Brix came to his rescue. “Stop yabbering in Cornish. Cal ain’t got a clue what you’re on about.”
It was true, though Calum didn’t have the heart to tell Brix that he wasn’t particularly interested.
“Sorry,” Kim said. “It’s habit when this ball and chain starts getting on my tits about leaving my tools all over the bedroom.”
“Ball and chain? Oh . . . you’re together?” Calum glanced between Kim and Lena, noting for the first time how their bodies were angled towards each other, their shoulders touching. Huh. For some reason, he’d pegged Lena as a spinster. Judgemental, much? Shit. Perhaps he really had become one of the arseholes he’d run all this way to escape.
“We’re together ’cause I’m the only mug who’ll put up with him,” Lena said.
Kim appeared unmoved. “She says it like she’s a bloody picnic.”
“I am, compared to you.”
“Now, now,” Brix intervened. “Sunday supper club ain’t for your bitching.”
“True enough.” Kim shovelled the last of his food into his mouth and pushed his bowl away. “Calum, I saw the mandala you did yesterday. That’s some awesome shit, man. I’ve done a bit of dot work, but nothing like that. Surprised we haven’t heard of you.”
Calum looked at Lena, who stared steadily back at him. “No reason for you to have heard of me. I’m not that good.”
“Yes, you are,” Lena said. “I put your work on the website last night, and you’ve got appointments every day this week. If you want them, of course. I didn’t take deposits, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case you didn’t want to work every day for the next week. You’re self-employed, Calum. You can do what the hell you want.”
What I want? If only Calum knew what that was. If only he’d ever known. “I’ll do them. Got nothing else on, have I?”
“Except chicken whispering,” Brix said. “Pretty sure I caught you singing to Bongo yesterday.”
Calum broke his stare-off with Lena. “Oh yeah?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve serenaded a bird.”
“If you’re referring to Stacey from Bethnal Green, you can fuck off.”
“Oooh, sounds juicy,” Lena said. “Do tell.”
Brix shook his head. “Nah, I’m a gentleman, but if you’ve never heard a drunk posh boy sing ‘One Day Like This’ from the bottom of an East End high-rise, you’re missing out.”
Calum laughed, couldn’t help it, though his humour was heavy, weighed down by the knowledge that the Calum who’d the balls to do stuff like that was long gone. “I blame that scrumpy you made us all drink. Fucking stuff was like acid. I’d have tried flying if my legs coulda carried me to the top of those flats. I felt like Spider-Man.”
Kim sniggered. “You should get ’im over your old man’s place. Give him some home brew.”
“No, thanks.” Calum drained his beer. “That scrumpy still haunts me.”
Brix got up and started clearing the table. The cats—Zelda and Dennis—joined them, howling for their dinner, until Brix opened a cupboard and cursed. “Fuck. I didn’t bring their food from the shed when I got back from the wholesalers. Give us a hand, Kim?”
Calum pictured the giant sack of dry cat food Brix had brought home the previous evening. He’d wondered where it had gone. Things seemed to disappear in Brix’s house and garden, like the stack of crates that had been here the first day he’d come. They’d evaporated overnight, leaving Calum to consider the possibility that they might’ve been a figment of his drunken imagination.
Kim and Brix went outside, which left Calum with Lena. Dodging her keen gaze, he gathered the last of the dishes and took them to the sink, hoping she wouldn’t follow.
A daft notion, it seemed, when she appeared at his elbow a moment later. “You wash. I’ll dry and put away. Don’t suppose you know where anything goes yet.”
She had a point. Calum filled the sink with hot soapy water and set about scrubbing the plates with a little more vigour than necessary.
“Are you going to sulk forever?”
“Sulk?” Calum passed Lena a clean plate. “What are you talking about?”
