“Apparently. I haven’t seen it, though.”
“Well, consider your price carefully when you do.”
“I know, I know.” Calum recalled Brix’s views on cover-ups. Tattoos gone wrong through poor artistry got done for free. Bad choices on the part of the client—like a holiday tat of a wonky ball sac—got charged the earth. “Where are you going? Anywhere nice?”
“Nope.”
Fair enough. “Is it bad that I feel like another drink?”
“I reckon you’ll think so in the morning, but there’s some of my dad’s scrumpy around here somewhere if you’re game?”
“Scrumpy? Is it worse than what you gave me in London?”
“I’d say so. Dangerous stuff. Can’t remember a thing if I have too much of it.”
“Sounds like my kind of drink.”
“Does it?” Brix opened the door to the cellar and ducked inside, reappearing a moment later with a plastic container of what looked like a dark urine sample. “What do you want to forget, Cal?”
Calum shrugged. “Nothing specific.”
“Ah.” Brix nodded like Calum’s vague nonanswer made perfect sense. “Wanna forget who you are for a while, eh? I get that.”
“Doubt it,” Calum said. “Seems to me that you’ve got everything in place down here. Ink, mates, family. The perfect life.”
“Nothing’s ever perfect. All that shit you just said . . . it’s a house of cards, nothing more. You can’t count on anything ’cept yourself, and even that’s a bonehead idea.” Brix turned away abruptly and opened a cupboard, retrieving glasses that were smaller than Calum expected for sharing a bottle of cider. “Come on. You’ll want to be on the couch for this.”
Calum followed Brix to the living room and obediently sat on the sofa. Brix claimed the other end and opened the scrumpy.
“Me and my brother used to call this Scrumpty-Dumpty when we were kids. I drew a drunken egg as a logo, and we sold it at the bottom of our drive every summer. My dad let us keep half the money.”
Calum leaned forward, fascinated, and accepted a tumbler of amber cider. “Who sells it now?”
“No one. Abel’s banged up, remember? And my dad doesn’t make so much these days. Too busy spending all his dosh on the horses.”
“You’ve never told me why Abel went to prison.”
“I know.” Brix took a long, slow swallow of cider. “I never told anyone back in London, ’cause it felt like if I kept quiet, it wouldn’t be real, even though Abel was closer to me there than he is now. Stupid, eh?”
“Not really. You can be right next to someone and worlds apart.”
“True that. I guess it depends how deep you bury your soul, and how deep the person beside you is prepared to go looking. What do you make of the scrumpy?”
Calum took Brix’s abrupt subject change at face value and let Abel Lusmoore go. He wasn’t in the business of forcing people to talk about stuff they didn’t want to. Fuck no. He reached for the cider and took a drink. Instant fire burned down his throat and set his insides alight. “Bloody hell!”
Brix laughed, his brooding of moments before all but gone. “My nan used to say it was like swallowing sunbeams, but Dad didn’t make it as strong back then. These days, he sets a batch to brew, then forgets all about it till the barrel’s about to blow.”
Calum believed it. He took another swig, absorbing the roiling heat. It reminded him of another heady burn, one he hadn’t felt for—
“Jesus. It’s got you already.”
“What?” Calum opened his eyes to find Brix watching him, clearly amused. “I’m okay.”
“Oh, I know you are. I remember the look on your face right now. Means you’re gonna fall asleep smiling.”
Calum snorted. “I doubt it. Ain’t done much of that lately.”
“You’d be surprised. I reckon you smile most when you don’t know you’re doing it.”
