And now, just before he arrives downstairs, the pièce de résistance. I uncork the bottle of wine I bought earlier. It’s a good red—far out of my price range—but for Jack, I’d be willing to spend it all.
At the table, I pour two large glasses. I’ve weighed the risks of this move and decided it was worth it. The wine will, I hope, lower his inhibitions. Loosen him up a bit. Chase any thoughts of her firmly from his mind. I’m not taking any chances. Not after our last disastrous dinner together.
Jack arrives downstairs two minutes later. He takes in the setup: the table, the stew steaming on the edge of the sideboard, the bread. Then his gaze halts at the glasses on the table.
“Iris, I don’t drink.”
“I know.” A breezy, insouciant voice. “But I do enjoy a glass or two with supper and I don’t like drinking alone. One can’t make a difference, can it?”
He swallows again, eyes fixed on the glass. Finally: “OK.” He doesn’t sound completely sure, but the wine is poured and in front of him, and he is very recently back on the wagon. Too recently to have any real willpower.
We sit. I watch carefully as he takes a small sip, then—to distract him—I ask about his day. He shrugs, reaches for the glass again. A bigger sip this time, eyes closed in pleasure. “It was fine. My bitch of a boss wanted me to stay later, but I told her I had to get back. Didn’t want tobe late. Not when supper’s on the table.” He smiles, raises the glass in my direction. I’m surprised by the expletive. It jars, coming from his mouth, which is so often used to spill compliments and kind words.
“Well, let’s hope it was worth it,” I say modestly, though I am very proud of my creation.
“It definitely was,” he says, chewing. “Did you have a shift today?”
If he thinks I can whip up a feast like this around my day job, he is very much mistaken. “I’ve taken some time off, actually,” I say. “After everything with Mum, I just felt like I needed to get my head together.”
In truth, the thought of cooking for Jack sent me into a total spin, and given I have now sorted my accommodation issue, the need for more shifts has diminished. I texted Mick, telling him about my fallout with Mum, how it’s brought back all sorts of difficult emotions for me. He replied, a little shortly, telling me to take whatever time I needed, though to please let him know further in advance next time. I refrained from a snippy retort. I’m learning.
“Have you spoken to your mum?” Jack asks.
I heave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ve tried, but she doesn’t pick up.” This is not true. Mum has been trying to call me almost incessantly since I left, no doubt with the intention of staining my name further, and I have no interest in speaking to her. She left a few messages that I haven’t listened to. I blocked her number earlier today, fed up with the constant vibration. I lower my eyes sadly. “I think I’ll have to go over at some point. Just to check up on her.”
Jack reaches out across the table for my hand. His glass is empty already. “You don’t have to, Iris. You’re not responsible for her decisions. You’ve done everything you can.”
“I know,” I say softly, employing one of Marcie’s hard-done-by looks. They had great effect with Mum on several occasions. “I just feel so guilty. She’s the only parent I have left. I can’t just leave her.”
Jack doesn’t reply. He pours himself another glass of wine, then rollshis shoulders. He’s loosening up already. I can tell from the slight flush traveling up his neck. I take a small sip from my own glass, curiosity clawing at me.
“What about you? Tell me about your family,” I say.
He swallows another large gulp. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, I got the sense that the house is a bit of a contentious issue.”
He sighs, nods, pours another glass. He wasn’t lying: This man can drink. “It is. I never wanted it. It was all my father ever thought about. He was obsessed with his ‘legacy,’ whatever that means. It came before everything else.” Another deep sigh. I love that he’s trusting me with these snippets of his personal life. Giving me a glimpse beneath the veneer. The foundation for any good relationship.
“I didn’t have the easiest relationship with my father,” he continues. “He was…he could be a bit of a bully. He had a lot of power, and he knew it, particularly when we were growing up. Before I started challenging him.”
“Could you not just say no, to the house?” I have absolutely no idea why someone wouldnotwant to live here, but it feels like the right line of questioning.
He shakes his head. “We have the good old British class system to thank for that. Firstborn son gets everything. Irrespective of what they really want. When he died, my sister and Mum got nothing.”
He tells me then—with a bitterness in his voice that I have never heard there before—about his father. A cruel, domineering man who enjoyed wielding power over the whole family. He came down hardest on Jack, as the son and heir. His demands became so all-consuming that, when Jack was aged only eight, he nearly broke. He was shipped off to boarding school not long after, and there he experienced freedom for the first time. The shifting goalposts that his father put in place felt less imposing, and Jack stopped trying to be something he was not. He turned to drugs and alcohol instead and began to free-fall.
“He got off on it,” he says now. “I guess he sort of loved and hated the fact that I was a failure. He told me about twenty times a day what a disappointment I’d been. Which just drove me toward the booze even more.”
“And Alice?” I ask now. Carefully. Don’t want to spook him. “What about her? Where does she fit in?”
“She saved me. Dad liked her, which helped. She had this way of making people like her. I always sort of envied her for it. Particularly because he just seemed to fuckinghateme all the time. But Dad saw what she did for me, and things became a little better. She really took to this house, you know?” He’s gone all misty-eyed, and I must resist the urge to stab him with my fork, bring him back to the room, remind him of who is sitting in front of him.
“I noticed—” I break off with a small, delicate cough. Getting to the crux of it all now. “That there are no photos of her?”
“No.” He takes another large swig of wine. “I couldn’t bear to look at them. They’re all in that chest in the sitting room. I just shoved them in there after she died. Can’t bring myself to sort through them.”
Bingo. Chest. Sitting room. That’s tomorrow’s little job. I’m bored of talking about Alice and Jack’s family now. I must make my own position very clear. And so I lean forward and place my hand oh so gently over Jack’s, and I curl my fingers round his, just as I did at the restaurant. My heart thuds in my chest. I watch his face carefully for any sign that he’s going to pull away. Reject me again. Somethingdoesflash over his face. But it’s not anger. It looks closer to guilt. That’s to be expected: It’s a complicated thing, falling in love after losing someone.
