“Uncle Tom was cool, you said as much yourself, that’s why you named me for him and—”
“I’m not finished,” Marnie said. “I didn’t ask any questions when I suddenly went back to living with my father, and my father didn’t ask any questions when I married your father. All this silent acceptance... it carried on and on. I didn’t ask any questions when your father ran off with his floozies. I didn’t ask any questions when your brother decided to become aDruidand celebrate solstices at ancient stone circles.” She paused, almost dramatically. “Tom, I didn’t ask any questions when you came back after an absence of years.”
Tom blanched. “Mom,” he whispered.
But Marnie shook her head. “Today I’m going to ask you questions, Tom,” she said firmly, “and you are going to answer them.”
He swallowed, his mouth dry.
“And I want to know, first and foremost, about the woman you met back when you were calling yourself Tom Miller.”
Chapter 5: Magic
When Tom was around nine or ten years old, he broke his mother’s antique vase. He’d been playing a game he wasn’t meant to, in a room from which he was forbidden, and when the football made contact with the blue and white china, causing it to topple before it came crashing to the ground with an almighty smash, Tom felt sick. That vase had come from Europe, a priceless heirloom from France. When Tom’s great-grandfather had fled the continent during the ravages of World War Two, he’d taken a small trove of treasures with him, this vase included. It made Tom’s stomach churn and skin pale to think that the priceless antique had survived a perilous journey across France, with an army not two steps behind it, a dangerous transatlantic crossing and then eighty years sat in this draughty room, before being felled by the clumsy antics of a bored child.
Guilty and scared, Tom had run from the room in a panic, then hid in his bedroom for the rest of the day. When he was called down to dinner, sick to his stomach, his small heart beating fast within his chest, his mother stared at him. Her eyes were dark and posture bone rigid, and Tom had to look away from the unflinching accusation in her eyes.She knew,he realised.She knew about the vase.
Sick with nerves, he waited for the yelling to begin. He waited for the recriminations, the punishment, the verbal dressing down his guilty heart told him he deserved. He waited to be sent to bed without supper. He waited for his mother to speak, to say something, anything, and end the miserable guilt he’d carried from the moment the vase had hit the ground.
But Marnie remained silent, picking at her food, the only sounds in the echoing dining room that of her fork scraping across her plate, and Corentin’s inane chattering. Tom, his appetite destroyed, picked at his food, conscious of his mother’seyes upon him, watching closely, waiting — Tom instinctively knew — for him to crack.
It took four days before he did. Four awful days and four uncomfortable nights before Tom, wracked with guilt and fear and misery, went to his mother’s office and confessed all, crying on her shoulder.
Marnie, surprisingly, was gentle with him. She wiped the tears from his cheeks and the hair from his damp forehead.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” she said softly. “That’s all I ask for, Tom... honesty.”
Sitting in his hospital bed now, his mother glaring down at him, Tom was reminded of that moment. His mother stood rigidly, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, one foot tapping restlessly on the clinical linoleum of the hospital floor.
“I want to know, first and foremost, about the woman you met back when you were calling yourself Tom Miller.”
Tom swallowed hard, watching his mother with nervous trepidation.
“There was no woman,” he lied with a shrug, trying his luck.
“Stop,” Marnie interjected, her tone so full of vinegar it was caustic. “That was a lie.”
“There was never any woman,” Tom said again, indignant at his mother’s presumption that he was lying, even though he was.
“You really expect me to believe you went years without female company?”
“Well, there might have been one or two nights where...” Tom began, before shaking his head. “Mom, I do not want to have this conversation with you. My sex life is my own business.”
“Absolutely,” Marnie agreed. “But I’m not asking you about your sex life. I want to know about therelationshipyou had with a woman back when you were Tom Miller — when you stupidly went off the grid for years, draining your trust fund to nothing.”
Tom flushed a dull red. “Yeah, well, I did a lot of stupid things back then.”
Nodding, Marnie slid into the plastic bucket seat next to Tom’s hospital bed. It was the fluid movement of a snake ready to strike. Nervous, Tom leaned away from her.
“So,” Marnie began calmly. “Was Ari one of the stupid things you did back then?”
Instantly, Tom’s hands felt clammy, and his stomach dropped. His heart began to beat faster, as it always did whenever he heard Ari’s name, and his mouth ran dry of moisture. He stared at his mother, his mouth hanging open, stunned into momentary silence.
“Where did... Where did you hear about Ari?” Tom finally croaked, and he watched as his mother sat back in her chair, snapping open her bag and pulling out — of all the fucking things — her knitting.
“Never you mind about that,” she said shortly, her needles clacking together. Knitting was a hobby Marnie had taken up in her retirement, something to keep her hands and mind busy, and although she was terrible at it — sending Tom and Sasha crooked tea cosies and sweaters so ugly and itchy that Tom became convinced they were meant as instruments of torture — she seemed to enjoy it immensely. “I told you, I’m asking the questions today.”
“But . . . But Mom—”
