A pause. Dad puts the record back. He leaves his palm on the shelf for a moment.
‘You should hear it on a proper system,’ Dad says. ‘Mine’s nothing fancy, but the speakers are.’
He stops, catches himself. Realises he’s just invited his son’s thirty-two-year-old former lecturer to come round and listen to records. The realisation crosses his face like weather.
He sits back down, his arms crossed again. But the crossing is different, looser, less fortified—a wall with a window in it.
Mum’s hand finds mine under the table. The squeeze is fierce. Briefly, her eyes are wet.
‘It shows that he cares about you,’ she says. Just for me. Her mouth barely moving, the ventriloquism of mothers in rooms full of difficult men.
I squeeze back.
The rest of the lunch happens. Conversation, halting, then less halting. Mum asks about Laurence’s family. He tells her about Lancashire, about his mother, about the house with the garden that backs onto the canal. Dad contributes nothing further but eats a second portion of the lasagna, and the second portion is the closest he’ll come to a compliment.
At the door. Coats. The shuffling choreography of departure. Mum hugs me, hugs Laurence, brief, startled. He hugs her back. His arms are not quite sure where to go.
She looks at him. Holds his look like she held mine when I was seven and lied about the broken window.
‘Look after him.’
Laurence nods. Doesn’t speak. Knows better.
Dad shakes hands with him again. The duration is the same. But the pressure is different. I can tell from the angle of Dad’s wrist, from the geometry of his grip. Still not warm, but present.
Ron stays.
Of course, he stays. The beer’s open before the door’s closed, and he’s on the sofa with his boots off and the expression of someone past the hard part and into the bit he wanted.
‘Good lasagna,’ he says.
‘It was burnt.’
‘Crispy. There’s a distinction.’
Laurence collects plates, and Ron watches him go. Waits until the kitchen tap runs.
‘Is the Northern Quarter far from here?’
I look at him. He rubs his thumb on his palm—the circuit.
‘That bar,’ he says. Casual. So casual it’s translucent. ‘The one with the good beer. Is it still?’
‘Twenty minutes on the tram.’
He does the thing with his face. The red creeping up his neck, his expression tightening, the helplessness of a twenty-six-year-old man who can boss a crew but can’t.
‘Go,’ I say. ‘Right now.’
‘I can’t just.’
‘You can. You’re Ronan.’
He looks at me. The look from the train, younger brother as advisor, the universe in the wrong configuration. Then he stands, boots on. Jacket.
‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Ron. I kept a huge secret from everyone I love for an entire year. Discretion’s not the issue.’
