Jaz made a kind of shudder that suggested having a sincere opinion about anything Oliver or I suggested was unthinkable to her, unless that opinion wasIt’s shit and you’re both shit.
“Let’s try it this way,” said Oliver. “Lucien and I intend to reach out to Esther and your mother to start making arrangements first thing tomorrow morning. If youdon’twant us to, just say literally anything that isn’twhatever.”
Jaz glared at Oliver like she was hoping she could spontaneously turn into the Ark of the Covenant and melt his face off, Indiana Jones–style.
And then she said, “Whatever.”
But when she said it, she smiled.
Part FourSpring/Summer
Chapter 41
When Esther had said that arranging for Jaz to see her mother wouldn’t make our lives easier, she wasn’t kidding. She wasn’t on the same street as kidding. She and kidding had met once at a party six years ago and then moved to separate continents.
It soon became clear Jaz’s mother, Maisie Johnson, had the kind of depression that, well, that gets your kids taken away by social services.
The first visit we’d arranged, at Esther’s suggestion, had been on relatively neutral ground close enough to Maisie’s house that it wasn’t an onerous distance for her to travel but not so close that we were concretely on her turf.
Eventually—and this had been a very Oliverian choice, now I think about it—we’d opted for a nearby park which, according to its website, had been opened in 1995 to give local residents a taste of the countryside. It had a tearoom and nature walks, and it wasn’t a pub so didn’t raise tricky questions of dog-and-child-appropriateness.
Just nailing down the details of the first meeting had taken over a month, which meant that whatever goodwill we—and especially Oliver—had earned for making the initial effort had evaporated in the interim. Which, on one level, we understood was to be expected when you were dealing with somebody for whom a month was stilla sizable fraction of their conscious life, but on the other hand was a bit of a pisser.
As we got closer to the actual day, Jaz got increasingly agitated. I’d love to be able to say she got increasinglyexcited, butagitatedis definitely the right word. She got antsy, snappish, and surly. Which made the atmosphere in the O’Donnell-Blackwood-Johnson household honestly kind of unfun.
Not that we were doing this for fun, of course. Which Oliver reminded me. Daily. He hadn’t quite hard-pivoted away from being Mr. Boundaries and Examples, but he seemed to have taken the lesson about being On Jaz’s Side to heart, which meant he was now On Her Side with the same unwavering intensity with which he was on the side of honesty, justice, veganism, and me.
Two days before our first scheduled meeting, there was a banging at the door. Oliver and I answered it to find Next Door’s Kid, Next Door’s Kid’s Dad, and Next Door’s Kid’s Mum standing on our doorstep, looking irate. Irate even by the standards of Next Door’s Kid’s Mum and Next Door’s Kid’s Dad, which was very, very irate indeed.
“Jacqueline,” said Oliver. “Richard.”
“Oliver,” said Next Door’s Kid’s Dad back. “Luke.” I could always, always tell when people put akeon the end. “Your guest—”
“Foster daughter,” Oliver and I replied, simultaneously.
“Your foster daughter set a bloodydogon Colin.”
My first instinct wasShe would never. My second instinct wasShe might, actually. My third instinct wasGood.
Oliver looked down at Next Door’s Kid. He was doing his serious face again, and for a heart-squashing, stomach-twisting moment, I thought we were right back where we’d been six weeks ago. “Tell me what happened, Colin,” he said.
Next Door’s Kid met Oliver’s gaze with tears glistening artfully in his eyes. He looked like a Dickensian orphan about to meeklyask for a second bowl of gruel. “Mr. Blackwood,” he began, lip all atremble, “I was in the park, feeding the ducks.”
“What with?” asked Oliver.
Next Door’s Kid looked momentarily confused, but only momentarily. “Bread.”
I had nothing like the skill set necessary to work out whether he was telling the truth or not. It’s not like he had a convenient bag of Hovis poking out of his pocket or crumbs all up his lapels. Hedidlook wet, dirty, and extremely bloody around the knees, but that could have meant anything.
“You should be careful with that,” said Oliver, playing it completely straight. “Bread isn’t bad for ducksper se, but they benefit from a varied diet.”
“Oh,” said Next Door’s Kid, who seemed a touch concerned that things were going off-script.
“They like sweetcorn.”
This wasn’t going in the direction that Next Door’s Kid had been expecting, but he did his malicious best to get back on his bullshit. “I was feeding the ducks,” he repeated, “just minding my own business, when the girl from next door pointed at me and was all, ‘Get him, boy,’ and the dog ran over and tried to bite me. And I was scared, so I tried to get away, so I fell in the lake.”
For a moment, Oliver said nothing.
