Between Oliver talking law and ethics, and my colleagues talking nonsense, I had a lot of experience with having no fucking clue what people were on about. This felt closer to the Oliver end of the spectrum. “Get my money back for what?”
She waved her hand over the table and looked at me like I knew nothing about how the world worked. “This. It’s an expense, isn’t it?”
“Not that much of an expense. I think it was like fifteen quid?” Shit, I was bad with money.
Every word out of my mouth seemed to bring me a rung lower in her estimation, and I hadn’t been that high up to begin with. “It’s anexpense,” she said. “Like as in, you can expense it. Get your money back off the agency. Or the government or something. I don’t know how it works. You should, though.”
I probably should have. “Honestly,” I told her, putting my hands up in a too-defensive-for-talking-to-children gesture, “that’s exactly the sort of detail I tend to screw up.”
The puzzlement on Jaz’s brow only deepened. “So what’d you bring me for?”
“I told you, it’d be illegal to leave you in the car.”
I’d been joking, but she didn’t seem to quite get it. “You could’ve took me home first. Got a takeaway or something.”
“I guess I thought stopping at a café would be…nice?”
“Nice?” Coming from Jaz, the word sounded almost foreign.
“Well, Iammeant to be looking after you.”
Andthatgot a laugh. I wasn’t sure why. Or at least I wasn’t sure why until she said, “Oh yeah. That’s right. I’m a looked-after child, aren’t I. Sooo looked after.”
A friendly-looking waiter set down a plate of chips in front of Jaz and a full English in front of me.
A thought struck me. “Y’know, Oliver’s vegan so if you did want to eat something with meat in it, now would be a good chance. I can still order you a bacon sandwich or something.”
Staring me dead in the eye, Jaz reached down, grabbed one of my two sausages between thumb and forefinger, picked it up, and took a bite out of it.
“Hey, I said I could order you something.”
She set the remaining half sausage down on top of her chips. “I’m good.”
“I don’t care if you’regood, that’s my fuc—flipping sausage you’ve just stolen.”
“You know”—Jaz glared at me contemptuously—“Ihaveheard the wordfuckbefore.”
“Not from me you haven’t.”
All the scorn in the world was channelling itself through Jaz’s eyes and into my soul.
“Notintentionally.”
For some reason the scorn continued.
So with trademark Luc O’Donnell maturity, I reached across the table and stole one of her chips.
“Hey!” The amount of outrage she managed to pack into one syllable with such a small larynx was genuinely impressive.
“Don’t like it, do you?”
“You’ve got your own.”
“And I’d have got you your own sausages if you’d asked,” I replied, feelingalmostlike a real grown-up. Well, as much like a real grown-up as I could feel when I was two steps away from getting into a food fight with a teenager. “Anyway, technically this is all my own because I paid for it and we’ve established I’m not going to be able to claim the money back.”
I’d meant it as lighthearted, but Jaz went silent at once and started staring intensely into her tea.
“Sorry.” I was probably apologising too much. It probably wasn’t parental to be apologising this much. In the hope of salvaging what I’d almost thought was a positive interaction, I pivoted to, “Do people really claim it back off tax or something every time they take you somewhere?”
