Hard Tail (4 page)

I cast my mind back and hit a blank, apart from a vague memory of Mum telling me I shouldn’t have been pestering my brother, anyway. “Doubt it. But the angler gave me a dead crab to take home.” I brightened. “Mum must have been horrified, but she just had to smile and say thanks, seeing as he’d just saved my life. And Jay was really jealous.” I’d kept the crab in my bedroom for a couple of weeks, until it mysteriously disappeared—by which time the smell had been so rank even I didn’t miss it.

Matt sighed. “Must be great, having a brother. Apart from, you know, him trying to kill you and all.”

“Er, yes. I think.” My turn to sigh. “I suppose I’d better go back and make the place look open.” I took a step back toward the door. Matt nodded and bent low over the bike once more, his baggy jeans slipping halfway down his arse to reveal stripey underwear that reminded me of one of the throws in Jay’s living room.

I caught myself staring, and shook my head. What the hell was I thinking of? Time to get back to work.

I sat behind that till and counted down the hours to one o’clock. How on earth could Jay make a living doing this? We had only two customers in who actually bought anything—one, a cycle lock for seven pounds ninety-nine, and the other, a pump adaptor for 87p. At this rate, we’d be bankrupt by the end of the week.

As I turned the shop sign to “Closed” I became aware of a sort of shuffling sound behind me. When I turned, Matt was there. “Um. I was just wondering—do you fancy going to the caff for lunch? I mean, it’s nothing special, just a greasy spoon sort of place, so maybe you’d rather not…”

“I’d love to!” I said a little too loudly. All those hours with no one to talk to had got to me a bit.

“Great!” Matt enthused—and promptly tripped over the most expensive bike in the shop, which started to topple over towards the next in line. I lunged to catch it, having visions of writing off all Jay’s stock in one fell swoop as the domino effect took over. “Shit. Sorry about that,” Matt muttered, hanging his dark, shaggy head.

I straightened, breathing hard. “No harm done.” Maybe this was how Jay kept afloat. Matt trashed the stock, and Jay claimed the insurance. I wondered how much longer it’d be before they started refusing to pay out for acts of clod.

We made it to the café without further incident, thankfully. Then again, it was only two doors down, past a hairdresser’s that wafted out humid fumes smelling of mingled fruit and chemicals. The café was pretty much as Matt had said—linoleum floor, orange Formica tables and a misspelt chalkboard menu that seemed to consist mainly of grease, grease and more grease. Generously seasoned with a sprinkling of misplaced apostrophes. The place was almost full, though, which argued well for the quality of the food, if not for its healthiness. The clientele was mostly male, in a mix of business and casual wear, but there was a group of four women dressed for the office in the far corner. They looked up when we went in, one of them giving me a frankly appraising look that was a little alarming. I broke eye contact and headed over to the free table farthest from their corner, trying to surreptitiously check if I’d spilt anything down my front or left my flies open.

“Does Jay ever come in here—watch out!” I managed to save the vinegar bottle Matt’s wayward elbow had knocked off a table on the way.

“Sorry,” Matt said, looking mortified. “And, um, no. Not really his sort of place. He usually has something healthy and cold in the shop.”

“Would that be Olivia?” I asked archly as we sat at the table. Then I wondered if I’d gone a bit too far with a bloke I hardly knew.

Matt just grinned. “You’ve met her, then? No, she doesn’t come round the shop much. She’s not really into bikes.”

“Might ruin those perfect nails,” I suggested, my cattiness fuelled by relief he hadn’t taken umbrage on her behalf.

“Or get oil on those white tunics of hers,” Matt added, his unblemished eye twinkling. “We shouldn’t diss her, though—she’s all right, really. And Jay seems to like her.”

As if that was a recommendation. Jay liked
everyone
. A middle-aged waitress in a brown pinny came and asked what she could do us for, so I ordered egg and chips with a mug of coffee (please, God, let it not be decaf), and Matt asked for the same. As we settled down to wait, he started fiddling with the little packets of salt and pepper that were in a cup on the table, and I started making bets with myself on how long it’d be before the table was covered in condiments.

“How long have you worked for Jay?” I asked, curious. Matt talked like he’d known Jay a long time, but then most people tend to do that five minutes after they’ve met him. Jay’s just that sort of bloke.

“Er…” Matt looked like he was
this
close to counting on his fingers. “About eight months now. I knew him before that, though. We go biking together, Thursday nights.”

“Just the two of you?” I asked more sharply than I meant to.

“God, no! There’s about half a dozen of us. Well, not everyone comes each week—actually, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Adam, I’d better give him a ring and see what’s up—but on an average night, there’s about half a dozen. You should come along,” he added with a lopsided smile.

“I don’t cycle,” I said a bit shortly. “Haven’t had a bike since I was in school,” I explained, trying to sound friendlier. “It was a bit hilly where I went to university.” Although, if I was honest, a lot of the students had managed with bikes.

Matt laughed, showing that broken tooth again. “You can’t run a bike shop and not even own a bike!”

If it had been anyone else, I’d probably have become defensive. But Matt was so good-natured, it just wasn’t possible to take offence. “I suppose it is a bit funny,” I admitted.

“Why don’t you have a look at the stock? Jay always gives a discount to mates; he’d definitely do the same for you.”

I had to smile at his innocent assumption that the only thing that had been stopping me from owning a bike up to now was that I hadn’t been able to get one on the cheap. “I’ll think about it,” I hedged and was relieved to see the food turn up—two huge platefuls of eggs with golden yolks and proper chip-shop chips, not the little matchsticks you get in fast-food places.

The next few minutes were spent passing the salt and vinegar—I’d always thought I was a bit heavy-handed with the latter, but Matt absolutely drenched his chips with the stuff—and hunting for the brown sauce in the little cupful of sachets. I noticed with approval that Matt, like me, kept his egg yolk unadulterated and only squeezed sauce on the boring bit.

Then I realised he’d seen me staring at his eggs, so I had to say something to cover my embarrassment. “So, er, did Jay tell you much about me? Apart from that I was married?”

“He said you were posh,” Matt said cheerfully, his mouth half full of food.

I gave a nervous little laugh and spread some egg yolk on a chip. “We’re brothers. I’m not any posher than Jay is.”

“Yeah, you are,” Matt contradicted me, gesturing with his fork and nearly taking my eye out. “Sorry. You don’t talk like him, for a start.”

“I don’t?” How did Jay talk, anyway? I tried to think if he sounded, well, more common than me. All I could think of was that he sounded like
Jay
. I ate another chip, this one with a bit of egg white to get it over with.

“Nah. He talks like everyone else.”

Great. My accent had social leprosy. “So how do I talk?”

Matt shrugged. “Well. Posh. Didn’t you go to Oxford or Cambridge, or something?”

I could feel my face growing warm. “Durham, actually.” So I hadn’t got into Cambridge, so what? It wasn’t like my mother constantly bewailed my failure… Oh. Wait. She did. I took a gulp of coffee, finding the predominant flavour was the salt that had been deposited on the mug by the dishwasher. Still, as long as it had caffeine in, I decided I didn’t care.

“Is that where you met your wife?”

I was a bit thrown by the sudden mention. “Kate?”

Matt grinned. “Why, how many wives have you had?”

The furnace in my face turned up to Gas Mark 12. I put my mug down slowly. “Uh, just the one. And yes, we met at Uni.” We’d been friends before we were girlfriend and boyfriend. A
long
time before. I think, in the end, it was just that neither of us could think of any convincing reasons to give to people when they asked, yet again, why we weren’t going out. So we did, and it had seemed to work all right. The sex hadn’t been brilliant, but Kate hadn’t seemed all that interested in sex in any case, so that had taken the pressure off quite a bit. We’d been happy enough, I guess—until Kate had started wanting more from life than a husband who was more like a brother.

I’d always wanted a sister, I recalled.

It wasn’t a subject I was particularly keen to talk to Matt about, so I tried to shift the focus away from me. “So are you, er, seeing someone?” I asked, cringing internally because when I asked girls this, they always seemed to assume it was a chat-up line.

Matt gave me a wary look. I wondered what Jay had told him about me. “Yeah. Actually, we live together. Um. So do you know the area well?”

I guessed I wasn’t the only one for whom it was a touchy subject, although it worried me it might just be that Matt thought I was judgmental. “It’s not a problem, you know,” I insisted. Matt just looked puzzled, so I was forced to carry on. “You being, well, gay.” I cleared my throat, feeling like an idiot. “Do you live in Totton?”

“Oh! Yeah—I mean, no. But I used to. My, um, Steve’s place is out in the New Forest.” Matt smiled, and his tone got warmer. I wasn’t sure if it was for the forest, the house, or for the mysterious and presumably comfortably well-off Steve.

I was already starting to dislike the bloke. “Sounds nice,” I said shortly.

“It is—we get wild ponies coming right up to the garden fence, and it’s really peaceful out there. The pubs are great too. You should try a few. Most of them do food.”

I shrugged. “Never really been that keen on eating out alone.”

“We could go to one next Wednesday, if you like. There’s this brilliant one I know out towards Lyndhurst—they do a great lasagna. Loads of other stuff too. If it’s nice, we could eat out in the garden.” Matt made excited gestures with his fork, and a blob of brown sauce teetered but just failed to fall on the table.

His enthusiasm had me sold on the idea even before I’d had time to think it over. “Yes, why not? We could make it a regular weekly lunch date.” Matt’s eyes went wide, and I cursed myself. “Not that it’ll be a date, obviously,” I added hurriedly. “Just…two blokes going for a pub lunch. Drinking beer and, um, talking about football. Not a date at all, really. I don’t know why I called it that.” I took a gulp of lukewarm coffee to cover my embarrassment.

Matt fiddled with one of the little packets of salt that had survived his ministrations earlier. In a belated reversion to form, it came apart in his hands, spilling tiny granules all over the table. “Shit.” He sounded miserable, and I felt like a bastard. “Look, Jay said you were a bit—and it doesn’t matter, I know some blokes are a bit uncomfortable with the gay thing.” Now I felt even more like a bastard.

“It’s not…” I stopped. Because it
was
that, and denying it would just make me a lying bastard. I pushed my chair back and stood. “Look, I’ve got shopping I need to get done. Thanks for lunch; it’s been great. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Then I dropped a £20 note on the table and walked out like the coward I was.

Chapter Four

After I’d braved the local Asda—it was a lot larger, busier and generally less user-friendly than the Waitrose I usually shopped at, but it was also cheaper, which, given my straitened circumstances, was a good thing—and cleaned it out of coffee, tea and microwaveable ready meals, I went to see Jay. Obviously, the universe agreed with me that I was due a bit of karmic payback, as Mum was there. She was putting all the get-well cards into a carrier bag and generally looking like she was preparing to re-enact the evacuation of Dunkirk, only on a slightly larger scale.

“Mum?” I said, giving Jay a distracted wave. “Is Jay going home already?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. James is far too ill for that. No, the doctors here have admitted he’s going to need a further operation, which clearly means the first one wasn’t done properly, and I don’t think it’s good enough. We’re having him transferred to the Spire.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Jay, you can’t afford a private hospital!” Not on the profits of 87p pump adaptors, he couldn’t.

“Don’t be silly, dear,” Mum said. “He’s got insurance.”

“He has?” I said stupidly.

“Yeah.” Jay finally took part in the conversation. “Mum pays for it.”

I stared at her. “What? You’ve never said anything about getting us private cover.”

“Well, I don’t, for you, Timothy. There’s never seemed to be any need. After all, you don’t
do
anything.”

“What about the karate?” I sputtered, wounded by her dismissive tone.

“Oh, Timothy.” She made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Everyone knows it’s all noncontact these days. You’re only pretending to hit people. It’s not as if it’s
proper
fighting.”

Way to make me feel good about my shiny new black belt, Mum. “One of the guys at my club broke his wrist a few weeks ago,” I pointed out, possibly a little defensively.