Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
TOM
Sunday lunch at my parents’ house is never quiet.
‘Pass the potatoes.’
‘I’ve just sat down, get them yourself.’
‘Mum, Hayley won’t pass the potatoes.’
‘Hayley, pass your sister the potatoes.’
‘She’s closer to them than I am!’
‘For God’s sake.’ Dad reaches across the table, deposits the bowl in front of Meg, and sits back with the air of a man who has resolved an international crisis. ‘There. Done.’
Mum emerges from the kitchen with the gravy boat. ‘What have I missed?’
‘Potato-gate,’ I say. ‘It’s been resolved.’
‘It always is.’ She sets the gravy down. ‘Right. Everyone’s here. Everyone’s fed. What’s the news?’
This is how it works. Mum waits until everyone has food in front of them before she starts. It’s strategic and harder to escape when you’re pinned by a roast dinner.
I’ve definitely been pinned by a roast dinner and I can’t taste any of it.
The beef is Mum’s best, the Yorkshires are perfect, and I’m putting food in my mouth and chewing and it’s all texture and no flavour because it’s been thirty-six hours since Nina backed away from me on the surgery doorstep and I haven’t slept properly since.
She hasn’t texted. She hasn’t called. The phone in my pocket is silent in a way it hasn’t been silent for eleven years, and the absence is so loud I keep checking it under the table, tilting the screen towards my knee, finding nothing.
Cara has gone off to explore Amber Cove, and I nearly went with her, but Darcy Sunday lunch is lore and to miss it is sacrilege. Unless your hangover is too bad, in which case Mum drops it off with a jug of perfect gravy.
Hayley launches into a story about a customer at the garden centre who wanted a refund on a dead plant he’d had for six years.
Meg counters with a tale from the hotel – a guest who complained the sea was too loud.
Dad shakes his head. Mum listens and laughs and keeps one eye on me, because she always keeps one eye on me, because mothers are built with a frequency detector that picks up the specific pitch of a child pretending to be fine.
‘Tom’s quiet,’ Meg observes, pointing her fork at me. ‘Tom’s never quiet. What’s wrong with Tom?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with Tom.’
‘That’s exactly what someone would say if something was wrong.’
‘Leave your brother alone,’ Mum says, but she’s watching me now too. The full beam. ‘He’ll talk when he’s ready.’
‘I’m fine. I’m eating my dinner.’
‘You’ve barely touched your Yorkshire pudding,’ Hayley says. ‘You love Yorkshire pudding. You once ate four in a sitting and then complained you couldn’t breathe. Mum, Tom hasn’t touched his Yorkshire pudding.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Definitive proof of crisis.’
‘Can everyone stop diagnosing me? I’m a vet. I do the diagnosing in this family.’
‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Dad says mildly. He’s got the look – patient, steady, the same look he gives nervous animals. The same look he taught me. ‘You’ve been jumpy all week, Tom. Your mother’s noticed. I’ve noticed. Even Mrs Pemberton noticed, and she’s blind in one eye.’
‘Dot’s dog has an ear infection. I was distracted.’
‘You were distracted before the ear infection.’ Dad sets down his fork. Dad putting down his fork is the Darcy equivalent of a judge calling order. ‘What’s going on?’
I look at my plate. The Yorkshire pudding, golden and perfect, exactly how Mum always makes them. The same recipe. The same table. The same Sunday. Every week for as long as I can remember, except for university, except for the years away that feel now like they happened to someone else.
‘Cara’s found a practice,’ I say. ‘In Scotland. Inverness, actually. Coming up for sale. She wants us to go in on it together. As partners.’
Silence. The real kind. Even Meg stops chewing.
Then everyone speaks at once.
‘Scotland?’ Meg.
‘As in, Scotland Scotland?’ Hayley.
‘When you say partners—’ Mum.
‘How far is Scotland from here?’ Meg again.
‘It’s literally the furthest point from Cornwall you can get without falling into the sea,’ Hayley says. ‘I looked it up once.’
‘Why were you—’
‘It was a quiz, Meg. Keep up.’
‘Hang on.’ Meg holds up her hands. ‘Scotland. You. Living there. Permanently?’
‘Potentially. A trial first. See how it goes.’
‘And Cara.’ Hayley’s voice has gone careful. ‘This is the Cara who’s been staying with you. The tall one.’
‘Yes.’
‘The one who looks at you like you’re the last biscuit in the tin.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘She does,’ Meg confirms. ‘I’ve seen it. Very intense. Very last-biscuit.’
‘Can we focus on the actual—’ I look at Dad. He hasn’t moved. Fork down. Face still. ‘Dad. The practice. I know you were expecting me to take over. I know that was always the plan. But—’
‘What kind of practice?’ he asks.
‘Mixed. Large and small animals. Some equine. There’s a wildlife rehabilitation programme attached.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘It is. And Cara’s brilliant – you’ve heard about her at the foaling. We’d be a strong team.’
‘And what about this practice?’ Mum asks. Her voice is quiet. Not the warning quiet. The real kind. ‘What about your father’s retirement?’
Dad picks up his wine glass. Takes a long sip.
Sets it down. The gesture is so precisely his – the deliberation, the unhurried consideration – that I feel a sharp, sudden ache behind my ribs.
I know this man’s every movement. I know the creak of his chair and the way he folds his handkerchief and the particular sigh he gives when Mrs Carmichael’s spaniel sits on his foot.
I know this kitchen, this table, the view of the garden through the window where his roses are dying in the heat.
I am sitting here contemplating leaving all of it.
‘Your mother and I have been talking,’ Dad says.
‘Oh God.’ Hayley puts her head in her hands. ‘They’ve been talking. That’s never good.’
‘Shut up,’ Meg hisses.
‘We’ve been talking,’ Dad continues, ‘about what happens when I retire. About the practice. About you.’ He looks at me directly, and his face contorts with a crack, brief and controlled, a fissure in the steadiness that he closes so fast I might have imagined it.
But I didn’t imagine it. ‘If you need to go, Tom, you go. We’ll find another way. ’
I stare at him. ‘What?’
‘I can sell to someone else. Bring in a partner. Your mother’s found a young woman from Truro – small-animal specialist, just qualified, very keen. Or I wind it down gradually. There are options.’
‘But the practice—’
‘Is mine. Not yours.’ His voice is firm but his hand, resting on the table, has tightened around the stem of his glass.
I see the knuckles whiten. I see the cost. ‘It was never supposed to be an obligation. I’d love for you to take over.
Of course I would. But not if it means you’re staying out of duty. That’s no way to build a life.’
The table is quiet. Meg has tears in her eyes, which she’ll deny if anyone mentions it. Hayley is studying her plate with sudden fascination.
‘You’d really be okay with it?’ I ask. ‘If I left?’
‘We’d miss you,’ Mum says. ‘Terribly. But we’d survive. Parents are supposed to want their children to fly. Even when it hurts to watch.’
‘Besides,’ Hayley says, her voice slightly thick, ‘Scotland’s not that far.’
‘Would you wear a kilt?’ Meg asks, and the question is so perfectly, absurdly Meg that the table laughs, and the laughter is a relief valve that lets everyone breathe.
‘I’m not wearing a kilt.’
‘You’ve got the legs for it. I saw them at the fete. Very tanned. Very capable.’
‘Can we not discuss my legs?’
‘Hayley, back me up. Tom has good legs.’
‘Tom has adequate legs. The knees are a question mark.’
‘My knees are fine.’
‘You’ve never looked at them properly.’
‘Why would I look at my own knees properly?’
‘What about Nessie?’ Hayley asks. ‘The loch’s right there. You could investigate.’
‘Do they have proper pasties?’ Dad asks. ‘Or is it all haggis?’
‘Don, they’re not savages,’ Mum says. ‘They have bakeries.’
‘A man needs a proper pasty.’
‘I’m sure Tom can survive without pasties.’
‘Can he though?’ Hayley tilts her head. ‘Remember when the Padstow place closed for refurbishment? He nearly cried.’
‘I didn’t nearly cry.’
‘You were misty.’
‘I was tired.’
‘Misty about pasties. It’s fine. We all have our weaknesses.’
I look around the table. Meg with gravy on her chin. Hayley gesturing with her fork. Mum trying not to laugh. Dad shaking his head at all of them, his hand still tight around his glass, the knuckles still white, his face already rearranged into something lighter than what I saw underneath.
This. This chaos. This noise. These impossible, wonderful, maddening people who have been the background music of my entire life.
I’m already missing them and I haven’t left.
‘What about Nina?’
Meg’s voice. The table goes quiet. A different quiet from the Scotland announcement – this one has edges.
‘What about her?’ My fork stops in mid-air. I put it down.
‘You’re just going to leave? Without telling her? Without—’
‘Meg.’ Mum’s warning tone.
‘I’m just saying. He’s been in love with her for approximately a thousand years. And now he’s running off to Scotland with someone else. That seems like information she should have.’
‘I’m not running off. I’m considering a career opportunity.’
‘With a woman who looks at you like—’
‘You already used the biscuit line.’
‘It bears repeating.’ Meg leans forward, and her face has shifted from teasing to serious so fast it catches me off guard.
‘Tom. I’m not trying to be horrible. But we’ve been watching you do this.
For years. Every Sunday you come here and you’re either slightly too happy because you’ve seen her or slightly too quiet because you haven’t, and we all pretend we don’t notice because that’s what families do. But if you’re actually leaving—’
‘Meg,’ Dad cuts in, sounding pretty damn firm, which is unusual to say the least.