Chapter 48 – Thomas
Chapter Forty-Eight
Thomas
It’s been ages since I’ve visited mum. She sends my helicopter for me and I sincerely regret choosing a Union Jack color scheme.
I was such a fucking twat as a kid and having to leave the Academy in a Union Jack chopper won’t exactly look subtle.
At least mum got permission from the trustees for me to take a quick trip home.
I told Violet about what happened on Halloween and she insists I spend a night at home for my mental health. Home is the last thing I need for my mental health. I have a far better reason to show up at the manor and I definitely won’t be staying the night.
It’s only a twenty minute ride on the helicopter to our place in London, and I only have to stay for an hour or two for supper.
I just can’t bear supper in that house anymore.
I’ve turned mum down for every offer to visit since the divorce announcement in the papers.
I have to dress for home too – no Doc Martens in mum’s house.
White button downs, khaki trousers, dress socks, Gucci loafers, the Hermès watch Gran gifted me for my sixteenth birthday and absolutely no fucking nail polish.
Mum would chop my hands off herself with the vigor of a Saudi oil magnate.
Home. I don’t know how Violet was ever comfortable here. I don’t know how I was comfortable either. I trusted my dad before I discovered the truth about him. He was my everything.
I can’t live in a house with my father, but I can’t imagine the manor without him.
I know he’s a monster, but he’s my dad, you know?
It’s like I have memories of a different fucking man – the man I wish he was.
Mum has my brothers anyway, she doesn’t need me.
They must all be at boarding school now. I don’t talk to them much.
She wishes she had Violet. Can’t help it that Violet’s fucked off to America with her slow boyfriend. Mum greets me in the foyer with two kisses after Marissa announces my arrival.
“Thomas. Come here.”
She hugs me and then smells my hair. “Did you shower?”
“Miss you too, mum.”
Mum purses her lips. She’s had more work done there. It’s beginning to crack her face again. “Parlor?” she asks stiffly. The work must have been recent.
“Do we have to have a formal parlor?”
She religiously takes afternoon tea. I’m not dressed well enough for afternoon tea. I stuffed her favorite necktie of mine into my backpack, but I didn’t expect to need it.
“When you asked for the chopper, I had Stefan make oolong tea. You can skip the tie just for tonight.”
My favorite tea and no necktie, mum really knows how to let loose.
Despite everything, she’s not a bad person.
She’s stiff. She’s English. But she lost it when she learned the truth about him.
If she wasn’t trapped, I know she would have wanted him prosecuted.
He just has too much power. I really fucking hate dad for hurting her.
Without her saying a word, I know she had the tea poured because she’s all alone in this big house and she’s lonely.
“Thanks, mum.”
She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look angry either. I think that’s just how she looks these days. It’s just this blank expression she hides all her sadness behind. I’ve seen that sadness somewhere else, in another person who I can’t seem to ever get out of my fucking mind.
The house looks different. She must have had some remodeling done. Considering they spent ￡14 million on the last remodel, I imagine she’s burned through quite a chunk of change. And my mother, ever so knowledgeable about her son, puts her hand on my shoulder.
“I know you’ve come for money,” she says, gesturing to a chair in the parlor. I sink into the recently reupholstered antique chair, missing the scent of cigarettes that usually accompanied sinking into this particular chair. Mum always hated his smoking.
“Will you allow me some money?”
She prefers I ask my father about these things, but she’s my parent too. She doesn’t have to run every choice by my father.
“You have to talk to your father at some point,” she says stiffly, stirring three cubes of sugar into her tea.
I really don’t have to talk to my father.
I don’t want to. After everything, I want him behind bars.
I don’t want to have tea with him or pretend he’s not a fucking criminal.
I know mum disagrees. He’s still your dad.
When I point out that hasn’t stopped her from divorcing him, she reminds me that it’s different.
But how? He’s a fucking dick. He doesn’t deserve a wife or kids.
“I need money urgently. A lot.”
“For what?”
It’s our family rule. You can have whatever money you want as long as you’re honest. There’s no hiding from our accountants.
Each one served over two decades accounting for the British crown.
I’ve never hidden anything from my mum, not even terrible things.
Fuck, she’s heard worse from my brothers by now, I’m sure.
They’re off at boarding school or the house would surely be filled with screeching by now.
“I’m going to kill someone,” I tell my mother and she takes her hand off my shoulder.
“I thought you got that out of your system.”
“I didn’t murder Amelia.”
“What you did wasn’t any different from murder, Thomas.”
That’s the deal, isn’t it? We don’t sugarcoat the truth from each other. Our parents love us. Our parents trust us to make the right choices. She’s my mum and I know she’s supposed to be hard on me, but with everything that’s happened, it’s hard to keep my cool.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter that I've been clean for a year?”
Mum doesn’t hesitate with a response. I can tell she’s been sitting on these criticisms my entire semester away.
She responds calmly, but firmly, “You stuck a needle into her arm.”
That first night together was almost as traumatizing as the night she died.
She’d never done it before. She didn’t want to.
Things got weird between us. Really weird.
She got me so hard and then… I couldn’t.
Not with her. She wasn’t right. I distracted her with drugs.
I couldn’t be with her, so I got her high instead.
I didn’t just ruin Amelia’s life, I ended it.
“I only gave her the first needle myself,” I whisper, as if that makes what I did any fucking better.
Sylvia never looked at me the same when she found out.
She promised not to tell Clover, but I can’t hide this from Clover forever, can I?
If my dad’s taught me anything useful, it’s that all our dark, dirty secrets eventually spill out.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how stiff you keep your upper lip. Secrets find the light.
“You drugged her, Thomas. If you’re going to avoid becoming like him, you’ll have to be honest with yourself.”
“I am honest with myself.”
“Good. Then there’s no other girl in the picture?”
I squirm in my seat. I love Clover, but she isn’t exactly in the picture, is she? I want her to belong to me, but she isn’t mine.
“No mum.”
“Think about that night, Thomas,” my mother says, trying to hide the fact that she fears me. I hate that I scare her. She’s my fucking mum. She doesn’t have to worry about me anyway. I’ll never forget that night with Amelia.
We were together. We were drinking. We were doing things we shouldn’t have been doing. I dared her to get even higher. I dared her to drag me to the edge of glory. She was the only one who fell.
My stomach twists as I think about that morning. The smell of her vomit mixed with the smell of her shampoo in the cruelest way. She was so cold.
“Will we have to make this one disappear?” she asks calmly.
“We? You’re not talking to him, are you?”
“We’re married until we’re not,” mum replies. “Of course I’m talking to your father.”
“I don’t want him involved in this.”
She scoffs.
“Nonsense. He’s a sociopath, Thomas. You want work like this done, he’s who you need.”
Her blunt acknowledgement of the unspoken truth about my father doesn’t stir either of us. I shake my head.
“I don’t need him. I just need money. That’s it.”
“Who are you going to kill? Please tell me it’s not a Barclay…”
I shake my head.
“Give me a name,” mum says, taking a small black notebook out of the pocket of her Chanel suit.
I think she bought Vi the same suit in yellow…
It’s one of her favorites. She clicks open her ballpoint pen, waiting for me to put her to work.
This is what she does, our mum. She holds the family together.
“Her name is Molly. I think… She might be a Harrington. But she’s going by another name.”
My mum purses her lips. “Are you serious?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re going to do worse than killing a Barclay.”
“What? How?”
“She’s a Fox.”
Oh, mum. I’m about to get myself in deep fucking trouble.
* * *