Chapter 30
Something went incredibly wrong.
The morning was fine. I got up, saw Oliver off to work, and even managed to persuade Jaz that no, just because she was suspended didn’t mean she could lie in, because her teachers would be sending her work to do remotely. On the laptop that she now had.
Then around noon I heard an engine.
It wasn’t a familiar engine. I’d have recognised Saint’s bike anywhere, and this wasn’t Saint’s bike.
But it was definitely Saint’s vehicle-of-some-sort.
There was just something about the sound of a noisy penis extension of a car roaring to a stop outside a quiet private home on a residential street that had the aura of the new Earl of Spitalhamstead.
Since I hadn’t been expecting him, I was in my study.
Since I was in my study, Jaz was nearer the door than me.
And ordinarily that would have been fine because most days getting Jaz to answer the door would have been a mission all of its own.
But today, maybe because she was bored, maybe because some sixth sense had told her it would make things difficult for me, or maybe because the universe itself had decided it was a good day to piss on Luc O’Donnell, she jumped straight up and went to see who it was.
“Who the fuck are you?” she was asking as I came into the hall.
“Who the fuck are you?” Saint asked back.
“Rescue dog,” Jaz told him, which led to a distant Ruff from Spud, who was still in the kitchen having lunch.
These two meeting was my worlds colliding in the worst possible way.
Although right then I couldn’t tell if I was worried my foster kid would make me look bad to my boss or my boss would make me look bad to my foster kid.
Honestly, it would probably be both. “Saint,” I said, “this is Jaz. She’s my and Oliver’s foster daughter. Jaz, this is Saint, he’s—”
“A friend of Luc’s,” Saint interrupted with a presumption so typical I couldn’t even be particularly bothered by it. And then, “Jazz. As in the music?”
“Saint,” she said. “As in the people who hang out with God?”
Saint nodded. “Like it.”
Okay, this had gone non-disastrously so far.
And since I didn’t trust either of them to quit while they were ahead, I quit for them.
“Great. We’ve established that both your names also have secondary meanings.
Now can we get past the who everybody is question and get to what everybody is doing here?
I’ll start. It’s where I live. Same for her.
” I tried to make assertive eye contact with Saint, which was hampered by the fact he was wearing mirrored aviators. Because of course he was. “Your turn.”
Saint pulled the glasses down and looked at me over the top of them. “We’re getting the band back together.”
Fuck. I’d left the problem of pitching an ecological fundraiser headlined by a band named Rancid Sputum for future Luc to deal with and, as I’d predicted, future Luc was now incredibly pissed off at past Luc for getting him into this mess.
Which meant future Luc—or I suppose present Luc—very nearly just came straight out with We’re fucking not.
But by some random blessing of the coleoptera gods, Jaz stopped me blowing up my job, my coworkers’ jobs, and an environmentally vital beetle charity by asking, “What band?”
“Rancid Sputum,” Saint replied at once, as if he expected Jaz to have heard of them despite the fact that they’d broken up before she was born and had never actually put out any albums, had any fans, or played any gig bigger than a pub toilet.
Jaz never looked impressed. And to be honest, nobody ever looked impressed with Saint; he just filled their impressed-ness in with the power of his own privilege.
But something about Jaz’s truly iconic inability to give anything even resembling a fuck seemed to get through to him.
Just a little. “Rancid what?” she asked.
“Sputum.” For the first time, I heard an edge in Saint’s voice that suggested he might not be totally convinced it was a name destined for rock legendhood.
“Sputum?” Jaz repeated.
“The thing you’ve got to remember about Sputum…
” began Saint. I suspected he’d started getting that thing where you said a word so much it either goes meaningless or becomes nothing but meaning, so he was essentially just saying the word sputum over and over again to a disinterested teenager.
“What you’ve got to remember about Sputum,” he repeated, “is that we were less about what we were called than what we were about?”
I didn’t wish Saint harm, but I was beginning to be oddly curious about whether Jaz could actually make him die of cringe. “You were about what you were about?”
He nodded, confidence flowing back as the part of him that had been flirting with self-awareness remembered that he was, like, really stupendously fucking rich. “That’s right. What’re you about, kid?”
Jaz gave no visible reaction. “Fourteen.”
I half expected him to ruffle her hair, but fortunately for his hand, he didn’t. “Nice. C’mon, Luc, we’re going.”
“Um…so…I kind of have a job to do? And a teenager I’m responsible for?” I really wished I’d been able to sound surer about both of those things.
“Your job’s working for me,” Saint pointed out, temporarily forgetting he wasn’t into hierarchies. “And the kid’ll be fine. Leave her a pack of cigarettes and a credit card for emergencies.”
Jaz nodded. “Yeah, leave me at home with a pack of cigarettes and a credit card. Esther will love it.”
“You don’t even smoke,” I retorted.
“I’m going to start because you’re a bad parent.”
“Hey,” I protested, stung. “I am a below-average parent at worst. And I’m sorry, Saint, but—”
“Got to be now, Luc,” declared Saint.
“Does it, though? Does it really?”
“It’s the moment,” Saint was still declaring. “I can feel it in my balls.”
The spirit of Oliver swept spontaneously over me. “Can you not talk about your balls in front of my foster daughter?”
Saint was visibly unmoved. “What can I say, the Gentlemen have strong opinions. Now, time’s wasting. Get in the car. Kid can come if she wants—it’ll be an education.”
I was pretty sure it wouldn’t, in fact, be an education.
I was pretty sure that it would, in fact, be a complete disaster.
But just like the last time Saint had decided to drag me off on one of his awful, selfish, posh-bastard whims, I really didn’t think I had much choice.
Or if I did, the choice was to go along with what he wanted or accept that he’d pull CRAPP’s funding and get me and everybody I worked with fired.
Fuck.
I looked back at Jaz. She’d probably be okay on her own.
But only probably. And maybe only okay in the sense that she, personally, would be perfectly happy.
Not in the sense that she’d stay out of trouble.
At the very least, I suspected that she’d be off down the park with Spud the moment my back was turned.
Fuck.
“Jaz,” I said. “It’s looking a whole lot like we’re going to need to go and put a punk band back together. You all right with that?”
Jaz looked suspicious. “How long’ll it take?”
I had no idea. “I have no idea.”
Without further comment, Jaz vanished into the kitchen and returned with half a loaf of white bread and Spud. “Can’t leave him if we don’t know when we’re coming back.”
Fantastic. The teenager with trauma-related anger issues was a more responsible dog owner than me. Actually, I was kind of proud of her for it, which maybe was a positive parenting sign? “And the bread?”
Jaz looked at me like she couldn’t possibly imagine how I could bear to be me. “Might get hungry.”
Instead of the bike, Saint had rocked up in a jet-black Cadillac convertible like an edgelord Elvis.
Jaz jumped in the back far more enthusiastically than she ever got into the car with me, and Spud jumped in after her.
I hung back to lock the door and send Oliver a quick note saying Took jazz and spud to get band with saint will explain later.
Which was all I could manage before Saint bullied me into the passenger seat.
Which felt like a metaphor for my life right now.
We were halfway along the A13 before I thought to ask where we were actually going.
“Clapham,” said Saint, as if it was an explanation.
“Okay.” I attempted a conciliatory nod. “Why Clapham exactly?”
“Gary the Cosmic Fuckstone.”
Ah. Right. Because we hadn’t actually had this conversation yet. “Umm, I’m not sure that’ll work.”
“It’s fine.” Saint waved a hand that I was pretty sure he should have been keeping on the wheel. “Me and the Fuckstone, we go way back.”
“It’s not so much—”
“Like that,” he added, crossing his fingers.
“It’s just,” I finished, “he’s sort of dead.”
The Cadillac screeched to a halt, very nearly getting us rear-ended by the much less obnoxious car behind. “Sorry, what?”
“He’s dead. He died in 2019.”
Saint didn’t look remotely close to believing me. “Bullshit.”
Sighing, I pulled out my phone and brought up Gareth Bennet’s Guide to Mindful Eating.
There were pictures that, despite the enormous beard and Alan Titchmarsh wellies, even Saint couldn’t deny were definitely of the man he’d known as Gary the Cosmic Fuckstone.
The final update was a tasteful memorial postdated, as I’d told him, from 2019.
It read, “Gareth’s family is sad to report that he passed away on Tuesday as a result of an improperly sorted mushroom foraging.
Well-wishers are encouraged to donate to one of the following charities on Gareth’s behalf. ”
“Fuck.” Saint looked like he was processing an entirely new concept. I liked to think it was “his own mortality,” but I suspected it was just “having to deal with inconvenience.” After a moment, he looked at me solemnly and said, “No wonder he wasn’t answering my texts.”
He pulled out his phone, ignoring the angry honking from behind us, and started scrolling. “The others are fine, though.”