Chapter Seventeen
Max wished like hell the next morning that he’d not agreed to have lunch with his parents.
He’d walked the streets of Marylebone for a while the night before, eventually making his way to Warren Street to catch the Underground to Hampstead.
It was past midnight by the time he walked through the door of his flat, but sleep was a long time in finding him.
At least this time, he’d learned his lesson, and hadn’t had another drink at home—his head was thanking him for that this morning.
The weather seemed to echo his unsettled mood, the sky outside his window overcast, the clouds scuttling overhead on a stiff breeze, rain occasionally spitting against the pane.
The oak tree in the back garden was radiant shades of red and yellow, its branches quivering in the wind.
After a fitful morning spent at home, unable to settle to anything, he seized his coat at half twelve and set out into the chill fog.
His mother and stepfather lived a quarter hour’s walk away, still in the same small terraced house they’d bought when Max had been a young boy.
The purchase had been a stretch on their limited resources at the time, but they’d been able to slowly renovate it over the years, and the result was charmingly cozy.
Max didn’t bother with the doorbell, instead popping round through the garden to poke his head through the kitchen door, even as he began toeing off his wet shoes.
“It’s only me,” he called, and his mother materialized in the doorway leading from the dining room a moment later.
She squinted at him. “Are my eyes failing me, or is that my firstborn son, in the flesh?”
“Hi, Mum.”
“He calls me ‘Mum,’ it must be him, and yet the sight has grown so unfamiliar in recent weeks that I really can’t be certain.
Paul,” she called over her shoulder now, “fetch those binoculars you use for bird-watching on the heath, please, I want to see if this really is a rare species materializing in our kitchen—‘adult human son come to visit his family.’ ”
“Right away, my love,” came Paul’s unconcerned reply.
Max shook his head as, now shoeless, he padded across the checkerboard tiles of the kitchen floor and dropped a kiss on his mother’s cheek.
Florence Ashbridge was well past her fiftieth birthday, but as lovely as ever—lithe and petite, with the dark hair (now liberally streaked with gray, which on her looked quite elegant) and gray eyes that she’d passed on to him, even if his build—the height, the broad shoulders—was all his father.
He had never cared much about his appearance, other than the faint satisfaction he got when he looked in the mirror and saw his mother’s face looking back at him.
It was still his favorite face, he thought—even as, at the back of his mind, another face, green-eyed and golden-haired and with a mischievous upturned nose, lurked quietly.
His mother grasped him by the elbows when he would have pulled away, her eyes searching his face in the way that always made him slightly uncomfortable, since it gave the distinct impression that she was seeing more than he would wish her to.
“Are you all right?” she asked, more quietly now.
He nodded, forcing a smile, and she seemed reluctantly mollified, if not entirely convinced.
He moved past her, through the dining room and into the sitting room, where his siblings awaited.
He hadn’t been certain the twins would be here today—they were terribly busy of late, and Jamie was living south of the river in a cramped flat with one of his mates now that he had started working as a clerk on Fleet Street—but there they were on the couch splayed out like beached whales, legs intertwined as ever.
The fact that they were twins went a long way to explaining their closeness, but Max knew that they would have felt separate from him even if they’d not been twins; a full decade separated him from them in age.
“Max!” Maud disentangled herself from Jamie and flung herself at Max, all long limbs and blond hair—the twins both bore a strong physical resemblance to Max’s stepfather.
At nineteen, she was exceedingly lovely, albeit something of a terror to both of her brothers, whom she harassed relentlessly.
She was wearing a simple white shirtwaist and blue wool skirt, and her long hair was in a plait over one shoulder, though she often pinned it up in a faux bob before going out, her solution to the fact that she was too emotionally attached to her long hair to cut it for the whims of fashion.
He spat out a mouthful of her hair and hugged her back, nodding at Jamie over her shoulder.
“I didn’t know if you’d make it home for Sunday lunch.”
“I’ve been home all weekend. Couldn’t resist the chance for two days of free meals.” Jamie looked at his sister. “Maud, let him breathe.”
“I haven’t seen him in weeks,” Maud protested, though she did loosen her grip from around Max’s neck and step back, tugging at his hand until he had no choice but to join the twins on the sofa that was, strictly speaking, not entirely large enough for three tallish adults.
“Whose fault is that?” Max objected. “Last time I came by, you were out to lunch with… one of the ‘ie’ ones.”
“Elsie? Nellie? Sophie?”
“There are so many, I can’t remember who’s who.”
Maud shook her head in disgust. “I can see why Mum complains about men so much,” she said, with all the worldly wisdom of a nineteen-year-old. “Though it is nice that this one deigned to remember we exist.” She nodded at Jamie.
“I take you to lunch every week,” Jamie objected, poking his sister in the side, and she stuck out her tongue at him.
“Where’ve you been, Max?” Maud said, turning back to him. “It’s been three Sunday lunches in a row that you’ve missed.”
“Work has been busy,” he said, which was true, but felt like an evasion, because it wasn’t work in general that was busy—it was one specific preoccupation.
“Is that Raffles woman giving you a hard time?” Maud asked, looking a little too interested, Max thought with some wariness.
She had seen a photograph of Raffles in the newspaper soon after Max was hired, and had been exceedingly interested in his professional life ever since.
He expected to have aged approximately one hundred years by the time Maud got married, though fortunately, she was so obsessed with books—and so preoccupied with the job she’d got as a shopgirl at a bookshop in the village—that she had little time left for romantic exploits.
“Even if she weren’t married, she’d be too old for you,” he informed his sister sternly.
“She’s not that old. She can’t be forty yet.”
“And you’re not yet twenty, so I recommend you look elsewhere.” Max patted his sister on the head, the gesture designed purely to annoy her, and it had its intended effect, as she scowled at him.
“Ah, Max, there you are,” said his dad, wandering into the room with a newspaper in hand. He looked his usual vague sort of self—blond-haired, yet to go fully gray, which made him look oddly boyish; slender and long-limbed, just like the twins.
“Just attempting to convince your daughter to stop pining after inappropriately aged women,” Max offered with a nod.
His dad looked unconcerned. “Better pining than actively chasing.” He slid a sly glance at Jamie, who was slumped next to Max on the couch, listlessly contemplating the ceiling, and who did not even appear to be able to muster the energy to object to this.
“Without much success,” Maud added cheerfully, which did provoke an indignant “Oi!” from her twin.
Max’s dad reached out to ruffle his hair affectionately. “I’m glad you’re home—your mother’s been fretting since we’ve not seen you in a while. She started counting backward last night before bed, trying to work out how many days it had been, and you know how much she despises maths.”
“What about me?” Jamie objected. “Doesn’t anyone fret about me?”
Max, Maud, and Paul contemplated him for a moment, and then said in unison, “No.”
“Tossers,” Jamie muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.
At that moment, they were interrupted by alarming noises from the kitchen, which prompted Paul to go a bit pale and vanish.
“I suppose we ought to help,” Max said, nudging the twins with his feet in turn, and, heaving melodramatic sighs, both twins joined him in rising and following the smell of slightly burning… something.
In the end, nothing was too terribly singed—Max’s mum was a good cook, but she was very fond of experimenting in the kitchen, which Max’s dad had tried to discourage over the years, with limited success.
This Sunday it was a standard roast chicken with all the trimmings, with only one (1) single parsnip that had caught fire in the oven.
It was while they were eating their sticky toffee pudding and custard that Max’s mother chose her moment.
“I hear you’ve been seen with the Holloway girl,” she said casually, adding a bit more custard to her bowl as if she had not just uttered anything remotely interesting.
Maud’s spoon dropped with a clatter. “What?”
Max set his own spoon down in a more dignified fashion. “Where did you hear that?”
“I ran into her mother in the food hall at Harrods the other day when I was buying paté.”
“Have we recently come into a small fortune?” Paul wondered to the table at large. “How thrilling. I shall have to purchase myself a new top hat to celebrate.”
“You don’t wear top hats,” Maud informed him.
“Perhaps, daughter of mine, I am going to start, now that I have learned that I am a man of means.”
“It was for last night’s recital at the school, stop being ridiculous,” Florence retorted with a dismissive wave of the hand.
Over the past decade, her small ballet school had seen ever-increasing numbers of pupils, as ballet became more established within the country—gone were the days when the only talent to be found in the field came from France or Russia.
In light of the school’s success, the clientele had grown considerably more upscale.