Chapter Eight #4
For want of anything else to do, Maddie took a sip of the dregs of her tea.
She hoped James had managed to escape the clutches of her brother and that he’d be back soon.
She thought about making her excuses and heading back upstairs, but it felt rude.
Maddie came across as confident, but she was quite shy and didn’t like to do anything that might upset anyone or cause confrontation.
She felt she had no choice but to suffer in silence, so she put her head down, stared at the floor, and waited for James.
“My name is Jennifer,” the woman said.
“Maddie,” Maddie said.
“He slept in his room with you,” Jennifer noted, pouring two mugs of tea and stirring milk into both and sugar into one. “He hasn’t done that since he left for university.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that.”
“Do you take sugar?” Jennifer asked.
“No, thank you,” Maddie said. Jennifer stirred the second cup of tea and handed it to her.
Maddie accepted it graciously, hoping Jennifer wouldn’t notice when she didn’t drink it.
She had never consumed dairy in her entire life, except by accident, and wasn’t about to start now.
But she also didn’t feel like James’ mum would be impressed by her veganism.
“So, where did you two meet?” Jennifer said.
“He’s working at my house,” Maddie explained. “Greystone Estate? We’re turning it into a cancer recovery retreat, and he’s helping us do the refurb.”
Jennifer’s face changed. She seemed curious. Softer, somehow. “You’re Ben and Emma Whittle’s kid?” she said. Maddie nodded. “Your brothers were very kind to James when Harry died. They took him under their wing at school.”
Maddie hadn’t known this. She made a mental note to ask Marley about it later. In that moment, she felt prouder of her brothers than ever.
“Someone made a big donation towards his funeral. They sent it to the school, so I never knew who it was. I always thought that might have been your mum and dad?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Maddie answered honestly. “And they’d never tell me, even if I asked. Bragging, even inadvertently, is not their vibe. That does sound like something they would do, though.”
Jennifer seemed to admire Maddie curiously for a moment, before her gaze hardened and the atmosphere cooled once more.
Maddie was taken aback by the sudden change in ambience.
She wanted to turn back to the window, but she was worried Jennifer would be eyeballing her from behind, so she kept facing her, her back against the kitchen counter, the mug of non-vegan tea in her hands, until James returned home five minutes later.
“Marley definitely thinks we’ve banged,” James called from the living room. Maddie grimaced and stood up straight, holding Jennifer’s eye for a few painful seconds before James appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Mum!” James said. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet.”
James unloaded his bounty onto the kitchen table — a carton of soya milk and a plastic container Maddie presumed contained butter.
He gestured for his mother to put the kettle back on, eyeing the mug of tea Maddie had in her hands.
Maddie communicated wordlessly with him through wide eyes and a little shake of her head. There was no need to make a scene.
“It’s hard to sleep when you’re making such a racket,” Jennifer said.
James rolled his eyes, busying himself popping a tea bag into a mug and two slices of toast into the toaster.
Maddie didn’t really have an appetite, nor did she want any more tea, but she was too afraid to tell James, given he had trekked through the elements and braced himself against a barrage of teasing from her brother to retrieve milk she could drink and butter she could eat.
She watched Jennifer watching him, a look of contempt on her face.
If she hadn’t known it, she would never have guessed they were mother and son.
They did not look alike and James’ sunny disposition was nowhere to be found in his mother.
Maddie tried not to judge Jennifer. She had lost a son in extremely tragic circumstances.
Maddie knew better than anyone how death changed a person.
“Marley said he’s heading to your parents’ house in an hour and he’ll take you home then,” James said, subtly handing Maddie a new mug of tea and removing the one she could not drink.
Maddie could tell from the look on Jennifer’s face that she knew what had happened.
She shot Maddie an accusatory glare. Maddie pretended she hadn’t seen it.
“What are you up to today, Mum?” James tried.
“Nothing.” Jennifer tossed the rest of her tea in the sink and headed for the door. “I’m going back to bed.”
James nodded in a knowing manner, trying and failing to remove the sadness from his face. He waited until they’d heard her go upstairs and close her bedroom door before saying anything else. “She’s a real mood hoover, isn’t she?” he said.
The timing of the comment was impeccable.
Maddie had never heard that phrase before, so it made her laugh.
She didn’t want his mother to hear and think they were laughing at her, so she tried in vain to straighten her face, but his obvious joy at making her giggle made that extremely difficult.
Maddie wasn’t only laughing at his comment, she was laughing at the ridiculousness of this entire situation.
She marvelled at the randomness of life.
Two days ago, she had hardly spoken a word to this man, now she was wearing his boxer shorts and drinking tea in his kitchen, forty-eight hours of solid drama behind them.
They’d gone from indifference, to despising each other, to emotional support, to almost sex, to awkward reunion, to close friends in just a few weeks, and most of those transitions had taken place in the last few days.
The whole thing felt like a story she would read and disbelieve, but also completely right.
Now, exhausted and confused, Maddie was stuck in a spiral of amusement.
Every time she caught his gaze she laughed harder and so did he, until she wasn’t sure what they were laughing at anymore and she thought she might cry, instead.
They had to put their heads in their hands and break eye contact in order to suffocate their snickers.
It took Maddie longer than James, and his sudden silence doused her hysterics.
When she dared to look back up, he was staring dispiritedly at the floor. Maddie moved to stand beside him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, nudging him gently. “Your burdens are my burdens, remember?”
He shook his head and turned to look at her. A grateful smile spread slowly across his lips. “Just knowing you’re here and I have you to talk to is making me feel better,” he said.
Maddie grinned. She knew exactly what he meant.