Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Did it count as minor vandalism when you spent the next ten minutes picking up every micro-shard of glass?
The sun streamed in the tall windows behind us, making the broken bits glitter. Underfoot, tiny pieces gritted into the lacquered wood rectangles butted up against each other in school assembly hall criss-cross patterns.
But Heybourne came as close to being an inner-city comprehensive as your standard suburban semi was to having a whop-off ballroom tacked on the back instead of a kitchen extension. The gilding on the plasterwork around the edge of the ceiling had been severely lacking in mine, anyway.
“I can see why you wanted a taste of all this,” I signed.
“What does that mean?”
I gestured around at the stately home and all the trappings. But Simon wrinkled his nose.
“Think about the electricity bill. Wouldn’t touch a place like this with a bargepole.”
“Oh, right.” Shit. Had I really just called him a gold-digger? “Sorry.”
Simon shrugged. “Hungry?”
Subject officially changed.
“Starving.”
No innuendo lived here. Lunch hadn’t happened between being snared up in traffic on the M25, butchering my soft porn acting debut, and racing for a phantom train.
“Me too. Come on, kitchen’s this way.” Simon nodded to the far corner, already striding towards it.
It looked exactly like the other three – panelled and painted from floor to ceiling.
All wall, no doors. Definitely none. Until he conjured one into existence like he had an interdimensional portal-maker up his sleeve.
Or, you know, knew the locations of all the secret pop-doors in the building.
“Oh thank Christ. Thought we’d walked into some kind of Jonathan Creek exitless murder room for a minute there.”
Simon tilted his head. “Sorry, did you say Jonathan Creek exitless murder room?”
“Er…” My face went hotter than the centre of the Earth. “Did I?”
He probably didn’t know who Jonathan Creek was. He probably spent his evenings doing humanitarian projects, not binge-watching 90’s crime drama with windmill-dwelling magicians in it.
Simon looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “You absolutely did.”
The semi-basement kitchen was approximately the size of my entire house. A small helicopter could have landed on the island unit.
“Bloody hell.” The range cooker was more locomotion engine than anything you’d reheat chips in. “Bet you could spit-roast a wild boar on that.”
“Wouldn’t go that far.” Simon shrugged. “Maybe a brace of peacock and a couple of chickens.”
“Pheasants, surely.”
“Certainly not. Peasants are dry. Tough and stringy, barely worth the bother.”
“Peasan-?”
Very slowly, Simon’s eyebrow lifted. “Do try to resist the urge to tell me I mispronounced it. Kills the joke stone dead.”
A flush of heat chased up the back of my neck, making my ears sizzle. Guilty as charged.
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “...Thought you’d be well-up for a bit of uh- peasant.”
“I grew up in a suburban semi. It wasn’t on the menu all that often.”
Simon ducked his head into the stainless steel monster of a fridge. My nostrils flared with the effort of holding in a laugh – fizz in a shaken up coke can.
“Just special occasions then?” I asked when he looked back.
“When the Queen visited, naturally.”
Suburbia. Not what I thought we’d have in common. How had that worked, with Simon dressing the way he did? Rubbing shoulders with the Richards of the world. Could I even ask that kind of question? Our banter might collapse under its own weight. I didn’t want it to go flat.
Stepping in closer, I peered over his shoulder at the cool shelves stacked with posh ready meals in wooden boxes pretended to be home cooked, and fancy ‘oven ready’ dishes in foil trays that would have been a lot better than the pasta-and-sauce-from-a-jar I’d have been having tonight if I wasn’t in my boss’ ex’s country mansion.
Simon caught my eye again, glancing back. “They’re not big on cooking. Any ideas?”
Food. That biological necessity I could learn to live without if Simon stayed exactly where he was, with his body heat arcing at me through his sleeve, and my skin keen for the futile possibility of learning his pulse where we didn’t quite touch. He smelled clean, like fruity shampoo.
“Any of that would be—
“Depressing—”
“—fine.”
“—with an oven like that waiting to be used, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yeah.” More lies. “Definitely.” No way was I disabusing him of the notion I was the kind of adult who cooked more than scrambled eggs and pressed Quickstart on the microwave.
“Ah here we go!” Reaching to the top shelf, Simon nudged a couple of the tray-meals out of the way. “These’ll do very nicely.”
A packet of Cumberlands had never seen such a warm reception. Safe to assume he wasn’t vegetarian.
“Sausages? Got to admit, I did not have you down for Toad in the Hole over gourmet fish pie.”
“God no.” Simon looked properly horrified. “We’re not cooking that.”
We. As in me and him. Together.
I needed my head examining. The only reason we were here at all was because of the messed up trains, and everything he’d got up to with Richard.
“What are we—”I tested it out, and the planet didn’t grind to a halt and fling me off in disgust. The idea of it – that we – glowed through me, like everything I’d always wanted“—making?”
“Rougaille.” A little flair of accent rolled into his voice.
“Right.” I blinked, hoping for a translation to osmose itself into my brain.
It didn’t.
“I’ve got no idea what that is.”
“Trust me. You’ll like it.”
Ducking out of the larder, juggling ingredients, Simon tossed an onion at me, and I scrabbled to catch it before it hit me in the face or sailed through another window. We should at least try to avoid breaking all the glazing in the building.
“Slice that for me?”
Slipping his jacket off, Simon donned an apron with a giant lobster on it, tying the strings in a bow at his front.
My brain malfunctioned as he rolled his sleeves up, revealing the light fuzz on his forearms I’d only learned existed earlier in the day.
He had no right looking so good in novelty kitchen-wear.
“Dad taught me to make this,” he said.
I could picture Simon small enough to need a stool to stand on, with his father standing back, showing him how to do this with the same gentle enthusiasm he now showed me. And I wanted to soak it all up.
Simon magicked up a deep, lidded pan in two-point-four seconds. Because he knew where everything was in this kitchen. He’d probably played Happy Polycules two-thousand times with good old Richard and Temp. And why was I even thinking about them? It was me Simon was sharing this with.
“He always says it tastes better in Rodrigues, but I can’t do much about our location.”
I nodded, clearing a nasty thickness from my throat. Not me getting choked up because he came from people who handed down recipes. Who took time with each other, to do what families were supposed to. It was dinner. He wasn’t letting me in.
Flashing a wide-blade knife, he set to dicing a couple of chillies and a piece of ginger while I hacked the onion to miserable bits on another board.
“Jesus, Ben. What did that poor allium ever do to you?” Wiping his hands on his apron, Simon reached around to shift my grip on the blade, and I promptly forgot how to hold anything.
“Here, look. It’s a lot easier like this.” Sparks firecrackered along the back of my hand where he touched me. “Watch your fingers.”
His shoulder curved above mine. There was air between us.
An entire centimetre. But the pull of him prickled all along my spine and I had to fight not to velcro myself to his chest. My brain numbed over as he rocked my hand on the knife again, slicing through the halved onion with easy momentum, already rolling on to the next cut.
His breath hushed damply against the back of my neck. And I didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare breathe. He couldn’t follow what I said unless I turned back. And fuck, his mouth was close to mine when I did.
“Right. Yeah. It is, isn’t it? Easier.”
He nodded, eyes pinning mine. “Much better when you use the shape of the blade.”
My attempt at a smile flittered out of existence. “Thanks.”
He only cared about the onions. And me not totally botching his dish. So why was he still looking at my lips like he wanted to—
“There. Try again. I think you’ve got it.”
Simon stepped back, grinning like he’d done a good thing, and I sliced the rest of the onion into fine little rainbow arcs and tried to forget he’d ever touched me. The flood of warmth in my gut had no business being there at all.
“So, uh—”Brain blank. What had we been talking about? “Where’s Rodrigues..?” Total geographical fail. Thank you secondary school for prioritising colouring between the lines over awareness of other places in the world.
“Mauritius. Indian Ocean. Off the coast of Africa, although hardly anyone thinks of it as Africa. Blue seas, white sand beaches...”
“Oh, ok.” I nodded slowly. “Your family’s from paradise.”
The rhythm of his chopping stopped. “My family’s from Bristol.”
Oh, fuck.
In his echoing pause, Simon raised a sharp eyebrow, looking at me, not the messy, hunked up bits of sausage he tossed into the pan.
I did a goldfish impression – mouth open, no noise. Pork fat sizzled. “That’s not what I – you’re the one who—”
Simon snorted a laugh, eyes twinkling. “Your face.”
“You shit. I know you’re British.”
“And now you know where I really come from too.”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, please. Admit you wanted to know. Because it’s interesting how different we are.”
The pan winced and hissed as he tossed in everything we’d sliced, calming down only as he stirred it. Flavours wafted up with eye-watering intensity, mellowing soft and fragrant as the onions turned see-through. How many times had someone asked him that? How many times had I wondered?
Heat itched into my cheeks.
“Alright, I wondered. But I want to know because you’re telling me. Because you’ve got... traditions.”
He gave another stir, glancing over his shoulder to catch my eye and cracked a tin of tomatoes open.
“Do I indeed?”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“No, you’re right. You’re standing here cooking things your dad taught you, that someone taught him. From the place he grew up. No traditions there whatsoever.”
“Everyone has family recipes.”
“Not me.”
Simon’s face glazed with lazy disbelief. “Not even Sunday roast?”
“I wish. Gran never liked cooking. She did a lot of tinned pies and marrowfat peas.”
“Tinned pies.” Simon made a face. If he’d ever had a marrowfat pea in his life, I would eat his hat. “How very interesting. You must tell me more about your peculiar Northern culture.”
“Oh shut your face.”
“Sorry. You didn’t go down the coal mines as a twelve year-old instead of getting a newspaper round?”
I snorted, shaking with laughter. My half-arsed shove sort of turned into me wedging myself in against his side, and he jostled me back, his ruffled laugh blooming louder in my ear, eyes sparking contagious joy.
God this was dangerous. His breath gusting against my neck felt far too good to be pretend.
Simon sobered slightly.
“What about things with your mother?” And then it didn’t feel good at all.
I squirmed out of reach.
“Uh – yeah.” Breath held deep enough to burn my lungs. I counted another five seconds before risking letting it out. “Suppose we had things we’d do. Not cooking.”
“Like what?”
“She – um.” The words were right there, lining up to tumble out of me, whether I wanted to tell him or not.
“She used to read to me. You know, bedtime stories – sound out all the words and do the signs in English order. I was struggling with my reading – getting it to map across from BSL. Every night for years she’d do that, even though she didn’t really speak with anyone else. ”
Simon nudged my trainer with the toe of his shoe. “She sounds kind.”
A bubble swelled in my chest, pressing too tight against my ribs.
“She – yeah. Best Mam ever.”
“So, how did you end up with your grandparents?”
Should have seen that coming. Too late for an about-turn now. Idiot.
“She got ill.” My nostrils flared. That still got me after years. Oh god. I was about to ruin this. Drag the mood right down. He’d only been doing polite small-talk. “But I was only with them for a bit really.”
Under his gaze, my whole face itched hot. He was watching me too closely, full of all this interest I didn’t know what to do with, and I wanted him to stop. “I thought Matt said—”
I scoffed. “Matt thinks he knows everything.” Come on smile. Extra brightness. “He’s met Gran twice...”
“Oh. I see.”
Except I really don’t think he did. Because I wasn’t as good at spinning versions of the truth as he was. And it felt like he could see right through me.