35. Jack
Chapter 35
Jack
M um insisted that we all sit in the garden for a glass of wine, despite the fact that Fool’s Autumn was still in full swing. All of us but Dad were draped in blankets and bundled in multiple layers; I knew Morgan was wearing her own socks under the pair of mine I could see peeking out of her boots. I’d also had to be the one to get the garden ready, including pruning some of the plants encroaching on the patio, and, as Chloe predicted, clearing masses of spiderwebs off the bug hotel.
“So darling,” Mum said as she refilled Morgan’s wine without asking, “tell us, what are your parents like?”
I winced; I hadn’t remembered to prep Mum on the fact that Morgan didn’t have a dad. I looked apologetically at her, but she just smiled at me. She was fine, and she had Mum eating out of the palm of her hand. She pressed her knee to mine under the table, and even after weeks of having basically unlimited contact, this small form still sent a heat wave through me.
“Mum used a donor to have me, so I don’t know my dad,” Morgan said, as if her history was run-of-the-mill. Which, I supposed, it was for her. “Mum was a librarian, but she retired when I went to uni.”
“Oh lovely,” Mum said, thankfully skipping past the part about Morgan’s mum using a donor. “That sounds so nice, being retired. Does she do a lot of gardening? Maybe a touch of writing?”
“You should know, Mum,” Amy said from across the table. “You haven’t worked since I was born.”
Mum’s mouth fell open and she reeled back. “You know very well that’s not true, young lady. I stay very busy.”
“Yeah, chucking bee bombs onto the sides of the motorway.”
“It’s much more involved than that,” Mum insisted to Morgan. “I’m the chair of multiple committees, I’ll have you know.”
I’d told Morgan before that Mum volunteered for the local rewilding trust; she nodded back at Mum dutifully.
“And what was the latest committee decision you made?” Amy asked. “Something about what kind of lamps to get in the office?”
Mum sighed. “It was assessing grow lamps for environmental impact,” she said. “So we can make sure the native species we’re cultivating are grown as sustainably as possible.”
“Your mother’s work is very important,” Dad said, the first time he’d spoken since introducing himself to Morgan. “Now let’s move on, please.” Amy sat back and rolled her eyes, but she didn’t push; Dad had a way of squashing the squabbles that inevitably arose between them. And when he said something was done, it was done.
“Thank you dear,” Mum said, then turned back to Morgan, waiting for an answer as if the conversation hadn’t halted long enough for a whole argument to unfold.
“Oh, um, she’s actually travelling,” Morgan explained. “Sold the house as soon as I moved out, and she’s been abroad ever since. I’m pretty sure she’s in Southern California at the moment, road-tripping the West Coast in a camper van. But she’s been all over. Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Canadian Rockies…”
Mum’s face pinched together in confusion.
“But where does she go when she comes back for Christmas? Your birthday?”
Morgan shook her head. “She doesn’t. I haven’t actually seen her in person in about two years. The last time was when she came back for a family funeral.”
“Oh, so you must speak on the phone all the time,” Mum said, concocting an explanation that made the idea of being permanently away from one’s children even slightly more tolerable. But Morgan shook her head again.
“She sends postcards,” she said. “And emails. And we talk every few months or so. On my birthday, as you said. And hers, and Mother’s Day.”
Mum just blinked at Morgan, as if waiting for her to laugh and say she’d been joking. But when she didn’t, Mum visibly shivered and went back to pointlessly swirling her wine in her glass.
“Jack’s been telling me about the new project you’ve got coming up,” Morgan said, and it took me a moment to realise she was talking to Dad. It took him a moment, too, to the point that we were all looking at him before he looked up from his glass.
“Oh, yeah, biggest we’ve done,” Dad said. “Should put us on the map with some of the bigger developers investing in the area.”
It was almost the exact same spiel he’d given me when we’d first taken the job.
“Is that important?” Morgan asked. “Is there a lot of competition for the smaller jobs?”
Dad sort of half-chuckled, looking at me as if I would intervene. But I just shrugged. I didn’t know where she was going with this any better than he did.
“Not really,” he said, setting his fork down and leaning forward onto his elbows, “but the bigger jobs have much better profit margins. We can work a lot more efficiently.”
“Interesting,” Morgan said, taking a sip. “Seems like it creates an awful lot of admin, right? That’s what Jack has been dealing with?”
Dad nodded. “A bit more than we’re used to, but what’s a bit more admin for that kind of profit margin increase?”
Morgan shrugged. “Well, a lot if you hate admin, I suppose.”
Dad laughed – a big hearty laugh that echoed, even outside – and pointed at Morgan. “You’re funny, Morgan. She’s funny, Jack.”
“Sure is,” I said, but I wasn’t laughing. I glared down at Morgan, fully aware of what she was doing. She looked up at me and smiled, but her smile faltered when she saw that I wasn’t impressed.
“Well, I’m glad to have you here,” Mum said, her voice strained with emotion. Was she seriously on the verge of tears? “Our Jackie here hasn’t always been so lucky in love.”
“Mum!” I said, begging her with my eyes to stop – or, better yet, to rewind time and not be embarrassing as fuck – but she just shrugged at me.
“What?” she asked, oblivious.
“Maybe not the best time to bring up Aria?” Amy offered, but that wasn’t much better, so I glared at her, too.
“It’s fine,” Morgan said quietly to me. “It’s not like I didn’t know.”
“Still,” I said, “it’s a bit pointed, isn’t it?”
“Well, fine then,” Mum said. “I suppose I’ll never say anything lovely or sentimental again, how’s that?”
“Great, Mum,” I said, sitting back and downing the last of my glass of wine. “Perfect, actually.”
* * *
The rest of the evening went as well as it could have: Dad was more talkative, Mum managed to avoid asking any overly embarrassing questions, and Amy gave Morgan a chunk of rose quartz, apparently to help with “bourgeoning love”. As we left to go back to mine for some food, a walk of shame made no less awkward by Amy whistling after us, Morgan snaked an arm around my waist and leaned into me. I draped my arm over her shoulder, but she must have sensed that my heart wasn’t in it, because she looked up at me in concern and, when she saw the frown on my face, clearly decided she would wait until we were inside my house to talk about it, dropping her arm away from me.
“That wasn’t funny,” I said quietly as soon as the door was shut. “That comment about the admin?”
Morgan rolled her eyes and threw her hands out to the sides as she walked ahead of me into the kitchen. “Your dad seemed to think it was.”
I pulled two beers out of the fridge and slid one across to her.
“Yeah, well, my dad doesn’t know why you were asking. If he’d had all the context, I can assure you he wouldn’t have been laughing.”
“Well, maybe he should have the context,” she said as she sat down at the island, and I shot her a look I knew probably rivalled the glare Dad often used with me. But it didn’t work on her. “Seriously,” she continued. “Does he even know you don’t like doing that part of the job?”
“No,” I said, “because that’s not true.” My voice was slightly raised now.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Morgan said, matching my tone. “You fucking hate this stuff.” She flicked at a stack of papers on the end of the island, weighted down by my laptop.
“Well yeah,” I said, “but everyone hates paperwork. I like knowing that Dad can retire when he wants, and know that his business is in good hands.”
“Is it actually in good hands if those hands don’t want it?” Morgan asked, very quietly, and I narrowed my eyes at her. She narrowed hers back, and we just glared at each other for a moment. She was hamming it up: the oppositional posture, pointing her two fingers at her eyes and then at me, baring her teeth at me. She was trying to defuse the tension, and it was up to me whether I let her.
“Whatever,” I said, deciding that I didn’t want to fight with her.
Part of me wanted to dig my heels in. Because it wasn’t just this thing with my dad, was it? We still hadn’t talked about the revelation last night that she’d apparently got a promotion at work. And we definitely hadn’t caught up about what that meant for the other jobs I knew she’d been applying to. At least, I was pretty sure she had been, because why else would she be putting off looking for a place to live?
But if that meant a fight, I wasn’t ready to be the one to cause it. We’d bickered plenty when we were just friends, but we hadn’t had a proper fight since we’d got together. Probably because we hadn’t burst the bubble until now. I wondered if, now that our relationship was out in the open, this kind of spat would happen more often.
But I didn’t want to spat with Morgan. Not now, and not ever if I could help it.
I walked around the island towards her so we could kiss and make up, but she was looking down at her phone, her face completely slack save for a crease between her eyebrows. Something was wrong. A dozen possible tragedies flashed through my mind – her mum was in some horrible parasailing accident, or her house had burned down, or her house had sold, or Pablo had got sick, or Pablo had been adopted – but I refused to let myself panic until she filled me in.
“What is it?” I asked. She finally looked up at me, and her face drooped in sadness.
“Don’t have that,” she said, pointing at my beer. “We need to leave.”
“Why?” I asked, the panic creeping in anyway. “What’s happened?”
She pressed her mouth together in a line and sighed, and I braced myself against the worktop for the worst.
“It’s Fatima.”