Page 27 of Catching a Con Man

“I do wish you’d all just…turn off for five minutes,” she said, swatting at my hand with a tea towel. “I’ve had enough of your father working through the weekend for the last three decades. If I’d known our children would inherit his ridiculous work ethic, I’d have bought a phone locker years ago.”

“Sorry, Mum.” I pocketed my phone. “Dad’s not working today, anyway. He’s at the golf course.”

“Withclients. And if there’s one vice worse than being a workaholic, it’s a crippling golf addiction and having work as an excuse to play.”

I snorted. “You love the peace it gives you really.”

Mum poured herself a glass of red wine from a bottle on the counter and held it up to me in a silent question. I nodded, and she poured me a large glass.

“It’s from the Andalusian vineyard your father bought,” she said. “Another vanity purchase he lost all interest in, but I’ve been doing the administrative heavy-lifting because I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste. This is from last year’s stock, so it isn’t exactly vintage, but…” Mum took a sip. “It certainly is divine.”

I took a sip and nodded. It was…red wine. Not the worst, not the best. But my mother certainly seemed proud of the part she’d played in getting it made, so I made all the right appreciative sounds with each subsequent sip until she went back to her cooking.

“So, where are all your lovely siblings?” Mum asked.

“Well, Cam is probably hidden away in the attic, Beckett is driving in from Gloucestershire, Eliza is finishing up her modelling shoot in the studio out back, and Dylan…” I took out my phone to check the map we all used to keep track of one another. “He’s either fallen into Cardiff Bay and drowned, or he’s dropped his phone on a night out again.”

My mother clutched at her chest with one hand. “That boy will be the death of me.”

“Thatman,” said Dylan as he stepped into the kitchen, “can look after himself.”

“So, where is your phone?”

“…somewhere,” Dylan waved his hands as if hoping to pluck a phone from the ether. He was wearing a black silk dressing gown, his silvery-grey hair was a mess and his skin tone almost matched it.

“Wine?” I asked, holding the half-empty glass out to him. One look at the liquid had his skin going from grey to green, and he ran out of the kitchen as fast as his bare feet would carry him.

“How often is he like that? And has he only just got up?” I asked.

“He’s twenty-four and quite right, I need to mollycoddle him less,” my mother muttered.

“I don’t think mollycoddling is as much of an issue as drinking to excess and getting up at…” I checked my watch, “…two in the afternoon. I feel like that’s significantly more of an issue.”

Mum threw her hands up. “I don’t know. Help me get this into the dining room. Katharine offered to help me today, but you know I like Sundays to be just us.”

“I bet the dishes get left for the staff tomorrow though,” I nudged her side before picking up trays of vegetables and carrying them to the dining room. After a minute, Mum joined me with the joint of beef.

We made a couple of trips to the kitchen until the old mahogany table was straining under the weight of all the food we’d brought out. My parents’ taste in classical interior decor was most apparent in the dining room, where classical portraits of all of us hung on the walls, and the dining chairs were straight and high-backed.

I sent a group text out to the whole family to let them know we were sitting down. Naturally, the first to walk through the dining-room door was Cam, and he took out his earphones and put his phone in his pocket as he sat down. Dylan joined us minutes later, his complexion slightly lighter, though he still didn’t look as model-fresh as his constantly updated Instagram would have his millions of followers believe.

Eliza was next through the door, and she gave me and Mum a kiss on the cheek before taking her seat next to Dylan. She and Dylan were twins, both of whom had taken their height and stature from my father but the lightness of their hair and features from my mother. “Did you see the latestVoguearticle I sent you?” Eliza asked.

“The one about nepo babies in the modelling industry? Yes.”

“We got a whole page interview and a three-page photo spread out of it,” Eliza grinned.

“I’m not sure…that article was a compliment,” I said as gently as I could.

“All publicity is good publicity, brother dear. And I wear our family as a badge of pride.”

“…right.” I was saved from having to formulate any other response by the presence of a storm cloud vaguely shaped like my younger brother Beckett as he barged into the room.

“Am I late? I’ve been dealing with South-East Asia all morning. I swear to fucking God the Taiwanese can be so fucking stubborn…” Beckett hardly looked up at any of us as he took his seat by my side. He had inherited the most from my father, from his fierce, dark brows and imposing height, to his no-nonsense business attitude.

“Maybe take a break from the work for a couple hours, yeah?” I said. He just glared back like I’d suggested kicking a puppy for fun.

“Hypocrite,” Cam coughed, and I flipped him my middle finger.

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