Page 12 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
“Shut it,” Phil said before we could find out what it’d be like, in Jase’s very limited imagination.
Jase slammed down his fork. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What’d I even say?”
“Jason Aaron Morrison, I will not have that language at my dinner table.”
Jase opened his mouth. Tracy glared at him until he shut it.
“More gravy, Tom?”
“Yeah, that’d be smashing,” I said, and faked a smile so hard my cheeks hurt.
We eventually got out of there, but not before I’d earned Jase’s and Leanne’s undying hatred by offering to wash up. Tracy refused to hear of it, so Jase and Leanne got the ear-bashing from their mum about how some people had proper manners, and then had to wash up as well.
Me and Phil had to sit on the sofa—telly still off—and try to make polite conversation with Tracy to the backdrop of them bickering in the kitchen. Every so often, she’d break off to yell at them to Shut up, Christ, and act your bleeding ages.
Phil was quiet as we walked back to his car. My eardrums were honestly enjoying the peace and quiet, but I didn’t like to think of him brooding. “Look, about what Leanne said,” I started.
He didn’t ask what I was referring to. “What? Want to know if it’s true? Yes, all right? He screwed around on me.”
Shit. “That wasn’t what I was gonna say. None of my business, yeah?”
“So what were you going to say?” he ground out.
“I was gonna say, I’m sorry you had to go through that. Her coming out with it, I mean. That wasn’t right. Doesn’t matter whether it was true or a complete load of bollocks, she shouldn’t have said it.”
It was only as Phil visibly relaxed beside me that I realised just how tightly wound up he’d been. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
“No worries. It’s family, innit? Didn’t some posh bastard write a poem about how they fuck you up? Far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen, okay?”
’Cept it wasn’t okay, not really. Because it had happened, and now that I knew . . . I really, really wanted to know more. Like, f’rinstance, why, if the Mysterious Mark had been a cheater, had Phil kept his photo around long enough after the bloke had died that I found it on a windowsill first time I’d visited his flat? It hadn’t looked like he’d been using it for darts practice.
I couldn’t ask him, though.
Like I’d said. None of my business.
I forced a cheery tone. “So, it’s Sunday afternoon, all the shops are shut, and I’m too full of your mum’s gravy to even think about going for a pint. Wanna slob out in front of the sport at mine?”
Phil was silent a moment. “I’ll drop you off. Got stuff to do at the flat.”
Great. Still, at least now I knew why Phil was so bloody emotionally constipated. Turned out it was his mum’s cooking that did it. “Urgent stuff, is it?”
“Don’t start.”
“Would I?” I sighed. “Look, feel free to come round later, yeah? Or not. Whatever you want.”
He nodded, which I took as a reasonably positive sign.
I wondered, after I’d let myself into my cold, empty house—all right, my comfortably warm, cat-occupied house—if he’d really thought things through before asking me to tie the knot. I mean, we hadn’t talked about dates or anything, but judging from a few things he’d let slip, I wasn’t the only one assuming he’d move into mine sooner or later, and at any rate after the wedding. So what was he going to do then when he wanted to come over all Greta Garbo and indulge in a bit of solitary brooding?
I laughed as a thought struck. I could always build him a shed down the bottom of the garden.
Phil didn’t come round on Sunday evening. Not that he was supposed to. I mean, I’d made it clear it was up to him. So it wasn’t like I went to bed pissed off at him for not turning up or anything.
Yeah, right. Anyhow, I just happened to be down Brock’s Hollow way around lunchtime, so I called Gary up and dragged him out for a pub lunch. Not that he needed a lot of dragging, mind.
Gary’s my best mate. He’s some sort of IT consultant who works from home and does well enough to keep Julian, his Saint Bernard, in sirloin steak and Bonios. He’s the camp-’n’-cuddly sort—Gary, I mean, not Julian, who has an air of sober and stately masculinity despite the vet’s attentions—and rings the bells at St. Anthony’s church in Brock’s Hollow. I don’t get to see as much of him as I used to, since his wedding, which was another reason to meet up for lunch. Evenings, him and Darren come as a job lot these days.
The Dyke being out of commission, and Harry’s arrangement with the local restaurant not, unsurprisingly, extending to competing for the lunch market, we went to the Four Candles. Gary’s choice, not mine. It’s a chain-owned pub down by the river. It’s all right, I guess, but every time they redecorate the place, they take a little bit more of the soul out of it.
