Page 44 of The Happy Hour
Did his dad’s lips twitch upwards? It was disconcerting that this whole, stilted exchange was happening againsta soundtrack of beeps. He couldn’t help thinking of it as acountdown.
‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ Nico said.
‘I think that’s part of the fun for him,’ Ash said. ‘He called me a whippersnapper, once. Young and overconfident, which isn’t true. I’m not that young any more.’
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘Well done, Dad. Glad you’ve been keeping tabs.’ It was out before he could rein it in. He glanced guiltily at Nico, but he had his eyes closed. He wasn’t going to apologise.
‘How’s your mother?’
Ash gritted his teeth.Notfully put back together after you left her with twoboys to bring up on her own. Too gracious forher own good.‘She was the one who asked me to come and seeyou,’ he admitted. ‘She couldn’t face it herself, which I hope you understand, so she asked me to.’
‘And you – you wanted to?’ His voice was quieter, and one of the machines gave a quick, high beep, more attention-grabbing than the rest.
How unfair it was, Ash thought, that he couldn’t be honest; that he couldn’t shout and scream, fling all the rage and guilt and despair inside him at the man who was the root of it all, because you couldn’t do that to someone who was dying.
‘I wanted to come for her,’ he said, instead. ‘She asked me to, so here I am. And I’ll come back next week, and the one after, until...’ He stopped. This was worse than he’d imagined it could be.
‘Don’t worry,’ Nico said, his eyes closing again. They had been warm and full of humour when Ash was little, deep brown irises he used to wish he’d inherited. ‘It won’t be for too much longer.’ He went still, only the shitty, irritating beeps letting Ash know he was still alive.
Ash ran a hand over his mouth, then got up and turned away. He stood in front of the closed door, not sure he could face Peggy’s empathy and her soft, warming smiles. Right now, he didn’t think he deserved her kindness.
How was it that his dad had been the one to walk out on them, to disappear into a new life, barely stay in touch and then wind up here, in this expensive place – no doubt paid for by one of his few madcap schemes that had actually worked – and yet it was Ash who felt like the guilty one? Like he wasn’t a good enough son because he didn’t want to be here, and couldn’t hide it from Nico?
He pulled open the door and stepped into the corridor, sighing his relief when he saw it was empty. Today had been both his best and worst Sunday since he’d started coming to Greenwich, and while he was desperate to go back to the market and see Jess again, mostly to remind himself that she was real, that their kiss had happened, he couldn’t.
It was more important than ever that he didn’t tell her about this, that he kept his miraculous, stolen moments with her separate from the time he had to spend here. He had to hold on to the good things, and being with Jess wassogood. The only problem was, it was always followed by one of the worst things he’d ever had to do.
Chapter Sixteen
Jess was at the market on her day off. Again.
She hadn’t been prepared for the knock on her door at half past eight, and with Terence at work, she was suddenly faced with the possibility of exchanging small talk with one of his friends. But when she’d opened the door, a bowl of cereal in her free hand, she’d instead found Lola, holding out her phone with an excited look on her face.
‘We’ve gone viral,’ she said. ‘Me and Spade.’
‘What?’ Since that first day of filming, which Jess thought had gone fairly well, even if she did say so herself, Lola had worked on the composition, and Spade had worked his charm on a friend who was a cameraman, and they’d reshot the whole thing without Jess, until their TikTok video was more like something you’d see on an online music channel.
Jess had watched it when it first went up, and Lola had been updating her on view numbers via WhatsApp, but Jess had had other things on her mind. Guilt gripped her, both because she hadn’t been paying attention to her friend, and because she hadn’t got any further with her vague plans to help Enzo.
‘Eighty-nine thousand views so far,’ Lola said. ‘So many comments. People already want our next track.’
‘That’s brilliant, Lols.’
‘We still haven’t come up with a name,’ Lola went on, but she looked pleased with herself. ‘Anyway, Kirsty said you wanted to do something for Enzo, so that’s what’s happening today.’
‘What?’
Lola rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, Jess. You spend your whole time grumbling about the demands of other people, about how we’re all too needy, but everyone knows you’re the helper. Kirsty said you wanted to use our inevitable popularity’ – she spread her arms wide – ‘to help solve Enzo’s predicament, and now we’ve proved wearepopular, so we’ve called a meeting, and it can’t happen without you. Finish your cereal, get your shoes and let’s go.’
Her protests had fallen on deaf ears, so now here she was, at one of the high tables next to the food stalls in the market, with Lola and Spade, Enzo, Susie, Roger and Kirsty, who was still manning Moreish Muffins but was within shouting distance. The market was quiet, but Lola didn’t seem to notice, holding court with a voice loud enough to reach the river.
‘The response on TikTok has been amazing,’ she said. ‘And I know I started this to showcase my own music, but it’s clearly become bigger than that.’
‘You’re the star,’ Spade said magnanimously. ‘I’m just happy noodling in the background.’
‘Your noodling is magnificent, though,’ Susie said. ‘Almost a hundred thousand views. And with the market as the backdrop!’
