To Mend a Broken Wing, page 6
At the very least, I’d get a free plane ride back to England.
*
I HADN’T PAID much attention to the journey, lost in my own world yet still acutely aware of the silent, brooding man in the seat next to mine on the plane. Still as much a stranger to me as before we’d met. He held his hand loosely in Marcel’s, their fingers interlaced, the lines between who supported whom blurring the more time I spent with them both.
I’d expected a taxi to collect us from Bristol airport, not a posh Jag. An F-Pace SVR in Firenze Red if we were really splitting hairs. Once upon a time, I’d dreamed of becoming a car mechanic. I’d even done a few months at college learning the trade before it all felt like too much of a fucking bother. Especially when I didn’t have a permanent place to bunk down. People like me didn’t manage to finish courses like that, not when loafing around and causing trouble were more tempting and less hassle.
A guy with frizzy hair leapt out of the passenger seat and sprinted across to Guillaume as if his arse was on fire. Jabbering in French, he threw his scrawny arms around my sperm donor before doing that kissy thing French guys seemed to get off on. Meanwhile, a pair of long legs unfolded themselves from the driver’s seat, attached to a tall blond man who instantly relegated every other hot guy I’d ever encountered into a minor league.
“Marcel, hi! And you must be Noah. Hi! Nice to meet you. I’m Freddie. Traffic was a bitch; we only just made it in time.”
He turned to where my sperm donor and the other smaller guy were still squeezed together. “Any time you’re ready to peel yourself away from Guillaume,” Freddie drawled, his voice matching his car and his clothes. “Just let me know, Reuben. No rush.”
“Mon dieu, Freddie. Calm down,” responded the other guy in accented English, reluctantly releasing the killer but keeping an arm around his shoulders. “Always in such a hurry.”
He spun around and, with a hand on his hip, looked me up and down, a happy grin splitting his lively features. “Putain, you and Guillaume are two beans in a pod.”
“Peas, my sweet. Peas, not beans,” Freddie murmured.
The smaller guy, Reuben, advanced on me, and I cringed as he repeated the kissy thing. “My husband corrects me because he is jealous of my good looks and charm, non? We have to pretend he is handsome, too, okay?”
Behind us, Marcel and the killer helped Freddie stow our bags into the boot of the car.
Reuben whispered in my ear, “I am Guillaume’s oldest friend. I will be your friend too. You’ll see; everything will work out fine. We are taking you to a magical place.”
I doubted that very much. The guy had a screw loose, evidently. And I’d stopped believing in magic years ago, the first Christmas Santa forgot to pitch up.
They spent the journey talking about plants and gardens—seemed they’d all visited the same stately home—the Reuben guy especially well informed. On the backseat, sandwiched uncomfortably between Marcel and my donor, I did my best not to touch either of them and switched off, preferring drab scenery and the near-silent hum of precision engineering to making small talk.
Before I knew what was happening, they’d elected to take a detour to the stately home they’d been blathering on about. Except it wasn’t a detour at all because Freddie parked the car in a garage housing quite a few other cars as if he lived in the grounds of the stately home himself. Which, it turns out, he did.
A flurry of activity greeted our arrival. Two blond streaks dashed out to the car, squealing in that ear-piercing, high-pitched way only small children could. Joyfully, they wrapped themselves around Marcel’s legs, Reuben chiding them and steadying Marcel to prevent them knocking him over. A chubby toddler waddled after them, gurgling and holding his fat arms out. For the first time since I’d clapped eyes on him, the killer smiled. Dropping his bag, he scooped the boy up, twirled him around, and kissed him, both of them laughing with delight.
A big guy followed the toddler at a more leisurely pace, and he embraced the killer, not minding in the slightest that the small child evidently belonging to him was being cuddled in his arms. He disentangled the other kids from Marcel, and they scampered off back inside the house, shouting to someone that we’d arrived.
“I’m Jay,” said the big guy pleasantly. “You must be Noah. Nice to meet you.”
What the fuck was I doing here?
Grunting hello with the finesse of an acned fourteen-year-old, I shook his hand. In his sweatpants and hoodie, he appeared perfectly at ease, although he didn’t look or sound like the sort of person who belonged in a place like this. Not like Freddie. But then what did I know about anything?
A second man appeared in the doorway, the two blond kids hanging off each arm. He didn’t resemble the kind of person who’d live in a house like this either. Too young for a start—he was around my age—and with his gingery curls and freckles, much too ordinary. Too small and skinny as well—he only reached my shoulder.
One of the children released him so he could shake my hand. This ginger guy was fucking smiling too.
Why was everyone around this place so fucking happy?
“Hi! You must be Noah. I’m Toby.” With the same hand I’d shaken, he ruffled one of the blond kid’s hair, which was when I noticed his other arm didn’t have a hand on the end, it just petered out into a kind of stump. Realising I’d noticed, he pulled the sleeve of his baggy jumper over it, then fixed me with his bright smile again. “I work here. I have the misfortune to be in charge of this pair of toerags.”
The girl let out a screech of protest, and Toby laughed easily as they dashed off again back to Marcel.
“They’re Eliza and Arthur, and sorry, they appear to have forgotten their manners. Usually, they would have introduced themselves, but they’re too excited at seeing Marcel and Guillaume. Everyone’s favourite godfathers. The baby wrapped around your dad is Orlando, by the way—he took a shine to him from the moment they first met; he probably won’t let go now until bedtime.”
My dad. The first time anyone had said those words to me ever, my entire life. And this stranger—Toby—had dropped the phrase so casually into his greeting, seemingly without realising he’d uttered it. A tense pause stretched between us as he waited for me to make an appropriate response.
“I don’t have a dad. He isn’t that.”
“God, sorry,” said Toby with a slight frown. “I thought you were…”
“Yes. I am. But that doesn’t make him my fucking dad. Okay?”
Toby shrugged, backing off a little. “Sure. Whatever.”
By now, we’d all trooped into the kitchen, a space the size of my old school assembly hall, except much more homey and cluttered with kitchen stuff and piles of laundry and kid’s toys and stacks of washed dishes and…a…a person. Yet another man, and not a run-of-the-mill sort. I had to look twice, thinking it was Freddie at first, somehow zipped in ahead of us through another entrance. And then I realised it wasn’t.
The new man wore a nightdress for a start, of the frumpy kind favoured by little old ladies.
Tall and slender, like Freddie, he had hair that looked as if it came from a bottle of bleach, except it didn’t because the rest of him was very, very pale too; his skin tone matching the elegant pearl rope weighing heavily around his neck. Even his clever eyes, made up with a shimmery bronze halo, were pale, a cloudless light blue, and they crinkled around the edges as he smiled at me. Marcel stepped up to give him a hug.
“Gosh, darling,” the man murmured in a whispery, fluttery sort of voice. With his slim arms around Marcel’s bony shoulders, his warm gaze settled on me. There was a hint of mischief in his smile, revealing pointy sharp canines as he flicked his eyes down to my feet and back up again. “I don’t think you need to bother wasting any of your filthy lucre on paternity testing, do you?”
Marcel gave a muffled laugh and shook his head.
So, this must be Lucien. The owner of this vast country pile and Marcel’s best friend. The person who apparently was going to ‘sort me out’. Yeah, right. I wouldn’t bet money on it. How could someone who had all this, and who looked like that, ever understand how it felt to be me? They hadn’t got a fucking clue, any of them. I should have parted ways with the killer and Marcel at Bristol airport, pretended to go to the bog, and sneaked off. This experiment would be over by the end of the week; I’d be out on my ear, sleeping rough in Bristol. A couple of nights kip here, and then I’d be gone.
Still tightly bound to his old friend, Lucien extended a bony hand towards me. I took it, his grip surprisingly firm, his palm cool and soft.
“I’m Lucien Avery. Welcome to Rossingley, darling.”
*
AT LEAST WITH all these people crammed into the kitchen, no one fired awkward questions or stared at me. Well, no one except the Orlando kid, who had draped himself over the sperm donor’s shoulder and tracked my every move with his big sloe eyes as if making sure I didn’t nick his daddies’ silver teaspoons. In amongst the noise and chatter of folk catching up and sharing news, I was momentarily overlooked, which suited me fine and allowed me to study them all, one by one.
Lucien was a fucking weirdo in a way only very rich guys could afford to be. Enough said. Reuben, the friendly French guy, got to have regular sex with Freddie, so I deduced his life must be pretty fucking peachy too. That alone was enough to explain his apparent joy with the world. And Freddie himself, with his looks and obvious money, wouldn’t recognise misery if it stared him in the face. Jay seemed a bit more straightforward, but even he had the air of a man totally chilled with himself and his surroundings. Which left the sperm donor and Marcel, and I’d already observed at close quarters what a happy existence they’d carved out together. The kids would be spoiled brats, obviously, which meant the only one remaining was the skinny one-handed ginger. The hired help—a fellow misfit, like me.
Maybe I wouldn’t even stay two nights—I could slip out later after dark; God knew which way took me back to Bristol or to that other little town we’d passed on the way here, but if I carried on walking in a straight line, I’d find civilisation somewhere.
After twenty minutes or so, all the people began peeling off. Toby took the twins outside to groom the ponies. (Exactly how did Marcel imagine my problems could possibly be solved by white people rich enough to keep fucking ponies?). Reuben and Freddie disappeared to be witty and beautiful somewhere else, Marcel went for a lie-down, and the killer took Orlando out to feed the ducks. Which left me alone with Jay, the most normal out of the lot, and Lucien, the most peculiar.
“We’re thrilled to have you staying here,” began Lucien as soon as the door was firmly closed. Talk about over-egging the pudding; I was fairly certain I was an inconvenience the entire clan could have done without. But no doubt, helping charity cases like me ticked some box inside him that made him feel good about himself. Like those celebrities who visited Ethiopia with a film crew and rolled up the sleeves of their pristine camo shirts to sprinkle glamour and baskets of Mars bars over pot-bellied kids too weak to eat them, then getting back inside their chauffeur-driven jeeps and drenching themselves in hand sanitizer on the route back to private jets. Okay, maybe not quite as bad as that, but along the same lines.
“Although it will be terribly boring if we don’t find you something to do. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, I find. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Okay, so this guy was even worse than the celebs. African kids only had to look cute and allow a few fat flies to crawl over their eyelids. Whereas he was planning on making me work for my charitable handouts. Lucien’s pale-blue eyes coolly regarded me, a hint of challenge dancing at his lips as if he could read my ugly thoughts and found them terribly amusing.
“I’ve had a word with Reuben, and he is very happy for you to tag along with the gardening team.”
I bet. He’d be able to spend the day telling me how wonderful his murdering best friend Guillaume was if only I could see beyond the murdering part.
“If that isn’t to your liking,” the weird earl continued, “then Will, my estate manager, can find plenty of chores to keep you busy. An alternative suggestion is that you enrol in a course of some description at Allenmouth College?”
No fucking chance. I’d tried college and not been very good at it when I found out they expected me to turn up every day.
Lucien’s smile was exchanged for a firmer expression. “What you can’t do, I’m afraid, is loaf. Contrary to first impressions, I run a rather tight ship, which you will come to appreciate if you hang around long enough.”
He threw me a sudden impish grin, so at odds with everything else about him. “And I hope you do. We like to have our home filled with…extended family. The more the merrier.”
Whatever. If he expected me to fall to his feet and grovel with gratitude or smile for the cameras, he was shit out of luck.
Jay stood up from the table. “I’ll show you where you can stay.”
I picked up my bag to follow. It was heavier than when I’d first arrived in France. On realising I scarcely owned anything, Marcel had left some tracksuit bottoms, a pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts and some sweaters out on the bed. Old stuff, about to be passed on to a charity shop apparently, although they seemed pretty new to me and suspiciously in keeping with the sperm donor’s sartorial choices. As soon as I had some funds of my own, I’d ditch them in the nearest wheelie bin.
“Noah, darling.”
Dear and darling, both in the same week. Fucking ridiculous, not to mention so fucking gay.
Lucien’s pale gaze openly appraised my physique, which, especially dressed in these clothes, was horrifically similar to the sperm donor’s. To give him credit, he’d been the only one with the balls to say out loud what everyone had been thinking; formal paternity testing would be a waste of bloody time and money.
“I must ask you an exceedingly important question. It may seem a little odd, but I do require an answer, and the sooner, the better.”
Jay threw him a quizzical look, and I tensed. Here we go already. Why had I pitched up? Would I leave without a fuss as soon as my presence became an inconvenience? How much money would I accept to clear off? Was I after Guillaume’s money? Did I promise not to nick the silver?
Thieving wasn’t on my list of juvenile crimes. But perhaps I would give it a go—thieve something and leave tonight after everyone had fucked off to bed. Steal enough to get me to Bristol. Forget the silver, hotwiring that posh Jag would do it. Those hypnotic pale eyes glinted at me with amusement.
“Tell me, Noah darling. How do you feel about playing some cricket?”
*
“DO YOU HAVE everything you need?” Jay asked politely as I traipsed after him up one staircase, along a spooky dark hallway, then down another.
Yes, aside from a map to find my way back down to the kitchen in the morning.
“Phone charger? Toothbrush?” he continued, casting a glance back at me.
I nodded.
“We’ve given you a room in the east wing. Next to Toby. He’ll show you where everything is. Lucien, me, and the children have quarters in the west wing. Marcel and Guillaume are on the floor below.”
“Why are you doing this?” The question came out more aggressively than I intended, although Jay seemed unfazed. “Why are you both taking me in?”
“Trust me, mate, it wasn’t my idea.”
We turned a corner onto yet another long dim corridor. I bet this house was haunted.
“You’d better not cause Luce any trouble,” Jay continued. “You’ll be answering to me if you do.”
Seemed I’d finally met someone in this place who spoke my own language.
He opened a door, revealing a plainly decorated blue bedroom. A double bed with a flowery eiderdown faced the sash window. A heavy oak wardrobe and matching drawers took up two walls. The view looked out onto a courtyard and the stables. With his arms folded across his impressive chest, Jay sized me up, the only person I’d met in this mad house who didn’t mind showing me his trust had to be earned, not gifted. In another life, maybe, we’d have been friends.
“The public relations answer is that Lucien is fully aware of his aristocratic inherited privilege and likes to give something back to those less fortunate than himself whenever he can.”
I huffed, indicating exactly how underwhelmed I was by that statement. Playing Lady Bountiful and sprinkling crumbs to the poor was easy when you already had so much you wouldn’t notice if some of it was given away.
Jay leaned down to fiddle with the radiator. “I’d keep this turned on if I were you. It’s bloody freezing at night along this corridor, according to Toby.”
Straightening again, he fixed me with a softer expression. “That’s part of it. The other part is he knows what it feels like to be cast adrift and alone. And to hit rock bottom. It’s hard to believe looking at him now. But trust me, he’s the best chance you’ve got. Don’t fuck it up.”
Chapter Seven
Toby
GUESS WHO GOT himself saddled with the new guy? I should have seen that coming a mile off. For a childless man, Marcel was extraordinarily adept at entertaining small children, more so now his alleged dental situation commanded 100 per cent of Arthur and Eliza’s attention. Orlando, as usual, clung to Guillaume like a limpet on a rock from the second he opened his wide, brown eyes until his doting godfather tucked him up and read him his bedtime story. Which left me slightly twiddling my thumbs. Fifth rule of Rossingley: look busy, otherwise Lucien would find you something to do.
Guillaume’s long-lost son would be drop-dead gorgeous if he cracked a smile occasionally, but there was no sign of one of those on the horizon. If brooding, introspective sullenness were an Olympic sport, Noah would trounce everybody on his path to claiming gold. Aside from the addition of a couple of eyebrow piercings and a burgeoning flesh tunnel in his left ear, he was the spit of his dad. Sensibly, I thought it best not to draw attention to that elephant in the room and focused on Rossingley instead, a topic on which I boasted an entire medal cabinet myself. Lucien had suggested/commanded I fill my time by offering Noah a tour of the estate.
