“Dev? Nah, we didn’t meet till we were eleven. High school. Had a couple of teachers who used to sit everyone in alphabetical order, yeah? So him being a Thompson, and me being a Thomas . . .” Mal shrugged.
“Thompson . . . that was the family who adopted him?”
“Yeah, but they ain’t been around since I’ve known him. Died.”
God, how awful for Devan. Dev. To be orphaned, effectively, twice, before he’d even reached his teens. Jory glanced over at Mal and desperately hoped he wasn’t about to hear another tale of everyday woe. “Have you got family, apart from your sister? You mentioned your mum, but . . .” Jory had never been able to think of a tactful way to ask if someone was still alive. Maybe there wasn’t one.
Mal seemed to take his meaning anyway. “Mum? Nah, she ain’t popped her clogs yet. Hit the big five-oh last year. Her and my dad are still married and everything. Morgan’s older than me. Married. Got a kid on the way. Like, any minute now.”
It was a rush of information all at once. Jory had to take a moment to sort it out in his head.
They’d reached the edge of town, and the first shops were beginning to appear.
Mal turned to him. “Got a place in mind, have you?”
“Ah, not really, no.”
“The Turkish place near the mosque does a wicked coffee—I went there with Dev last year.”
Jory blinked. “You were here last year too?”
“Yeah, came down for a week to join Dev. Drove down with Tasha. Missed all the drama though. And we were here again over Christmas, but that was just for a few days.”
That was . . . appallingly unfair. Jory could have known him for a year already, if he’d only been in the right place at the right time.
Then again, given what had happened with other members of his family, maybe not. “Um. The trouble with the Seven Stars is that there’s an outside chance we might bump into Bea or Bran there.” Jory couldn’t help glancing nervously around in case he’d somehow conjured them up.
“Gotcha. Tell you what, we’ll go down the front. They ever go to the Square Peg?”
“Is it touristy?”
“Just a bit.” The way Mal said it clearly implied a place crammed to the rafters with families eating cream teas, half of them pronouncing scones incorrectly and the other half putting the jam and cream on in the wrong order.
Perfect. Neither Bran nor Bea would be seen dead in a place like that. “Then no.”
“Right, that’s where we’ll go, then. Tasha’s mate Ceri used to work there,” he added as they turned down a side street.
The Square Peg Café, when they reached it, turned out not to be quite as tacky as Jory had imagined, but it was every bit as touristy. He wondered how long it had been here, considering he hadn’t even known about it, but was afraid to ask.
“Do you mind if we take this table?” He gestured to one set back against the café window and shaded by the awning. It’d give them some cover in case anyone who knew them happened by. Jory was damned if he’d avoid Mal just because his brother and sister wouldn’t approve, but he didn’t fancy having a public argument about it. And the last thing he wanted was to get Mal in trouble with either Tasha or Jago Andrewartha.
“Yeah, with colouring like yours, the sun ain’t your friend, is it? I freckle and burn like a ginge anyhow if I don’t slap on the sunblock, so it’s no skin off my nose sitting in the shade.” Mal grinned. “Literally.”
They sat down. Jory took a couple of cheaply laminated menus from the stand in the centre of the table and passed one to Mal, who took it with a smile and a brush of fingers that Jory was almost certain was deliberate.
Almost. He looked down at his menu quickly.
“Now, what I want to know,” Mal said with an air of significance that had Jory tensing up automatically, “is, are you eating? Cos I don’t want to sit here stuffing my face while you try and make an espresso last half an hour.”
“I had half a slice of toast for breakfast several hours ago, so yes, I’m eating.” He’d woken up early and been unable to either get back to sleep or force much food down. Nerves.
Sometimes he envied Bea’s way of remaining untroubled by strong emotion.
“In that case, the full Cornish sounds good to me.” Mal shoved his menu back in the stand.
Jory did likewise, and managed to catch the waitress’s eye so he could give their order.
“You don’t know her?” he asked a few minutes later, as she bustled away from them. She was a pretty girl, with bleached-blonde hair up in a doughnut on top of her head. It made her look curiously doll-like, and her ivory-and-pink makeup seemed designed to accentuate the impression of unreal perfection. Her name tag had read Aurora.
“What, her? Never met her before. Why?”
“Oh—I thought maybe she was a friend of your . . . friend’s friend. The one you said used to work here.” Jory frowned. Put like that, the connection seemed embarrassingly tenuous.
“You mean Ceri? Nah, she ain’t got a lot of friends round here.” Mal, who’d been fiddling with his phone, turned back to Jory and grinned. “Why, you fancy her or something?”
“What? No. I, um, I don’t really . . .” The heat was rising in Jory’s cheeks, and he hated it. “I’m not looking for a girlfriend.”
“No? Nah, you’re probably right.” Mal’s voice was off-hand as he flicked through messages on his phone. “I’d be shit-scared she’d bite my balls off if I messed up her hair.”
Jory swallowed. Did Mal realise the sort of imagery he was conjuring up? Was he doing it on purpose? Jory wasn’t sure how to respond.
And then he didn’t have to.
“Well, fancy meeting you here,” a familiar voice said in ringing tones
