Which meant . . . Jory must’ve thought this was a date. Or he’d wanted it to be one.
Mal wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d been working bloody hard to flip the mental switch from bloke I want to shag to Dev’s long-lost uncle. All that stuff with Jory in his bedroom had been doing a number on his head, not to mention other bits, but he’d thought he was safe once they got out in the open. And okay, yeah, he’d been having a bit of a tease when they’d talked about the waitress, but that had just . . . That had just been passing the time, that had.
Kind of.
“So tell me about it now,” he said, cos at least if he got Jory talking, that’d give him time to think.
“There’s not much to tell. We . . . I . . . They were having a party down on the beach, the one below our house. Kirsty and her friends. Although to be honest, I think she’d only just met them . . . Anyway, I went for a walk, and she invited me to join them.”
“Got you pissed and had her wicked way with you behind the beach huts?”
Jory winced. “Behind the lifeboat station, actually. It was a couple of years before they built the new one.” He must have caught Mal’s WTF? look. “The old slipway wasn’t on stilts, like the new one. So. More cover. I think. I don’t remember it all very well.”
His face was so red it made his hair and beard stand out bright blond in contrast, reminding Mal of some old negatives his mum had shown him once from back when she was young and people had taken photos with actual cameras with film in them. Mal felt bad for him but, well, he was supposed to be vetting the bloke, wasn’t he? To see if he was the sort of uncle Dev would want to get to know.
Shit. His kid was Dev’s cousin. Dev wasn’t going to want to let that go, was he? Despite the fact that he had about fifty of them on his dad’s side. The Malakars, up in Sheffield. Dev had been up there and met half of them, and he’d said they were all welcoming and that. Even his dad’s missus, who might have been a bit pissed off about proof that her husband had been shagging around when they’d been as good as engaged, had cooked Dev a big meal and told him to visit anytime.
He’d been a bit quiet when he came back home, though. Showed Mal a couple of pics of him and his half brothers, who were all younger than him and doing really well in school. When Mal said how much they looked like him, he went even quieter.
Mal hadn’t wanted to push him on it, but . . . it’d been like when they’d been at school, him and Dev, and he’d come round to Mal’s for tea. Mum had always done her best to make him feel welcome, but Dev had always been sad afterwards. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but it had sort of reminded Mal of when he’d been little and had dreams he could talk to his rats, like properly talk to them and understand what they said, and sometimes even be their size and go on adventures with them. And then he’d woken up and remembered he couldn’t. He’d always felt a bit flat for the rest of the day.
“I’m not doing a very good job of persuading you to trust me, am I?” Jory said. “I’m sorry.”
Mal realised he must have been silent too long. “Just . . . it’s a lot to take in, yeah? So tell me about your kid. Gow—uh, Gavin?”
“Gawen. It’s an old Cornish name.” Jory smiled, looking genuinely happy for the first time since Kirsty had left them. “He’s great. Brilliant, in fact. Already doing GCSE standard maths. The school wants him to take his exams early.”
Great. Another perfect cousin for Dev. He was going to love that.
“So how’s it work with you and his mum? You’re not living together, right?”
“No. She has her own house. That was part of the deal.”
“‘The deal’?”
“Bran offered her a house in Porthkennack and financial support, in exchange for her agreeing to legitimise Gawen.” Jory stared out across the street. “So we got married, and then I went back to university.”
Mal laughed. “Bet your mates were surprised.”
“Nobody there ever knew.”
Okay, so now he wasn’t laughing any longer. “So it’s always been your dirty little secret?”
“It’s not . . .” Jory made a jerky gesture and knocked over the brown sauce. It landed on the edge of Mal’s plate with a clatter of jumping cutlery. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
He sounded wrecked.
“Hey, chill, bruv. No harm done. I get it, yeah? You were young, you didn’t wanna let it cramp your style.”
“That’s not . . . I was ashamed of myself.”
Mal looked at him sharply. “For sticking your dick where you shouldn’t of? Mate, we’ve all been there. It’s part of being a bloke, innit? The little head wants what it wants.”
“For . . . for lots of things.”
Jory didn’t seem to want to go into details, which was fair enough. Mal had another bite of sausage while he thought about what to say next.
Jory beat him to it. “I hope this hasn’t changed the way you feel about me getting to know Dev.”
Had it? Mal wasn’t sure. Except, yeah, he really was. “Nah, it’s okay. But that’s it, innit? You ain’t got no more kids stashed away somewhere?”
“No. I can say that with the utmost certainty.”
Translation: Kirsty’s was the only vag he’d ever shagged. Well, either that or he had shares in a major condom company. Mal grinned, and it was only a little bit forced. “Then we’re golden. You gonna eat that?”
