“Uh, no. Feel free.”
“Cheers.” Mal slid it onto his own plate. “Ain’t had this since I was down here last year staying at Mrs. Quick’s B&B. I keep trying to get Tash to cook some, but she says she’s trying to save my arteries from myself.”
“Tash . . . She’s Dev’s sister, you said?”
“Yeah. Well, foster sister. They ain’t blood. Been through a lot together, though.”
“What made her move down here?”
“Liked it, I guess. And she had a bit of grief with the last place she was living, so . . .” Mal shrugged. He wasn’t going to mention Ceri. That was Tasha’s business, not his and Jory’s.
“Landlord not maintaining the place properly?”
Mal had to laugh. “Something like that.” But not very. He finished up the hog’s pudding with his last bit of fried egg, then put his cutlery together on the plate. “You working today?” Maybe Jory could show him around the local history archive, help him dig out some stuff about Pirate Mary.
“No. The museum’s closed today.”
Bollocks. Maybe not, then. “So what do you do on your days off?”
“It depends.”
“On?”
“On whether I’ve got company or not.” Jory gave him a direct gaze.
Mal appreciated that. “Let’s say you have, then. What’d you fancy getting up to?”
“If I had company, it’d be up to my guest.”
Mal bit his tongue before he could blurt out, Right, shagging it is, then, because seriously, did his dick have it in for the rest of him or what? “What’s the castle round here like?” he said instead. “Worth a look?”
“It’s . . . okay. It’s not Tintagel, though.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit there,” Mal said with a pang. “Come on, who wouldn’t want to see the actual place where King Arthur’s dad got his mum up the duff with him?”
“While he was magically disguised as her hours-dead husband. I feel I ought to point out that the historicity is a little suspect.”
Mal could picture the bloke in front of a class of students, one eyebrow raised and with a funny, sceptical twist to his mouth just like now. He must give great lectures. “Yeah, yeah, I know. And the castle was built a few hundred years too late. But it’s s’posed to be really atmospheric. Inspiring, and all.” He tried not to sound too sad about it, but to be honest he was gutted at finally being so near the place and with no means of getting there.
“Why don’t we go, then?” Jory said. “Today. It’s only about an hour’s drive from here. Well, in the winter it is. Maybe a bit more if there’s traffic. Um. Maybe it’d be better to make an early start tomorrow.”
Mal almost laughed at the way Jory’s voice started out all enthusiastic and then trailed off, but he was too busy fighting the hope that had surged up in him. “Yeah, but, whatever day we go it’s gonna take most of the day, innit? You’ve got to have stuff to do.” He wasn’t sure if he was protesting to be polite or . . . because of the other thing. But whatever it was, it came out sounding pretty unconvincing.
“I’m not working tomorrow either, and Gawen will be at school. There’s nothing else I need to be doing.” Jory took a deep breath. “I’d love to take you there. I’ll be happy to drive, unless you’d rather?”
Mal avoided his eye. “Nah, I, uh, left my car in London. Flew in to Newquay.”
“Oh? Most people prefer to have transport available while on holiday in Cornwall.” Jory shrugged. “Trains and buses can only take you so far.”
“Dev told me about the planes. It ain’t a bad service.” Mal swallowed, and went for it. “So, uh, yeah, we could take your car.”
Jory, who’d been frowning more and more as Mal spouted that load of disjointed bollocks, broke out into a smile. “That’s great.”
Mal couldn’t help smiling back, even if it did feel a bit wonky. He’d be fine. Honest.
And tomorrow was another day. It was, like, famous for it, even. “Right, so that’s settled, then,” Mal babbled on. “So how about we have a butcher’s at the local one today, so we’ll have something to compare it to?”
Jory beamed. “Why not?”
The waitress came with the bill at that point, which was a fair hint that if they weren’t going to order something else, they should cease and desist squatting on prime café real estate. Jory ignored Mal’s protests and paid, leaving a generous tip because the poor girl didn’t look like she enjoyed her job over-much.
Had there been something odd in Mal’s manner just now? Jory wasn’t sure—if there had been, he seemed to have fully regained his equilibrium as they walked away from the café, cracking a joke about how the British on holiday always seemed way more British than usual.
“Maybe that’s why we go abroad,” Jory suggested. “To be confirmed in our Britishness. Innate nostalgia for the days of empire.”
Mal gave him a raised eyebrow. “Nah, mate. Us Brits go abroad to get a tan, get wasted, and get laid.”
“It can’t be both?”
“Course not. Who wants to multitask on their holidays? Me, I don’t even wanna uni-task.”
“Or as most people would say, task. If they were in the habit of using nouns as verbs.” Jory tried not to wince at himself. Next he’d be pulling Mal up on incorrect usage of who versus whom.
Mal just grinned. “You got a problem with nouning?”
Jory did wince then.
Mal burst out laughing. “Lemme guess, you’re the sort of bloke whose sexts have, like, commas and capital letters in ’em.”
Jory barely stopped himself from saying, You’ll just have to wait and see. Appalled at the near miss, he bit his lip hard, in case the words somehow spilled out anyway. Christ, how did Mal have this effect on him? He was supposed to be trying to convince the man he was capable of being an upright, decent
