Mal barked out a laugh. “Yeah? How’d that go down?”
“She told me to eff off and find myself a nice boyfriend. She said it kindly, though,” he added quickly. He didn’t want to give Mal the wrong idea about her.
“Has she had other blokes? Or, you know, birds? Whatever floats her boat.”
“Not many. She’s very protective of Gawen. But there have been lovers—although none of them have lasted long.”
“So no one likely to get pissed off about you?”
“Not anyone that I’ve heard of.”
“What about you? You must’ve had a few flings at uni.”
Must he have? Jory remembered his undergraduate years mostly as a time of keeping his head down and his nose in a book, still reeling from unexpected fatherhood. “There was someone,” he admitted. “Rafi. Up in Edinburgh. We were together for nearly three years.”
“Three years? Blimey, that’s practically married and all. But you split up? What happened?”
“Gawen was having trouble at school. Being bullied.” And there was no way Jory would leave him to deal with that on his own. Not when Jory had first-hand experience of what it was like, to go into school every day and be made to feel utterly worthless. “Kirsty was worried about him. I needed to be here.”
“And this Rafi bloke didn’t want to come with you?”
Jory half shrugged, half just slumped. “It would have been career suicide. I mean, look at me: working part-time in a museum nobody visits. I hear he’s accepted a post as a professor in America.”
It had been more complicated than that, of course. Things always were. Jory hadn’t suspected how much Rafi had resented him not getting divorced from Kirsty, but it had all come out in their final, bitter row. How Rafi had been sick and tired of making excuses to his mother for why they didn’t get married, spending weekends alone while Jory visited his wife and child, and listening to his friends tell him Jory would never commit to him and he should move on. If only he’d said something . . . There had been a time when Jory would have done anything Rafi wanted him to. But he’d never asked.
When the end had come, it had all been too late, and they’d both said too much that couldn’t be unheard.
Jory startled as a warm arm slipped around his shoulders. Meant as comfort, he realised even as every muscle in his body tensed. He drew in a breath—
—but Mal was already backing off. “Whoa, sorry, dude. So, uh, hey, I think I can see the castle from here? We oughtta get going.”
He loped off down the path, leaving Jory to curse himself and follow.
Jory had seen Caerdu Castle many times before, of course. One of the things he’d missed out on by being sent away to boarding school was the annual educational trip there that almost all the local schools seemed to organise, so for a few years, he’d made a point of going there by himself every summer.
He’d thought the place had nothing new to offer him. And strictly speaking, it didn’t—but what was new was seeing it through Mal’s eyes, and his imagination. Mal climbed every crumbling wall—even the ones with Keep Off notices on them—and staged mock sword fights on the fragments of spiral staircases that remained.
Apparently his wariness of heights didn’t kick in until above second-storey level. Jory couldn’t help but be drawn in, finding himself somehow in the role of French invader fighting against Mal’s valiant Cornish defender. As they were armed only with imaginary swords, it might have been a little hard to tell who was winning, were it not for Mal’s spirited narration that made it clear that the Cornishman had the upper hand. Jory spat out half-remembered Old French insults and, finally, staggered back to die supine on the rough grass, having been disarmed and run through by Mal’s nonexistent weapon.
A smattering of applause made Jory open his eyes. He looked up to see a small crowd of fascinated children and their laughing parents, some of them filming him with their mobile phones. Mal was taking a bow with a courtly flourish.
For a moment, the embarrassment was paralysing—Bran would be livid if he found out Jory was making a spectacle of himself like this—then Jory thought, To hell with it, and stood up to take his own bow.
“Do I wanna know what you were calling me?” Mal asked as they walked off, grinning like idiots, to take a breather.
“Uh . . .” Jory was glad he’d expunged fils a putan from his limited vocabulary of insults. “Gluttonous, base evildoer. That sort of thing.”
They sat down side by side in the shade of the highest wall of the castle, and Jory resolutely didn’t stare as Mal lifted the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his forehead.
“‘Gluttonous’? Hey, that ain’t fair. I asked if you wanted that hog’s pudding.” Mal nudged Jory with his shoulder.
It was a companionable gesture, nothing more. Jory knew that. He couldn’t help the way it made him want to lean into the contact, though.
Maybe Mal wouldn’t mind? Would welcome it, even? Maybe—
Mal stood up. “So, uh, yeah. ’S been great. Think I’d better . . . I’ll see you tomorrow, right? If you’re still up for it? Cheers.”
And he was gone before Jory could work out what had just happened.
Mal was an idiot. A total, gormless prick-led idiot.
He lay on his bed, hot and sweaty from practically running back to the Sea Bell, and screamed into his pillow. Really quietly, so Tash wouldn’t hear and want to know what was up.
That look on Jory’s face, when they’d been sat down together . . . Mal had been this close to leaning in and kissing him, and that would’ve arsed things up good and proper, wouldn’t it? Imagine explaining that one to Dev. Yeah, mate, I met your uncle. And fucked him.
Yeah, that’d go down so well. Especially when Mal
