Page 116 of Playing By Ear

He dug harder, deeper, shoving aside the mulch that tried to slip into the hole. He should have brought a trowel instead of using the fingers that earned him a living—or had earned him a living, before Martin and the others had stolen it.

Coming home had been a mistake. All it brought was danger and sorrow and⁠—

“Burying another Barbie?”

His whole body jerked, and he uttered a strangled cry.

“Sorry,” Belinda said behind him. “I thought you heard me open the back door and were just ignoring me.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Pulse slamming his temples, he noticed he’d dug a six-inch-deep trench. He shifted over a few feet and went back to attacking the ivy at the surface.

“Remember how when you were a wean you used to run outside at the sound of the lawnmower?” she said. “You’d batter all the white dandelion heads so their seeds would spread before they got chopped down. Took you years to realize no mere lawnmower could destroy a dandelion.”

He gave a light grunt in reply.

“Then you’d be dead proud of yourself when the dandelions grew back a few days later.” She adjusted a rock surrounding the flower bed with the toe of her low-heeled black court shoe. “You always wanted to save things, no matter how noxious they were. Lucy’s the same way.” When Jamie didn’t answer, she said, “Never tell her how much rabbits love dandelions, okay? She’ll never let me use another herbicide on our lawn.”

“Okay.” He yanked up another long string of ivy stems. God, these buggers were everywhere.

“Can you stop for a second?” She held out a sheet of kitchen roll in each hand, one wet and one dry. “I think that English ivy is meant to be there anyway.”

“Dad always had me pull it out.” Still, he took the wet towel. “Did he tell you what happened?”

“That he threatened to sally forth, guns a-blazin’, and end the Coyles? Yes. Well done, you, talking him down.”

“Just cleaning up my own mess.” Jamie took the dry towel. “I lost the rag when he telt me to stop busking.”

“That’s what wound him up, you whingeing about security precautions? The tumor must be sapping his self-control.”

“It wasn’t exactly that.” He flinched in advance. “It was when I said he only loved himself.”

“Oh, no.”

“And his money.”

“No wonder.” With a deep sigh, she turned and went over to the wooden canopy swing chair at the edge of the garden. As she sank into the seat, she pulled out her packet of cigarettes.

Jamie sat beside her, still holding the wads of kitchen roll. The canopy swing felt precarious, as if adding another body would tip it over.

“Jamie, when you—” Belinda stopped speaking for a few blinks. “When you left ten years ago, he wasn’t angry. He was heartbroken.”

Jamie rubbed the twinge-y spot on his chest.

She continued. “He’s lost so many people close to him. Uncle Mick. Mum. You.”

Ritchie.

“Did it ever cross your mind,” Belinda asked, “that he might want you to stop busking so you’ll have more time for him?”

It hadn’t. “He should’ve said so.”

She gave him a withering look. “Were you born this morning? You can’t take his words at face value.”

“Och, it’s like I need two sets of ears.” He sat back, bracing his feet against the ground to hold the swing steady. “I suppose if I stopped busking, that would simplify things. My life used to be just football and work. Now it’s football, work, family, and Perry.”

“Welcome to adulthood, aka, the human sword-juggling act.” She lit her cigarette, then clicked the lighter shut with a flick of salmon-pink thumbnail. “Remind me to kill you for telling Dad about Tony Coyle’s threat. I know you did it so he’d agree to try radiation, but it made me look weak and indecisive. Worse, it burned a lot of the trust I’ve built up with him over the years.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He wrapped the drier piece of kitchen roll around the wet one.