Page 160 of Playing By Ear

Her mother hesitated.

“We’ll be all right,” Perry told her, then realized she was understandably nervous about leaving her child with a near stranger.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, a soft one alternating with a thump. Then Jamie was calling his name, and, in the next moment, delivering the hardest hug of Perry’s life.

“Oh my God, I’ve missed you.” Jamie’s whisper was hoarse, as though his throat was singed.

Perry couldn’t speak. Was it only ten days since he’d held this man?

“Now you’re here, Jamie,” Belinda said, “I’ll nip to the shops.”

“More chocolate Hobnobs,” Jamie called after her without letting go of Perry. Then he tightened his embrace. “Thank you for coming. Sorry for the family of nutters.” He released Perry and turned to Lucy. “Present company excepted, of course.”

“I know,” she said.

“Anyway,” Jamie said, “Dad’s expecting me with a cuppa and some of those prawn crackers.” He tousled Lucy’s fair hair. “Assuming this one’s not eaten them all.”

“Blech,” she said.

“I’ll only be upstairs a few minutes this time, promise,” Jamie said.

“No hurry.” Perry sat at the table with his tablet and scrolled through his recipes, copying several to a separate list for easy access. They were all tasty dishes that were easy on the stomach and didn’t require cutting into bits.

“You’re his boyfriend?” Lucy asked over the whir of the label maker.

“That’s right.”

“Will you marry?”

So much for being shy. Perry gave her his full attention. “I don’t know. It’s a bit soon to think about such things.”

“But you’re old.”

“Ah. Thanks.”

“I want a cousin,” she said, rotating the glass mayonnaise jar. “A proper cousin, not a second cousin like Miranda’s baby will be.”

“Understandable.”

“I really want a wee sister, but a cousin’s the next best.”

“I’m an only child too. Sometimes it’s nice, but sometimes it’s lonely.”

She nodded vigorously enough he could see it across the table. “Mummy and Daddy don’t⁠—”

Lucy cut herself off, and Perry didn’t press her to finish. How much did she know about the family business at six years old? Even if she didn’t know-know, Lucy was surely aware she wasn’t like other kids, that even in an age of helicopter parents, her level of protection was extreme. No sleepovers or summer holiday camps in her future.

Perry rescued her with a subject change. “So, Jamie’s teaching you guitar?”

They continued chatting, Lucy applying Braille labels and Perry organizing the kitchen’s cookery tools.

He was arranging the pots by size when the front door opened. A man’s voice came from the living room, talking on his mobile.

“Eddie, mate, we’ve gotta get this done and dusted, pronto.”

Perry froze. He knew that voice, the voice he still heard, deep within his fiercest grudge.

No. This voice was just as nasally but lower in pitch than that of the man who’d once tried to bribe him.