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He needed space, he’d told me. Mm… more like a nice way of dumping me.
The thought of sharing a meal with my mother suddenly appealed.
I brightened a little. “Just give me half an hour.”
Weendedupatan Italian restaurant near Piccadilly, where we shared a bottle of wine, and I ate everything put in front of me. I’d forgotten how hungry I was. It was the first time in a while that I’d even had an appetite.
My mother drank too much, which wasn’t unusual. She had a tendency to overdo alcohol.
“So, what now? A new lord?” I asked, taking a spoonful of Italian ice cream.
“It’s getting harder to compete with the young ones.” She gave me one of her loaded stares.
“Hey, I’m not interested in older men. Been there. Done that.”
“Peyton wasn’t that much older, and he was hot,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “I was only fifteen, Mum. Don’t you feel bad about that? It kind of fucked me up, you know?”
We sat outside so she could smoke. And as she blew a smoke ring, my mother became that Cockney, council flat single mum again. No amount of designer wear would ever remove that.
“I could have sold you for a higher price to someone much older and uglier. At least I dropped the price for Peyton.”
I shook my head. “You’re fucking kidding me. You didn’t feel bad?”
“Nope. We were hungry.”
“Um… no. I was hungry. You were too busy going out with every dick that came along and bought you a meal. Until you tracked down Will, that is. I guess life got a little more stable for me, despite your lack of interest. I mean, you only dragged me along to Merivale so you could try to sell me to Crisp.”
“Well, it’s all worked out well for you. Caroline, through some guilty conscience, I imagine, has attached herself to you. I didn’t expect that. There’s something going on between her and Crisp. They’re fucking thick, those two. I noticed that much when I worked there.” She studied me for a moment. “Do you know anything about that?”
I thought about the detectives and how a body had been found connected to both my grandmother’s past and Crisp.
Out of respect for my new family, I remained silent. “Nothing much.”
She kept staring at me. My mother missed little, and I did flinch. “You do, don’t you?”
“Only that he owns her. That’s all.”
“I know that.” She sounded frustrated.
She stood and ran her hands down her skin-tight skirt, and after paying the bill, we left.
We rode the taxi in silence, despite a ton of questions bubbling away inside of me. It was the most we’d ever spoken about things from our past.
When we got back to her Edwardian house, I poured her a drink and even made myself one.
I settled on the sofa and lit a cigarette. So much for kicking the habit. Drake had even had me drinking those yucky green juices, but with him turning his back to me, I’d returned to not giving a shit about what I did to my body.
“You shouldn’t hate Caroline, you know. She’s super-intelligent and classy. We could do worse than take a leaf out of her book. I want to.”
She laughed dismissively, as a mother might to a child aspiring to be a fairy princess or something equally fanciful and unachievable.
“One thing about Mummy dearest is that she’s smart. Highly educated. Something you’re not.”
Fire bit my belly. “That’s because you kept moving us around so you could be with some dickhead or other.”
She knocked back her drink and refilled her glass. “Get over it. Look at you. You’re richer than most at your age. You’ve got everything going for you. I could’ve fucking aborted you.”
