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“I know families fight,” I say. “Do you want to tell me what you were fighting with yours about?”
I’m expecting him to just say “no” without even turning around. Then I’m just expecting him to say nothing. But eventually he says, “My mother wants me to host Christmas this year.”
I mock-tsk. “What a bitch.”
Now he does turn round, Gollum dive-bombing onto his lap. “I know you’ve got amnesia but did you just call your boss’s mother a bitch?”
“I was joking. I mean, that sounds like quite a reasonable thing to ask on account of how you live in a big empty mansion.”
Jonathan’s dark eyes bore into mine. “Well, it’s not reasonable. I’m—”
“I know, I know, you’re very busy. But it’s fucking Christmas and they’re your fucking family.”
“You work in retail, Sam. You know how important this quarter is.”
I’m about to say, “It’s not more important than the people you love”. Except I don’t because not everybody’s as lucky as meand not everybody’s family is the sort of family you’re mad keen to spend your holidays with. And I don’t want to be sayingoh you’ve got an obligationif he’s going to come back withactually they threw me out when I was sixteen.
Not that Johnny and Wendy seemed the sort. But the sort often don’t.
“Look,” I try, “it’s not my business—”
“It really isn’t,” he agrees.
“—but you’ve worked hard and made a success of yourself—”
“Thank you for the validation.”
“Can you let me fucking finish?” I’d glare at him but I’ve not got a face for glaring. “I’m trying to say that if you don’t like your family or you’ve got reasons for keeping them out that I don’t know about, that’s fair enough. But if it really is justthe jobthen…y’know…there’s other things that matter in the world.”
He swivels back to his laptop and makes a good go of working while Gollum makes a good go of stopping him. “I like my family,” he says at last. The words come out slowly, like he’s confessing some terrible sin. “But I have real demands on my time and this isn’t a house for entertaining.”
“This house has three reception rooms, five bedrooms, and five bathrooms. How much more made for entertaining can it get? And, anyway, you’re not entertaining, you’re having the family round. It’s a different thing.”
He flashes a dangerous glance over his shoulder. “And why should I take advice from an amnesiac who lives in an empty bedsit above a butcher’s shop?”
I know Jonathan Forest’s a dick and, as a dick, he sometimes—he often—says dickish things. But that was fucking personal. “Well, clearly,” I say, “you’re not.”
And then I turn and walk away.
CHAPTER 9
I don’t sleep well that night. I end up thinking about things I don’t want to think about. It’s enough to make me wish I really did have amnesia. In any case, I look sorry enough for myself at breakfast that Jonathan—who’s tucking into his customary black coffee and half a grapefruit—almost gives something vaguely like the impression that he might be beginning to feel something that might at some point move somewhere in the direction of guilty.
“About last night,” he says instead of sorry. “What you have to understand is that my relationship with my family is very complicated. It’s not that they’ve ever treated me badly. It’s just that there are a lot of them and I don’t have a lot of time and, over the years, we’ve got bad at accommodating each other’s needs.”
If I was in a better mood, I wouldn’t push it. But I push it. “The thing about being bad at something is that you can get better at it.”
“This isn’t your business, Sam.”
He’s right. I’m not sure even sure why I give a crap. I’m not here to be Jonathan’s friend, I’m here to get him to like me just enough that Tiff, Brian, and me all get to keep our jobs. Getting mixed up with family drama is exactly the kind of aggravation I don’t need.
“Anyway,” he goes on briskly, “I’ll need to go in this afternoon. But the housekeeper will be around so…”
“So if I fall over dead there’ll be someone to sayoh no, how sad?”
He refuses to rise to this. “If you need anything, you can text.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Big of you.”
