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“However”—Auntie Jack blows the kind of smoke ring you can only blow with fifty years of practice—“he has now clarified that you’re just good friends and we of course believe him entirely.”
I put up my hands. “Hold on, I never said we was friends. I work for him.”
“Our relationship is none of your business,” adds Jonathan.“And, Jack, how many times must I tell you not to smoke in my house?”
“At least a few more times, I dare say.”
Just as I’m wondering how this can possibly go wronger, Del speaks up. “Point is, we come round here to have a word with Sam about you not wanting to do Christmas, and he agrees with us.”
I’m about to say that I don’t feel he’s representing my position in a totally accurate manner, but I only get as far as “um”.
“Everybody. Out.” Jonathan’s doing that thing where he manages to sound like he’s shouting even though he’s not really shouting, and you wish he just would because it’d somehow be less scary. “You have no right to come barging in like this, and I have far too much on my mind right now to be thinking about stuffing turkeys and hanging paper chains.”
For a moment people are just quiet. Then Les says, “I’d rather you didn’t talk to your mother that way.” And he doesn’t shout either.
“He don’t mean it,” Wendy insists. “He’s just had a long day, I bet.”
“My day,” Jonathan’s voice is rising now, just a little, “has been just as long as yesterday was, and as tomorrow will be. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I donothave time for thisnonsense. If catering is too much for Nanny Barb to manage, then I’m happy to pay for somebody else to do it. Just not me, and not here, and not with you lot coming in and dragging”—he turns and looks at me, and it’s almost like it’s the first time he’s seen me since he’s come in—“dragging Sam into it when this has nothing whatsoever to do with him.”
I don’t especially want to be dragged into a stranger’s Christmas family drama, but being told I can’t—reminded that I don’t belong—stings a bit.
“Now all of youleave,” he finishes.
Del’s the first to react. He takes his wife by the arm. “C’mon Barb, we know when we’re not wanted.”
The rest of them file out, and Les is the last to go. He stops in the doorway and looks back. “Jonathan,” he says—but then doesn’t seem to know what to say next.
And Jonathan doesn’t seem to know what to say to him.
Then he’s gone. And then it’s just me and Jonathan Forest alone in his main reception room, a room that clearly is, whatever he may say about it, designed to have more than two people and a cat in it.
“And as for you,” he says. He’s jabbing his finger at me like he’s Perry Mason or Elle Woods and is telling me that the defendant didn’t do the murder because I did. “What makes you think you can—”
“Hey, I didn’t do anything.” I’ve got my hands in the air again. “I was just standing there making a roast chicken, and then the door goes and there’s all these people there.”
“Granddad said you were on their side.”
I give a kind of uncomfortable shrug. “Well, I don’t really know him, but I think he might be the kind of feller’d say that no matter what?”
For a moment he doesn’t say anything, or rather, he looks like he’s trying to say about eight different things at once. Finally he settles on, “I don’t have time for this. Just stay out of my business.”
And then he scoops up Gollum, who nestles against his shoulder like a smug ugly baby who’s decided to abandon the person who brought it home from the baby shelter, and they both storm off into the office.
My roast chicken is sitting on the side looking all sorry for itself. And in a lot of ways, I know how it feels.
CHAPTER 11
My mam always said you should never cook in a mood because then your mash’ll taste of spite. But since my options are cook in a mood or not eat, I don’t have much choice. I finish rubbing the chicken, stuff it with lemon and thyme, then throw some oil and garlic over it and bung the whole thing in the oven for an hour and a bit. Once I’ve given it a head start, load up the dishwasher and get on with the veg.
I don’t get angry like Jonathan gets angry—all steaming and forceful—but I am angry with him. And it’s the quiet sort of anger that sits in your gut like a mouse. The thing is, he’s not tret me any different than he did when I was in the store, but at work you can’t say nothing, and you’ve got somewhere to go afterwards. Now I’m just stuck with it and it’s making me a feel a bit…not okay like.
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of fellers who make a big song and dance about standing up for themselves because a lot of the time they wind up, well, like Jonathan. And I know he’s got his three stores and his big house and all that, but he’s also the kind of person who throws his own family out of his home and bullies an employee into a Nexa by MERLYN 8mm Sliding Door Shower enclosure. And some folk think that makes you a proper man but it don’t. I think it just makes you a dick.
My dad was never like that. He’d hold his ground if he had to,but he’d always try to see the other feller’s point of view. Which meant he never got nasty with it and if he weren’t backing down you knew he had a good reason. And I’m beginning to think I might have a good reason with Jonathan Forest. Because Ihavelistened, and Idounderstand why he’s upset, and I know family can be complicated, but he doesn’t get to take it out on me, and the old man wouldn’t want me to let him get away with it.
The timer goes on the oven, and while the chicken’s resting I stick the peas on; they don’t take that long and if I’d started them any earlier they’d be cold by the time I was carving up. Then I transfer everything to the island in the middle of the kitchen, lay it all out so it looks kind of rustic and yell through to Jonathan that everything’s ready.
“I’ll take it in here,” he yells back.
