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He turned and headed back for the house, half expecting Joq to call after him, to follow him.
He didn’t.
15
“I fucked up,” Joq said as soon as his mother opened the door.
“No kidding,” she retorted. “Come in. That poor boy,” she ushered him inside. “I can’t figure out where I went wrong raising you, I thought I did such a good job.”
Joq groaned. Then he whirled on her. “How do you know he’s upset?”
“We were at the dinner,” she said and closed the door, glided past him and tossed her scarf over her neck as she did so. “The dinner he’d organised for you,” she said with a pointed look on her way. “And then all those calls, that poor boy. Where were you?”
Shit. The dinner. He trailed after her and watched her put the kettle on, pull out two mugs, drop in tea bags.
“Well? And did you apologise? You had him worried sick, all of us, but he was a wreck,” she shook her head, propped her hip against the counter and folded her arms. “First you waste twelve years of your life with that other one, and now you mistreat the good one. Don’t think I missed how long it took you to include him in our dinners, and I understand wanting to keep your place, but that man has forever stamped all over you. Did he accept your apology?”
“I don’t know why I talk to you,” Joq replied and went and sat in the armchair in the sun room.
“Because no one else is brave enough to tell you the truth.”
The kettle pinged. He listened to her pour. She brought over his tea.
“I haven’t apologised yet,” he said.
“Joaquin!” she said. “Why?” she held up her hand suddenly. “Don’t answer that.”
“Okay,” he said readily because he didn’t have an answer. He’d been sitting in the house for two days with Delia, staring at the wall and wondering where he went so wrong. The feeling had paralysed him. He had no answers. He missed Chris desperately, but he had no explanation and he had treated him like shit, never fully letting him in.
His mum sat down beside him, crossed her legs and blew on her tea before setting it aside.
“Do you actually love him? Of course, it’s fine if you don’t, I know you’ll be fine on your own, I know I got that part right at least. You’re very self-sufficient,” she smiled at him, fond. But then she sobered. “But you can’t do what that other awful one did to you to someone else.”
“I don’t mean to and I’m not, it’s not the same.”
She waited for him to go on, picked up her tea and blew on it again.
“I just, I saw George,” he took a deep breath. “With his son,” he finished heavily. “Did you know about that?”
“Everyone knows about that,” she said dryly, sipped her tea. “Look, I can’t stand the man, you know that, and the way he’s parading around with that beach bum gives me a migraine, but when all’s said and done, who cares about him, he wasn’t right for you. The bigger problem was why you put up with it for so long. Did something happen? Did someone else do something to you when you were a boy that I don’t know about?”
“Of course not,” he replied but his mum was smiling like she knew it too.
“Well, if you’re going to apologise you might want to do it soon. Two days,” she shook her head at him. “If your father waited two days to make amends with me, I’d divorce him.”
“Yeah, well, you’re terrifying, so even if you’re wrong, he’s going to apologise.”
“I’m never wrong,” she smiled, winked. George always said she was like a terrifying version of Catherine Deneuve—Joq wasn’t aware Deneuve had another side, but the point was she wasn’t, she was actually a lot of fun, a lot of witty self-awareness in her remarks. It was her way of showing she loved you if you saw that side, which is probably why George never did.
Chris though, Chris thought she was hilarious.
“You like him,” Joq said now.
“Chris? Of course I do, he adores you.”
“No, I mean, you personally, you like him as a person.”
“Well, yes, who wouldn’t? He’s lovely, charismatic but not full of himself, wealthy but even without the money he’d have the gravitas. But all that is irrelevant if you don’t love him.”
