Page 91 of Carry Me Home

‘I’ve just sat down, get them yourself.’

‘Mum, Hayley won’t pass the potatoes.’

‘Hayley, pass your sister the potatoes.’

‘She’s closer to them than I am!’

‘For God’s sake.’ Dad reaches across the table, deposits the bowl in front of Meg, and sits back with the air of a man who has resolved an international crisis. ‘There. Done.’

Mum emerges from the kitchen with the gravy boat. ‘What have I missed?’

‘Potato-gate,’ I say. ‘It’s been resolved.’

‘It always is.’ She sets the gravy down. ‘Right. Everyone’s here. Everyone’s fed. What’s the news?’

This is how it works. Mum waits until everyone has food in front of them before she starts. It’s strategic and harder to escape when you’re pinned by a roast dinner.

I’ve definitely been pinned by a roast dinner and I can’t taste any of it. The beef is Mum’s best, the Yorkshires are perfect, and I’m putting food in my mouth and chewing and it’s all texture and no flavour because it’s been thirty-six hours since Nina backed away from me on the surgery doorstep and I haven’t slept properly since.

She hasn’t texted. She hasn’t called. The phone in my pocket is silent in a way it hasn’t been silent for eleven years, and the absence is so loud I keep checking it under the table, tilting the screen towards my knee, finding nothing.

Cara has gone off to explore Amber Cove, and I nearly went with her, but Darcy Sunday lunch is lore and to miss it is sacrilege. Unless your hangover is too bad, in which case Mum drops it off with a jug of perfect gravy.

Hayley launches into a story about a customer at the garden centre who wanted a refund on a dead plant he’d had for six years. Meg counters with a tale from the hotel – a guest who complained the sea was too loud. Dad shakes his head. Mum listens and laughs and keeps one eye on me, because she always keeps one eye on me, because mothers are built with a frequency detector that picks up the specific pitch of a child pretending to be fine.

‘Tom’s quiet,’ Meg observes, pointing her fork at me. ‘Tom’s never quiet. What’s wrong with Tom?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with Tom.’

‘That’s exactly what someone would say if something was wrong.’

‘Leave your brother alone,’ Mum says, but she’s watching me now too. The full beam. ‘He’ll talk when he’s ready.’

‘I’m fine. I’m eating my dinner.’

‘You’ve barely touched your Yorkshire pudding,’ Hayley says. ‘You love Yorkshire pudding. You once ate four in a sitting and then complained you couldn’t breathe. Mum, Tom hasn’t touched his Yorkshire pudding.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Definitive proof of crisis.’

‘Can everyone stop diagnosing me? I’m a vet. I do the diagnosing in this family.’

‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Dad says mildly. He’s got the look – patient, steady, the same look he gives nervous animals. The same look he taught me. ‘You’ve been jumpy all week, Tom. Your mother’s noticed. I’ve noticed. Even Mrs Pemberton noticed, and she’s blind in one eye.’

‘Dot’s dog has an ear infection. I was distracted.’

‘You were distracted before the ear infection.’ Dad sets down his fork. Dad putting down his fork is the Darcy equivalent of a judge calling order. ‘What’s going on?’

I look at my plate. The Yorkshire pudding, golden and perfect, exactly how Mum always makes them. The same recipe. The same table. The same Sunday. Every week for as long as I can remember, except for university, except for the years away that feel now like they happened to someone else.

‘Cara’s found a practice,’ I say. ‘In Scotland. Inverness, actually. Coming up for sale. She wants us to go in on it together. As partners.’

Silence. The real kind. Even Meg stops chewing.

Then everyone speaks at once.

‘Scotland?’ Meg.