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‘I left early this morning. Didn’t take that long. You were upset, in the pub in Durness yesterday, right? Iain told us that stuff about Don?’
‘Was that yesterday? With that couple playing pool?’
‘Yeah, it seems an age ago to me, and I haven’t fallen off a cliff.’ Jez smiles.
‘Did he talk to you? What did he say?’
Jez looks nervously over her shoulder at still-hovering Mum.
‘It’s OK, Mum. Sit down will you?’ I shuffle to make room on the side of the bed.
‘He got some girl pregnant and her family like smashed up the museum,’ I say as I remember it. ‘Did he tell you about that?’
Jez leans forward, her thighs twitching in their leather, her hair straggling round her neck. I catch my breath as I trace the glistening line of her cleavage.
‘I had to fucking squeeze it out of him.’
‘So, I’ve got a little sibling, is it? I bet it’s a girl.’ I see a tiny female version of me with dark page boy haircut, in a yellow dress, sucking a strawberry ice-lolly. Where the hell did that come from?
‘No Gethin…?’
‘A boy then?’ I’m properly disappointed. ‘Don’s been denied access, so he doesn’t want to see me because I remind him of it?’ I feel a twang of jealousy for this kid he cares about losing. ‘As in, sperm donor child doesn’t count.’
Silence. Mum shifts on the edge of the bed, tensing up her shoulders.
Jez takes a breath, her hands pushed palms together between her thighs. ‘Gethin, will you give me a frigging chance?’ She looks me in the eye. ‘I’m trying to tell you, there is no sibling. No baby. Nowt.’
Whoa. I feel knocked dizzy by this. ‘I don’t understand?’ My voice is small now.
Mum leans forward. ‘Let Jez explain.’
‘There was this seventeen-year-old lass,’ Jez starts. ‘She helped Don out at the museum. He reckons they only slept together the once.’
‘So, the rest was all malicious gossip, just as I thought, is it?’
Jez snorts a little laugh. ‘Oh, she was pregnant all right. He told me how her brothers came and smashed up the place. Painted PAEDO on the museum and stuff.’
‘PAEDO! I thought you said she was like seventeen!’
‘Yeah, young enough if you ask me,’ Jez says, then waves me down as I start to protest. ‘Alright, calm down, not a paedo, right?’
I take a breath. ‘What happened to the baby?’
‘It took me a while to get it out of him, I tell you.’ Jez pushes a strand of hair out of her eyes.
As she lifts her arm, I see a little butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. I never even noticed it before. I would more have expected a serpent or something.
I nod, keep my lips shut tight.
‘So, after Don getting beaten up some more by the brothers, Ruthie, the girl, comes to tell him it’s not his baby.’
‘You what? Fucking hell, how come she let everyone think it was?’
‘She’d refused to say who the father was. The brothers decided to blame it on Don. In fact, it was some Dutch biker, and she was hoping he was coming back for her, right?’
‘So how did she even know who it was?’ I say, impatient.
‘Apparently, she had her period after sleeping with Don. Got knocked up the following month. Her brothers guessed because she was throwing up all the time.’
