Action

His jaw clenched as his fingers flexed on the steering wheel. If he was this tense now she couldn’t wait to see what he would look like in the city. Especially after he found out her appointments were with her hairdresser and the sale at Harvey Nichols. Her credit card was going to take a huge dent, one she couldn’t afford, but it would be worth it to keep Jack far away from the house for the day. Besides, it was this or tie him up and stuff him in the garden shed. Things were piling up. Every day lies piled on top of lies. Debt piled on top of debt. The stress was going to snap her in two – unless her dress killed her first. She wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. The dress was far too tight. It was hard to breath and she was pretty sure that the circulation to her legs had been cut off entirely, causing permanent damage.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said as a distraction from the pain in her abdomen.

“Yeah, right,” Jack said.

She elbowed him in the ribs.

“Talk to me,” she ordered.

“Fine, you want to share, tell me what’s going on in the house and I’ll open up. I’ll even go into details about my poor deprived childhood.”

“You were poor and deprived?”

She put a hand to her chest. In her mind she could see a tiny, neglected version of the Terminator. It explained a lot.

He rolled his eyes.

“No. I grew up in Oxford. I had a normal middle class childhood. No trauma.”

“Oh.” Well, that was a let-down. She’d expected a bit more drama.

“Are you sure there wasn’t any abuse, neglect maybe?”

“No.”

“Tell me about your family. What do your parents do? Any sisters? Brothers? Did you have a dog?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Come on, Jack, it’s a long drive, don’t make me crazy. Play nice.”

“Okay, okay.” His shoulders slumped. “Mum teaches English Lit, Dad is retired and as far as I can see mainly restores old cars and pickles beetroot. I have two sisters, both married – one is a dentist, the other writes cookbooks. And we had a border collie called Herbie.”

“Huh.” Davina stared at the traffic in front of her.

“Huh what?”

“Just wondering about something.”

“Well?”

“Well,” she said. “That sounds like a nice normal upbringing, so how the heck did you end up like this?”

He bristled.

“Like what?”

“Antisocial, abusive, annoying, arrogant. Entitled. Definitely entitled. You think that everyone should fit into your scheme of things and get grumpy when we don’t. I figured it was a reaction to your youth, that you were never properly socialised. You know, like the boys they find wandering in the woods, the ones who were raised by wolves.”

The blood vessel at the base of his neck began to throb.

“Raised by wolves?”

“You know what I mean.”

They were out of the green belt now and heading through endless suburbia. Row upon row of terraced houses, each one with little touches the owners had used to make them seem individual. It made her wish that she could live in the wacky old Gothic house forever. It was an oddity. Just like her.

“So, was your dad with the police? Are you following in his footsteps?”