back into its fold once again, she wept.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tick tock. Eleven o’clock. Fuck me, thought Jed, why do I
always
oversleep when I’m here? He looked around the room, once his bedroom, and wondered why. It wasn’t even his bed any more; Malachy had sensibly replaced it with a sofa bed when he’d converted the room. Nothing of Jed’s past was visible. A couple of Robin’s small oils and four old framed prints of Derbyshire landscapes replaced the Cure and the Clash who’d once papered the walls alongside Echo and the Bunnymen. There was no sound from any of them anymore, Jed’s towers of vinyl LPs replaced long ago by CD versions which themselves had since been condensed further into virtual MP3 files. The walls were now uniformly white – whereas he’d painted all five of them in different hues. Red, black, purple, navy, orange. If he lifted the new carpet, the floorboards would still bear the spatters as evidence.
He stared at the ceiling; the long, snaking crack which his eyes had traversed for so many years while music played and his mind whirred with teenage emotion, was now Polyfillaed into a slightly raised scar. The huge paper lantern shade had gone, replaced with a neat, dimmable, three-light unit. When his parents had moved to Denmark a decade ago, they had signed the apartment over to him and Malachy. Jed had persuaded his brother to take on a mortgage and buy him out so that he could purchase his own place. Malachy was thus within his rights to make any changes he wished and the room had been sensibly, sensitively converted. Jed didn’t mind at all because, whatever the title deeds might say, this room was unmistakably his space and he always slept like a log here.
He showered and dressed, begrudgingly made a mug of instant coffee and took a pot of Greek yoghurt from the fridge, dolloping in honey from a sticky jar retrieved from the back of the cupboard. He thought, my brother’s fridge is empty save for beer and Greek bloody yoghurt. It wasn’t just a bit pathetic. Apart from the order and spryness of the spare room, the rest of the place was forlorn and dusty and the kitchen was a disgrace. And yet, of the two of them, Malachy was the together one, with the common sense and the poise and maturity, who avoided drama even if it made life dull.
‘Thieving cleaner-shag aside, of course,’ Jed murmured, taking a yoghurt through to the sitting room. Once the ballroom, its full-height windows flooded the room with spring sunlight, revealing just how in need of a clean they were while dust danced across the air with a we-don’t-care. Automatically, Jed glanced at the piano and yes, Malachy had indeed left him a message. He hadn’t bothered to check his phone: it wasn’t his brother’s style to text. Or to push a note under the bedroom door or stick it to the bathroom mirror or fridge. The piano had always been the place where messages were left.
J. We need food. M.
Two twenty-pound notes were stapled to the paper.
Jed grimaced at the bitter scorch of instant coffee masquerading as the real thing. He phoned the gallery.
‘Where the fuck is your coffee machine?’
‘It broke.’
‘OK. But where is it? I’ll fix it.’
‘I binned it. It smashed beyond repair when Csilla dropped it when she was stealing it.’
‘Oh. Shit. Sorry – I.’
‘I’m kidding, Jed. But I
did
bin it because it broke.’
‘Don’t you have a cafetière? For emergencies?’
‘No.’ Malachy paused. ‘I do have an old, stove-top coffee maker somewhere – but you’ll have to hunt for it.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Jed, hanging up.
Malachy anticipated the phone call which came twenty minutes later.
‘You
shit
!’ Jed said. ‘You could have told me you don’t have any bloody ground coffee
before
I searched high and low for the sodding pot.’
Malachy just laughed.
Jed was about to launch into something larkily insulting about all that Greek yoghurt, when he looked out to the garden
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tick tock. Eleven o’clock. Fuck me, thought Jed, why do I
always
oversleep when I’m here? He looked around the room, once his bedroom, and wondered why. It wasn’t even his bed any more; Malachy had sensibly replaced it with a sofa bed when he’d converted the room. Nothing of Jed’s past was visible. A couple of Robin’s small oils and four old framed prints of Derbyshire landscapes replaced the Cure and the Clash who’d once papered the walls alongside Echo and the Bunnymen. There was no sound from any of them anymore, Jed’s towers of vinyl LPs replaced long ago by CD versions which themselves had since been condensed further into virtual MP3 files. The walls were now uniformly white – whereas he’d painted all five of them in different hues. Red, black, purple, navy, orange. If he lifted the new carpet, the floorboards would still bear the spatters as evidence.
He stared at the ceiling; the long, snaking crack which his eyes had traversed for so many years while music played and his mind whirred with teenage emotion, was now Polyfillaed into a slightly raised scar. The huge paper lantern shade had gone, replaced with a neat, dimmable, three-light unit. When his parents had moved to Denmark a decade ago, they had signed the apartment over to him and Malachy. Jed had persuaded his brother to take on a mortgage and buy him out so that he could purchase his own place. Malachy was thus within his rights to make any changes he wished and the room had been sensibly, sensitively converted. Jed didn’t mind at all because, whatever the title deeds might say, this room was unmistakably his space and he always slept like a log here.
He showered and dressed, begrudgingly made a mug of instant coffee and took a pot of Greek yoghurt from the fridge, dolloping in honey from a sticky jar retrieved from the back of the cupboard. He thought, my brother’s fridge is empty save for beer and Greek bloody yoghurt. It wasn’t just a bit pathetic. Apart from the order and spryness of the spare room, the rest of the place was forlorn and dusty and the kitchen was a disgrace. And yet, of the two of them, Malachy was the together one, with the common sense and the poise and maturity, who avoided drama even if it made life dull.
‘Thieving cleaner-shag aside, of course,’ Jed murmured, taking a yoghurt through to the sitting room. Once the ballroom, its full-height windows flooded the room with spring sunlight, revealing just how in need of a clean they were while dust danced across the air with a we-don’t-care. Automatically, Jed glanced at the piano and yes, Malachy had indeed left him a message. He hadn’t bothered to check his phone: it wasn’t his brother’s style to text. Or to push a note under the bedroom door or stick it to the bathroom mirror or fridge. The piano had always been the place where messages were left.
J. We need food. M.
Two twenty-pound notes were stapled to the paper.
Jed grimaced at the bitter scorch of instant coffee masquerading as the real thing. He phoned the gallery.
‘Where the fuck is your coffee machine?’
‘It broke.’
‘OK. But where is it? I’ll fix it.’
‘I binned it. It smashed beyond repair when Csilla dropped it when she was stealing it.’
‘Oh. Shit. Sorry – I.’
‘I’m kidding, Jed. But I
did
bin it because it broke.’
‘Don’t you have a cafetière? For emergencies?’
‘No.’ Malachy paused. ‘I do have an old, stove-top coffee maker somewhere – but you’ll have to hunt for it.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Jed, hanging up.
Malachy anticipated the phone call which came twenty minutes later.
‘You
shit
!’ Jed said. ‘You could have told me you don’t have any bloody ground coffee
before
I searched high and low for the sodding pot.’
Malachy just laughed.
Jed was about to launch into something larkily insulting about all that Greek yoghurt, when he looked out to the garden
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