Page 82 of Hired Help

Again, I shake my head, with less confidence this time. “Maybe. We’ve only just begun to talk about it.” His face is mottled, dark circles are smudged under his eyes. “I guess you’ve got a lot of opinions on the subject.”

It’s not meant to be a taunt but I’m uneasy, unsure of myself. Harrison is a different kid than the one I remember, the one who last stayed with me. Perhaps because he’s not a kid, not any longer.

In the time we were separated, he’s grown into a man. One who looks like he’d do more damage to me than any of my rough neighbours. Maybe worse than all of them combined.

“Is she still on her way?”

I shrug, not liking my position on the sofa because it gives him such a height advantage but not willing to move. Unwilling to show him how unsettled he makes me. “Brooke’s already been and gone. I doubt she’ll be dropping by again today.”

“She didn’t text you?” He pulls out his phone like it’s a reflex, staring blankly at the screen.

“She hasn’t been in contact,” I assure him. “What’s happened? I guess she talked to you. Can you tell me what she said?”

“Talked.” There’s a hard smile on his face that I don’t want to see there. This is worse than seeing his initials on her skin. I don’t want my son to explain that smile any more than he wanted to find her waiting here in my bedroom. “Yeah, we talked.”

“If she’s on her way here, I don’t know anything about it, but you’re welcome to wait.”

He continues to stand, tapping at his phone, each passing second cranking my nerves tighter.

“Would you like a drink or something to eat?”

“I’d like you to stop fucking my girlfriend.”

“Same.”

His glare is sharp enough for me to want to take back the retort, then his lips twitch. A tiny gesture that he immediately captures and puts to death, but it was there.

“I could make pancakes.”

It used to be a Saturday morning ritual. When he was young, Harrison would wake at the crack of dawn on the weekend, eager to get started on all the fun he’d been planning during the week.

Gwyn sent him to me regularly back then, always a fan of a sleepy lie-in on the weekend. I’d get up with him, sometimes before five, always before six, and make pancakes while my son, ‘helped.’ Afterwards, he’d sit in front of the television, watching the children’s programming while I repaired the damage done to the kitchen, rewarding myself with a coffee once the cleaning was done.

I expect him to turn me down; in the short time he’s been here, his excess energy has burned off, leaving him with the shakes.

But he says yes, following me into the kitchen, leaning against the wall, watching my every move as I get out the ingredients.

It’s crowded, the two of us and the enormous elephant in the room, but the simple process of pulling the recipe together relaxes me. The flour looks too old, the sugar is some organic stuff that I bought to make myself feel better about still craving it, the milk is high protein, but the process is the same. The first one off the pan is still rubbish.

“I didn’t know,” I start with, a repeat of the message I’ve already texted him. “She contacted me, asking for help.”

“You help a lot of eighteen-year-olds, do you?”

There’s broken glass in his voice but I dance around the sharp edges. “I arranged a meeting first, just a chat at a café in town. Before I went, I expected it would take all of ten minutes then I’d send her home.”

I insert a spatula under the leading edge of the pancake, jiggling it to get further under, then flipping it, loving the sound as the surface sizzles against the low fat spread that I can definitely believe is not butter.

“But you didn’t.”

I glance to the side, nodding to the cabinet below the counter. “There should be some lemon juice in there or some sugar-free maple syrup.”

He bends, rooting through the mix of eclectic items until he stumbles upon the right ones. While I shake the second pancake onto a plate, he squeezes some lemon juice over, using the organic sugar to take the edge off the topping.

“She was beautiful,” I say, picking up where I left off. “And she was hurting.” I glance over, accidentally catching his gaze, and we both look away. “When she told me what you’d said to her, I didn’t know it was you, but I wanted to wring your neck.”

“Yeah, well.”

He’s halfway through the rolled pancake and now stuffs the rest in his mouth, focusing on chewing while he sorts out his answer. I flip the next one in the pan, and keep my eyes averted, letting him get there in his own time.

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