Page 39 of One Snowy Day
There had been a thousand examples over the years. Maybe it was because he was almost two years older, but when they were kids, Jason was the boy who needed to win at any cost. Who had to be the best. Have the most. Who couldn’t bear to see someone get something better than him. The one who would go after what he wanted until he got it, whether it was his to take or not. Jason had hero-worshipped their dad, but he’d been twisted with jealousy over Lachlan’s closeness to their mother too, convincing himself – wrongly, Lachlan was sure – that their mother preferred her younger son. Maybe that’s why he had to triumph in every single battle or competition, real or imaginary.
And that didn’t change when they were adults.
It was who his brother was. He was the guy who would undercut a friend in a property deal and not lose a minute’s sleep over it. Who would cosy up to an asshole if he thought it would give him an advantage. Who would humiliate others to make himself feel good. When he won anything, from a pool game to a business deal, he made sure that the other person was wounded so badlythey wouldn’t want to come back for more. And he got away with it every time, because he did it all with such an easy charm and impressive manipulation. His father had respected Jason’s success and ambition, but Lachlan always had a sense that their dad saw his first-born’s flaws. Martyn Morden had been ruthless, but never cruel or underhand, and it was pretty bloody obvious that Jason could be both. His mother, however, had only tried to see the good in her son. And Lachlan’s childhood need for brotherly approval had turned into teenage combativeness and then adult disgust, when his brother had burned him one too many times.
He slowed to navigate the bends of a particularly tight stretch of road. There were no street lights here, no cat’s eyes either, so he had to stay on alert when headlights were approaching him from the other direction. It would be way too easy to misjudge one corner and end up in a ditch, or worse.
As he reached a straight stretch of road, he slid back into his thoughts. Returning to Scotland had been the mistake he’d feared it would be. Earlier, he’d almost relaxed, almost begun to focus on the good stuff: the friendships, the people, the happy memories, but now here he was, dragged back down into the gutter by association.
What he’d wanted to tell Alyssa was that his brother wouldn’t even contemplate helping her, and that sending her into Jason’s firing line would only prolong the agony and leave her ultimately crushed. Instead, he’d come off as the dick, the person who was blocking her chances of saving her business or at least delaying its demise.
He switched on the windscreen wipers as a chunk of snow fell from the branches of the trees that were creating a glistening silver arc above him.
Vision cleared, he saw the sign for the motorway and followed the directions onto the slip road, joining the heaviertraffic of people making their way home after a day’s work. If life had turned out differently, that would have been him. If he hadn’t lost Tanya, he’d be married now, still running his construction firm in Glasgow, going home after a day at the office or on a building site to the home they shared. Instead, he was on his way to the airport, to get a flight back to a city where he had no family, to a flat where he lived alone, to a world where his work was his only sense of purpose.
Today, in that café, was the first time in longer than he could remember that he felt a sense of connection to the past. To his mum. To the person he was before his heart had been shredded. And it had meant something, but the thing was, as Alyssa had pointed out, none of this affected him. Not really. He could walk away, but she was the one who was losing everything. And he knew how that felt.
His speed had dropped to under forty miles an hour now, as the streams of vehicles in front slowed to avoid a tailback at a particularly busy junction. The airport cut-off was only a couple of miles ahead. Five minutes. And then all he had to do was drop the car off at the hire office. In half an hour, he should be in the lounge and putting this whole bugger of a day behind him.
The most frustrating thing was that he didn’t see what else he could have done to solve Alyssa’s situation. If it were up to him alone, the answer would be different. There would have been options. The points that Alyssa had mapped out made sense. The building was appreciating asset and had a steady rental income. He was in no rush to sell and release the equity from it because until this morning he neither knew nor cared about it. Even if he did think selling was the best move, he could have given her six months, maybe a year, to find a new location that worked for her, or tried to figure out something else that would soften the blow.
The airport slip road was right up ahead of him now and hecouldn’t wait to get there. The car in front of him suddenly slammed on its brakes, forcing him to do the same and putting the Range Rover into a skid that he had to frantically steer out of so that he didn’t end up in the back seat of a beige Volvo. He regained control when his front bumper was just inches from the back of the Volvo and he sagged with relief. Christ, what a day.
What. A. Day.
When he’d had a bad day as a kid, his mum would tell him to go and make one good thing happen, so that it wasn’t wasted. A tough day at school? Choose your favourite meal. Unrequited teenage love? Let’s cuddle on the couch and watch a movie. A poor exam result? Stuff it, let’s go and play football in the garden. He smiled at the memory. Somewhere in the shitshow of the last few years, he’d forgotten that. Or maybe, after Tanya was gone, there was just nothing that could turn his days around.
He blocked that train of thought, unwilling to go back there, and that left space for Alyssa’s comment to come back to him yet again.
‘Mr Morden, you said that your mother loved this place. I wonder what she’d think of this now.’
What would she think of it all?
A couple of dots joined in his mind. Alyssa had been having a crap day, and she was just trying to save it by making a good thing happen. His mum would have appreciated that and been right on her side.
So why wasn’t he?
Taking all his excuses out of it, what wasn’t he trying? Was the fact that it would be futile a good enough reason to give up?
Maybe it wasn’t.
Fifty yards to the slip road.
Maybe he needed to man up and take his own advice here.
Forty yards to the slip road.
Had he become so spineless that he was going to back down, even when he saw that something wasn’t fair?
Thirty yards to the slip road.
His flight wasn’t due to leave for several hours, so was he just going to sit in the airport and wallow in the misery of this whole frigging day?
Twenty yards to the slip road.
What would getting into this fight cost him? The answer was nothing, because he had zero left to lose.
Ten yards to the slip road.
