Samhain Publishing

Standing there was a man I hardly recognised. I’d known Piers since Alasdair and Tamar had married four years ago, was used to speaking to him on the phone, but I’d not seen him for a while. When last sighted he had been a pretty but unremarkable looking boy, but standing on my threshold he seemed to have a broader chest than I’d remembered. He’d lost the startled-in-a-glue-factory spiky hair in favour of shoulder-length, expensively unkempt shagginess. A smattering of proud stubble adorned sharp, pale cheekbones, his pallid skin contrasting with his shadow-dark hair as though he was trading on what Florence called his “Orlando Bloom with edges” look. He’d completed the show with a pair of D&G sunglasses. This and the black designer jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket apparel made him look as though he were on the run from a Transylvanian boy-band.

“Hello, Piers,” I said, when he didn’t say anything following my opening of the door. I hoped I hadn’t been staring at him in silence for too long.

“Hey. Alys.” He was gazing past me, into the flat. “I thought, I mean, I heard Florence left her revision stuff here. Thought I’d come by and pick it up.”

Maybe Florence had changed her mind about revision. Maybe she’d decided to spend the rest of Sunday rereading her notes. Oh yeah, and maybe I was going to be the next face of L’Oreal. “Did Florence ask you to come?” I was still not opening the door wide enough to let him in, and he was still not meeting my eye.

“Not exactly. I just bought this car—wanted to give it a try-out, found myself over this way. I thought, well, okay, two birds with one stone kinda thing. You know.”

“Out this way? From Richmond?” Richmond was about fifty miles north. Not exactly popping next door.

“Yeah.” He took his sunglasses off and began twiddling them between his fingers. “A19.” Now he looked at me and I was taken aback by the expression in his dark eyes. He looked almost—nervous?

“Piers.” I stood back now to let him come in. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m…” Again, that look of, not panic exactly, but something twitchily close, then it was gone. “Yeah. I’m cool. How about you, Alys, you okay?”

Gosh. It was a long time since anyone had asked that. “Look, Piers, it’s really very kind of you to come all this way, but Florrie’s already decided she’s done enough revision. Do you want a drink or something before you head back? Coffee, tea? Lemonade?” I could have bitten my tongue off. He was twenty-one, for God’s sake, not nine. “Whisky? Oh, but you’re driving—”

“Nah. Like I said, I’m cool.” He looked it, cucumber cool in all that black whilst I felt unnaturally hot and oppressed by the air in the flat.

I followed him into the living room where, to my surprise, Grainger was submitting to a head scratching. It could only be a matter of time before fingers were lost. “How’s the new car?”

“Pure kick-ass.” Piers left Grainger and whirled to the window, all long-limbed animation like a Quentin Blake cartoon come to life. “There, see? The yellow Porsche? Hey, why don’t you come for a drive, Alys? We could shoot through to the coast, top down, catch some sea air?” He was talking without looking at me, couldn’t take his eyes off the car.

“Oh.” I hesitated, a quick Thelma and Louise moment flashing before my eyes as I saw myself zipping along a coast road next to Piers, top off. Off the car, obviously, not off Piers. “Better not. I’ve got stuff to do. And there’s a book I want to read.” I glanced apologetically towards Theo. Grainger was stomping across his cover trying to attract Piers’s attention again by chewing the cushions, mugging like Jack Nicholson in a small fur coat.

“Well, okay. But, look.” He’d dropped his gaze again, hands in the pockets of his jacket, awkward as a teenager. “I really need to talk to you sometime. It’s just family stuff, but I don’t know who else I can go to with this shit.”

“Really? But I don’t know anything about your family.” I felt a bit strange having this conversation. A bit wrong footed. My memory had Piers down as a teenager, but here he was, very obviously an adult. Making adult conversation.

“It’s Ma and Alasdair. It’s getting kinda heavy.” Once more he met my eyes, and I found myself wondering, not for the first time, how blue-eyed, epitome-of-WASPness Tamar had managed to produce such a sultry-eyed son. “Please, Alys. I’ve always been able to talk to you.”

“It’s—”

“Please.” This time soft, fractured. The faint twang of his American parentage crept in around the vowels, made him sound vulnerable.

“Oh, all right.” Aware that I’d sounded ungracious, and he really did look unsettled, I added, “If there’s anything I can help with.”

“How about tomorrow? I told Florence I’d bring her back here after school.”

“Um. Tomorrow might be tricky. I have my book group on a Monday night.” Because something about his straight stare made me feel like filling in uncalled-for detail I began to gabble. “It was my turn to choose, you see, and I gave them Dead Air. I really want to know what they think.”

“Your book group.” Piers gave a tiny grin. “Is that the one where everyone’s over eighty?”

“No, Mrs. Treadgold’s only seventy-three. And I’m”—well, thirty-six actually, but damned if I’d admit it—“not eighty either.”

“And you gave them Dead Air? Alys, they’ve probably all had coronaries. Do you know how much swearing there is in that book?”

“Never counted. So, anyway, tomorrow would be tricky.”

He gave me an odd sideways smile and pushed pale silver-ringed fingers through his unAryan hair. “I’ll give you a lift. Pick you up at eight.”

And he was gone in a blur of blackness, flinging himself out of the front door and down the stairs with an energy which almost crackled. Despite myself, I found I was watching from the window as the Porsche roared away down the street.