The Spark - Jules Wake Page 0,66

the cellophane of the flowers. ‘Not you.’

‘Sorry. I’m fine. Just a bit shaken up.’ For someone who did a job like mine, I ought to be used to confrontation. We were certainly trained to handle it. But that was different. It wasn’t personal … even though some of the men tried to make it that way. After our supermarket drama I felt sick and liverish, as if I’d been on an all-night bender and woken up to the aftermath.

‘I know.’ Sam stopped, kissed my nose and gave me a lukewarm smile. ‘I feel like I’ve got a monumental hangover with my very own black cloud hovering over my head.’

I stood on tiptoe. ‘Snap. And that’s why I love you, Sam Weaverham. Lego.’ I dug in my handbag and pulled out the little piece I’d been carrying around with me since our first date in the pub. I held it between finger and thumb and he kissed both.

Then he dug in the pocket of his trousers and brought out the little red brick.

‘Snap.’ he said, taking my piece and clicking the two together and placing them in my palm. ‘Stupid, but I carry it with me all the time.’

For a moment we smiled stupidly at each other and I felt that familiar bounce of pure joy in my chest.

‘Hello, you must be Sam.’ The door flew open as if Mum had been lying in wait for the last half-hour.

Smiling to myself, I stuffed the Lego pieces into the pocket of my dress.

‘Hello, Jess’s mum.’ Sam held out the flowers. ‘These are for you.’

‘Thank you.’ She took them and stood back like a guard at Buckingham Palace to let us in. ‘You can call me Joan. I stopped being Jess’s mum a long time ago.’

I frowned; it was an odd thing to say, although for a time she had. We never referred to that period in our lives. I’d come back from Aunty Lynn’s to a spick-and-span house and a mother almost Stepford-wife in her perfection. Everything had been suddenly immaculately clean, tidy and ordered.

My eyes slid to the cobweb-free cornice in the hallway, but I think she caught the echo of my surprise. ‘I mean, not since she was at school has anyone called me Jess’s mum. Go on through to the lounge. I’ll just put the kettle on.’

‘And then I’ll come and start the interrogation,’ I muttered under my breath. Sam nudged me in the ribs.

Sam began to smirk as soon as he stepped into the small lounge.

‘What?’ I asked my lips twitching.

‘You … erm … don’t take after your mother.’ He scanned the room. ‘It’s very tidy.’

‘Sometimes I move the ornaments or tweak the pictures so they’re not quite so straight. Bugs the hell out of her.’ I darted to the mirror over the fireplace which housed a gas fire with fake coals and flames and pushed the corner ever so slightly so that it was a tiny bit offset. ‘But she never says anything.’ I’d wondered about that for a long time. Her reluctance to engage in any form of conflict. It occurred to me now that I’d been trying to provoke a reaction.

‘Rebel,’ teased Sam.

‘And very childish,’ I admitted.

‘Yes.’ He looked bemused.

I shrugged. ‘She brings out the worst in me.’ Now he frowned, confusion furrowing his forehead, as if this was something he couldn’t quite fathom. ‘We’re not close, like you are with your mum and dad.’

‘Hmm,’ said Sam, suddenly intent on brushing a non-existent piece of something from his caramel-coloured chinos.

Before I could question him, Mum’s arrival was announced by the chink of china and teaspoons and she appeared in the doorway carrying an overloaded tray, her arms braced as if she were a weightlifter who’d just racked up a record lift, reminding me rather bizarrely of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted.

‘Joan, let me.’ Sam rushed to her side and relieved her of her load.

‘Oh, thank you, Sam. That’s very kind.’

He put the tray down on the coffee table that was exactly mid-centre of the rug, right angled to both the sofa and the two armchairs on either side.

‘Tea or coffee?’ A silver cafetière and a china teapot sat on the tray and her hand hovered over them. Of course she’d made both. She couldn’t ask us beforehand like a normal person and bring a mug through.

‘Coffee, please.’

I watched as her eyes strayed to his man bun and then to his forearms. Hair nil, lack of tattoos, one.

‘Do sit down.’ She waved him to the sofa