“We’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Andy propped his tablet against the microwave so he could continue with folding the laundry. “What’s that, bro?”
“One of us needs to fly out to the Czech Republic before the end of the week.”
“And that’s a problem because?”
“I can’t do it.”
Andy poked his fingers inside a tiny sleeve to turn it the right way out. “Again, that’s a problem because?”
“Well, are you gonna do it?”
“If I have to.”
Dan fell silent.
Andy checked to see if the call was still connected. It was. He held in his sigh, folded the little pink cardy and added it to the pile. “Are you gonna elaborate, or am I flying out blind?”
“It’s those cylinder blocks for Len’s mate. They arrived last week, and he says they’re not right.”
“I know all this. I talked to the engineer about it. They’re remaking the cast moulds.”
“But it shouldn’t have happened.”
“No, but it did, and they’re fixing it. Why does that require one of us to pay them a visit?”
Dan frowned. In the background, Adele called his name, and his frown was replaced by a pained expression.
Andy smirked. “You’re not trying to escape already?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I thought you might fancy a break.”
“Why?” Andy had a good idea why.
“You haven’t been away in ages.”
“Since Mike turned up on my doorstep,” Andy said, which was where Dan was heading.
“That’s a long time, bro.”
“Not even six months.” Andy finished folding clothes, picked up his tablet and returned to the living room. The twins were asleep for the time being. “Right,” he said, getting settled on the sofa, “tell me what you want me to do about the cylinder blocks.”
“It’s not what I want, it’s—”
“Pack it in.”
Dan shrugged and folded his arms. “Fine. If you say it’s in hand…” Adele called him again, and he grunted. “Be right back.” He got up and left Andy with a view of the window behind the dining table.
While Andy was waiting, he checked his email, firing off replies where needed, and then found the last message from the engineer in the Czech Republic, who was apologetic and confirmed the parts were being recast from new moulds. They’d be in the UK by the end of the following week. So, unless Dan knew something he didn’t, there was no reason at all for Andy to fly out there.
Or maybe there was, and it had nothing to do with the cylinder blocks.
Dan arrived back in front of the camera. “Gotta go,” he said, holding up a baby’s bottle with an inch of milk in the bottom.
“No worr—” Andy was talking to a blank screen. “Catch you later, then,” he muttered, disgruntled. He went back to the kitchen and grabbed the pile of clothes, rationalising his annoyance before he reached the top of the stairs. Dan was still adjusting to having a new baby, and Adele was probably laid up in bed. She’d have him running in and out of their bedroom like a man stuck in a revolving door.
And, of course, Dan would be worrying about the business. It had always been his top priority—the only occasion Andy could recall his brother taking more than a day off work was after the stabbing, and only then because they wouldn’t let him have his laptop in the ICU.
So Andy understood all that, but he was still riled by Dan’s bullying tactics, with his ‘you haven’t been away in months, thought you might fancy a break’ when it had nothing to do with worrying about Andy’s well-being. Dan was projecting his own stress, and there was no point telling him. He’d only get defensive.
For no reason other than his brother’s peace of mind, when Andy returned downstairs, he made a few quick calls, the first to the engineer in the Czech Republic. The customer—one of Len’s business acquaintances—restored pre-war and wartime vehicles, and he’d bought a job lot of transport wagons that should have gone to the scrapyard decades ago, but he already had buyers for them, and it was cheaper to get the parts custom-made overseas. Cue Jeffries and Associates: Andy had set about making contact with a guy he knew from way back, who worked at a small factory in the Mladá Boleslav district, soon discovering the factory wasn’t small anymore.
Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the company had expanded significantly and worked with some of the big car manufacturers. Andy figured it was still worth a shot. Don’t ask, don’t get, and all that. It was how he’d managed to talk Dan into coming on board with Jeffries and Associates in the first place—the gift of the gab, plus almost twenty years of travelling and making connections all over the world, which included Vít, the engineer at the Czech factory, whom he’d met while snowboarding in Slovakia, and who had systematically drunk him under the table.
Ten years on, Vít was overjoyed to hear from Andy, and they’d spent hours online, catching up and doing the whole virtual meet-the-family routine. It was in Andy’s long-term plans to visit Vít, but not until both men’s children were old enough to appreciate the experience, which certainly wouldn’t be happening this side of next weekend.
Phone calls made, Andy sent Dan a bullet list of the status of all their current projects, rounding off with ‘take a chill pill’ and wishing he hadn’t when, five seconds later, Dan called him back.
“I’m perfectly bloody chilled,” he snapped.
Andy nodded slowly. “Course you are. Seriously, bro—”
“I was looking out for you! I mean, sooner or later those nomadic tendencies are gonna take over, and—”
“Whoa!” Andy’s hair bristled. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“If you say so.”
“Are you deliberately winding me up?”
“How? I’m offering you a time-out. Take it.”
“I don’t want a fucking time-out!” Andy jabbed at the end-call button and started pacing the room, livid. First Shaunna, now Dan—if the option had existed, he’d have been in his running shoes and straight out the door.
“Ah, fuck.”
Andy stopped pacing, combed his fingers through his hair and tugged in frustration. Maybe they had a point, but there was a big difference between legging it halfway across the globe and going for a quick run around the block to get his head together. He couldn’t even listen to music without waking the girls.
It was going to take a lot longer than three months to convince everyone he’d changed, and he had. He’d felt it happen in the delivery suite, when he’d held Rosie for the very first time and watched Sorsha come into this world. That feeling hadn’t dwindled in the slightest, and he could just look at his daughters for hour upon hour, never losing his sense of wonder at how they were so different yet so alike, and so beautiful he cried, often, and with no shame. Like Mike had said when he’d turned up with Bethan, ‘kids change your life’.
More like they become your life, Andy thought with a smile as the tiniest noise came from the baby monitor. He knew their ways so well already that he was in no doubt it was Sorsha stirring. Rosie was more like her mummy and woke up complaining loudly, whereas Sorsha slowly eased into it, and she usually awoke first, giving him time to change her nappy and get the milk while Rosie got over the grumps.
Andy crept into the nursery and whispered, “Hey, you,” as he peered down at Sorsha. She smiled up at him, her little legs kicking at the blanket. He scooped her out of her cot, cuddling her close on the way downstairs. “I think we’ll go see Nana soon. What d’you reckon?” If they walked there, they could stop off and see Shaunna’s dad on the way, not that he recognised them. Sometimes, he made the connection that they were his granddaughters, although if he did, he called Sorsha ‘Krissi’, and when Krissi went to see him, he more often than not thought she was Shaunna.
It was always going to be hardest for Shaunna, even more so because her dad either didn’t recognise her at all, or thought she was her mum, and then she’d have to remind him who she was, and that her mum was dead. He must’ve grieved for his wife a thousand times over by now, and it tore Shaunna apart, although she put a brave face on it. It was another of those things to which Andy had remained oblivious, until Kris pulled him to one side and suggested they took turns visiting Shaunna’s dad so she didn’t have to go through it as often. Jim Hennessy barely knew Andy to begin with, but if he asked, Andy repeated the explanation.
That’s how it panned out for today’s visit.
“Oh, aren’t they lovely.” Jim reached into Rosie’s pushchair and tickled her cheek. “You look just like your mum, you do.” He peered at Sorsha and then at Andy. “Where is she? Working?”
“Yep. She’s popping in tomorrow.”
“Tell her not to bother.” He sat back in his chair and stared out of the window, his thoughts instantly lost.
Andy settled into the chair opposite. He wasn’t planning on staying long.
“What are you doing with them?” Jim asked.
Andy felt the disconnection but explained what he was up to as if Jim had a grasp of the context. “We’re going to my mum’s for a bit. It’s a nice day and I fancied a walk.”
“You’ve still not got a car?”
“Yeah, I have.” For the umpteenth time. It was Kris who didn’t have a car. He travelled everywhere by train, or used to, before Ade. “A Mustang,” Andy said.
“Hm.” Jim’s mind wandered again. He studied the sleeping babies. “Funny how they’re so different. Both yours?”
“Yeah,” Andy sighed.
“Where’s erm…” Jim soundlessly clicked his fingers. “Oh, what the hell’s his name? She’s married to him. You know.”
“Kris?”
“That’s right. Kris. I haven’t seen him in ages.”
“Didn’t he come in yesterday, Jim?”
“Oh, did he? No. I don’t think he did. So you’re, let me see…Geoff, isn’t it?”
“Andy.”
“That’s right. Are you friends with our Shaunna?”
“Yeah. We’re together.”
“So Kris…what’s happened to him?”
“Shaunna and Kris are divorced.”
“When was that?”
“Few months back.” Andy tried to keep the weariness out of his voice. Whether he succeeded, he couldn’t tell, although after they’d circled the same conversation three more times, he could hear it for himself.
“We’re off now, Jim. Do you need anything bringing in?”
“No, don’t think so.”
“OK. See you later.”
“Bye.”
Andy reversed the double pushchair out of the room and stopped to regroup. He hoped to God his own mum and dad would never have to go through this.
“You all right?” a care assistant asked.
He smiled. “Yeah, cheers. Does Jim need anything? Sweets, or hankies, or…?”
“Ooh. Yes, actually, could you pick him up a pack of underpants? He’s not making it to the toilet. He forgets he needs it.”
Andy’s heart sank a little. It was yet another sign of Jim’s deterioration, and he wasn’t looking forward to telling Shaunna. “Yeah, no worries.”
The twenty-minute walk from the rest home to his mum’s was lost to his thoughts. Seeing Shaunna’s dad had certainly put things in perspective. Andy had only met him a few times when he was younger: at the hospital when Krissi was born, at Shaunna’s eighteenth, and then at Kris and Shaunna’s wedding. He’d always been a nice enough bloke but a bit distant and quiet, nothing like Shaunna’s mum. She’d been great fun, laughing and joking and getting along with everyone. At the house-warming, she’d had a few too many drinks and danced and flirted with them all—Shaunna was her mother’s daughter, no mistake.
Siobhan Hennessy had died before Kris and Shaunna got married, and sometimes, Andy could tell Shaunna was thinking about her, wishing she’d still been around to meet the twins. She’d been an awesome grandma to Krissi, and she would have been to Rosie and Sorsha, too. But such was life. What mattered was making the most of it here and now, because there was no way of predicting the future. That was a lesson Andy had never needed to learn, but these days he acknowledged taking it to the opposite extreme could prove just as disastrous.
Pity he hadn’t thought of that before he set off for his mum’s.
“Trust you to come over today.” She tugged her bathrobe around her and stopped to lift the front wheels of the pushchair over the top step.
“Were you in bed?”
“I was about to get in the bath.”
“Ah. Sorry.” Andy followed her in and shut the door. “You not got Bethan today?”
“No, Michael’s taking a well-deserved day off.”
“Good stuff. Is he out?”
“I don’t think so. Is his van not there?”
“I didn’t see it.” Then again, Andy didn’t remember opening or closing the gates, either. “You go and have your bath. I’ll pester Mike for a bit.”
“All right, love. See you after.”
Andy continued on his way across the atrium and out through the conservatory, glancing longingly at the pool. He hadn’t been for a swim in a while. Unfortunately, they had the match against Comco this evening, or he’d have come back later with his boardies. Tomorrow, maybe. He moved on, opening both doors to get the pushchair out of the conservatory, aware of the thump of a bass beat coming from the summerhouse, his steps falling in sync as he walked along the path Len—or Len’s lads—had put between the house and the summerhouse a few weeks after Mike had moved in.
“Oh, God.” Andy laughed as he got close enough to see his brother’s terrible dancing. Bethan was in his arms, and she was giggling away, both of them having the time of their lives. Andy stopped, spun the pushchair to face the opposite direction, and went back the way he’d come.
“Andy?”
He stopped and turned back. “Alright, Mike?”
“Where’re you off?”
“Well, I was coming to see you, but I didn’t want to crash your party.” He grinned.
Mike blushed. “I’ve just connected the speakers to the computer. They’re really good.”
“Yeah, I got that. Computer?”
“Charlie’s. You coming in?”
“If I’m not gonna be in the way.”
“Nah.”
Andy parked the pushchair and lifted out Sorsha in her seat, taking her inside before repeating the process with Rosie.
“I’m looking forward to tonight,” Mike said, but Andy was only half listening, his attention stolen by the array of technology neatly stacked on a wall unit.
“That’s some setup.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty decent, as it goes. Charlie bought the computer, but she nabbed the rest from where she was working.”
“I remember her telling me. That’s gotta be about three grand’s worth of equipment.”
“Yep. You want a drink?”
“Just water’ll do me.”
Mike obliged and returned with two sports bottles filled with filtered water.
“Don’t you own any glasses?”
“Yeah, but they get knocked over. Here, give me that—” he held out his hand for the bottle “—and I’ll put it in a glass for you.”
“It’s fine. I was only asking.”
“Fair enough. So you just popped round for fun?”
“Sort of. Dan’s doing my head in.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Chasing up jobs I’ve already done, mostly, and trying to talk me into taking a business trip I don’t need to take. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was trying to get me out of the country.”
Mike swallowed his water down the wrong way and it came back, sending him into a coughing fit that woke Rosie. “Sorry,” he spluttered.
Andy huffed and tried to settle Rosie back to sleep. She wasn’t having it, so he took her out of her seat and sat her on his lap. When she—and Mike—finally stopped squawking and choking, Andy said, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“About?”
“Dan.”
“Dan? I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday.”
“What did you talk about?”
Mike frowned as he thought. “Whether Mrs. Hunter fancies me or not.”
“Who?”
“A job I did recently. She recommended me to her friend in Dovedale and then came over twice while I was working. Dan was taking the piss when he suggested it—turned out he was right. I tell you what, it’s no fun being the object of women’s desires.”
Andy laughed and peered upwards. “Dear God, please grant me the opportunity to prove my brother wrong.”
“Ha. Like you aren’t doing that every day already.”
“You know what they say. If you’ve got it…” Andy flexed his shoulders and struck a pose, or as much of a pose as he could strike whilst holding a baby. It made Mike laugh.
“You look like one of those crappy posters from the eighties.”
“So is that all you talked about?”
Mike’s eyes moved from side to side, like he was trying to recall, though Andy knew he was putting it on. If it had been nothing, he’d have told Andy to mind his own business.
“Yep,” Mike said finally. “Oh, and Adele coming home. And whether the woman upstairs owned a cat.” He shrugged and drank some more water.
That was all Andy was getting out of him, and clear confirmation that Dan was up to something.
* * * * *