Music filled the kitchen of Sebastian Moran’s flat: slow, melancholy synth and drum beats with low, barely-audible vocals, creating an oddly serene atmosphere as Jay leaned against the kitchen island and watched him work.
“I’d have figured you for a vinyl man,” Jay mused aloud, regarding the wireless speaker on the counter with a certain scepticism. “Sixties soul music, that sort of thing. Not darkwave.”
Moran stood across from him, knife in hand as he scored a duck breast with clean, precise strokes. “Is that what it’s called?”
If Moran was just letting the streaming algorithm run loose, they were surely a mere five or six tracks away from microgenres even Jay hadn’t heard of. He decided to let the subject drop and instead eyed up the meal coming together in front of him. “I could get used to this.” Moran had made him a cup of tea; Jay lifted the mug to his lips. “Is this what it was like for you, growing up with a hired chef?”
Moran rolled his eyes but didn’t look up from the cutting board. “How posh do you think I am?”
“Well, I counted at least a half-dozen different vinegars in your cupboard, so …”
Moran played along: “Oh, is that how we’re measuring it?”
Jay hid a grin against the rim of the mug.
In hindsight, he should’ve guessed Moran’s knife-work would be impeccable. The remainder of his culinary skill, however, was still a mystery. The man’s well-established poshness more or less ruled out the possibility that he’d learned as a child, and Jay had doubts that there were cooking classes on the curriculum at Sandhurst — although, admittedly, he hadn’t checked.
And then there was the kitchenware. The mug in Jay’s hands was pastel blue, one of a set; there were no chipped, well-loved keepsakes in Moran’s cupboards. His plates, cutlery, pots and pans — none of them were more than two or three years old, all clearly acquired at the same time. The furniture had a little more variety to it in terms of age; most of it was antique, but Moran once let slip that the whole lot had sat in storage for years until he’d moved to London.
It all suggested a civilian life pulled together in an unanticipated rush — as if Moran-the-person had only come into being once Moran-the-weapon was cast aside.
Jay wondered, sometimes, if the two Sebastians Moran weren’t so neatly separated as that.
A harsh ringing noise blasted abruptly from the speaker on the counter; someone was calling Moran’s phone, putting the music on pause in the process. Moran looked down at the raw meat under his hands and sighed. “Could you—?”
Jay put the mug down and circled around the island, reaching into Moran’s pocket to retrieve his phone. He couldn’t resist fondling Moran a bit in the process, slipping the fingers of his other hand up under his shirt to tease the skin just beneath his waistband.
“Stop it,” Moran grumbled, even as he rocked his hips forward into Jay’s touch.
Jay gave him a wink before pulling back to check the phone’s screen. “Who’s ‘Jules’?”
Moran’s reaction was immediate; he spun toward the sink, lifting the tap with his wrist. “Could you answer for me? I’ll be just a moment.”
Jay answered the call — careful to switch off the connection to the speaker in the process — and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
There was a confused pause from the other end of the line. “I’m sorry,” said a woman’s voice. “I was trying to call Sebastian?”
“He’s here,” Jay confirmed, as Moran finished washing his hands and reached out. “One second.”
Moran took the phone from Jay. “Hi, Jules,” he said, with a fond smile.
After a moment, it plummeted from his face.
Travel to Herefordshire from London by train turned out to be a tremendous ball-ache involving no less than three transfers. In the end, it made more sense to rent a car and drive instead.
Moran had wanted to leave as soon as he got off the phone. It was Jay who insisted on waiting until morning, leery at the prospect of a three-hour drive out to the West Country in the dark. And then the logistics of car rental and the packing and the work rescheduling had pushed their departure well into the afternoon.
The whole while, Moran protested half-heartedly that he’d be fine going alone; the whole while, Jay ignored him. And refused to let him drive.
Moran was uncharacteristically quiet once they got on the road. He sat in the passenger seat with his long legs folded awkwardly in the small space of the car, head tipped to rest against the window as the concrete-enclosed motorways out of London transformed by degrees into country roads through rolling green fields.
Ross-on-Wye was like a charming English country town from a children’s movie: red brick and plaster and well-trimmed hedges bracketing quiet, winding residential streets. Jay followed Moran’s directions, recited from memory, until they arrived at a small bungalow tucked neatly away on a sizeable wooded lot.
Moran stepped out of the car and walked up the drive; Jay followed at a hesitant distance.
The house’s front door flew open, and a blur of motion barrelled toward them. Jay only recognised it as a teenage girl moments before impact.
Moran let out a surprised grunt and staggered as the girl hurled herself at him, just barely managing to hold her up by the waist as she hugged him tightly around the neck. He had a resigned look that suggested this was not the first such attack he’d endured. The girl was all elbows and knees, her long hair dark at the roots but pale pink near the ends — remnants of a long-faded home dye job.
A woman appeared in the open doorway. She was a few years older than Moran; there were fine lines around her eyes, a slight heaviness in her cheeks, and she had the particular chin-length haircut of a woman for whom daily styling had become one hassle too many. Jay noted a distinct family resemblance, mostly in the straight nose and strong jaw.
This, then, was Sebastian’s cousin Julia. Which meant the clinging creature around Moran’s neck was her daughter, Patience.
Julia was smiling as she made her way down the drive at a much more sedate pace, but there was a fragile edge to it. Moran managed to transfer Patience to one hip and free an arm so he could draw Julia into a hug. His forearm was tight across her back, his hand gripping her shoulder with quiet desperation. “Hi, Jules.”
A little of the tension in Julia’s frame ebbed as she leaned into the hug.
Patience, meanwhile, released her grip on Moran and dropped back down to the ground. “Is that Jay?” she asked; it was only once the words were out of her mouth that she cringed slightly, as if realising she’d been too forward.
“Er …” Jay cleared his throat. “Hi.”
Moran pulled back from the hug and quickly composed himself. “That’s Jay,” he confirmed.
Both Julia and Patience had a look of recognition that immediately made Jay nervous.
The house’s entry hall was far too narrow for four people to navigate comfortably. Fortunately, Julia — or perhaps a previous owner — had the good sense to knock out the walls between the kitchen, dining room, and sitting room; the alterations opened up the space, allowing the light coming through the sitting room’s wide glass doors to brighten up the whole house.
Moran’s maximalist approach to home decor evidently ran in the family, but while his flat was full of antiques and mementos from his work abroad, Julia’s furniture appeared to have passed through several charity shops on its way to her house. A massive faded corner sofa dominated the sitting room, its cushions permanently depressed in the middle; the walls were covered with an eclectic mix of photos, prints, and what had to be several of Patience’s school art projects down through the years.
Julia directed Jay to a seat at the table in the dining room, but had no hesitations about drafting Moran into helping with dinner. He moved around the small kitchen with easy familiarity, prepping vegetables at one end of the counter while, at the other, Julia arranged a set of chicken thighs on a baking tray.
Patience dodged between the both of them as she flitted about the kitchen, a big pair of wireless headphones hanging forgotten around her neck. “And Mia’s boyfriend broke up with her,” she said, continuing the stream of frequently-distracted gossip she’d been rattling off since they arrived. “He says it’s ‘cause of this fight they had over that video she posted, but I think it’s ‘cause he met somebody when his family went up to Birmingham for Christmas.”
“This is the boyfriend with the car?” Moran asked, with an attentiveness Jay wouldn’t have expected.
“Yeah, it’s annoying — he’s supposed to drive us to the Irene Adler concert next month.” That thought triggered another tangent: “Did you listen to my playlist?”
“I did.” Moran cast a glance in Jay’s direction. “Jay was listening to it, too.”
Patience’s previously-scattered attention focused on Jay. “Really?”
Jay froze. He’d barely had any idea how to talk to teenagers when he was one, and his abilities had not improved in the years since. A small voice at the base of his hindbrain kept insisting their vision was based on movement.
“The darkwave one?” he hazarded; at Moran’s nod, he went on: “Yeah, it was good.”
This assessment seemed to meet with Patience’s approval.
Julia slid the baking tray into the oven and closed the door. With polite interest, she said, “Seb told us you work with computers, Jay.”
Jay raised an eyebrow at Moran, who was putting a tremendous amount of focus into peeling a potato. “He told you about me?”
Patience rolled her eyes. “He won’t shut up about you,” she said, as if this were the most exhausting thing in the world. “It’s all, ‘Jay’s so clever, Jay’s so funny, can’t talk long ‘cause I’m going out with Jay later—’”
She shrieked as Moran turned and hauled her into a playful headlock.
The sun still set fairly early this time of year; it was completely dark by the time dinner was over, and the hours since had passed deceptively quickly.
“I was ten, but Seb was only seven.” Julia topped up her wineglass and settled back against the sofa cushions. “We were probably too young to be watching it, but they just wanted a tape that would keep us quiet in the next room and figured dinosaurs would do the trick.”
“I had nightmares for weeks.” Moran had claimed the corner section of the sofa by what appeared to be long-standing treaty, his rangy frame sprawled lazily across the cushions. Jay was settled in next to him, and over the course of the evening Moran had cosied up closer and closer until Jay was functionally an additional cushion.
“He was terrified.” Julia failed to stifle a giggle. “Especially of that little one, the—” she raised both hands to her face and waggled her fingers to suggest a reptilian frill. “You know, the one that spat poison?”
“You kept making the fucking noise.” Moran looked to Jay for support. “They put us in the same bedroom the whole holiday. I’d be trying to sleep, and out of the dark I’d hear her hissing at me.”
Jay made no effort to hide his delighted grin. “Poor baby.”
Julia hid a yawn behind her hand and reached for her phone to check the time. She stretched out a foot and nudged Patience where she lay boneless on the floor in that way only adolescents could manage, shoulders propped up against the sofa. “It’s a school night, my love.”
Patience somehow turned rolling her eyes into a full-body motion. “I don’t need a bedtime, Mum.”
“All right, but if you’re all cranky tomorrow morning, you still have to get up for school.”
Patience threw her head back against the sofa with a dramatic groan and rolled to her feet. “Goodnight, then,” she called out to the room at large.
“Goodnight,” Moran called back as Patience retreated down the hall to her bedroom. Only once the door was closed did he turn a careful look in Julia’s direction. “Don’t you have work in the morning?”
“Haven’t been sleeping much,” Julia muttered into the rim of her wineglass.
Moran’s weight shifted against Jay as he swung his legs around to plant them against the floor. He leaned forward, all the easy contentment of the past few hours slipping away. “What happened, Jules?”
Julia’s eyes stayed on the wineglass as she lowered it to her lap. “It went bad with Brandon,” she said. “He lost his job. Started drinking more. A lot more. Things got … violent. So I called the police on him.” The wineglass rose again as she took a long, deep drink. “Only they let him go. Didn’t tell me they were doing it, just … released him. And he came back here.” She took a shaky breath. “He had a gun.”
“Christ.” Moran’s voice was a hoarse, horrified whisper. “Jules—”
“I did what you always said to do.” Julia, bizarrely, sounded as if she were trying to reassure him. “I’d had the locks changed already, so he couldn’t get in. I hid in the bathroom, down away from the windows. Called 999.” She blinked rapidly, fingers tight around the glass. “Brandon kept screaming at me to open the door, and then he … he shot himself. Right on the doorstep.” She sniffed. “One bit of luck, at least — Patience wasn’t here. She was out with some friends.”
Moran’s expression was blank, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Jay followed his glance toward the sliding doors, out into the dark of the garden, and immediately caught his train of thought: if Julia’s boyfriend had thought to circle around and shoot the glass out, she might very well be dead.
Julia downed the rest of the wine and set the glass firmly on the table. “I’m going to bed.”
Moran answered with a wordless nod, not taking his eyes off her as she withdrew to her room.
The house had one small bathroom. Mismatched towels fought for space on the rack, every cabinet stuffed to bursting with dryers, curlers, bottles of various products, and the specific collection of cheap, mostly-expired makeup that tended to accumulate around teenage girls.
It all prodded an odd, nostalgic ache somewhere behind Jay’s sternum.
The house was silent around him as he finished up in the bathroom and crossed the hall, feeling a little self-conscious in just his pants and a loose t-shirt. At no point over the course of the evening had anybody asked about sleeping arrangements. Moran had wordlessly carried both their bags into the third bedroom when they arrived, and that more or less settled the question.
It wasn’t a particularly large guest room; the double bed occupied most of the available space. Moran had graciously claimed the side pushed up against the wall so Jay wouldn’t have to climb over him. He lay on his back, eyes fixed distantly on the ceiling.
Jay quietly closed the door and slid beneath the covers, resting on one elbow as he settled in next to Sebastian. There was one observation he’d kept to himself all night, and it was this: in all of Julia’ stories of Christmases and summer holidays and family, Sebastian was never older than about ten.
“Julia’s mum got custody in the divorce.” Sebastian’s eyes didn’t stray from the ceiling. “The family solicitors made sure she got nothing else. Aunt Phoebe died a few years back and Patience’s dad isn’t in the picture, so … I’m all the family they have.”
Jay couldn’t shake the feeling that the inverse was also true. He rolled closer, blanketing Sebastian; he was tense under Jay’s weight, wound tight and restless. One hand hooked around the back of Jay’s knee, thumb rubbing in mindless circles. Jay reached up and took Sebastian’s chin.
“Look at me,” he said.
Sebastian’s eyes finally moved from the ceiling to Jay’s face. There was a mute terror in them that Jay recognised — it was the same terror that overtook him when Jay was in danger and Sebastian couldn’t do anything about it. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“I know.” Jay leaned up to brush his lips against Sebastian’s. “So let’s find out why it did.”
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