House of Cards Read online

  Brix grunted and pushed Calum ahead of him on the cliff path. “Do you bollocks. You talk to Lee more than you do me.”

  “Jealous?”

  “What do you think?”

  The spark in Calum’s gaze faded. “I was just messing, man. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  He looked down at the hiking boots Brix had lent him, apparently lost in the art of putting one foot in front of the other. Brix frowned, nonplussed. Did I miss something?

  Brix had no idea, but if the past few days had taught him anything about this new, subdued version of Calum, it was that these loaded silences needed to be quickly filled, or else hours could pass before Calum spoke again. Besides, was it really his business that Calum and Lee had hit it off like they were the long-lost mates?

  But the masochist in Brix couldn’t let it go. “Has Lee been showing you some of her tricks?”

  “Actually, yes. I thought she’d be more shady about her stuff, but she’s shown me loads.”

  “Good.” Brix pulled himself through a narrow gap in the rocks. “That’s how we roll at Blood Rush. Share the love, you know? I want everyone to grow as an artist, not worry and bitch over who’s making the most dosh.”

  Calum followed Brix through the rocks. “I suppose that’s the right way to be, but it feels kinda weird. Where I came from, I couldn’t leave a sketchbook lying around without someone ripping my designs and selling them on.”

  “That’s ’cause you’ve been surrounded by cunts.”

  Brix regretted his crass bluntness as soon as the words were out, but Calum merely shrugged.

  “You’re probably right. In fact, you are right. Maybe that’s why I’ve found it so hard to draw these last few years. Remember when we used to get a crate in, and some JD, and a bunch of us would draw all night, collaborating the fuck out of everything we did? I miss that.”

  “Then you’ve come to the best place. We have drink-up-draw-downs all the time. Don’t plan ’em, they just happen.”

  “Sounds good to me. Oh wow, we’re nearly at the top.” Calum drew level with Brix and peered over the edge of the path. “That’s a long way down.”

  “Give it a minute.”

  Brix grabbed Calum’s arm and pulled him up the last few steps of the path and out onto the cliff that had been the top of the world for as long as he could remember. “My dad brought me up here when I was born and dangled me over the edge, presented me to the sea or some shit. Tradition for Lusmoore babies.”

  “Always knew there was legend in you somewhere.” Calum winked, then turned to the view—the grey sky, the misty clouds. The crashing waves below, and the miles and miles of moody-blue ocean. It was like nothing else on earth, and Brix wondered if Calum could feel the Cornish magic Brix had been born with. The fabled histories that were still sung out loud by the choir of old-school fishermen who hung around the Sea Bell.

  “Don’t be daft, boy. Emmets aren’t like us. You’ll see when you go on chasing your dreams to that big city you’re always blathering on about.”

  Brix’s long dead grandfather’s views on non-Cornish folk reminded him that he’d promised Calum a story. He caught up with him as he drifted to the edge of the cliff to peer cautiously at the deadly rocks below. “Ever told you why they call me Brix?”

  “Nope.” Calum didn’t look away from the crashing waves. “It’s always screwed with me, though. I know you did your apprenticeship in Brixton, but Jordan told me you were Brix way before that.”

  Brix found a grin, forcing back the bad taste in his mouth that just a mention of Jordan’s name brought. “My dad called me Brix. Apparently he took me to London once, and Brixton was the only name on the Tube map I could read. I wanted to go there, but he dragged me to the dogs in Walthamstow instead, grumpy old git. Reckon he thought the name would wind me up, but I loved it, and now . . . it’s who I am.”

  “Who were you before?”

  “Benjamin. Did I never tell you that?”

  Calum shook his head. “Nope. It makes sense now, though. You could be a Benjamin.”

  “Not in this lifetime.” Brix shuddered. “Learning to write was a whole lot easier once I’d lost a few letters.”

  “Eh? How old were you when you went to London with your dad?”

  “Too old to not to be able to read the whole map or write my own name, put it that way. I was twelve before I had those down.”

  “It doesn’t show.”

  Brix snorted. “Why do you think I went into business with Lena? I couldn’t do what she does on my own. Can barely make sense of the booking system, let alone all the taxes and crap.”

  “Bet that’s not true. You’re not stupid, Brix.”

  “Oh, I know that; least, I do these days. Just had a different start to most emmet folk. Different kind of education, I guess.”

  “What the hell is an emmet?”

  Brix retrieved his hip flask from his inside pocket and took a swig before passing it Calum’s way. “An emmet is an outsider . . . a non-Cornish person. Some Porthkennack folk believe none of you should be let over the border.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I reckon the world would be a darker place without the souls that keep us warm.”

  Calum shivered and swigged from the flask. “You must need a lot of them to stay warm around here.”

  Brix let the turbulent sea reclaim his gaze. “You’d be surprised. You can come up here wanting to jump and go home a few hours later with a new skin. This place is magic, and it’s in my blood. Without it . . . well, who knows where I’d be.”

  Calum paced the spare bedroom in Brix’s cosy cottage. Voices and laughter filtered up from the kitchen, but despite Brix’s open invitation, he felt no urge to join them. In fact, the thought of traipsing downstairs and presenting himself to Brix’s mates made him want to throw himself out of the nearest window.

  The notion took him back to the cliff-top adventure Brix had taken him on that morning. “You can come up here wanting to jump . . .” Brix had uttered the words like they meant nothing, but the flash of pain in his eyes had struck Calum like a lightning bolt. There were many things he couldn’t bring himself to tell Brix, and in that moment he’d suddenly been certain there was much Brix hadn’t told him either. He’d stepped closer, his arms outstretched, silently asking Brix to lean on him and let whatever shadows had brought him home to Porthkennack go, but Brix hadn’t seen him move. He’d closed his eyes to the wind and turned away, signalling that it was time to go home.

  Home. Calum swallowed a bitter laugh. He hadn’t known where that was for a long time. Brix had taken the soul from London when he’d left four years ago, and Calum’s hometown of Reading held nothing for him except the dingy semi he’d grown up in. No lifelong friends or treasured memories. No ties, no bonds. Which left him hiding in Brix’s spare room, jumping out of his skin every time a burst of laughter reached his ears. Bellend.

  He intended to skulk in his room all afternoon, but Brix apparently had other ideas when he woke Calum from a restless doze sometime later. “Hungry?”

  Calum rubbed his bleary eyes. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. It’s five o’clock.”

  Damn. It had been barely three the last time Calum had looked at the retro alarm clock on the bedside table. He sat up, helped upright by Brix’s strong hands. “Did your friends go?”

  “No.” Brix eyed Calum steadily. “That doesn’t mean you can’t come downstairs and have some dinner, does it? Can’t stay up here forever.”

  The miserable bastard in Calum wanted to do just that, but the gnawing hunger in his belly betrayed him . . . along with a pressing need to escape the scorching heat of Brix’s touch before he embarrassed himself. “What’s cooking?”

  “Paella.”

  “Paella?” That got Calum’s attention, and explained the smoky scent of paprika and garlic wafting through his open bedroom door. “Didn’t fancy a Sunday roast?”

  Brix smirked. “Oh, I did, but Kim and Lena had
other ideas.”

  Lena. Brilliant. Calum had done his best to avoid her since she’d dropped her bomb about the fate of Black Star Ink. He’d tried not to care that the shop he’d poured his soul into had evaporated overnight, but had heeded the first part of her advice and taken the afternoon off when his abandoned client had come in to see Brix. Shame he hadn’t had the balls to take the rest of it and come clean to Brix before she’d ratted him out.

  “What are you thinking so hard about? Don’t you like fish?”

  “Hmm?” Calum returned to reality and realised that Brix had leaned closer while he’d been fretting—too close if he’d been anyone else—so their faces were mere inches apart. “What are you talking about fish for?”

  Brix stared down at Calum for a protracted moment before he blinked and pulled back. “Erm, I wondered if you didn’t like it. There’s chicken in the paella if you don’t, and chorizo. You can pick out the squid and prawns.”

  Calum rolled his eyes. Despite the context, conversations like this were nothing new. The Brix he’d known before had eaten like a damned horse, and if the past few days were anything to go by, little had changed. The only meal Brix was less than obsessed with was breakfast, though Calum had yet to see him skip it. “I like fish. Love it, in fact. Just not sure I’m in the mood for company.”

  “It’s not company. It’s Lena and Kim. You know Lena, and Kim wants to meet you.”

  “Can’t I meet her at work?”

  Brix snorted. “Just come down. Have some food, say hello. Ten minutes, then I’ll leave you in peace, I promise.”

  It seemed to be the best deal Calum was going to get. Grumbling, he dragged himself off the bed and peered in the nearby mirror at his wayward hair. Rob had insisted he keep it neatly styled, but since he’d invaded Brix’s life—a man who’d never even sniffed a hair-styling product—he’d let it succumb to the wild Porthkennack wind, leaving it a shaggy mess of dark curls that had a tendency to hang over one side of his face. Not his best look. Or was it? He’d always felt like a twat with a head full of hair wax.

  “Stop preening. Dinner’s gettin’ cold, and my belly feels like its throat’s been cut.”

  Brix slugged Calum’s arm and left the room. Lacking any better ideas, Calum let his wild hair be, found some socks, and followed him.

  Downstairs, he expected to find yet another woman with fluorescent locks to add to Brix’s collection of friends and coworkers. Instead he found Lena talking the ear off a scruffy, slender dude who made Brix seem tidy and fat. Calum had been caught out again, as Kim, it seemed, was a bloke.

  A friendly bloke, if his wide grin and outstretched hand were anything to go by. “All right, mate?”

  Calum shook Kim’s hand, forcing what he hoped was a genial smile. Meeting Rob’s friends had never panned out. Apparently, Calum wasn’t good with people. “It’s the artist in you. Makes you hate the world. Can’t you handle a bit of adult conversation?”

  Well sure, if adult conversation didn’t mean shouting over each other about how much money they had.

  “Calum?” Brix was staring like it wasn’t the first time he’d called Calum’s name. “Do you want a drink?”

  It was probably a bad idea, but something made him nod anyway. A moment later, Brix pressed a bottle of cold beer into his hand and pushed him gently towards the kitchen table, where Lena and Kim were sitting. “Park your arse. I’ll get the grub.”

  The grub turned out to be a wide, shallow pan of chubby yellow rice laden with chicken, seafood, and spicy sausage. With all the bickering going on around him, Calum couldn’t work out who’d cooked it, but it was bloody good. He was on his third helping when he caught Brix watching him.

  Calum shoved a prawn in his mouth and raised an eyebrow. Brix mirrored the gesture, his eyes twinkling with an emotion Calum couldn’t quite decipher. So he looked away, turning his attention to Kim, who seemed to be arguing good-naturedly with Lena in an incomprehensible dialect.

  Brix came to his rescue. “Stop yabbering in Cornish. Cal ain’t got a clue what you’re on about.”

  It was true, though Calum didn’t have the heart to tell Brix that he wasn’t particularly interested.

  “Sorry,” Kim said. “It’s habit when this ball and chain starts getting on my tits about leaving my tools all over the bedroom.”

  “Ball and chain? Oh . . . you’re together?” Calum glanced between Kim and Lena, noting for the first time how their bodies were angled towards each other, their shoulders touching. Huh. For some reason, he’d pegged Lena as a spinster. Judgemental, much? Shit. Perhaps he really had become one of the arseholes he’d run all this way to escape.

  “We’re together ’cause I’m the only mug who’ll put up with him,” Lena said.

  Kim appeared unmoved. “She says it like she’s a bloody picnic.”

  “I am, compared to you.”

  “Now, now,” Brix intervened. “Sunday supper club ain’t for your bitching.”

  “True enough.” Kim shovelled the last of his food into his mouth and pushed his bowl away. “Calum, I saw the mandala you did yesterday. That’s some awesome shit, man. I’ve done a bit of dot work, but nothing like that. Surprised we haven’t heard of you.”

  Calum looked at Lena, who stared steadily back at him. “No reason for you to have heard of me. I’m not that good.”

  “Yes, you are,” Lena said. “I put your work on the website last night, and you’ve got appointments every day this week. If you want them, of course. I didn’t take deposits, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “In case you didn’t want to work every day for the next week. You’re self-employed, Calum. You can do what the hell you want.”

  What I want? If only Calum knew what that was. If only he’d ever known. “I’ll do them. Got nothing else on, have I?”

  “Except chicken whispering,” Brix said. “Pretty sure I caught you singing to Bongo yesterday.”

  Calum broke his stare-off with Lena. “Oh yeah?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve serenaded a bird.”

  “If you’re referring to Stacey from Bethnal Green, you can fuck off.”

  “Oooh, sounds juicy,” Lena said. “Do tell.”

  Brix shook his head. “Nah, I’m a gentleman, but if you’ve never heard a drunk posh boy sing ‘One Day Like This’ from the bottom of an East End high-rise, you’re missing out.”

  Calum laughed, couldn’t help it, though his humour was heavy, weighed down by the knowledge that the Calum who’d the balls to do stuff like that was long gone. “I blame that scrumpy you made us all drink. Fucking stuff was like acid. I’d have tried flying if my legs coulda carried me to the top of those flats. I felt like Spider-Man.”

  Kim sniggered. “You should get ’im over your old man’s place. Give him some home brew.”

  “No, thanks.” Calum drained his beer. “That scrumpy still haunts me.”

  Brix got up and started clearing the table. The cats—Zelda and Dennis—joined them, howling for their dinner, until Brix opened a cupboard and cursed. “Fuck. I didn’t bring their food from the shed when I got back from the wholesalers. Give us a hand, Kim?”

  Calum pictured the giant sack of dry cat food Brix had brought home the previous evening. He’d wondered where it had gone. Things seemed to disappear in Brix’s house and garden, like the stack of crates that had been here the first day he’d come. They’d evaporated overnight, leaving Calum to consider the possibility that they might’ve been a figment of his drunken imagination.

  Kim and Brix went outside, which left Calum with Lena. Dodging her keen gaze, he gathered the last of the dishes and took them to the sink, hoping she wouldn’t follow.

  A daft notion, it seemed, when she appeared at his elbow a moment later. “You wash. I’ll dry and put away. Don’t suppose you know where anything goes yet.”

  She had a point. Calum filled the sink with hot soapy water and set about scrubbing the plates with a little more vig
our than necessary.

  “Are you going to sulk forever?”

  “Sulk?” Calum passed Lena a clean plate. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that you’ve hardly spoken to me since Wednesday.”

  Calum couldn’t deny it. “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He couldn’t deny that either.

  Lena sighed. “Look, I know you’re pissed off with me for telling Brix about your old place, but I had to. He’d do his nut if he found out and I hadn’t told him. I wasn’t stirring, I promise. I haven’t told him any of the shit your ex has written about you on the internet.”

  Calum dropped a jug into the sink, splashing them both with water. “What?”

  “The weaselly guy with the glasses and bad quiff? Apparently, you stripped his shop, punched him when he tried to stop you, then ran off with all the money.”

  It would’ve been funny if it weren’t so tragic. Calum shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”

  “I know. You turned up here with a black eye and barely a pair of clean socks, and I can tell by the way you moon at Brix that you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Calum didn’t know whether to be offended or embarrassed. “I don’t moon at Brix.”

  “Uh-huh. Like he doesn’t moon right back.”

  Calum opened his mouth. Shut it again.

  Lena laughed. “Dude, quit catching flies. It’s okay. Your secrets—all of them—are safe with me. I only told Brix about your old place because I had to. The rest of it’s none of my business.”

  Calum was saved from having to answer by the noisy reappearance of Brix and Kim. He drained the water from the sink and took the tub Brix had filled with cat food to the corner of the kitchen where Zelda and Dennis had their bowls.

  Dennis sprang onto the counter with surprising grace, considering his bulk. Zelda, however, climbed up Calum’s back and punched him in the face. Nice. Perhaps Porthkennack wasn’t such a safe place after all.

  Lena and Kim left not long later. Brix walked them out while Calum fended off attention from Zelda, who seemed to have decided his shoulder was hers to sit on. But it proved another fight he was destined to lose. She’d settled in quite nicely by the time Brix returned, much to Brix’s obvious amusement.