“Funnily enough, I can,” said Nathan before a thought came to him. “Hey, can I ask you about something Clifton told me?”
“About me?” Polly folded her arms.
“Sort of. He said that back in school, you’d asked him if I would go to the end-of-term dance with you. And he told you not to bother because I was already taken. Is that true?”
Polly did her usual eye roll thing, but he could see the remark had caught her off guard. “Hell in a handbag, that was centuries ago, Nathan. Another lifetime.”
“So itistrue. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Do you remember the weeks after Cliff vanished when we became close? You confided in me about you and him and told me you were gay. That’s when the penny dropped. I suppose I could have said something later, but what would have been the point? What with your mum’s death then Cliff’s disappearance, you had enough on your plate.”
Polly shrugged and gave him a world-weary smile, but when Nathan leant in to hug her, she giggled and shook him off. Before they reached the top of the stairs, she stopped him with a hand gently placed on his chest before handing him a note with a name and telephone number.
“Look, I know you’ve got a call to make. If you’d rather we left you—”
“No. Absolutely not,” said Nathan emphatically. “I’d rather have you here. Let me get this out of the way. Then, at least, we can kick back and relax. Enjoy the remains of the night. Besides, I really do owe Jaymes.”
Nathan wondered if he should feel irritated noticing how Jaymes had found his way around the kitchen, but the sight amused him. With a can of stout in one hand, an empty pint glass in the other and a bag of potato chips hanging from his mouth, Jaymes lumbered towards Nathan’s sofa.
Maybe that was also a family trait because Polly had clearly made herself at home. Crusts of a pizza sat in an open box on his coffee table next to a half-empty bottle of white wine. A mound of blanket smothered the sofa where she had set up camp. On the flatscreen, she had been watching what looked like a crime thriller where a car had been frozen mid-explosion. Although he relished his solitude, he also enjoyed having occasional company.
Polly sat between Jaymes and Nathan, the movie still paused on the screen. Jaymes, his socked feet crossed at the ankles on the coffee table, sighed aloud after gulping a good measure of stout before giving his version of the night. Polly snorted loudly at the recount and leant forward to unscrew the wine bottle and pour Nathan and herself a glass. In those few moments, he felt a hand tap his shoulder. Jaymes’ arm stretched along the back of the sofa behind Polly. Nathan turned to find Jaymes staring at him, his gaze unfathomable. In that brief moment, when Nathan grinned, Jaymes seemed to come to his senses and winked back playfully, but not before a strange, fuzzy feeling had settled in Nathan’s stomach. Eventually, they all sank back into the sofa, and after catching them up with the plot, Polly continued the movie. Twenty minutes into the action, Nathan checked his watch.
“Don’t stop the movie,” Nathan whispered, standing and placing his glass down. “I’m going make the call from the bedroom.”
“You’ll be needing your phone then,” said Jaymes, picking up Nathan’s mobile.
“Nate has a landline in the flat.”
“Landline? Who has a landline these days?”
“For the shop,” said Nathan a little defensively. “For commercial purposes.”
“Don’t tell me you have one of those annoying answering services that tells me my call is being recorded for training purposes. Dial one for gluten-free products, dial two for cream puffs—”
Somebody’s mood had clearly improved. Nathan shared a look with Polly.
“Shove another can of Guinness down your cousin’s throat while I’m gone.”
Without another word, he crept into his bedroom and used the phone beside his bed to call the solicitor in Melbourne. A male voice answered after the third ring, and after being put through, Nathan introduced himself.
“And this is Mr Nathan Dajuan Faolan Fresher I’m talking to?”
Deeply accented, the man made a point of enunciating each of Nathan’s names. Nathan cringed, his eyes squeezed tight. His mother had chosen the middle names. The first was her Caribbean father's name, and the second something like ‘little wolf’ in Gaelic.
“It is. What’s this about?”
No response. Apparently, the man wasn’t taking questions yet. Nathan’s father might have been able to place the accent for one of the Australian states or territories. A party trick of his, he could accurately guess the accents of people from other English-speaking nations. Sometimes he could even pinpoint the region or town they came from, astounding and amusing customers, especially during the tourist season. Nathan could only discern an Australian twang.
“And am I right in saying you’re the last surviving member of the Fresher family? On your father’s side.”
“Yes, my father, John Fresher, passed away five years ago. Heart failure.”
“And your grandfather?”
“Goodness. My grandfather left us around—let me see—eleven years ago.”
At one point the shop had been run by three generations of Freshers. Granddad, a widower, had retired at sixty-five, but when Nathan’s mother fell ill, he’d come back to work. Although Nathan officially started working at the age of eighteen, he’d helped out most weekends and after school since the age of twelve. His grandfather had died just before Nathan’s seventeenth birthday.
