And that was the one thing Marc could give.
Six
Jamie listened to Marc manoeuvre himself down the steep narrow staircase. Every instinct he had screamed at him to help, but he stayed where he was. Marc struck him as a dude who didn’t accept help easily, and Jamie got that. How many times had he burned Marvin’s helping hand?“Leave me alone. I can do it.”
When he heard Marc safely reach the bottom, he returned to his love affair with the groaning bookshelves. He recognised some titles from the community library he’d hung out at in King’s Cross before the security guards had got wind that he was using the place to hide from the rain, and a few titles from school, but there were many he’d never heard of.
He pulled out one that caught his eye—Charlie Big Potatoes—and scanned the back, and then wished he hadn’t. It read like a lad’s mag cover, laced with the socially acceptable version of alcoholism—turn up drunk to a few business meetings, run naked down the street in the dead of night when no one will see you, then see the light and live happily ever after. Blah, blah, blah. Jamie had heard enough of that bullshit in rehab, and had found himself gravitating to the hard-core meth-heads who’d ruined far more lives than just their own.Misery loves company.
Jamie put the book back and picked up a Stephen King that he’d read before. Horror novels were his favourite, along with Russian history; one of his weird obsessions. He blamed his grandmother for that.Evil old witch.But Jamie wasn’t going to think about her now.
He wandered to the only seat in the room—a bench built into the windowsill—and sat down, flicking absently throughCarrie, but after a few minutes, he cast the book aside and instead gazed around the book-filled room again, comparing it to the rest of the house that he’d seen so far. It hadn’t taken him long to find it—it was the only house for miles in the direction Marc had pointed—though he’d had trouble reconciling the grand old building with the humble bloke he’d met on the plane. Now he was inside, and knew about Marc’s mum, it all made sense, but still... the house didn’tfeellike Marc. At least not the Marc that Jamie had spent the last three weeks dreaming of.
The interior of the house wasn’t what he’d expected either. Far from stuffed with grandeur and luxury, the house was old and shabby, and the upstairs was caked in dust, like no one had been up there in years. Jamie heard Marc moving around somewhere below him and imagined him wincing as he tackled the stairs again.Fuck that.Jamie tore himself away from the window—and the books—and returned to the kitchen.
Marc was toasting bread on the giant oven. His half-closed eyes made him look a million miles away, and Jamie considered leaving him to it. Poor bloke had been at work all night, and now he was faffing around for Jamie’s sake.
But Jamie didn’t leave. Couldn’t. Marc’s broad back called to him, and he found himself treading silently across the surprisingly sleek kitchen until he was at Marc’s side. “How come it’s all modern down here and like a museum upstairs?”
“Because I live downstairs, so I had to fix it up before I could move in for good.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Here and there. Hospital until I was back on my feet, then I travelled around a bit, working in a couple of hospitals until I learned the ropes of civvie medicine.”
“‘Civvie’?”
“Civilian. The anatomy is the same, but it’s a different animal. It took me a while to get used to assessing a patient without a helicopter buzzing above my head.”
And the rest.But Jamie suppressed his shudder. The idea of Marc being blown to bits lanced his heart with a pain that he’d never encountered before, even in the deepest throes of withdrawal. He leaned closer to Marc and looked over his shoulder at the great hunks of bread Marc had jammed into some kind of cage. “I’ve never seen toast made like that.”
“It’s the AGA way. This stove was the one thing I could salvage from my mum’s old kitchen. And it saves me a fortune on heating.”
“Mmm. I like the warmth. It’s like an open fire. You just need a dog sleeping in front of it.”
Marc chuckled softly. “That’s usually me. Once I drop on that couch over there, I’m done for most days. Shouldn’t have bothered buying a bed.”
It was on the tip of Jamie’s tongue to ask just where Marc’s bedroom was as he couldn’t see any sign of one, but Marc broke the moment by stepping away to open a door markedPantry.
He disappeared inside. Jamie mourned the loss of his soothing presence, but he was back before Jamie could blink, armed with a clutch of jam jars.
“Take some home, mate. I’m running out of old ladies to give it to.”
Jamie wasn’t about to refuse free food—a habit he’d yet to kick, even though he had enough money in the bank to buy plenty of his own. He took the jar Marc proffered, and held it up to the light. The jam inside was an odd greenish-brown, and didn’t seem that appetising until Marc opened the jar he’d kept back and spooned it onto the thick toast he’d made. “Wow. That looks like nectar.”
“It ain’t bad,” Marc said. “I love my grub, but some days I’m too tired and pissed off to eat anything but this stuff with a big-arse spoon.”
“I used to do that with peanut butter when Zac wasn’t around to feed me.”
“Zac?”
“My friend... at least, he used to be. I crashed at his flat sometimes before I went to America.”
“Before you got clean?”
Jamie blinked. “What?”
“Sorry,” Marc said, though he didn’t appear particularly remorseful. “I get a bit of a recovery vibe from you. And I saw the needle scars on your arms.”