Fen was all girlish enthusiasm as she opened up her biscuit tin to show David the treasure within. “Do you like it? I made it myself, decorations and everything. It’s chocolate, with butter cream filling.”
David was touched. He wasn’t particularly into cake, as a rule, but clearly a lot of effort had gone into this one. Fen had used fondant icing to top the cake with what was obviously intended to be a house, and underneath it, something he couldn’t quite identify. “Oh, how lovely,” he said, with a fair amount of girlish enthusiasm of his own. “Is that a carnation? Shouldn’t it be green, not red, though? If you’re attempting to go all Oscar Wilde on me, that is.”
“Uh?” A flash of confusion across her pretty, studded face was instantly supplanted by condescension. “It’s a fire. Duh. Cos it’s, like, symbolic? You know? House? Warming?”
“Oh, très droll. I’m glad to hear it’s not because you’d like poor Rory to burn in hell for jilting Patrick’s mother.” David fixed her with an avuncular look. “Aren’t you being a teensy bit harsh on him?”
“No.” She folded her arms. “It’s really rough on her, you know? Like, she’s never had a bloke that didn’t treat her like sh—like, not very well. It’s not fair.”
David patted her black-clad arm. “There, there. Perhaps she’s a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man? Like me?”
“Course she doesn’t need a man,” Fen snapped. “But I think she wants one. Why would she have gone out with Rory if she didn’t want a boyfriend?”
“Irresistible attraction overcoming her higher thought processes?”
“What, for him?”
David felt obscurely defensive on Rory’s behalf. “He has a certain cuddly charm.”
“Ew. And now she’s all on her own again, cos Patrick’s living with me and Dad.”
“So? Regarde moi. I haven’t had a steady man in years. Do I bewail my lot? Do I rage against the dying of the light? Do I moon around, lovesick, pining for Mr. Unattainable?”
“Well, yeah. Duh.” She sent him a sly side-eye. “So what happened to make you get fired? It must be something good cos Dad won’t tell me.”
“And neither will I. Not until you’re older. Much older. Thirty, perhaps. Or thirty-five. Forty, even. Mark would never forgive me if I destroyed the innocence of his precious child.”
“I’m nearly sixteen. I do know about sex. I’ve had lessons on it.”
“Not from young Ollie, I hope.”
“Course not.” Her smile was treacled with insincerity, but David was almost certain she was pulling his pigtails.
Probably best not to know. “So, cake?” he said brightly, and by trial and error managed to unearth a knife and two plates, feeling rather guilty about poor, left-out Rory. He made a mental note to cut the poor man a generous slice after Fen had left. Still, if they were going to abuse his hospitality, they might as well do it properly. “And you can tell me all about my new housemate,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper.
Fen frowned as she took the knife from him and cut two extremely large slices of cake. Oh, to have the metabolism of a teenager. David said a quick prayer for his soon-to-be-departed waistline and tucked in.
“Don’t know him all that well,” Fen said with her mouth full. “I only ever met him with Granny O, and he always seemed a bit . . . I mean, I wondered why she was going out with him, cos she was always . . . not really laughing at him, it was just stuff she said . . . It was like he didn’t always get the joke, you know?”
“Not the sharpest needle on the record, hm? Maybe he has other talents,” David suggested idly, and licked butter cream from his finger. “Fortunately I’m above such petty things as intellectual snobbery.”
Rather uncharitably, Fen snorted a cake crumb and went red in the face. He manfully forbore from slapping her on the back in the guise of helping her breathe.
“I get no respect,” he said instead. “And nor does poor Rory, by all accounts. Even from your Granny O, which might, I’d suggest, be one reason for the split.”
“No. They split up cos he chucked her right before they were supposed to be going to a wedding. That’s a shit thing to do.”
“Language, ma petite crevette. And I’ll admit the evidence seems damning, but we don’t know what goes on between two people in a relationship, do we? Lessons on sex notwithstanding.”
“S’pose.”
“Good. Now, how about we concentrate on enjoying this scrumptious cake? Did I mention the cake is scrumptious, by the way?”
“No. you didn’t, actually. Some people would call that rude.”
“I was merely lost for words adequate to describe its delectableness. Or do I mean delectability? Whatever, it’s very good.”
“Yeah, well, don’t go wasting it on him.”
“Would I?” David mentally crossed his fingers behind his back. “But I don’t think we should lurk in the kitchen much longer. Some people would say that was rude.”
“S’pose. I can’t stay, anyway. Lex is coming round later to watch horror movies.”
“Bless.” As long as it wasn’t to pierce or tattoo something. Lex, who was a young person a few years older than Fen, had encouraged her love of black and introduced her to heavy metal boots. David had nothing against Lex’s enthusiasm for body art, but he couldn’t help feeling that any permanent physical evidence of their influence on Fen might not be good for Mark’s blood pressure.
All friendship aside, he’d hate to have to go hunting for another employer so soon.
“Thank you for making time in your busy Gothic schedule for little old me.” David put the lid back on the cake tin.
“Oh—I haven’t seen your room yet.” Fen glanced at the kitchen clock, which had hands in the shape of humorous vegetables, and screwed up her face in obvious indecision.
“Next time,” David promised. He probably ought to at least think about changing the duvet cover first. Fen wasn’t fond of pink, and she had an aversion to fairies.
Present company excepted, of course.
Rory looked up hopefully as they trooped back into the living room. “So, uh, Fen, you seen much of Jenni lately? Sorry. I mean, your gran? I was wondering how she’s getting on.”
His wistful tone made David suspect Rory regretted the split. Still, if one couldn’t do the time, one shouldn’t go doing the crime, in his view.
Fen glared at Rory. “Last Sunday. She came round for dinner.” The words And some company, because her heart just got broken, you unfeeling bastard went unsaid, but hung in the air nonetheless.
Rory winced visibly. “Yeah? She okay?”
“S’pose.”
“Yeah? Smashing. School going all right, is it?”
“S’pose.”
“Uh, and that lad of yours—Ollie, was it? He all right?”
“Yeah.” Her words were getting shorter as the, for want of a better word, conversation went on.
All this tension was not good for the digestion. David broke in hastily. “Fen, darling, before you go, please tell me you’ve reconsidered about the cosplay? Because I had this marvellous idea for us—me as the fourth Doctor, and you as Leila. It’ll be fabulously retro. And Gregory could come as a jelly baby. Say you’ll do it?”
Fen’s kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed, and she pulled out her phone to tap at it furiously. “Oh. Oh, no way. Me in a fu—a leather vest and half a skirt? That’s like one step up from Slave Leia. Come on, you know Dad would have a heart attack.”
David pouted. For something he’d just made up on the spot, he’d been rather warming to the idea. “He’s not coming.” He caught Rory’s expression of extreme bewilderment. “London Comic Con. Fen and I have tickets, but she’s proving remarkably resistant to the idea of cosplay. Dressing up,” he added for the benefit of the hard-of-geeking.
“That’s because some of us don’t like looking stupid. And that Leila thing is the stupidest idea you’ve had yet.” Fen glared at David, which was a marked improvement on her sulking at Rory.
Rory was nodding. “Yeah, I heard people do that. Sounds like fun,” he added a little sadly.
“Whatevs. I gotta go. Bye, David.” She gave him a quick hug and swept out with a jangle, the front door slamming behind her.
David sent Rory a sympathetic glance. “Cake?”
Whatever he might think of Rory as a callous heartbreaker, David still had to live with the man, after all. And he did appear to be very chastened.
“Nah. Ta. I’m good.” Rory gazed dolefully at his knees. “Gonna have an early night. Work tomorrow, yeah?”
“Poor you. Don’t wake me.”