What.
The actual.
Fuck?
Dev was too shocked to even catch him on the way down.
Kyle had just sort of crumpled from the knees, exactly like a puppet with its strings cut, which Dev knew for a fact because he’d had to take his foster sister, Tasha, to a kiddies’ party once, and they’d had a puppet show there, and it had been boring as fuck until the villain puppet actually got out a big pair of scissors somehow and cut the strings on the hero puppet and half the kiddies started crying, and Christ, why was he remembering that now instead of doing something useful?
Dev shook himself and dropped to his knees beside Kyle. Recovery position, right? Kyle was pretty much in that already, the way he’d fallen. Maybe he’d had a lot of practice. Falling. Shit. Focus. Was he breathing? Dev bent close, and he’d have sworn on his life there wasn’t a hint of alcohol on Kyle’s breath, which seemed to be coming just fine, thank God. Was he epileptic? Christ, was he likely to swallow his tongue? Dev pulled down Kyle’s slack jaw, hoping he wasn’t, like, tearing muscles or dislocating joints or anything. Kyle’s tongue was exactly where it ought to be.
Right.
Sitting back on his heels, Dev took a deep breath and pulled his phone out of his pocket to call 999—but even as he did, Kyle blinked and stirred.
“Mate,” Dev said with feeling. “You all right? You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack. Shit—did you just have a heart attack?”
Kyle swallowed, struggling up to a sitting position on the grass. He shook off Dev’s offered hand and said something that came out way too garbled for Dev to make out. He closed his eyes for a long moment, rubbed his jaw, then tried again. “I’m fine.”
Christ, he sounded tired. “You’re fine? Does that word mean something different around here? ’Cos last time I looked, fine didn’t include collapsing on the bloody ground with no warning.” Ice flooded Dev’s veins. “Shit, if you’d still been standing on the edge . . .”
“I’d have . . . I’m fine.” Kyle’s voice was angry. Frustrated.
“So what was it?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Kyle made the same drinking-up gesture Ceri had made yesterday.
“No. No way.” Dev shook his head slowly for emphasis. “Mate, I’ve seen falling-down drunk—fuck it, I’ve been falling-down drunk—and that is not what this looks like. So what is it? Epilepsy?”
Again the eyes closed, like Kyle wanted the world to go away. Or maybe just Dev. “Cataplexy,” he said at last.
“What?”
“I have narcolepsy with cataplexy. I fall asleep at odd times during the day. And sometimes I just fall.” Kyle spat out the words like foul bits of gristle from a cut-price supermarket’s value-brand pack of sausages.
“Shit. You know, you oughtta have one of those medical bracelets or something.”
Dev trailed off as Kyle held up one hand. On his wrist was a chunky black leather band Dev vaguely remembered noticing yesterday. He’d thought it was a fashion statement. It had a stainless steel plate engraved with a symbol of . . . Dev frowned. “A pole-dancing snake? What’s that mean when it’s at home?”
“It’s the Rod of Asclepius.” He pronounced the weird word with annoying precision. “The international medical symbol. The information’s on the other side.”
“Huh? What’s wrong with the flippin’ red cross? Everyone knows what that means. And, mate, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that symbol could get seriously misinterpreted in certain company.” Like Dev’s, for instance. First sight, he’d thought it looked well gay.
Kyle stood up smoothly, although he swayed a bit when he got there. “You can go now. It won’t happen again. And my house is just up there.” He nodded to a row of bright-white cottages along the cliff, far enough back from the edge that at least they didn’t look in any danger of toppling over.
“Yeah? You got anyone there?”
“No. But I’ll be fine.”
“You sure? You want me to call a doctor? Your family?”
“There’d be little point. They’re in Australia.” Kyle started walking towards the path that led up to the cottages.
Dev fell into step beside him. “All of ’em?”
“My parents. My sister and her family. I said you can go. I’m fine.”
Dev ignored the last bit. “You don’t sound Australian.” Not to be suspicious or anything, but he wasn’t sure the bloke wasn’t pissing him about.
There was an impatient huff. “My sister moved out for work, taking her family with her. Mum and Dad moved out there to be near them. Satisfied?”
“What, they moved halfway round the world with you ill and all? Jesus.”
“I hadn’t been diagnosed when they went out there. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Shit. “And they never came back when you got ill?”
“They don’t know I’m ill.”
Dev actually stopped walking and turned to stare at him. “You haven’t told them? Your own mum and dad? Are you serious?”
Kyle took a mo to answer, seeming to struggle with his temper. “They don’t need to know.”
“Don’t need to know? Are you fucking serious? Jesus, you got this illness that makes you fall over all the bloody time, you live on your own, and you’ve moved somewhere you don’t know anyone, and you’re saying, what, you don’t need your family?”
Christ. Families were wasted on some people.
“What the hell is your problem?” Kyle was breathing hard, fists clenched by his sides. Dev took a step back in case the guy decided to throw a punch. They were pretty evenly matched, weight wise, but Kyle was a couple of inches taller so he had the reach. And yeah, definitely some anger issues. “You think because my life is ruined, I should ruin everyone else’s too? Is that the kind of selfish thing you’d do?”
Okay, so maybe Dev had some anger issues of his own. At least, now he did. He balled his fists and stepped back up in Kyle’s face. “What, like hanging around on cliff edges until you manage to fall over and kill yourself ain’t gonna ruin their lives anyway? You wanna talk about fucking selfish? What about the poor bastards who have to scrape your body off the rocks and stuff it in a coffin for your mum to cry over, eh?”
“That’s not . . .” Kyle stared at him, openmouthed. Then he looked away, his face screwed up. “I’m not suicidal,” he said at last.
“Bollocks. What was all that pissing about on the edge, then?”
“I was safe. No, listen—the attacks don’t come without warning. Usually. When I fell down just now it was different . . .” Dev’s face probably showed what he thought of that, as Kyle spun away with an angry gesture. “I’m not explaining this well. Just now . . . It was because you made me laugh.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Trust me. Narcolepsy is one thing I never joke about. Unlike the rest of the world.” God, he sounded bitter.
And yeah, Dev could remember when Tasha had been into that Shrek movie where all Sleeping Beauty did was have nap attacks all over the shop. And there was that old film with the bloke who did Mr. Bean—Christ, what was it called? Rat Race, that was it—where he’d done the same.
It’d seemed pretty funny at the time. Although maybe not to anyone who actually suffered from that sort of thing. “Fucking hell.”
“Yes. It is.” Kyle’s words were clipped, but Christ, there was plenty of feeling behind them.
He strode off again.
“Hey, that’s the way I’m going,” Dev said, half jogging to catch up with him, only partly to annoy the git. The cottages were on the way to the Big Guns place, after all. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Suit yourself.”
They strode on in silence a few paces, and Dev started to feel a bit bad about it all. Here the poor bastard was, dealing with really shitty health issues, and Dev had gone and got all up in his face about it.
“So, you lived here long?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer from Ceri.
“A couple of months.” He side-eyed Dev. “As you seem to know already.”
“Uh, yeah, might have heard something . . .” Dev rubbed the back of his neck. “They didn’t say much, though. Just that you’re new round here. Where are you from, then? No, wait, you told me that. Surrey, yeah? Bit different round here, innit?” Not that Dev had a fucking clue, apart from being fairly sure Surrey didn’t have any coastline. Wait—he’d been to Guildford once. That was in Surrey. Of course, he couldn’t exactly remember a right lot about it, mind, seeing as it’d been a mate’s stag weekend.
“Yes.”
“I’m from Balham, me. South London. It’s a bit shit, but it’s home, you know? I’m here on holiday. Got a few weeks off, thought I’d grab some fresh air and all that bollocks. Ain’t never been to Cornwall before, but it’s all right.”
Kyle didn’t say anything, but his shoulders had relaxed. Dev snuck a glance at the man’s face. With the beard and all, even neatly trimmed, he had a sort of wild look. Like he belonged out here, with the cliffs and the sea and all that dodgy history of smugglers and wreckers.
It was a bit of a turn-on, if he was honest.
“So which one of these houses is yours?” Dev asked. “Hey, why’d they build them up on the cliffs like that? Weren’t they worried about, you know, erosion and stuff? I’ve seen that on the telly—houses falling in the sea and all.”
“Apparently not. Which they clearly didn’t need to be, given that the houses are still standing centuries later. And mine is the farthest one. The Zelley cottage.”
Wow, actual extra info he hadn’t had to push for. “Zelley the bloke what built it, was he?”
“No. He just bought it.”
“So why’d it get named after him?”
Kyle huffed again, but Dev could almost swear it was less pissed off and more fondly exasperated than last time. “There’s this thing called the internet, you know. You can look up all kinds of information on it.”
“Yeah, but reading history’s dead boring, innit? Much more fun hearing someone’s take on it. So go on, tell me about this Zelley bloke.”
“He was an artist.”
“Yeah? What did he paint, then? Naked women with wobbly bits?”
That almost got him a laugh, there. Then again, given what’d happened last time Kyle had laughed, maybe it was a good thing the bloke was such a moody git. “Landscapes, mostly. Some portraits. And we’re here now.” There was a clear subtext of so you can piss off and stop asking me all these bloody questions.
The Zelley house was what Dev was already coming to think of as traditional Cornish style: whitewashed walls and a grey slate roof. So it wasn’t a proper cottage, was it? Because those were supposed to have thatched roofs. Dev hadn’t seen a right lot of cottages in his time, but he knew that much. It didn’t have roses round the door, either, but there was a small, overgrown garden in front, with a riot of bushes and flowers of different colours that filled the air with scent and had Britain’s last remaining bees buzzing around them.
And this was where they were going to part company.
“Wanna ask me in for a coffee?” Dev blurted out. “Always wanted to see an artist’s cottage. They have, like, good light, innit?”
Fuck him, what the hell was all this shite coming out of his mouth?
Kyle stared at him. “You’re . . . I’m not interested in anything,” he said at last.
Jesus. That was a slap in the face and no mistake. How had the bloke known Dev was even gay? He wasn’t obvious. Was he? Maybe it was the earring? Maybe round here it meant something it didn’t mean in London? No, even places like this, blokes wore jewellery. Probably. “Uh, right. No problems, bruv. I ain’t gonna come on to you or nothing.” Dev backed off a step, holding his hands up.
“I didn’t mean . . . It’s not a problem. But I’m not . . .”
“Interested. I got it.” Christ, he got it, all right? No need to keep banging on about it. “Fair ’nuff. Just, I’m here on me own, thought it’d be cool to hang out for a bit, that’s all. I didn’t come here looking for a bloke.”
Of course, he wouldn’t say no if one happened along for the duration. Say, a bit taller than him, with a beard and mysterious blue eyes that gazed out to sea like they were witnessing the end of the world . . .
“What are you looking for?”
Dev had the daftest urge to actually tell him the truth. “Cup of coffee and a history lesson,” he said instead, because Kyle had his own problems. No way would he want to hear about Dev’s. “Unless you’ve told me all the good bits already. Then I’ll just take the coffee.”
Kyle was staring again. “Why?”
Someone, somewhere must’ve really done a number on him if he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to spend an hour or so in his company. Dev felt a surge of sympathy for the poor bastard. Of course, telling the bloke that would get him the cold shoulder again faster than he could say fuck off, I don’t need your pity. Inspiration hit. “I got told off, didn’t I? By this girl I met yesterday. For only talking to people so I could get ’em into bed. So this is me proving I’m not like that, all right?” The logic seemed a lot shakier out loud than it had in his head and from Kyle’s look, he probably agreed. Plus Dev had probably made it sound like he was bi, which he wasn’t.
Ah, sod it. Dev thought he’d better change tack, and went for the sympathy vote. “’Sides, I’m all on me own here, like I said. Me mate couldn’t make it. You really gonna leave me with no one to talk to for three weeks straight? I’ll go loopy. Start seeing mermaids and chatting up the seagulls and stuff.”
Kyle drew in a deep breath, then let it out again. “Fine. But I’ve only got decaffeinated.”
Dev grinned, because as last-ditch attempts to put him off went, it was pretty feeble. And he could be philosophical about decaff. Yeah, it’d taste like shite, but it wouldn’t give him the jitters, which after that wicked strong Turkish coffee was a serious risk if he had any more caffeine in a hurry. “Lead on then, mate. And go on, give us the guided tour.”
The front door was at the side of the building, around the corner from a slate plaque that proclaimed the place to be Mother Ivey’s Boudoir, not Zelley House at all. “Bit racy, that,” Dev commented. “So who was Mother Ivey to old Zelley? His bit of stuff?”
“No. His alter ego. She was a nineteenth-century drag queen.”
“Shut up.” Dev was fucking delighted. “I didn’t know they even had ’em in them days.”
“Thought gay culture was invented in the twenty-first century, did you?” Kyle sounded amused.
“No, but seriously . . . they had laws back then, didn’t they? Two years hard labour just for having a limp handshake and a lisp.” One of Dev’s ex’s had been mad keen on Oscar Wilde. They’d seen the film several zillion times, until Dev had started having disturbing dreams about Stephen Fry with floppy hair, and put his foot down.
“It’s surprising what you could get away with, provided you did it on a stage in front of a paying audience. This is the living room.”
It was pretty bleeding obvious what it was, seeing as the front door opened directly onto it and it had comfy chairs, a stone fireplace, and a smaller-than-average telly. Plenty of space, though, as it stretched the entire depth of the house, and the large windows opposite him had a seriously awesome view of the bay. They faced due north, Dev reckoned, which meant the room wouldn’t overheat in the summer. Could be bitter in the winter, though, with the wind blowing straight off the Atlantic.
He wandered past mismatched armchairs to squint out of the nearest window. “This place must’ve set you back a fair bit.”
“I’m renting.” Kyle gave Dev a sidelong look. “If you’re casing the joint, I regret to tell you most of my valuables are back in Epsom.”
Dev flipped him a finger. “Tosser. So how long are you planning to stay? Just for the summer?”
There was a pause. “I haven’t made plans. There’s an option to buy on the place. The dining room’s through the far door.”
Huh. “You know, you can tell me stuff. I ain’t gonna take it down and use it in evidence against you.” Dev kept his tone light, moving into the dining room as he spoke to show willing.
Then he sort of wished he hadn’t said it. Went two ways, that sort of thing, didn’t it? It’d serve him bloody well right if Kyle started grilling him on why he’d come here.
“What did you do, back in Surrey?” he asked, because jobs were always safe ground.
“I was a barrister.”
The flat tone, with a slight emphasis on the was, told Dev he’d better rethink his position on jobs never being a minefield.
“You like the place?” Kyle asked, like maybe he’d realised he wasn’t exactly being chatty. “The furniture came with the house, but I think it suits it.”
“Yeah, it’s cool. Homey, you know?” Dev flashed him a smile, but Kyle looked away.
The dining room was a lot like the living room—it wasn’t as wide, but it still stretched the whole depth of the house and looked like it’d been put together by a real person going to shops and buying stuff they liked, not from a furniture catalogue or the Ideal bloody Home Show. There was a pine table and chairs, but the cupboards and sideboard were all different shades of wood. The open staircase leading to the next floor was pine, again, but a deeper shade than the furniture. An actual real oil painting on the wall—Dev could see the splodges and everything—showed what could only be a Cornish fishing village, its squat, rough-looking men setting out to sea in old-fashioned boats while white-aproned women, who were also a bit on the squat and rough-looking side, watched them go, probably wondering if this was the trip that’d widow them.
“That’s Porthkennack how it used to be, right?” Dev asked.
“An artist’s impression of it, anyhow. The painting’s modern—not a Zelley.”
“Yeah? Too bad. Won’t bother nicking it, then. Well into their gender roles back then, weren’t they?”
Kyle gave an intriguing little smile. “Not all of them. Mother Ivey, remember? Coffee?” He paused, his posture stiff for some reason. “It’s getting on for lunchtime. I could knock you up a sandwich?”
“Nah, I’m good. Ate a whole bloody farmyard for breakfast. You go ahead, though, yeah? Seriously, mate.” If a bloke had a habit of keeling over anyhow, adding low blood sugar into the mix probably wasn’t the best idea. Maybe narcolepsy was like diabetes, and he had to eat at certain times?
Dev reckoned he’d guessed right when Kyle’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Come through, then,” Kyle said, leading the way to the door at the other end of the dining room.
The kitchen was pretty small, probably built in the days when no one had fridges or dishwashers or washing machines. Christ, how had they even lived? Dev leaned on a counter while Kyle switched on the kettle and started putting together a couple of cheese and pickle sarnies. Dev liked that he was getting on with his lunch even though Dev wasn’t eating—like you would with a mate, not just a guest.
There was a mug tree on the counter, so Dev grabbed a couple of mugs and set them by the kettle to show willing. They were solid, chunky, earth-coloured things with a stylised fish carved into the surface and a dribbly glaze that looked deliberately random, not the plain blue-and-white-striped stuff he’d seen in gift shops in town. “These from the local pottery?” he hazarded.
Kyle’s pause made him look up.
“I made them. Back in Epsom,” Kyle said in the end.
Dev’s eyebrows shot up before he could stop them. “You never. Thought you were a barrister, not a potter.”
“I’m not either, these days.”
“How come? I mean, yeah, I get the barrister thing—no one wants a lawyer who’s always kipping in court—but you could do the pottery thing, couldn’t you?” He thought about it. “S’pose it could get a bit painful if you face-plant on the wheel, but you reckoned you get warning, didn’t you? And these are dead good. I mean, people’d buy ’em and everything.”
Kyle gave him a funny look. He’d finished making the sandwiches and now cut them both into quarters diagonally, posh café style. “Are you some kind of counsellor? Social worker?”
“Fuck off,” Dev said fervently. “Why’d you say that?”
“You seem unusually good at listening. And . . . making suggestions. All right—police, then?”
“Fuck off and die. Nah, mate. I’m a motor mechanic.”
Kyle seemed amused, though fuck knew why. “Handy profession to be in,” was all he said, though.
“You’re not wrong, mate. Way I see it, anywhere you go, people are always gonna want their cars, right? And I was never gonna get some job where I had to ponce around in a suit.” A thought hit him. “Oi, barristers, right? They still wear those naff little wigs like on the telly? That’d put me right off.” Dev shrugged, and added honestly, “Well, that and all the studying. Do my head in, that would.”
“Actually a lot of barristers like the naff little wigs. It makes them less recognisable on the street.” Kyle sounded distracted as he spooned coffee into the mugs from a jar that managed to look expensive even though the coffee inside was just instant, and poured on the hot water.
“Huh.” Dev had never really given a thought to barristing, or whatever the fuck you called it, being a potentially dangerous occupation. But yeah, if you sent someone down for twenty years or whatever, chances were his mates weren’t going to be happy. “You ever get beaten up for putting someone in jail?”
“No, but a friend had her wig vandalised once.”
Dev laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Kyle’s tone was trying to be solemn, but his face wasn’t having any of that shit. “Some people see the wigs as a symbol of the dignity of the profession. Although I think some of my older male colleagues just appreciate having hair again,” he added drily. “Milk?”
“Yeah. Ta. No sugar.” Some blokes, when you looked at them, you could easily picture them bald. Kyle, though? Dev couldn’t imagine that thick, dark hair even thinning. He could see it with a daft white wig on top, though, the black beard below making it look even more unreal. He looked away to cover his smile. “We going back through?”
Kyle nodded, and Dev carried the mugs back into the dining room. Like the living room, it had a large window with a fucking epic view of the bay. Dev couldn’t imagine actually living anywhere like this. It was, like, sea views were for holidays. Not for real life. He made sure he took the seat with the best view, the sun not in his eyes or anything. Kyle could look out at this shit every day.
Kyle made it through to join him without keeling over and dropping his sarnies, which was a relief. Grated cheese would’ve got everywhere. “How often do you get those attacks, anyway?” Dev asked, then realised it was a bit personal. “Shit. No, forget that. None of my business.”
“It depends,” Kyle said after a long pause. “So where are you staying?”
Yeah, Dev could take a hint if you bashed him over the head with it. “B&B on the edge of town. It’s nice. The landlady makes a wicked breakfast, which is why I ain’t helping you out with those sandwiches.”
“No? I made extra in case.”
“Sorry, mate, they’re all yours.” Despite how good they smelled. “So how do you like it here? Got to know a lot of people?”
Kyle looked out to sea. “Not really,” he said after a long while. “Although apparently I’ve been around enough to get a reputation.” The bitterness was back.
“Uh, yeah. You know, you oughtta tell people you ain’t an alcy. What if, like, you really need help some day and no one bothers ’cos they think you’re drunk?” Like that time Tasha had a hypo while she was in the pub, and none of the useless twats she was with even noticed.
“I don’t want their pity. Or yours,” Kyle added, though he didn’t seem quite so certain on that one.
“It ain’t pity, mate,” Dev said earnestly, leaning forward. “It’s, like . . .” Shit. What was it like, except that Dev liked the bloke and yeah, felt sorry for him having to deal with this shit? Kyle had already made it pretty bloody clear he didn’t want anything to do with either of those reasons. “We’re both new around here, yeah? And we’re both on our own. We oughtta stick together.”
Kyle gave another crooked smile. “The two of us, united against the Kernewek?”
“The what now?” Dev’s eyebrows were getting a right workout today.
“It’s Cornish. Meaning Cornish.”
“Yeah? That’s like Welsh, innit? I mean, I seen signs up in town and it looks sort of the same. Lots of y’s and stuff. I’ve been to Wales. We had a school trip.” Dev’s case worker had buggered up the forms to get the council to pay for it, but his geography teacher had found funding somehow. He’d got really good marks in geography that year, but the following year she’d left to go back to Scotland and he’d failed all his exams.
Dev found he’d absentmindedly picked up a sandwich and taken a bite. Huh. Maybe he wasn’t all that full from breakfast anymore, after all. It was good too. Decent quality Cheddar, and bread that tasted like it came from a baker’s, not a supermarket. He took another bite.
Kyle was nodding. “They have a common root. They’re not as similar as they might look, though.”
It was times like this Dev wished he’d paid a bit more attention in school. “Can you speak Cornish?”
“No. I only know a few words.”
Dev swallowed his mouthful. “Yeah? Go on. Say something.” He grinned at Kyle’s trapped expression. “Go on. Anything.”
Kyle glanced out the window again, as if he hoped someone might be doing a fly-past trailing a big banner with Cornish phrases on it. For all Dev knew, maybe they did sometimes. “All right, here goes, but I warn you, my accent is probably atrocious. Bràmm an gáth.”
“Meaning?”
“Cat’s fart.”
Dev burst out laughing. “Shut up! Why’d you wanna learn that?”
Kyle looked amused, if a bit sheepish. “The website said it was an authentic Cornish curse.”
“What, particularly smelly round here, are they? Must be feeding ’em too much seafood. Mind you, my mate Baz’s farts are well rank, and he can’t stand fish. So are you doing, like, evening classes in Cornish or something?”
Kyle shook his head. “Just online.”
“Yeah? Don’t they do classes round here, then? That ain’t right. It’s important, innit? Heritage and all that.” Stuff like that shouldn’t get forgotten.
“They do. They run courses at the Institute of Cornish Culture in town. But it didn’t seem worth signing up for them,” Kyle said, gazing out to sea. “I’d probably miss most of them anyway.”
That didn’t seem right, either. Was his . . . what, illness? Condition? Was it really as bad as all that? Not that Dev had a fucking clue. He took a gulp of his coffee, surprised how cold it’d got. How long had they been yakking away here? It was time he was getting on, really. Between them, they’d finished all the sandwiches. He put down his mug.
Hesitated.
Now it came down to it, he didn’t want to go. He liked Kyle, despite the darkness about him. Maybe because of it. Like eating really posh dark chocolate that was never sweet like proper stuff made by Cadbury’s or whatever. First bite, you didn’t like it, but after a while you got to appreciate the bitterness and the dryness of it, and if you went back to the normal stuff it tasted sugary and bland.
Of course, maybe he was missing a trick here anyway. “You ever have anything to do with them over at the big house?”
“The big house?”
“You know. Roscarrock House, up on Big Guns Whatsit up the hill.”
“Why do you ask?”
Dev gave him a look. “There’s this thing called conversation, see? People use it to find out stuff about each other.” He laughed out loud when Kyle, straight-faced, gave him the finger for that.
Then he broke into a smile, and Dev cringed.
“Shit, I’m not gonna make you pass out again, am I?” He had got to remember to be more careful about making jokes.
“I didn’t pass out. I fell over. And no.” Kyle seemed to think about it a bit. “Probably not.”
“Good.” Dev took a deep breath. “So do you? Have anything to do with them?” Dev wiped his hands on his jeans. It was stupid, getting so worked up over just asking a bloody question, but apparently his body hadn’t got the memo.
“The Roscarrocks? Not so far, no.” Kyle stared down at his mug for a moment, then looked up at Dev. “There is a connection, though. Well, sort of. I suppose that’s why I came here, rather than anywhere else. You see, my mother’s family were from around here, originally. Until they moved away, sometime in the nineteenth century. Which was quite unusual for those days, of course. People didn’t move around nearly so much as they do now. Unless they had good reason.”
Dev suddenly knew what it must feel like to be a car that’d just had its air con recharged and switched on at full blast. “So what’s that got to do with the Roscarrocks?” It sounded a bit off even to Dev. Too sharp.
Kyle frowned, so apparently he’d noticed too. “Oh, it’s nothing. There’s always been a family legend about a link. A bit of a joke, really. Supposedly one of my forebears was a Roscarrock bastard.”
Dev’s chair scraped queasily on the tiled floor, and he found himself on his feet before he’d even thought about it. What were the odds? What were the fucking odds? This was bollocks, this was. “Listen, mate, I’m gonna tell you this once, okay? Don’t mess with me. Do not fucking mess with me. Shit.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “I gotta . . .”
He had to get out. Right now.
Kyle didn’t try to stop him. Dev was out of the house and stomping back down the cliff path before his head had even cleared.