Jonas didn’t think there was any way across it at all.
‘So...’ he said slowly. Speaking first felt like giving in, but after all he had intruded on them. ‘I was just passing...’
‘Where from?’
Did he just imagine that his mother sounded suspicious? Although, to be fair, he hadn’t been ‘just passing’ in four years—not since the day he had told them that he had bought their beloved hotel.
‘I was dropping Lawrie off at the airport.’
‘Lawrie? You’re back together?’
Now that emotion he could identify. It was hope. Even his father had looked up from his teacup, sudden interest in his face. Lawrie was the only thing he’d ever done that they’d approved of—and they hadn’t been at all surprised when she’d left him.
‘She’s working for me this summer. Just a temporary thing before she moves to New York. And, no, we’re not back together.’ It wasn’t a lie. Whatever was going on, they weren’t back together.
‘Oh.’
The disappointment in his mother’s voice was as clear as it was expected. Jonas looked around, desperate for something to catch his eye—another conversation-starter. A spectacularly hideous vase, some anaemic watercolours... But something was lacking—had always been lacking. And it wasn’t a simple matter of wildly differing tastes.
‘Why don’t you have any photos?’ he asked abruptly.
The room was completely devoid of anything personal. Other people’s parents displayed their family pictures as proudly as trophies: bald, red-faced babies, gap-toothed schoolchildren, self-conscious teens in unflattering uniforms.
The silence that filled the room was suddenly different, charged with an emotion that Jonas couldn’t identify.
His mother flushed, opened her mouth and shut it again.
‘Dad?’
Jonas stared at his father, who was desperately trying to avoid his eye, looking into the depths of the ridiculously tiny teacup as if it held the answer to the secret of life itself.
‘Dad,’ he repeated.
The anger he had repressed for so long—the anger he’d told himself he didn’t feel, the anger that was now boiling inside him—was threatening to erupt. He swallowed it back, tried to sound calm, not to let them know that he felt anything.
‘I know I’m not the son you wanted, but—really? Not even one photo?’
‘Leave it, Jonas,’ his father said loudly, putting his cup down so decidedly it was a miracle the thin china didn’t break in two.
‘Why?’ he persisted.
He would not leave it. For so many years he had endured their disapproval and their silence, their refusal to engage with him. He’d listened to their instructions, to their plans for his life—and then he’d gone ahead and done what he wanted anyway. But suddenly he couldn’t leave it—didn’t want to walk away.
He wanted answers.
‘I appreciate that I don’t live my life the way you want me to, that I didn’t make the most of the opportunities you gave me, and I admit that failing my exams at sixteen wasn’t the smartest move.’
He tried a smile but got nothing back. His father was still trembling with some repressed emotion; his mother was pale, still as stone.
‘But,’ he carried on, determined that this time they would hear him, this time he would have his say, ‘I have an MBA, I have a successful business, I own a house, I’m a good boss, I give to charity.’ Despite himself, despite his best intentions, his voice cracked. ‘I just don’t know why I have never been good enough for you.’
There. It was said.
The silence rippled round the room.
His mother got to her feet, so pale her carefully applied make-up stood out stark against her skin. ‘I can’t do this, Jonas,’ she said.
He stared at her in astonishment. Were those tears in her eyes?
‘I’m sorry, I just can’t.’ She laid one, shaky hand on his shoulder for an infinitesimal second and then was gone, rushing out of the room.
What the hell...? He’d expected indifference, or anger, or some lecture about what a waste of space he had always been, but this tension strung as tight as a quivering bow was unexpected. It was terrifying. Whatever was going on here was bigger than the fall-out of some adolescent rebellion.
Jonas glared at his father, torn between utter confusion and sudden fear. ‘Dad? What is going on? I think I deserve the truth, don’t you?’
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