style="font-size:15px;"> ‘JACK!’
Blake was delighted to see him. ‘Janey got hurt.’
‘I’m fine,’ Janey insisted. ‘I fell over, ice skating.’ She rolled up her sleeve and showed a rather spectacular bruise, as Nina came through to the lounge and he saw the tension on her face.
‘Great, isn’t it?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sending her back black and blue.’
‘It was an accident, ice skating,’ Jack calmly pointed out.
‘It will be fine, Nina,’ Janey said, and he heard the younger sister trying to reassure the older, actually heard the rare tenderness in Janey’s voice. And despite appearances, despite the horrible things she said at times, Jack realised Janey really did love Nina.
‘So how did you all go?’ Jack followed her into the bedroom where Nina was packing.
‘Okay, I guess, but Janey took herself off to bed at eight last night and this morning she didn’t want to talk. Still, it was fun ice skating till she fell. How was your night?’
‘Yeah, okay.’ He didn’t even have to be evasive, Nina simply didn’t want the details.
Everyone was trying to ignore that the small holiday was over, trying to pretend that everything was fine. It was Blake who couldn’t hold out.
‘I don’t want to go back.’
Jack was loading up the car when Blake said it.
‘I know,’ Nina answered, as she always did, because Blake never wanted to go back, only this time it was different. ‘Couldn’t we stay another night?’ Janey asked.
‘We can’t,’ Nina replied. ‘Blake’s got school tomorrow and we’ve got to go and sort things out.’
Nina watched as Jack locked up the house and when he climbed into the car and drove off, he didn’t really say much. For once it was Janey who was talking.
‘What are we doing tonight?’
‘Sleeping,’ Nina said. ‘And we can set up your bedroom.’
‘Jack can do that,’ Janey said.
‘Uh-oh …’ Jack shook his head. ‘I’ve got to head home once I’ve dropped you guys off.’ He glanced in the mirror as he said it and saw Janey’s frown, but didn’t pay too much attention to it.
‘I think I might go back to Barbara’s tonight.’ Janey’s voice from the back seat broke into her thoughts.
‘Barbara’s?’ Nina swung around. ‘I thought the whole point of running away was because you didn’t want to ever go back there!’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Janey …’ Nina was struggling to keep exasperation out of her voice. ‘Let’s just leave things as they are. We can have a nice night, just the two of us, and sort things out, talk things out …’
Jack glanced in the mirror again and saw that Janey was back to looking out of the window, realising then that the last thing Janey wanted was another night alone with Nina.
Why?
He said nothing, just kept driving, but his mind was working overtime.
Why wouldn’t Janey want a night alone with her big sister? He went through things just as he would with a patient, doing his best to take all the emotion out—except it was impossible to extract emotion from this equation.
Janey was back to scowling and as they approached Manhattan Blake started to cry.
‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’ Nina daren’t say it might be sooner, not until she had spoken with his social worker. There was an appointment next week for them to come and see her flat—the wheels tended to move really slowly when a child wasn’t in danger. Jack said nothing. He really didn’t know how to deal with the situation. He could see Janey’s angry expression in the rear-view mirror, could almost feel the daggers she was hurling at him embedding in his back.
‘Just here,’ Nina said as they approached the house where Blake lived, and Jack wondered how she did this every fortnight. Saying goodbye once was bad enough, but having to do it week in and week out must kill her. He helped her to get Blake’s case out of the boot and saw her pale face as she did her best to stay calm for Blake, who was really crying now and clinging to her.
‘Of course you can show me your poster.’ She glanced up at Jack. ‘I might be a while.’
‘Take your time.’
‘Can Jack come and see it?’ Blake asked hopefully, but Jack shook his head.
‘I’m going to wait in the car.’
Nina didn’t blame him. He wasn’t trying to impress Blake, or be his best friend, or proxy father, but she felt the sting of his rejection and it compounded her thoughts that she must end this soon, because after just one weekend Blake already hero-worshipped him. He’d already had enough loss in his life and she didn’t want him falling in love with Jack, only to lose him too.
In fact, Jack would’ve loved to have made this transition easier for Blake, would have happily gone in and looked at his hockey posters, but he had a feeling that there was a rather more difficult conversation to be had and that it was about to take place.
Jack’s instincts were rarely wrong.
‘Happy now?’ Janey demanded as soon as he got into the car. ‘You give him the best weekend, driving around in your flash Jag, and then drop him back …’ She was going ballistic and Jack just sat there. ‘Mr Nice Guy!’ Janey sneered, and Jack sat there as she told him how he thought he was better than them, better looking than them and that he was messing around with her sister.
Jack anticipated what would come next, warned Janey that if she spoke like that again, he would get out of the car and go and get Nina, which was when Janey burst into tears. In the end there was no need for a long talk—all Jack really had to do was listen.
‘Can you tell Nina this?’ Jack asked.
‘No,’ Janey sobbed. ‘Because she panics about everything, she feels guilty about everything. I know you think she’s good at her job, and calm about things, but she loses her temper when it comes to us and she’ll go crazy when she finds out …’
And Jack smiled an invisible smile, because Nina would do that. ‘I’m scared she’ll get into trouble and lose her job or something.’
‘Your sister is not going to get into trouble,’ Jack assured her, ‘and neither are you—you’ve done nothing wrong.’ He was very certain on that. ‘Can I speak with Nina about it?’ he asked. ‘I can come back to the apartment and we can talk about it tonight …’
‘No!’ Janey begged, her hand moving to open the door.
‘Don’t run off, Janey.’ Jack was stern and she shrank back in the seat. He would have spoken some more but all too soon Nina was coming out of the house,
