It was a confining environment, living in a shared house, yet it was a much bigger world than Helen had ever been part of. All she had to do was to come out from her shell, and there’d be someone to talk to.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘There must be something.’
‘Well, if you want the whole boring life story …’
‘I do.’
‘Okay,’ he drawled, finished the biscuit he’d been eating, and brushed the crumbs from his hands.
Jason had only caught a glimpse of the contents in the folder which had lain open on Helen’s lap, the one she seemed so keen for him to forget about. A headline about a murdered woman and her child, a picture with the name Mimi Stephanov underneath it. A company logo of an R and a D cleverly intertwined like a royal insignia. No dates, but the newspaper clippings were yellowed with age so it couldn’t be that recent. Was Helen related to this woman? The child who was mentioned? Her reaction had told him it was private, not work-related.
Her face was animated now that the focus had shifted away from herself, and he supposed he ought to let her have this little triumph. Another time he might try to delve deeper with her, but for now let it be the other way around.
Of course, it was possible she was interested in him, which was flattering, and he wasn’t going to discourage it. He was certainly interested in her, one way or another, the mystery or the woman. Or even both.
She was smiling expectantly. Jason took in the full lips and that cute little dip above her mouth he hadn’t really noticed before, and wondered how it would feel to kiss those lips. Probably very nice.
Then he stopped himself. One thing at a time. Right now she wanted to know more about him, the rest could come later, perhaps.
The question was how much to tell her.
‘I’m an only child,’ he said. ‘My father is a, well, I suppose you’d call him a self-made business man. He worked himself up from humble beginnings, and then tried to give me everything he never had as a child, you know expensive toys, the right clothes, boarding school. It all meant that I was a spoilt little brat until I discovered how the other half lives.’
‘I can’t imagine you being spoilt.’
‘Why is that so difficult to imagine?’ he said, with more feeling than he intended. He snapped off a blade of grass and tossed it aside irritably. ‘You’d be surprised. I was intolerable. Of course, the perverse thing about parent-child relationships is that parents try to show their love in one particular way, their way, but the children only see that they’re not loved in the way they think they ought to be loved. It can get into a right old muddle sometimes.’
Helen watched him quietly with those arresting eyes of hers. Could she tell there was more going on between him and his father than met the eye? At the best of times he found it hard to hide his irritation with his father, and it must have sounded like the sore point it was.
‘And what about your mother?’ she asked.
‘My mother keeps dogs.’
‘What?’
‘Dogs, yes. Day in, day out, dogs, dogs, dogs. That’s what she does.’
‘What kind of dogs? Does she own a kennel?’
‘Pekes. Pekingese,’ he explained in response to her confused look. ‘And she doesn’t run a kennel, more’s the pity. She has them at home. Five of them. Drives my father around the twist. Can’t say I blame him. Annoying little yappers if you ask me, but she adores them.’
Helen laughed, and the sound of her carefree laughter did something funny to his stomach.
‘What?’ he said, both peeved and delighted.
‘You. Your mum and her dogs. Your poor dad.’ She laughed again. ‘I can just see them. It’s wonderful.’
‘Wonderful? It’s bloody awful. My family are messed up and get on each other’s nerves, and you think it’s funny, do you?’ He made his voice sound extra stern but for some reason she’d managed to take the sting out of his bust-up with his father. When he thought of it now, it was almost irrelevant.
‘At least you have a family,’ she said.
‘And you don’t?’
She shrugged. ‘Not really. Just aunties and stuff.’
‘Yeah, I have a few of those, on my father’s side. They’re a bit younger than him, so he doesn’t see much of them.’
‘And what are they like?’
He picked up another biscuit and sent her a look of mock despair. ‘WAGs. Think Footballers’ Wives, and that should give you a pretty good idea. Opinionated, expensive hair, lots of bling. But they’re very nice.’