Page 29 of All Mine (The All Mine #1)
Etienne
Brothers from Another Mother WhatsApp group
Fox : The good news– the investors fucking love the game!
Walker : Well done, bud.
Etienne : You going to be rich now then?
Fox : The bad news– they want a couple of extensions designed over the coming months before they buy.
Etienne : So, I guess Walker and I are making rockets this weekend?
Fox : Lifesavers.
Fox : Talking about projects, Etienne– they’re planning a project on cooking at school. I gave your name to the class teacher. . . She wants you to go in and cook something French.
Etienne : You owe me, mate.
Fox : I know.
Etienne felt a rush of love for Fox. He worked bloody hard, putting in long hours after his boys were in bed.
He deserved success. Maybe his game would take off and be a worldwide phenomenon, the next Fortnite or Roblox , and Fox would never have to work again.
You never knew what was around the corner.
He touched a wooden windowsill nearby, an old superstition since losing his parents, trying to hold luck close to him.
Things were going well on two fronts, and he wanted to keep it that way. Firstly, bookings for the restaurant were full for weeks and he could add to the ￡40,000 for Alex with every good day’s work. And secondly, the hot Italian Isabella was caving in. He just knew it.
He threw a look out the window, as he often did, to see if he could catch a glimpse of her painting the frontage or planting window boxes, hair in a messy bun or tucked under a baseball cap.
She was hot even when she was decorating.
But not today. In fact, he hadn’t seen her for a few days, maybe close to a week. Hmmm.
The phone rang in his hand and he half expected it to be Fox again, laughingly apologising for volunteering him to go into a class of children and teach them how to cook.
Him, the most child-free man in town. What was he going to do with a bunch of six-year-olds?
When he glanced at the screen and saw Alex’s name, he sank down on the nearest seat to answer.
‘Hello?’ he said hesitantly.
‘Et?’ Alex said, sounding equally anxious, but Etienne held the phone tighter at the sound of his brother’s voice. It had been so long.
‘Al,’ he said back and his face broke into a grin. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m okay,’ he answered and Etienne could hear the smile in his voice too.
‘Where are you?’ Etienne could hear other sounds down the phone, people talking, something clanking in the distance.
‘The train station.’
Etienne’s stomach dropped. Was he leaving again? Before he even came home? What was going on?
‘Where? Where are you going?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m moving around until I get this sorted. Now that I’ve made contact with the Dougalls, I don’t feel safe staying in one place.’
‘But you’ve told them you want to clear your debt?’ Etienne said. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Contacted the pub landlord where they run the poker games from. Told him to pass on my message. He said they’d be in touch.’ They both considered that in silence for a moment. It sounded ominous.
‘How long ago was that?’
‘A few days. But nothing yet.’
‘You worried?’ Etienne asked quietly.
‘Been worried for years, Et. But now it feels worse. Like I’m so close to getting out of it, you know?
’ Alex’s voice shook. Although they were twins, Etienne suddenly felt older than him.
Responsible for making everything better.
Alex paused while a train announcement sounded far away, mentioning Newcastle and other places.
‘I want to come home. To start a real life. I’ve made a lot of wrong decisions over the past few years, all because I couldn’t trust myself.’
Etienne watched out of the restaurant window as he tried to imagine where his brother was. Somewhere in the north by the sound of it. Faraway cities flashed through his mind– Middlesbrough, Leeds. . . He could be anywhere.
‘What’s the plan then, with the Dougalls?’ he asked.
When Alex replied, it was in a whisper. As though he didn’t want people to hear.
‘When they contact me, I won’t give them any clues as to where I am. I need to do this on my terms. It’s safer. That’s why I want to stay on the move until it’s done.’
Etienne imagined his brother existing in cheap bed and breakfasts and living out of a suitcase. He closed his eyes.
‘Hopefully I can just transfer the funds, or arrange a drop-off point for the money and hand it over. And that will be it. A clean slate.’
It sounded a bit too easy to Etienne. Were they being terribly naive?
‘Why don’t you come here now? And wait for them to contact you? I’ve got a spare room. You can hide out upstairs.’
‘Etienne . . .’
‘You wouldn’t even have to come downstairs if you don’t want to. Just think, you could place your order and it would be like having a fantastic French bistro delivery service, three times a day.’
‘No.’
‘But I could look after you here, Al,’ Etienne said, realising how urgent he sounded. How much he wanted to do the right thing this time.
‘I don’t want to put you in danger.’
They listened to each other breathing down the phone. As they had done in their cots, and in their twin beds in their shared room before they fell asleep. It was oddly comforting.
‘Are the Dougalls that bad?’ Etienne asked.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Alex said.
‘Like what?’ Etienne said, unable to leave it alone, morbidly curious.
‘Like people getting branded for cheating in a game. On the face. With a hot screwdriver. Which they make the cheat heat up themselves on the fire. They carve the letter D on their cheek.’
Etienne flinched. Images of cattle branding flooding his mind. The branding iron, the red glow of the hot iron, the sizzle as it touched flesh. The smell, he could imagine the smell.
‘And someone didn’t pay their debt quickly enough, so they got their thugs to pay his wife a visit and beat her until he got home with the money.’
Etienne exhaled slowly. He hadn’t realised that all those terrible stories he’d heard were actually true.
‘So, now you see why I’m staying on the move. And why I don’t want anyone linking us together.’
‘I get it.’
‘It would be safer all round to keep it between us until it’s over.’
‘It’s okay, Al. I understand.’
They were silent again, as if taking in the severity of the situation.
‘It would be good to think I might be home in time for Mum and Dad’s anniversary.’
Etienne took a deep breath. He was aware of the turn of the calendar as it got closer to October.
He felt the date looming over him. The day his parents died in a car crash five years ago.
It had been a day like any other for him, for them.
A bright and breezy autumn day which blew leaves from the trees.
He’d been working as assistant manager in a hotel in Ealing.
He’d been on the late shift and started at midday, by chance calling his parents as he hurried along a side street in West London to work.
His mum had been happy to hear from him, but then she always was.
She put him on speaker to tell him about a character in the new book she was writing, an old lady who owned a fish and chip shop who had never been to the sea.
‘So, guess where we’re going now?’ his dad called in the background and his mum laughed.
‘The seaside!’ she said. ‘For ice cream and paddling. Research purposes of course!’ And that was last time he spoke to them.
A lorry travelling at seventy miles per hour on the M27 burst its tyre, lost control and smashed their blue Volkswagen Golf into the central reservation of the motorway.
Emergency services said that his parents would have died instantly.
The one happy thought, that Etienne clung to, was that they were on their way home from the coast. They had eaten their ice creams and done their paddling.
‘That would be good,’ he answered Alex softly, thinking of how he normally marked the anniversary. A closed restaurant. A good bottle of French wine. Alone.
‘So, I’ll let you know when they make contact. And then I can arrange next steps. I’ll have to get the money from you. . .’
‘I’m almost there with it.’ Etienne felt his jaw pop as he clenched his teeth together.
‘And I’ll pay you back, Et. Every penny.’
‘I know,’ Etienne agreed with him, not intending to take a penny. Because as Alex paid off his debts, so Etienne would have a clean slate too.