Then -- catching Arthur's expression -- she launched into a Jamie Oliver impersonation -- 'me old codger', 'laaaarvely!' and 'pukka, innit?' while slouched on the other side of Mal on the couch. Then she tried mimicking a Paul Hollywood handshake, or at least it was probably that.
It lured him away from thoughts that at nearly nine, the twins didn't need quite as much babying as Mal gave them. Unarticulated murmurings about 'favourites' and 'not fair' lurked around in his head sometimes. But he was busy, and couldn't pay any attention to them. Crazy thoughts, and he had to have imagined them.
Arthur was fond of his host family – he loved them. Fae were not as cold-blooded as biased observers might have a person believe. But he wasn't attached to the point that his objectivity was compromised.
Neither Pip-pip nor Jimmy could be derailed for long, and shortly managed to worm out the facts.
When Dom came through the door, they'd quietened down a little – or at least they didn't need to pay so much attention to Pip. She was a daddy's girl, as much as Mal favoured Jimmy. It could be pretty sickening – a person might have thought the rest of the family suddenly ceased to exist. Anyway it saved them having to go through the whole story of the heart palpitations, since Pip spilled it all.
Dom went immediately into action mode, energized, fierce. When Mal wasn't co-operative about calling an ambulance, haring through Slough with siren wailing, he got her in a bear-hug up against the stone sink. Then he started whispering, firm and authoritative.
Pip came over and sat on the floor, leant against Arthur's knee and started relaying all the filth and scandal of her school clique. She still found it embarrassing, when Mal and Dom acted like boyfriend and girlfriend. Arthur sometimes felt a bit flushed himself. But not really. It was quite sweet. At least they weren't shagging other people. Or screaming at each other about bills, which made a change from the parents of some people he knew at college.
As it turned out, when Dad decided it was imperative that Mum let him drive her to A&E in the people carrier, and get a quick once-over from some frazzled junior house-officer, then Mum, too, thought it imperative. As opposed Arthur or the twins saying the exact same thing.
Mum was a Daddy's girl, too. Dinner was on hold, stuck in the Aga, and he and the kids piled into the back of the car before they set off. Dom lectured on the journey about the good sense of Steve who had his little problem sorted out and was skiing in Gstaad as they spoke, while that moron Ted refused to get his thingummy checked up and, well, poor Leela hadn't even got his pension to get by on, with the whole final salary fiasco.
Yes Dad. Sure, Dad. Dom, Jesus. First sign of a leader of men: they never shut the fuck up.
Next morning Arthur woke up to a weekend. Good, in itself, yet with that trace of a niggling feeling wriggling in his mind – a feeling of something better yet, if he could just locate it, beckoning him on, waiting on the horizon.
He stretched out in the hillocks and tangles of his rumpled duvet, listening to silence. Then he located the missing data, and his body desisted its twitching, relaxed. Yeah, the young medical student in A&E last night: Arthur was seeing him again tonight. Except out of a clinical setting.
Who could resist a Fae approach, after all. A trace of glamour, embroidering his usual late-adolescent appearance to something more mature, compassionate and responsible... And hot, with it, while seeming almost unaware of the fact. Obviously. And, well. So he reached out for the phone beside his bed. No time was too early to pass on the latest to Ariadne.
Squeals greeted the news: she was almost too overcome for coherent speech. She sucked all the details out of him: hair, eyes, general fitness, car, seniority, salary. Religion, sock size, favourite cheese. Maybe she was a bit over-enthused. Of course she couldn't ever, quite, escape her indoctrination: nice middle class girls became doctors all the time these days (till they had kids and went part-time). But it was still slightly higher in status, for some parents, to marry one, and be loaded enough to stay home with the kids. Too bad, too bad. You couldn't escape destiny when it was up too close to see.
Of course, Ariadne was aiming for architecture. But it still applied.
She did ask the question Arthur had been evading. "But Arthur... Don't you think Nash might be a bit, um, upset?"
Oh, Nash was going to be upset. Arthur almost rubbed his hands, thinking about it.
And Ariadne - sweet, gullible Ariadne - would think him upset because, well, poor pining Nash! With his pathetic sweet crush on Arthur, based on the least littlest bits of encouragement, over the years!
Not psychopathically competitive Nash, panting and wanking over the urge to eliminate and destroy, no. Ugh. Obsessed with Arthur to the point of insanity, but not in any sweet pat-on-the-head kind of way. Whatever he feigned to Ariadne, looking for a socially acceptable reason for his monomanic stalkery slobbering.
Fae powers were a bummer sometimes, alright. You couldn't call it telepathy: just those brief moments of harmonizing with a human mind, the silenced world shut out. And all of that dribbling sociopathy falling out, like stinking entrails. In the very worst instances. Not all humans were so repulsive.
But Ariadne was better off with her delusions. And Arthur was keeping the little turd close enough to keep an eye on.
"He'll get used to it. He has done before." An ominous silence greeted him – not hostility, but anxiety. Then she piped up. "Well, yes, if getting used to it means shutting up about it. And glaring at us. But those other lads were just spotty gits from rival schools, Arthur."
Not a glamorous older guy. Not a doctor. Not someone with a car, a salary and a swish riverside flat. Hmm. "Well, okay. I see your point. Maybe." Arthur still didn't want to hear it, though. He made his excuses, and arranged to meet up in town in the afternoon for a coffee. Leaving Arthur the morning to brood. Plenty o' time.
Shrugging on his dressing gown, he took a Mickey Spillane novel from Cobb's bookcase, and went downstairs to make a cuppa before taking both up to the main bathroom: his ensuite was too small for thinking in. Everyone was still asleep: so he was free and easy with the coffee grinder. Mal didn't like him to drink strong coffee: due to her very French upbringing, she was disappointed in her very British children. Their lack of exquisite manners, no fondness for bizarre European torch singers, no respect for their elders, a refusal to eat what was on their plates, and tolerate hot milk barely flavoured with the bean.
Bolshy ill-mannered British kids, in short: and the irony was that she'd married an American to get them.
Often, seeing Arthur bearing an espresso cup, she snapped that he would die of a broken leg and pneumonia, once he'd given himself osteoporosis. When he was eighty. Like, right, Mum?
Arthur remembered eighty. Those were the days.
* Cassandra Clare
