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The cafe is the kind of place you thought had gone out of style in about the 1980s – plastic seats, tables with cheap veneer, tomato sauce in squeezy bottles. It offers sandwiches with no nonsense fillings such as cheese or ham and nothing else, as well as peddling the infamous 'all day breakfast' to people who don't much concern themselves with such things as cholesterol. Meanwhile their tea is even darker and stronger than the rather grey liquid that passes for coffee here. It's hardly your sort of place really, but neither is it his, and there's a certain entertainment that comes from seeing him enter, look around disdainfully, spot you in the corner and have to navigate his way over in his obviously very expensive dark woollen coat and perfectly polished shoes that probably cost more than most of the cafe's patrons earn in several months. He is punctual, walking in at bang on 11 a.m.; you have to give him that much, if nothing else.
“I'm almost surprised you actually came here,” you remark as he slips into the seat opposite you, clearly trying his best to touch all of the surfaces as little as possible. You know though that he only allowed you to pick the meeting place because he had absolutely no desire to invite you to one of his clubs, and you refuse to go back to his house still.
“Why in God's name did you choose this place?” he asks.
“Because it amuses me to see you come down in the world. Here.” You slide the second mug of the murky grey-brownish liquid over to him. “Got you a coffee.”
He peers down his nose at it although you're not sure whether he suspects you slipped poison in it or he's just not at all convinced it actually is coffee in anything but name. You grin and take a sip of your drink as he places his hands in his lap and studiously ignores the coffee.
Augustus Moran. Father. Daddy dearest. He sits studying you, taking in your hair which is longer than last time he saw you and dyed dark, your denim jacket, your T-shirt with the image of a skull on it, your black jeans, the chipped black varnish on your fingernails.
“You're still dressing like that then.” He sniffs disdainfully. Like a child, he doesn't say, but the inference is there. He doesn't seem surprised though, which rather confirms your suspicions that he's still having you monitored.
“Obviously,” you say wryly.
“Why?”
“Because you hate it.” You laugh bitterly. “What do you want, father?” He has never been dad to you, nor daddy or papa or anything else that might ever convey any affection. “If you've come here just to talk at me the way you usually do, I don't want to hear it.” That is his way – the man has probably only ever had about two real conversations with you, both of them brief, in your entire life. Usually he merely talks at you or over you.
“Just to see how you are.”
“Your little spy not feeding you enough information?” Because you know full well Clara is still telling him everything. Some therapist she is.
He doesn't even have the decency to look embarrassed about this. “At the end of the day,” he says, “you are still my son, Sebastian.”
And don't you just know that, every time you look in the mirror and see those faded blue eyes, that long nose (though yours is somewhat more crooked than his), that hair a shade somewhere between blonde and brown (at least with it dyed you don't have to deal with that particular resemblance currently, though the dye does make a mess on your towels).
You're about to say something scathing probably, letting your mouth run away with you, when he speaks again.
“And your mother would want me to ensure you are looked after.”
You suck in your breath sharply and stare at him.
“You haven't found work yet?” he asks.
“That why you're checking up on me?” you enquire, managing to regain your composure. Yes, you have work here and there, but mostly nothing you're willing to tell him about. “I'm not coming to you pleading for funds so what does it matter?”
“It matters because it will be my name dragged through the mud also if, well...”
“If I have to go on the dole? Or go begging in the streets perhaps?” You arch an eyebrow at him and grin, enjoying his discomfort. Having to go to the job centre and endure their condescension and them trying to foist any unsuitable job onto you, or sitting on the pavement begging passers-by for spare change might almost be worth it just to get in a dig at him. Augustus Moran, former Ambassador to Iran and personal friend of the Prime Minister, who let his only surviving legitimate child descend into poverty. Even though he of course believes you brought all of this upon yourself.
“I can find you work,” he continues. “You remember Silas Webster? He owes me a favour, he would give you a job. A good one, respectable.”
“Working in a bank?” you say incredulously, but he seems not to notice. “I mean this sincerely, father: I'd rather kill myself.”
“You should come home with me,” he says, as if you haven't even spoken. “I can get your old room redecorated, or there are other rooms you could have, of course.”
“Of course,” you echo wryly. Of course many of the rooms are free. It's an empty house most of the time, except for the servants, and they barely count as people to Augustus. As far as you know there is a girlfriend still (younger than Augustus, also of course) but you've never met her and even though you're not a child any more you still can't quite shake off the feeling that any new woman in Augustus's life is going to be some sort of replacement for your mother, wiping her memory out even further. “That's why you asked to see me? To try to shove me into a job I don't want, to drag me back to your house?”
“Our family home, Sebastian,” he says.
“Your house,” you repeat, firmly. Some family, you think. The patriarch who cares only for his reputation and the son he wishes had died instead of his favourite. “And if I come back, will you try locking me in my room again? Slip sedatives into my food?”
“That was...!” He has unwittingly raised his voice, but he corrects himself and lowers it. “It was hardly like that.”
“It was exactly like that.” Your jaw has tensed and you practically spit this out between your teeth.
“You were not well, Sebastian.” He is watching you, studying you, judging you, filing away every bit of information he can read about you as further evidence that you are still, in his view, not well. “In fact I still have concerns about your wellbeing.”
“So why don't you just get me sectioned and have done with it?” you say scathingly, even though it's probably better not to put such ideas in his head. “I'm sure one of your dubious mates could make that happen.”
He closes his eyes momentarily and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if he has a headache. “I have only ever wanted what is best for you,” he says slowly, opening his eyes again, looking at you. His words have the ring of something rehearsed about them, something he says for the sake of appearances.
“No.” You shake your head. “You wanted what you thought was best for me, what you thought I was supposed to want.” Augustus wanted an obedient child who toed the line, who grew up to have a steady and respectable career and a pretty wife and soon after that churned out an heir and a spare. All very mediocre. “But I don't want any of that.”
“Then what do you want?!” He slams his hand down on the table, making the spoons clatter and you flinch back, and you hate yourself for doing so, hate too that your hands tremor just a little as you put them into your lap.
Several people around you stop their conversations and stare at the two of you, finding your father's antics more entertaining than discussing their children or television shows or the football or whatever it was they were talking about until Augustus's little outburst. When he stares fiercely back at them though most return to their own conversations, leaving only one woman paying attention to you – Sharon, the cafe's owner.
“You all right love?” she calls to you.
Augustus resolutely ignores her, leaving you to answer. “Fine, thank you. Just a small difference of opinion.” You glare at him and remember being up in that tree, back against the rough bark, feet braced against a large branch and the leaves rustling around you, with the gun's sun-warmed metal in your hands, looking down at him – him with no idea that he was being watched through a rifle's scope.
Sometimes you still wish you'd pulled that trigger.
“What do you want, Sebastian?” he asks again, quieter now, his anger largely simmering beneath the surface once more. “Hm?”
You half-turn your head and give him a sidelong glance and, bizarrely, what runs through your mind in that instant are snatches of a song, one that Kitty somehow dragged you into performing with her last week at a karaoke session in her local pub. Don't you want somebody to love? Don't you need somebody to love? Wouldn't you love somebody to love? Ridiculously inappropriate, you think, and behind that is the thought that you shouldn't have come here, you should have given in to the temptation to stay longer with the attractive couple you spent last night and part of the morning with. Liam and Rowena. They had asked you to stay longer even as you insisted you had to go to meet someone, Liam's hand snaking down into your boxers, Rowena practically nibbling on your ear. Definitely not love, not between you and either of them, but it was a pleasant distraction. “Nothing you can provide me with, I assure you,” you say coolly. You turn your face back towards him again. “Did you ever love her?” you ask. “My mother?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“An important one. Did you ever truly love her, or was she just a trophy to you?” The Scandinavian beauty with poise and intelligence, the gifted horsewoman, the woman who could charm anybody. You have no idea what she ever saw in Augustus, though she must have loved him once, you suppose.
“I...” He clears his throat. “Of course I loved her. She was my wife.”
“That doesn't mean you loved her.” You take another sip of your coffee, relieved that your hand doesn't shake as you pick up the mug. What you don't ask is did you ever love me? Somewhere within that stuffed shirt of a man is some genuine sense of duty towards you maybe, some feelings of paternal responsibility (however twisted) but love? No. “Well,” you say, setting your mug back down on the scratched veneer of the tabletop. “You've seen me now, you know at least I'm not lying dead in a gutter somewhere, is that enough for you?”
“Not at all,” he says, and strangely there almost seems to be a flicker of sadness in his eyes, just for a second or two. “Look, Sebastian.”
“Drink your coffee or you'll offend Sharon,” you say, nodding towards her turned back as she wipes down a recently vacated table.
Augustus stares morosely into his mug before gingerly picking it up and taking a sip. “Good lord, that's terrible.”
“Isn't it.” You drain your own mug anyway.
“If you do need some money...” He takes another sip, grimacing again.
“I don't want your money.” Although logically you should probably take whatever you can get right now, since you're sure the old bastard will disinherit you and leave his estate to some obscure second cousin rather than you. He probably owes you too, after all the things he put you through. But you still don't want it. It would only sit there in your bank account, reminding you of things you don't want to remember and continuing to bind you to him.
“All right.” He sets his mug down, apparently giving up on drinking the alleged coffee. “If you change your mind though, about coming home, or about the money, you know how to contact me.” When you nod, wordlessly, he stands up and holds out a hand to you, and you want to snub him, to brush him off, because a brief moment of almost-civility from him cannot even begin to atone for what he did to you in the past.
You stand up and shake his hand across the table though, if only because you don't want to look like an unreasonable asshole in front of the other customers.
You watch him leave, thoughtfully, tracking his progress across the room towards the door, then out into the street where he climbs into the back of a waiting black car. You down the remainder of Augustus's drink, mostly to avoid having to tell Sharon her coffee is awful but also because you like the caffeine, if nothing else about it.
You still have no idea what the fuck that was about, why Augustus wanted to see you face to face, why this couldn't have been a phonecall instead, as if he thought perhaps you'd be more likely to acquiesce to him if you actually saw him? Honestly though, you'd expected more forcefulness from him, more him marching in and demanding you return back to the big house, far more like his behaviour in the hospital. He seemed somewhat subdued though, and when you think it over now you properly realise how much older he seems lately, how much more lined his face is, how his jowls have sagged. For the first time perhaps it makes you consider that your father is a mortal man after all.
You just wish this was something you'd realised much sooner.