This time, he followed Mo into the vast chrome and granite fitted kitchen – which, even more than last time, looked like somewhere no one actually did any cooking. Had Mo’s ‘girl’, Marika, just been? But then he reflected that Mo probably didn’t spend much time here. Living alone, in this vast place, must be a very different business than in the overcrowded terrace he shared with his mam and dad, and now Nicky. He wondered if Mo ever felt lonely.
He felt glad, then, that Paula had persuaded him to go home. As his dad had said gently to him only yesterday, he’d punished his mam enough.
‘Take a seat, boy,’ Mo said, pointing to a black leather bar stool – one of four that were arranged around a freestanding breakfast bar. ‘It’s called an Island,’ Paula had whispered to him the last time. ‘You want some coffee?’ Mo asked him, nodding in the direction of a complicated machine that stood hissing on the adjacent worktop.
Joey climbed up onto the nearest stool, careful not to place his hands on the pristine and fingerprint-free granite.
Joey had already smelled the coffee, and he nodded a yes. Wake up and smell the coffee, he thought to himself. Well, he was certainly doing that right now. He drank in the aroma. Proper coffee, too. He couldn’t wait to tell Paula. And with the thought came a memory that he held very dear. Of Paula saying, when she’d stayed over, the night he’d gone back, that when they got their own place, the first thing they would do would be to buy a proper percolator. How did that happen? How’d you get from going out a couple of times to planning to live together in so short a time? It was as unexpected as it was exhilarating, but it was infinitely more exhilarating. Was that how it worked? That when you knew, you just knew?
After some ceremony – elegant cups in matching saucers, a fancy cream jug, tiny teaspoons – Mo finally handed Joey his coffee and sat down opposite him.
‘This is the life,’ Joey said, because the occasion seemed to call for it. ‘I tell you what, if me and my Paula ever make it big, we’re going to have a place just like this too.’ He felt himself redden under Mo’s benign scrutiny. ‘“If” being very much the operative word,’ he added quickly.
Mo, who’d taken a delicate first sip, set down his cup and shook his head. ‘Don’t use the word “if”, boy,’ he said. ‘That’s just setting yourself up to fail. Use the word “when”, always. Say “when” you make it big. And even if that isn’t what you’re doing right now – yet – always intend on making it big. Always.’
Joey grinned. ‘Is that what you brought me here for, Mo? A pep talk?’ Then cursed himself for his boldness because it seemed to displease Mo, who stood up abruptly, and went to the window, where he stared silently out across the vast expanse of garden. Or at least that was what it looked like; he could be staring into space. He had his hands in his trouser pockets and Joey could see the tense way in which he was holding himself.
Joey picked up his own cup – the handles were so small it was a job getting his finger into the hole – and wondered if Mo was about to let him go. Or tell him things at the club weren’t working out. Something bad, anyway. The little speech – and the way Mo had said it – had felt altogether like the sort of thing you’d say when you were about to let someone down.
‘What is it, Mo? Did we do something wrong?’ Joey asked finally, the sound of silence getting altogether too loud. ‘Are things still alright down at the club?’
He braced, waiting to hear that everything had gone tits up before he’d even got started. He hadn’t forgotten how many clubs had been set up and closed down before this one. Oh, how his mum would bloody crow.
Mo shook his head and turned around, then crossed one ankle over the other, leaning back against the run of kitchen units. His shoes were as brightly polished as the worktops. Did he look like things were going tits up? No.
He sighed. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, boy, okay? So I’m just gonna say it.’
‘Say what?’ Joey asked him. ‘You’re fucking scaring me now, Mo.’
Mo’s teeth flashed white as he returned from his vigil at the window. He sat down again. ‘You’re my boy, Joey,’ he said. Then nothing more.
Again came that sense that Mo was setting him up for a disappointment. ‘Yeah, I know that,’ Joey said. ‘Course I do. I know you have my back.’
‘No, Joey,’ Mo said. ‘I mean that I’m your father.’
When he recounted it later, to Paula, as he obviously would, Joey knew he would struggle to find words to describe it – that ‘what the fuck?’ moment when he thought Mo was kidding, then the thump in his chest and, as the blood flowed in his temples, a sensation of falling – of almost spinning out – when, no more than half a second later (it was almost instantaneous), he knew without question that Mo was not kidding at all.
And perhaps he had disappeared somewhere, even as he was rooted to the spot.
‘Joey.’ Mo’s voice was sharp. ‘Joey, are you hearing what I’m saying? I’m your father. You’re my son.’
Joey grabbed the slab of granite now, making claw marks instead of fingerprints, entirely clueless as to how he should process what he was being told. What exactly did you do with that kind of information anyway? What did it mean? What did it change? He pulled Mo back into focus, seeing him anew. Seeing him as a man he barely knew. And was his father. It changed every fucking thing.
‘Look, boy,’ Mo said, reaching out a manicured hand towards him but not touching him. ‘I’m not out to make trouble. I’m not out to make a cunt out of you, okay? I just wanted you to know. So you know. So you see where I’m coming from. Fuck, boy, I knew the very minute I first clocked you. Someone told me you were Christine’s and it was, like, whap!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I’d have known even if they hadn’t. I’d have worked it out.’
Joey felt a sudden welling of emotion that he couldn’t put a name to. Just everything, he decided, just the whole fucking bigness of it all. He searched Mo’s face – not for meaning; Mo’s meaning couldn’t have been plainer – but for points of physical similarity; for landmarks he could recognise in the handsome, leonine face. Features that could be singled out and ticked off and counted. The same jawline, the same eyes, the same fucking smile, even. Why the fuck had he not noticed any of this before?
Oh, you are so your mother’s son! People said that to him often. Had done so all his life – oh, you’re the spit of your mam, Joey! Such a Parker! And all this despite the one glaring bloody fact that no Parker alive had ever had brown skin and a head of wayward curls. Despite? Or because of? That point hit him hard now. Just how hard everyone worked to try and help him forget the stark reality that he wasn’t just a Parker – he was something else too.
He was Mo’s. He shared half of his genes.
‘You need some time,’ Mo said, clearly interpreting his racing thoughts. ‘I get that, and I’m sorry to just lay it all on you like this. It’s a lot to swallow. But it’s a fact, and you needed to know the truth.’
Truth. Joey found himself jolted into a completely different mindset. Truth. And its opposite – lies. The lie he’d lived with all his life, more specifically.
The questions teeming in his mind became more and more urgent. ‘Why?’ Joey asked Mo, the polite coffee break now forgotten. ‘Why now? Why not fucking years ago?’ He paused, but not for long. ‘Why not back when I was a kid and didn’t know why my dad didn’t want me? Had disowned me. Why my mam wouldn’t tell me. Why I had a step-dad but –’ Another thought hit him hard. ‘Does my dad even know about this?’
Mo nodded. ‘Yes, he does. He’s always known, Joey. And listen’ – he raised his hands, the gold of his rings glinting – ‘I have no intention – none, okay – of trying to step in and mug Brian off. He’s always been your