Throwaways by Jenny Thomson Page B

“You might want to take the wok away from the heat.”
    Despite my serious expression, he grinned.
    “Christ, Nancy. Can’t you keep your hands off me for five minutes? You’re insatiable, darling.”
    He knew I hated being called darling.
    My scowl cut him dead in his tracks.
    “Okay, I get it. You want a serious talk.”
    He pulled out one out of the chairs from the table for me and sat down on the other.
    “I suppose you want to know if my intentions towards you are noble, Miss Kerr?”
    A chuckle stuck in my throat; came out as a snort. If only it were that easy.
    “Stop messing around.” I said. “This is serious.”
    The tone of my voice surprised him. “Okay, fire away.”
    Part of me wanted to tell him to put the dinner back on and we’d watch some nonsense on the TV and pretend I hadn’t said anything, but I had to know who this man I’d trusted was.
    What kind of person would let their own mother think they were dead?
    He knew my deepest, darkest secrets; why I woke up at night, drenched in sweat, screaming “no” over and over again. Yet he’d hidden something this important from me?
    What the hell was going on?
    “I went to see your mum today.”
    There was no preamble, I spat it out.
    He slammed a fist down on the table. “You did what?”
    When you’ve stared death in the face, not once, but twice, a man pounding his fist down on a table doesn’t so much as make you flinch even when he’s glaring at you crazy-eyed.
    “I visited your mum. Don’t think you’re the only one with the right to be surprised. You told me your mum was dead. But, of course, that was just another lie.”
    My heart was a big stress ball that was being squeezed.
    Tommy’s shoulders relaxed. “Did you see her? How was she?”
    At least he wasn’t going to try and insult my intelligence by trying to deny it.
    “Oh,” I shrugged, “she was fine for someone who was meant to be dead; very well-preserved. We had a nice wee chat over tea and she told me about her sons Sammy and Tommy and how they both died.”
    Tommy couldn’t meet my gaze. His eyes faced towards the wall as though he was buying time before he spoke.
    “What the fuck is going on, Tommy? Why does she think you’re dead?”
    “I can’t tell you.” He briefly looked up to say that, met my gaze, steady no wavering. “I can’t.”
    “Okay,” I said, dragging my chair across the floor and getting up. “In that case I’m going and I won’t be back.” The blood pounded around my brain. “I’ve had enough lying bastards to last me a lifetime. You won’t be seeing me again.”
    I was marching out the door when he called after me.
    “Nancy, I’ll tell you everything. Just come back.”
    There was something about the way he spoke that made me stop.
    “Okay, you’ve got 2 minutes. Talk and don’t leave anything out.”
    “How much do you know about the military campaign in Iraq?”
    We were sitting at the kitchen table across from one another. We were within touching distance, but we might as well have been thousands of miles apart because I no longer knew the man sitting opposite me. I never had.
    “As much as anyone,” I said, answering his question, whilst wondering why the hell it mattered when I was sitting across from a liar. “The weapons of mass destruction were never found. Tony Blair took us into the war on a lie.”
    Tommy frowned. “I meant the actual operations on the ground.”
    “Same answer,” I snapped. I didn’t need a lesson on the military operation in Iraq. I wanted to know why Tommy had faked his own death.
    Tommy reached his hand out across the table as if he was going to place it on top of mine, but the sour look he got from me made him think twice and he withdrew his hand as if a crocodile had snapped at it.
    He settled for giving me a sincere look instead.
    “I need to explain how things were so you’ll understand why…”
    I jumped in; I couldn’t help myself. “Why you let your own mother believe you