Sibylline Greetings (Book 2, the LiteraTours Cozy Mystery Series)

Chapter 3 - It's a hard life - Part 1

This is 3/4 free chapters

The electric peppermill toppled over, rolled across the glossy surface of the mahogany dining room table until it hit the solid-silver fruit platter. Jon, with all the wisdom of his nearly thirteen years spent on this planet, most of them wielding a smartphone, labelled his grandparents as poshies. Though he would never admit it to his offspring, Gary supposed the boy might well be right. His father-in-law Bill, a top-shelf corporate lawyer, earned more than enough money to suit his dated taste. More than enough money to pay for Jon's new school. So much money even, Bill felt entitled to interfere with Gary's chosen parenting style, using his cash as a bargaining chip.

Not that banging his fist onto the table would put Gary in the right, overstretched single parent stroke widower or not.

Gary straightened the fallen utensil. "Apologies, I didn't mean that. However, don't you think wanting Jon to stay with you during the whole school term is taking things a tad too far?"

Sandie had the decency to avoid Gary's gaze and kept kneading the satin napkin in her lap.

Bill never flinched. Instead, he raised one supercilious eyebrow, pencil-thin like his moustache, over his horn-rimmed glasses.

Emma had resembled neither of them.

Not in looks, not in her actions. Not in the slightest.

"It's all for the boy's good," Bill drawled. "And yours, actually. You've got way too much on your plate, with running your own business and no time to spare on a traumatised child."

"That's my problem, don't you think? And traumatised is rather strong a label. Yes, Jon suffered when his mother . . . Well, Emma left us rather. That affected him. But traumatised?"

Such tame words for the anguish the little man had vented once, then bottled up. It had taken Gary and the counsellor he hired and paid out of his own pocket almost a year to get the boy to talk. The mobbing at Jon's old school, aggravated by a posse of particularly insensitive teachers, worsened matters. At least, the hours spent on dragging his son from the abyss of his mother's demise helped Gary cope with the loss of his soulmate.

Cope being the operative word. Sometimes he felt like a well-programmed drone buzzing about. Functioning. Not living.

Still, Bill had wormed his way under Gary's skin. Preposterous to assume he would ever concede to seeing his son only during school holidays.

Jon was all that remained. The only thing worth living for. That and the tours perhaps, as they had been Emma's brainchild.

Bill pushed at his spectacles. They weren't slipping, not in the slightest. Gary's father-in-law would never allow such laxity.

"Perhaps not traumatised, but certainly in bad shape. Look, man, you did the right thing when you called us in. The Amersham Institute for boys has everything Jon needs. A safe environment. Counsellors, tutors, special lessons. Jon is truly gifted, he will go far. He's wasted at a state school."

The way Bill pronounced it, the title sounded like an insult.

A shame really, his in-laws had never met Gary's parents. They would have got on like a house on fire. Same elitist worldview. Same snobby principles. The only difference being the depth of their pockets. The twelfth Lord Nettlehole and his lady had been as strapped for cash as the previous generation. Ever since the inheritance taxes owed due to the deaths of three heirs in rapid succession wiped out the Sands's family's fortune and a fire ruined the ancestral pile, nothing much was left of former glory. Apart from a handful of constipated-looking fellows glaring from the family portraits Gary kept in the attic.