Chapter Text
Malcolm practices an open-door policy at the office. He’s not afraid of confrontation (quite the opposite), and he’d rather be disturbed and in the know than left alone and out of the loop.
He’s never regretted this approach, not until in the middle of him dealing with a semi-disastrous MP fuck-up, Jamie bursts into his office to shove a screaming child into his arms.
He drops his BlackBerry. That’s how fucking startled he is.
“What—”
“Two seconds, Malc. I have to go deal with the thing, I’ll be there in two shakes.”
And he’s off to deal with the thing. Malcolm stares at the tiny, wailing human in his arms. It’s fucking loud.
“Sa-am! SAM!”
------
Jamie is not there in two shakes. Granted, Malcolm doesn’t know the official time span constituting a shake, but Jamie’s not back yet thirty fucking minutes later, which are no two shakes in anyone’s book.
It’s Sam’s fucking day off. He didn’t remember that until he’d already prowled most of the floor with a screaming, squirming toddler in his arms. He’s pretty sure that at this point, all of Whitehall knows about this. There’s pictures, probably. He’s going to fucking skin Jamie alive.
He’s got to give it to the wee noisy fuck, she’s got stamina. He thinks it's a she. Who the fuck knows; tiny humans all look alike. This one’s got a head as red as a strawberry, a vocabulary consisting solely of the word "no", and a voice that hasn’t given out yet.
Putting it down is out of the question. Malcolm tried, and almost got strangled for his trouble when the kid grabbed his tie and held on for dear life. So he’s perched on the edge of his desk, tries to ignore the snot and the tears soaking into his suit jacket as he writes emails one-handedly on his phone and barely keeps himself from clamping the other over the baby’s mouth.
“What do I have to do to make you fucking shut up?” he asks about twenty minutes in. “I’m ready to negotiate, just state your fucking demands, all right?”
He’s pretty sure if the baby could speak, it’d demand a clean diaper. He’d be more than willing to provide if he had one; the smell of shit is overwhelming.
I’m going to fucking kill you. Yet another text to Jamie, which he knows is going to go ignored, along with the other six he’s sent, and the numerous calls he’s placed. He doesn’t even know why Jamie would have a baby. It’s not like they’re that easy to come by if you’re a bloke.
Nobody makes use of the open-door policy in his hour of need, which Malcolm knows is no fucking coincidence. At least that means that when the door eventually does fly open, he’s reasonably sure it’s Jamie before he actually sees him.
“About fucking time!”
“Hey.” Jamie’s out of breath, hair dishevelled, tie askew. He looks stressed, but Malcolm has no sympathy. “Sorry, that took longer than—”
“Take the fucking—” He holds out the infant, twists to extricate himself from tie-grabbing fingers. “Take it.”
Jamie does, scoops the baby into his arms as if he does this kind of thing every day. “Hey, hey. It’s all right.”
It’s a weird fucking sight. Jamie’s not what anyone would call a gentle soul, even if Malcolm knows that half of what comes across as Jamie being aggressive is really just Jamie being enthusiastic. He’s not being either, right now. He runs a hand over the baby’s head, adopts a soothing, humming tone. “Shh, it’s all right. We’ll sort it, yeah? Don’t cry.”
Malcolm steps over to his desk, picks up his phone to occupy his hands and prevent Jamie attempting to give the child back. “Care to explain what the fuck is going on?”
Jamie winces as the wee lass’ squirming lands a kick into his side. “She’s Simon’s.”
That explains nothing. Jamie rolls his eyes. “My brother.”
“Which one? You’ve got like twenty.”
“I do not.” Jamie wrinkles his nose as he picks up on the shit aroma. He almost has to shout to make himself heard. “He’s six years younger, got this beard. His wife died.”
“Right.” Malcolm remembers that, the phone call that came in late one night a few months ago. It had Jamie pacing in the sitting room and come back to bed with his hair dishevelled and his eyes too bright. He took a plane up to Glasgow to attend the funeral a few days later. “I didn’t know they’d had a bairn.”
Jamie’s too preoccupied to reply. “I’ve got to change her,” he says, and again sounds like he does this kind of thing all the fucking time. “I’ll just quickly use your cupboard—” and he goes for the door next to Malcolm’s desk.
Malcolm steps in front of it. “The fuck you will.” He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t want Jamie to use the cupboard, except that changing babies is not what Jamie’s in Number 10 Downing Street for. “You still haven’t told me what the fuck’s going on. ‘It’s Simon’s’, all right, so why isn’t Simon the one changing the shitty diaper?”
“He—” Jamie stops a mere split-second before walking straight into Malcolm, and glares. “He’s fucking unavailable, all right?”
“Fucking unavailable? He’s the fucking father!”
“Jesus, Malc—get out of the fucking way! I need to change her.”
Jamie looks ready to land a kick against his kneecap or, worse, hand him the baby again, so Malcolm concedes and steps aside. “Doesn’t your entire family live up in Glasgow? Are you that great a fucking babysitter that he’s brought his child all the way down to London just to put it in your tender fucking care?”
The kid doesn’t approve of their raised voices, judging by the way the screaming’s intensified. Jamie grimaces and pushes past. “He’s in fucking London! He’s here for a legal thing. Will you get the diaper bag?”
“What fucking diaper bag?”
It's sitting next to the doorway, where Jamie must have deposited it earlier. Malcolm gets it for him, but he doesn’t stick around to watch the process. On the list of disgusting things the human body produces, excrement is way up at the top. He’d much rather deal with the adult babies comprising the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. At least most of them know how to wipe their own arses.
------
It’s a late one that day, as most of Malcolm’s workdays tend to be. He arrives at his house in Islington around half ten, and hides a yawn in the bulk of his scarf as he digs for his keys.
The door swings open before he can find them, and his heart nearly stops.
“Shite—”
He manages to catch himself just before tripping backwards down the steps. Jamie’s in the doorway, looking almost as startled.
“Jesus, Malc, watch it!”
“What the fuck?”
Jamie being here isn’t, in itself, unexpected. They’ve been cohabiting ever since Jamie’s flat lease ran out a couple of months ago. He says he’s been too busy to look for a new place, but Malcolm suspects ulterior motives. Jamie’s complained more than once about Malcolm’s insistence they keep separate flats, says that there’s no point in him paying exorbitant London rent on a place he sleeps in once a month. Malcolm’s told him that the point is to keep the nature of their relationship out of the press and curious ears, but as usual, Jamie’s not as concerned about that as he should be.
He has to admit that it’s been sort of nice having Jamie around. It’s a big fucking house; it gets really empty when he’s here on his own. Right now, though, everything about Jamie’s demeanour says ‘unpleasant surprise’, and Malcolm fucking hates surprises even when they’re good ones.
“All right, don’t freak out, yeah?”
Malcolm glares and pushes past. “About fucking what?”
Jamie’s lost his suit jacket and tie, rolled up his shirt sleeves, but otherwise, he’s still dressed in his office clothes. His hair’s all over the place, and there’s a stain on his shoulder that Malcolm doesn’t want to look at too closely.
“I’ve got Gracie upstairs.”
Jamie says it looking sort of contrite. He says it like it should mean something to Malcolm.
“Who the fuck is Gracie?”
“My niece.” Not contrite now, just exasperated. “You fucking met her earlier today, remember?”
“You—” Malcolm’s at a loss for words, and covers it by shrugging out of his coat. “You brought a fucking baby into my house?”
“Shh!”
He’s being shushed, and that doesn’t make sense; he wasn’t even properly shouting. It’s a major fucking concession, the way he keeps his voice down as he continues. “Why's she still with you? Your brother can’t still be at the fucking court; they don’t do office hours at night.”
“He just needs some fucking time, all right?” Jamie glares. “I'm looking after her, just for a week or so, until—”
“A week?” That’s not quiet anymore, but nobody could be expected to react calmly to an outrage like that. “You’re not turning my house into a fucking day care centre for a week!”
Jamie’s about to reply when there's a thump from upstairs, followed by a wail. Jamie’s shoulders sag. “Fucking great, Malc. Thanks a lot.”
He makes off up the stairs. Malcolm follows him on his heel. “We’ve got three major policy announcements this week, they’re launching that new fucking education programme in Cardiff on Wednesday, and Thursday’s fucking Cliff Gardener’s divorce trial hearing. I do not have time for this, and neither, I should mention, do you!”
Jamie heads into the bedroom, turns on the light. There’s a rumpled nest of blankets in the centre of the bed. It's empty. The child’s on the floor (that explains the thump), seemingly unhurt as she anxiously waves her arms and bounces on her diapered butt. She’s crying again, and looks pretty fucking unhappy.
Malcolm relates. “Did you figure I just wouldn’t sleep at all tonight? That’s my fucking bed!”
“Jesus Christ.” Jamie’s scoops her up once more, checks her over to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. At least there’s no smell of shit this time. “Stop being such a massive precious cunt about this, all right? You don’t need to fucking concern yourself, just go sleep in the guest room or summat. I’ve got this.”
And with that, Malcolm’s absolved of all responsibility. He’s not protesting—except that this is Jamie sending him away, and Jamie’s not supposed to do that. “Can I count on you to be doing your job while—” and he waves his hand at the wailing bundle in Jamie’s arms.
Jamie’s gently rocking her, a stark contrast to the murderous glare he sends across the room. “When have I ever not done my job? I’ll fucking work from home, unless my boss has a fucking problem with it.”
“Your boss doesn’t care where you are when you’re working, as long as the fucking work gets done.”
“Good. All right. It’s settled, then.” Jamie shifts the baby in his arms, starts walking up and down the foot of the bed. “Good night, Malcolm.”
He’s being chucked out of his own bedroom; that’s what it’s fucking come to. But continuing this fight doesn’t sound like great fun, either. It’s late, so he heads into the guest room and makes up the bed.
It’s fucking unfamiliar, with a weird lumpy pillow that he really should replace at some point, but it’s not the worst night’s sleep he’s had.
------
Jamie doesn’t want his help, so Malcolm does his best to give him space. It’s not difficult; Malcolm tends to spend most of his time at the office, anyway. But not all encounters can be avoided.
There’s the time he enters the bathroom early one morning to be greeted by the pungent odour of shit, a stain-smeared diaper on the floor, and Jamie hosing down the (naturally screaming) toddler in the shower, looking like he could use a good hosing down himself. There’s the time (that same fucking day) Malcolm arrives home to find his sofa stripped of its cover, the smell of stale porridge in the air, and Jamie on all fours scrubbing a moist, chunky, disgusting stain out of the upholstery. There’s the time he goes to plug in his phone to find a child safety contraption covering the sockets that presumably requires NASA training to be circumvented, the time he finds twines of string tying shut all cupboards below hip-level, and the time he almost trips down the stairs because his foot gets stuck in the makeshift cardboard gate Jamie’s installed at the top.
All loose items disappear from the bottom shelves, and two mugs, three glasses, and four plates go missing. Malcolm never sees any broken shards, but he fucking knows how many dishes he’s got in his kitchen. On the third day (all of this unfolds within a terrifyingly short amount of time), a neon-coloured set of plastic bowls appears on the kitchen counter. Plastic dishes, as far as Malcolm’s concerned, are the height of uncivilised living, but for the sake of his nice stuff, he doesn’t put them straight in the bin.
Jamie doesn’t speak to him much. Malcolm’s not sure if he’s being given the cold shoulder, or if Jamie’s just too preoccupied with his babysitting duties. It happens twice that Malcolm calls him during the workday and gets the click-beep of a rejected call. Most other times, Jamie simply doesn’t pick up. When Jamie is reachable, he sounds frayed, slightly panicked, and in no state to be making governmental PR decisions. Before long, Malcolm stops trying, and recruits Frank to fill in as his second-in-command.
He holds back about reading Jamie the riot act, though. Family emergencies happen to the best of people, after all, and judging by the frazzled terror in Jamie’s eyes, he’d rather be dealing with politics than babies, too. Malcolm thinks himself quite benevolent when he decides to ignore that Jamie ‘working from home’ constitutes Jamie not working at all. At least this way, they all get to keep their dignity, and once the week is over and Simon’s reclaimed his hellspawn, they can go back to business as usual.
------
It’s the fourth night that Malcolm’s sleeping in the guest bedroom (he’s got used to the pillow at this point) when he’s woken up by the creak of the door.
He blinks at the dark silhouette in the doorway, drops his eyes to the alarm clock. It’s two-thirty in the morning.
He manages a grunt. “What?”
Jamie turns on the night lamp, makes Malcolm squint against the glare. He’s still dressed; lost his tie but kept his shirt, which is rumpled and unbuttoned at the top to expose a glimpse of chest. His hair’s a mess, and his eyes are showing a lot of white, but it’s the panicked twist of his lips that makes Malcolm sit up, push the blanket aside. “What is it?”
“She’s fucking dying.” Jamie’s voice is shaky, sort of high-pitched. Malcolm’s heard him sound like that on only one other occasion, and it wasn’t a good one. “She sounds like she’s fucking dying, Malc, I don’t know what to do.”
He gets out of bed, forgoes his slippers as he pushes past Jamie to head for the bedroom. “She’s not fucking dying.” He has nothing to base this on, except that as much as he’s hated the inconvenience of Jamie’s niece in his life, she’s not going to die in his house.
He understands what Jamie’s talking about when he comes up to the bedroom door. In the dimly lit room, Gracie’s curled up in her nest in the centre of the bed. She’s crying—of course she is, it’s her fucking default state—but it’s not normal crying: it’s thin, wheezy whistles, followed by breathless sobs strangled by laborious attempts to draw air. She does sound like she’s fucking dying. “Jesus Christ.”
He hasn’t been in the bedroom in a while. It’s a fucking mess (clothes scattered everywhere, a messy changing mat on the dresser, half the bookshelf spilled on the floor) and there’s a ripe smell hanging about. Right now, though, these things barely register. “Has she got asthma?”
“No. I don’t think so.” Jamie sits on the bed, and the baby stretches her chubby arms out for him as the wail-wheezing intensifies. He pulls her into his lap, puts the back of his hand against her forehead. “She’s had a cold. This is not supposed to be happening, Malc. Bairns aren’t meant to sound like this.”
He sounds fucking freaked out, and Malcolm feels a twinge of discomfort in his gut. He’s come to accept that Jamie’s an exception to most of his rules (‘don’t mix sex and work’, ‘don’t fuck anyone on a regular basis unless you’re going to marry them’, ‘make sure to keep anyone you’re fucking but aren’t married to out of your personal space’), but even Jamie shouldn’t be an exception to the rule Malcolm has about children: he doesn’t want anything to do with them, and he’s not going to let anyone put him in a position of responsibility for them.
Except this is Jamie completely out of his depth, and Jamie’s never learned that when you’re out of your depth, you cut your losses and run. Jamie’s just going to keep trying, and Malcolm can’t stand by and watch. He never could.
“All right,” he says, goes to the wardrobe to hunt for jeans and a jumper. “So we take her to A&E. Get your stuff.”
Jamie looks as hesitant as he does relieved. “You’ve got to be in the office in a few hours.”
“Right,” and he waves a hand in direction of the guest room, “I’m just going to fucking toddle off and go back to sleep while a small child’s suffocating in my bedroom. That’s fucking likely. Get your stuff.”
Jamie does. Malcolm’s seen him in and out of the house a few times this past week, lugging bags stuffed full of what seemed like supplies for a month, rather than a two-hour trip to the shops. There’s the diaper bag, another bag with bottles and food supplies, and an assortment of other things Malcolm doesn’t care enough to identify. Once Jamie’s packed it all up, it’s like they’re fucking New World settlers ready to take on the North American Cordillera.
Malcolm grabs the bags and leaves Jamie to carrying the wheezing, weeping child.
There’s no cab nearby, so they take Jamie’s car. It’s apparently equipped with a toddler seat these days. Jamie’s in the back with Gracie while Malcolm navigates London’s narrow streets.
At A&E, he doesn’t even try to find a parking space; just backs up onto the pavement and leaves the car sitting under some trees. They want to write him a ticket, they’re fucking welcome to. They’ll be paying for it themselves; his salary comes out of the tax bucket, after all.
Like most hospital floors, the triage room is a space of creepy, liminal gloom. Grey plastic chairs barely contrast against grey walls and seat an assortment of the sick, the tired, and the suffering. Malcolm keeps a careful distance between himself and any other living person as he follows Jamie to the glass-encapsulated nurse's desk.
‘Breathing difficulties’ seems to be a magic word that skips them ahead of the queue. Any other day, that’d be great news (as far as Malcolm’s concerned, waiting rooms are only marginally less torturous than electric chairs), but under the circumstances, it’s fucking ominous. He eyes the child, who’s resting her grubby cheek on Jamie’s shoulder, greasy hair sticking up, every facial orifice leaking either tears, snot, or saliva. She’s uttering breathless whimpers interspersed with the occasional "no". It’s a picture of misery if he’s ever seen one.
“This way.” A blonde woman clad in bright red scrubs and half a head shorter than Jamie takes the chart from the nurse and herds them towards an exam room. “Are you the fathers?”
“No.” Malcolm’s stomach flips, and it has nothing to do with the fact that a small child may be expiring in his presence. “No, we are not. Do not put that on any of your fucking forms, all right?”
The look she gives him suggests that she doesn’t approve of any of the words he just said. “We don’t. I just need to know who the primary caregiver is.”
“I am,” Jamie says. He sounds a bit cross. “He’s just here to carry the fucking bags.”
Normally, Malcolm would be insulted, but with this, he’s perfectly content to be the fucking diaper caddie. The woman (presumably the doctor) doesn’t look happy with that answer, though.
“So you are the father?”
“Uncle. Her father’s not—he’s not available. I’m taking care of her.”
That’s not making it better; the doctor seems even more sceptical now. “Have you called him yet? Or her mother?”
“She’s not—it’s just her da. He’s not available right now. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
“All right.” The doctor still doesn’t look quite convinced (Malcolm can’t blame her; after that display of evasiveness, he's got a few questions himself), but she waves them into the exam room. Malcolm stands to the side between a flimsy-looking stool and a medicine cabinet as the doctor instructs Jamie to put the baby down on the exam table.
It’s easier said than done. Breathing difficulties or no, Gracie manages a respectable, high-pitched scream as she holds on to Jamie’s shirt collar. Jamie twists and tries to dodge, but it takes the doctor peeling apart tiny fingers before Jamie can put the baby down.
“Shh, darling,” he says, catches the child’s flailing hands in his own as he stands against the table to keep her from toppling to the floor. “Calm down, all right? It’ll be okay. The doctor’s just going to take a look at your breathing, yeah?”
Having her hands held makes the kid wail louder. If it weren’t for the whistling wheezes interrupting her screams, Malcolm would be tempted to assume she’s been faking the breathing issues.
“I really need her to be quiet while I listen to her chest,” the doctor says, hooks a stethoscope into her ears. “Have you got any of her toys with you?”
“Aw, fuck. No.” Jamie looks as guilt-stricken as a nun caught in flagrante with the town drunk, but the doctor seems unbothered as she fishes something out from under the exam table.
“Let’s try this, then. Come over here,” and she waves the thing at Malcolm. “Try and distract her.”
The thing is a fucking bubble maker. The only reason he knows that is because his niece used to love them, and he’s tripped over more than one while visiting her and Annie up in Hatfield. Knowing what it is means he wants to touch it even less—Fi wasn’t above shoving hers halfway into her mouth and drooling all over it like a dog over its favourite chew toy. Even the memory’s disgusting, but at least Fi’s family. This bubble maker has probably been drooled on by some infant who’ll turn out to be patient zero of the next cholera epidemic.
“Malc, come on. Please.”
Jamie’s looking at him with that wide-eyed fucking look he does, and Malcolm sneers. “I did not fucking sign up for this.” But he takes the fucking thing from the doctor anyway. At least it’s not damp.
His first attempt to produce bubbles results in no more than a sad ripple in the soap; his second makes the film pop and spatters his hand in itchy liquid. It’s the third that does the trick. Four a.m. in A&E or not, he has to admit that these bubbles are very fucking sparkly.
Gracie agrees. Chubby fingers reach for floating rainbow orbs, and the noise tapers out. Wonders never fucking cease.
“There we go,” the doctor says, slips the stethoscope under Gracie’s shirt, and shifts seamlessly into a sort of baby-talk voice Malcolm thought was reserved for the fucking Supernanny. "There we go, sweetheart, let's have a look at you—yeah, that's viral wheeze all right," and she’s back to sounding like someone whose job includes literal life-and-death decisions. “I know it looks scary, but don't worry. Usually they're right as rain after some inhalers.”
“Usually.” Malcolm glances up from his monumental bubble task. “What about fucking unusually?”
“If the inhalers don’t work, there’s other things we can try.”
That’s a fucking ominous statement if he’s ever heard one, but a side-glance at Jamie makes him refrain from probing further. Jamie looks freaked as all fuck as it is, patches of red on pale cheeks, eyes wide and shiny. “All right. Inhalers it is, then.”
First, though, it’s bubbles, because the last one’s popped and Gracie’s waving her arms and letting out a threatening whine. Malcolm’s getting the hang of it now, and even manages to blow a fairly big one that floats all the way down to the floor before it pops and leaves a damp spot on the linoleum.
If someone slips and falls in that, he’s not paying the lawsuit.
Finally, the nurse shows up, carrying a medical gadget that looks like a cross between a gas mask and a scuba diving tank. There’s more cooing and baby-talk as they stick the thing right onto the kid’s face, which ruins all of Malcolm’s good work and unleashes an unholy hell of insistent, wailing "no"s. Jamie’s doing his best to hold on to the child, and it’s like watching someone trying to wrestle down a drunk in a Motherwell pub on Guy Fawkes Day.
“Jesus fuck,” and he glares across at Malcolm. “Do the fucking bubbles, Malc, will you?”
It’s the last thing he ever expected to be told in that tone of voice (it’s the kind of tone you’d use, presumably, to order someone to enter nuclear launch codes into a missile guidance system), but he glares back and complies.
What the fuck else is he gonna do.
------
The doctor orders three rounds of ten inhalations each, unperturbed by Gracie's deafening protests. Even the bubbles stop being exciting halfway through, and by the end of it, Malcolm feels sick. There's bullying people at Number 10, where everyone's heart is shrivelled to a dried-up pea, anyway, and then there's torturing small children who don't understand what's happening to them. The former’s quite satisfactory, the latter fucking sucks.
Turns out that skipping the queue doesn't mean they're not still going to have to spend an ungodly amount of time in the waiting room. Gracie's fine now, she's breathing normally (or, well, she's hyperventilating, but that's from crying), but the doctor says she needs to be kept an eye on.
"Three hours," she says, "just to make sure it doesn't come back. After that it should be fine for you to head on home."
Fucking sadistic doctor twat.
The room's mostly cleared since they came in; apparently, this is a slow time of day (night) even in A&E. They sit in a corner, plastic chairs creaking underneath. Jamie’s got Gracie in his lap, arms wrapped around her as her hitching breaths slowly even out. He’s staring at empty air, eyes glassy and eyelids sagging, and he’s being really fucking quiet.
It’s weird. Jamie doesn’t do quiet.
“Hey,” Malcolm says after a while when the silence becomes too discomfiting. There’s no reaction. “Hey.”
Jamie looks around, and it’s like a watching a slow-motion effect in a film. “What?”
He looks like shit. Perhaps Malcolm should’ve noticed earlier, but he blamed Jamie’s pallor, the shine in his eyes, and the sweaty tangles sticking to his forehead on stress. Jamie has been really fucking stressed out this past week. But what they’re doing right now isn’t stressful, just boring, and Jamie’s still got even paler since sitting down. “Are you ill? You’re fucking ill.”
Jamie just blinks in that over-exaggerated special effect way. Malcolm swears under his breath and puts the back of his hand against Jamie’s forehead. It’s like touching a fucking stove, one that’s covered in clammy sweat. “For fuck’s sake—“
“Get off.” Jamie pulls back, shakes his head like he’s trying to clear his vision. “I’m fucking fine.”
“It’s really fucking obvious that you’re not. Did you catch whatever she’s got?” Malcolm frowns, and remembers an argument they had a few months ago. Less of an argument, really, and more Malcolm trying to get Jamie to be precautious for once in his life, and Jamie waving him off. “Did you ever get your flu jab done?”
Jamie mumbles something unintelligible.
“What?”
“I said no, I fucking didn’t.” The baby’s fallen asleep at this point, and Jamie shifts her up for a better hold. “Feel free to fucking gloat, or whatever. I really don’t got time for this.”
“For what, being ill?”
“That, too.”
Malcolm wants to know what that’s supposed to mean, if Jamie is saying he’s not got time for Malcolm (which would be preposterous as well as a little hurtful, as loath as he is to admit that even in the privacy of his own head), but Jamie doesn’t seem like he’s up for an argument. Malcolm digs his phone from his pocket.
“I’m not going in tomorrow.” His lips twist as he realises what he said. “Today. I’m putting Frank in charge.” ‘You’d better fucking appreciate it’ is what he doesn’t say, but Jamie just shrugs, hugs Gracie closer, and closes his eyes.
Malcolm writes all necessary emails, puts the phone away, and settles down to observe the clock through a narrow squint. Two more hours.
He really fucking hates this.