Tea, page 25
“Oh, Gawd, no. Noooo,” Chris whined, and John started to laugh helplessly. “My God, no, that’s nearly as bad as ‘lovemaking.’ Go away. I take it back. No reward for you.”
“You love me.”
“I tolerate you.”
“You love me.”
“I barely tolerate you!”
John grinned, pushing his chair back. He stood, and his enormous size was enough to lean over the table like it wasn’t there and kiss the protesting man on the other side. Who quieted, smiled into it, and curled both hands around John’s on the table.
“Fine,” he murmured when John pulled back. “Let’s walk back to yours…”
“Walk?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. And then what?”
“Then maybe—maybe—I’ll let you do a bit of that lovemaking you’re so keen on.”
John grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
John beamed all the way out into the street and decided to throw sense to the wind. He took Chris’s hand, rather than his arm, and showed off their entwined fingers. He was six foot eight, for Christ’s sake. Let anyone say anything.
They walked slowly, Chris oddly tired that evening, and the crowds were thicker than usual. A tram rumbled along the very end of the high street. A police car nestled in the midst of the shoppers, watching and waiting.
And then Chris stopped dead.
“Oh.”
“What’s up? Forgotten your wallet?”
“No. I—oh.”
John frowned.
“Chris?”
“I need to lie down.”
“Oh, hell.”
“I don’t feel right.”
“Okay. Okay, here, there’s a bench just—”
“No. Now. Here.”
Chris went to his knees clumsily but under control. John hastily shucked his coat off. The ground was damp, and it was cold. He rescued his phone and started thumbing through it for taxi firms.
“Okay,” he said, trying to keep his voice—and heart rate—under control. “It’s fine. You go ahead. I’ll ring for a cab.”
Chris was already gone. The vacant stare was somehow blanker than usual. The hand John groped for had gone limp.
And then the long body sitting on the pavement went stiff and fell the rest of the way.
John’s jacket caught head and shoulders and dulled the impact. There was a nasty sound from the left wrist, though, and then the shaking started. People started to stare. A woman had her phone out, and John suppressed a surge of anger, deliberately shifting around to get in her way.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, half to Chris and half to himself. “It’s fine. It’s okay.”
He could feel the balloon expanding.
“Sir?”
The deep voice was familiar, even though the speaker was a stranger. It was the way he said it. John knew who he’d be looking at long before he raised his head. Black boots. Black trousers. Kit belt.
Copper.
The balloon exploded. Police. His palms were slick. His heart was in his mouth.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
The copper squatted down. He had blue eyes.
Like Chris.
John’s mouth unglued. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah. He’s—”
“Are you with him?”
“Yes. He’s my partner.”
The copper nodded. “Do you need an ambulance, sir?”
Chris’s vehement insistence jarred the terror.
“No. No. He’s epileptic. This is—” Normal? Standard? “This happens a lot.”
The copper frowned. The balloon turned into cement, hard and unyielding under John’s ribs. His heart was beating like a rabbit’s.
“He has a bracelet,” John said, pointing to the trembling wrist. A glint of gold showed below the sleeve. “I’m timing him, see.” Pointing at his own watch. “I know what I’m doing. I do.”
“I’d feel better if you’d let me call an ambulance, pal.”
“He doesn’t need an ambulance.”
The copper was still frowning. His mate had gotten out of that car, too, and was coming over. Coppers. Two coppers. John couldn’t get enough damn air.
“He’ll be fine,” John insisted and licked his lips. “Look, can you just—stop people filming him and stuff? I know—I know what to do. It’ll be over in a minute.”
Less than. The shaking was beginning to ease.
The copper’s mate did just that, turning and beginning to shoo people away. John forced himself to blot the other out and focus on Chris as the shivering slowly leaked away, and he sagged against the jacket, limp and lifel—
No, just limp.
John carefully felt along neck and back before turning him, easing him into the recovery position with gentle hands. The copper turned and barked something to his mate, who jogged back to their car.
“Chris?” John smoothed back the messy curls. “You with me yet, babe?”
The endearment slipped free. Chris twitched and mumbled something incomprehensible. The copper’s mate came back, unfolding a foil blanket.
“Here.”
John managed a wobbly smile as the coppers tucked it around Chris carefully. He could do this. They were fine. He was fine. Still, he kept his eyes firmly on Chris, stroking his fingers slightly too hard through his curly hair, so the motion dragged a little and made him stir.
“S’just me,” he murmured when the mumble turned into a distinct snarl. “S’just me. You ready to go home?”
“F’k off.”
John winced and glanced at the coppers. “Chris? You wanna wake up a bit for me?”
Hands curled into fists on the floor. Chris scowled but didn’t really stir.
“Chris…”
Chris lashed out. The bracelet flashed. John caught the hand easily and put it back under the blanket.
“Look, pal, I’m going to call a paramedic at the very least…”
John tuned the police out. He already felt like passing out. He didn’t even hate cops, not even after the investigation. They’d only been doing their jobs, but he couldn’t help but remember. Couldn’t help but think all it would take would be one check on their little radio things, and they’d find out he’d been nicked for—for—
Rape, he told himself.
He couldn’t be afraid of the word. Nadia said so. He couldn’t be afraid of the word. This wasn’t him; this was epilepsy. This wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything to do with him.
Chris was just like he’d been in the flat. Out like a light but just sleeping. John coaxed gently, trying to wake him up a bit faster. He rubbed at a shoulder, played with his hair, called his name. He earned a few grumpy scowls and snarls—but it wasn’t until blue lights started flashing, and he looked up to see a paramedic car creeping towards them across the pedestrianised zone, that the body under his hand really stirred.
“What’s…”
“It’s all right,” John murmured.
“What’s going on?”
His voice was sleepy and slurred, and then the car door slammed, and he jumped violently.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“Where the fuck are—”
“High street,” John said. “You had a seizure. Attracted a bit of attention from the police, and they’ve called a paramedic. They just want to make sure you’re okay.”
The frowning copper looked at ease again. The paramedic—a young woman with blonde hair in a high ponytail—squatted down by John’s side, snapping on gloves and firing off questions. At first, John answered and Chris simply lay there, clutching his arm and frowning. And then, slowly, his brain came back online.
“You called an ambulance?”
“I didn’t.”
Chris scowled. “Right. Well. I don’t need an ambulance. I want to go home.”
“I just want to check you’re—” started the paramedic, but Chris made as if to get up, and she had to back up or be headbutted.
“I’m fine,” Chris said shortly, fumbling for the pavement and John’s arm to orient himself. “Look, I have a bracelet and everything. This is embarrassing. I want to go home.”
“You really ought to get checked over at a hosp—”
“I’m not going to hospital, and you can’t make me go,” Chris said. He sounded pissed. In both senses of the word. “John? Ring a taxi, let’s go. I’m knackered.”
John helped him to his feet, bracing Chris’s weight entirely until they were completely upright.
“Sir, we just want to make sure—”
“I know my own damned disease!” Chris flared up.
John winced and could see the coppers beginning to frown again. This was going to get ugly.
“Hey—” He caught both of Chris’s shoulders in his hands. “Calm down. Come on. Let’s go. There’s a taxi rank at the bottom of the road. We can get one there. Come on. No,” he said to the copper’s mate, who reached out as if to stop them. “He’s fine; you can see that for yourselves. I appreciate the help, but we just need to go home.”
The paramedic fell back almost at once, but the policemen tailed them right down to the taxi rank, and it was only when John shut the door of a black cab on their faces that he felt able to breathe again.
And then he groped for Chris’s hand and bent to put his own head between his knees.
“John?”
“M’fine…”
“You sure?”
“In a minute.”
Chris’s hand rubbed soothingly at his back. It was clumsy and his words were slurred, but it helped all the same. “What’s the matter?”
“Cops,” John mumbled.
“Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Or theirs, really. Just…had a bit of a panic,” John admitted.
“How bad?”
“Didn’t freak out and start crying or anything. Just…you know. Felt like crap. No air. The usual.”
Chris hummed. “Yours.”
“What?”
“I want to go to yours.”
John straightened. “You need to go home.”
“I have two doses still at your flat. And your bed’s bigger than mine. I need a nap, and you need a hug.”
John couldn’t really argue with that. He sighed, then shouted the change of address to the cabbie. Chris leaned against him, sagging bonelessly into his shoulder, and John winced. He forced the worry aside. Now wasn’t the time. He slid an arm around Chris’s back and pulled him closer.
“You okay?” Chris asked sleepily.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “You?”
“Think I’ve bashed my wrist, but I’m okay.”
John buried his face against cool, damp hair.
“John?”
“Mm?”
“Y’handled it.”
“What?”
“You handled it.”
“So?”
“So, you’re getting there.”
John lifted his face free again.
“I still wigged out.”
“Only on the inside, by what you said. You sounded calm when I came round.”
John opened his mouth to argue—and subsided. Yeah. He had, actually. He’d completely bricked it on the inside, but on the outside…
He squeezed tight until Chris wriggled in protest.
He was getting better.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I THINK YOU’RE too hard on yourself.”
Nadia’s voice was firm. Their gaze was equally so, and John fought to hold it.
“In a single week, you came out to your rugby club, an old friend, and you managed to keep your anxiety under control until you were in a position to deal with it. That’s very impressive and would take a toll on anybody.”
John fidgeted.
“I—they were trying to help, and I was shi—losing it.”
“You didn’t sound like you were losing it to me.”
“It felt like it.”
“Of course it did. That’s how anxiety works,” they said calmly. “But from the actions you took, I think you handled it excellently. You’re still a long way from not having the attacks at all, but that you can keep yourself functioning long enough to ride out the situation is a hugely positive step.”
“I guess…”
“After all, you couldn’t do that with Chris’s stepmother, or his father. Could you?”
John opened his mouth…and slowly closed it again.
No.
He’d wigged out immediately, both times. He’d not had a hope. This time…
And this time had been cops. People primed to think the worst. People who had, when Daniel had falsely accused him.
“No.”
The timer beeped.
“Well, that’s all for today,” they said, sitting forward. “Do think about what I’ve said, John. You have wounds. Perfectly normal, understandable wounds. It’s going to take time for those to heal, no matter what relationship you’re in now. Don’t beat yourself up for needing that time.”
John nodded. He shook their hand, and thanked them, and kept his face perfectly impassive, all the way out to the van.
Only then did he crumble. His eyes burned. His lip wobbled dangerously.
And then he sucked the lip in and squared his shoulders. He hadn’t fallen apart in the street, when the coppers were scowling and Chris was seizing on the floor between them. So he wasn’t going to do it now, when he’d only talked about it.
His phone started ringing in the glovebox, and John scrubbed both hands over his face before reaching for it. Unrecognised number. So, customer.
Deep breath.
Then: “Hi, John Halliday.”
“Oh.” A woman’s voice. “Hello. Is this Reet Breet Electrics?”
“Yep.”
“I’d like to get a quote for getting a cable laid out to our summerhouse and some plug sockets put in. Is that something you can do?”
“’Course,” John said, maybe a little too flippantly. “I’d need to see the property to quote you though. Price really depends on the cable length and how much earth you’d need to disturb. Might need a landscaper or a builder out as well.” Rhodri, ideally, but some people chose their own.
“You’d have to bury it?”
“Yeah, can’t leave live cables exposed to the weather or your gardening.”
“Oh. Well. All right. When can you come over?”
John glanced at his watch. A quote wouldn’t take long. He wasn’t meeting Chris until dinner, and the girls were all at work.
“Could do it now, if you’re free.”
“Really? Oh, that’d be marvellous.” John raised his eyebrows at the odd choice of words. “Yes, that’d suit nicely. Have you got a pen for the address?”
It was oddly familiar when John jotted it down—maybe a repeat customer—and he hung up with the sense that he was about to earn a lot of money. Posh women wanting cables laid? He got his best markups on those kinds of jobs.
The address was a way away, and he stopped off for petrol halfway there, but then he found himself winding his way into vaguely familiar streets. The satnav announced his destination at a spot he distinctly remembered, and he hauled on the handbrake with a frown, squinting up at the house.
There wasn’t a Land Rover on the drive.
But he could have sworn he’d kissed Chris right here on the pavement, under this streetlight, when it had been snowing.
The voice on the phone hadn’t been Lauren’s though. She’d spoken with a broad Sheffield accent, not that cultured southern sound. John racked his brains, trying to pull up anything else, any other female relative Chris had mentioned that might live there. Grandparents were all gone, weren’t they? And he’d implied his Aunt Kelly was gone too.
Slowly, John pulled the satnav off the windscreen. Scrolled through the recent destinations list.
Yes.
There. Before the first time he’d gone to the flat at Parson Cross.
Same address.
John swallowed tightly and glanced up at the house. Christ. So it had to be Lauren. Because that was Chris’s dad’s house.
Damn it. Damn-damn-damn-da—
John shook himself and shoved the satnav in the glovebox. No. Time to stop wussing out. And, anyway, maybe they wouldn’t remember him. Maybe Chris had never mentioned what he did for a living.
He threw out his chest and threw open the van door.
His fist hammered on the door in time with the hammering of his heart in his throat. He took a good four or five steps back so he wouldn’t loom so much. Prayed silently for Lauren, and for Chris’s dad not to be home.
And then the door opened, and John’s jaw sagged.
This was not Lauren.
A thin woman wearing nothing but a pair of fluffy slippers and a dressing gown stood in front of him. Her hair was long and frizzy, and soaking wet from a recent wash. It was dark like Chris’s but obviously dyed. Her wrists were covered in silver bangles and bracelets that clinked musically as she tucked a clump of hair behind her ear and beamed at him.
“Caroline,” she said. “Come through, come through…”
John swallowed. Great. Chris’s dad was having an affair, and here was John, right in the middle of what could turn into a World War Three scenario in about five seconds.
The house smelled of incense. It was airy and light, wooden floors everywhere, and pictures on every spare inch of wall in the kitchen. He saw several of Chris and had to suppress the urge to pinch one of him as a chubby baby, those big blue eyes still recognisable twenty-four years later. But apart from the pictures, the place was pristinely tidy. Almost like a show home. It had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life, and he could see the tracks of a vacuum cleaner as he was lead through the building to the back. Glass doors opened onto the long garden, and at the end stood a glorified shed.
“There.” She threw out her arm, and the dressing gown almost opened. John stared determinedly at the shed.
“So you want a cable laid out to give it power?”
“Yes.”
“What are you planning to do with it?”
“It’s going to be my meditation space,” she proclaimed.
“Right,” John said slowly. “So, uh. What kind of electrical items would you use in a meditation space?”
She gave him a look like he was an imbecile. “Lamps. Stereos…”
“You love me.”
“I tolerate you.”
“You love me.”
“I barely tolerate you!”
John grinned, pushing his chair back. He stood, and his enormous size was enough to lean over the table like it wasn’t there and kiss the protesting man on the other side. Who quieted, smiled into it, and curled both hands around John’s on the table.
“Fine,” he murmured when John pulled back. “Let’s walk back to yours…”
“Walk?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. And then what?”
“Then maybe—maybe—I’ll let you do a bit of that lovemaking you’re so keen on.”
John grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
John beamed all the way out into the street and decided to throw sense to the wind. He took Chris’s hand, rather than his arm, and showed off their entwined fingers. He was six foot eight, for Christ’s sake. Let anyone say anything.
They walked slowly, Chris oddly tired that evening, and the crowds were thicker than usual. A tram rumbled along the very end of the high street. A police car nestled in the midst of the shoppers, watching and waiting.
And then Chris stopped dead.
“Oh.”
“What’s up? Forgotten your wallet?”
“No. I—oh.”
John frowned.
“Chris?”
“I need to lie down.”
“Oh, hell.”
“I don’t feel right.”
“Okay. Okay, here, there’s a bench just—”
“No. Now. Here.”
Chris went to his knees clumsily but under control. John hastily shucked his coat off. The ground was damp, and it was cold. He rescued his phone and started thumbing through it for taxi firms.
“Okay,” he said, trying to keep his voice—and heart rate—under control. “It’s fine. You go ahead. I’ll ring for a cab.”
Chris was already gone. The vacant stare was somehow blanker than usual. The hand John groped for had gone limp.
And then the long body sitting on the pavement went stiff and fell the rest of the way.
John’s jacket caught head and shoulders and dulled the impact. There was a nasty sound from the left wrist, though, and then the shaking started. People started to stare. A woman had her phone out, and John suppressed a surge of anger, deliberately shifting around to get in her way.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, half to Chris and half to himself. “It’s fine. It’s okay.”
He could feel the balloon expanding.
“Sir?”
The deep voice was familiar, even though the speaker was a stranger. It was the way he said it. John knew who he’d be looking at long before he raised his head. Black boots. Black trousers. Kit belt.
Copper.
The balloon exploded. Police. His palms were slick. His heart was in his mouth.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
The copper squatted down. He had blue eyes.
Like Chris.
John’s mouth unglued. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah. He’s—”
“Are you with him?”
“Yes. He’s my partner.”
The copper nodded. “Do you need an ambulance, sir?”
Chris’s vehement insistence jarred the terror.
“No. No. He’s epileptic. This is—” Normal? Standard? “This happens a lot.”
The copper frowned. The balloon turned into cement, hard and unyielding under John’s ribs. His heart was beating like a rabbit’s.
“He has a bracelet,” John said, pointing to the trembling wrist. A glint of gold showed below the sleeve. “I’m timing him, see.” Pointing at his own watch. “I know what I’m doing. I do.”
“I’d feel better if you’d let me call an ambulance, pal.”
“He doesn’t need an ambulance.”
The copper was still frowning. His mate had gotten out of that car, too, and was coming over. Coppers. Two coppers. John couldn’t get enough damn air.
“He’ll be fine,” John insisted and licked his lips. “Look, can you just—stop people filming him and stuff? I know—I know what to do. It’ll be over in a minute.”
Less than. The shaking was beginning to ease.
The copper’s mate did just that, turning and beginning to shoo people away. John forced himself to blot the other out and focus on Chris as the shivering slowly leaked away, and he sagged against the jacket, limp and lifel—
No, just limp.
John carefully felt along neck and back before turning him, easing him into the recovery position with gentle hands. The copper turned and barked something to his mate, who jogged back to their car.
“Chris?” John smoothed back the messy curls. “You with me yet, babe?”
The endearment slipped free. Chris twitched and mumbled something incomprehensible. The copper’s mate came back, unfolding a foil blanket.
“Here.”
John managed a wobbly smile as the coppers tucked it around Chris carefully. He could do this. They were fine. He was fine. Still, he kept his eyes firmly on Chris, stroking his fingers slightly too hard through his curly hair, so the motion dragged a little and made him stir.
“S’just me,” he murmured when the mumble turned into a distinct snarl. “S’just me. You ready to go home?”
“F’k off.”
John winced and glanced at the coppers. “Chris? You wanna wake up a bit for me?”
Hands curled into fists on the floor. Chris scowled but didn’t really stir.
“Chris…”
Chris lashed out. The bracelet flashed. John caught the hand easily and put it back under the blanket.
“Look, pal, I’m going to call a paramedic at the very least…”
John tuned the police out. He already felt like passing out. He didn’t even hate cops, not even after the investigation. They’d only been doing their jobs, but he couldn’t help but remember. Couldn’t help but think all it would take would be one check on their little radio things, and they’d find out he’d been nicked for—for—
Rape, he told himself.
He couldn’t be afraid of the word. Nadia said so. He couldn’t be afraid of the word. This wasn’t him; this was epilepsy. This wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything to do with him.
Chris was just like he’d been in the flat. Out like a light but just sleeping. John coaxed gently, trying to wake him up a bit faster. He rubbed at a shoulder, played with his hair, called his name. He earned a few grumpy scowls and snarls—but it wasn’t until blue lights started flashing, and he looked up to see a paramedic car creeping towards them across the pedestrianised zone, that the body under his hand really stirred.
“What’s…”
“It’s all right,” John murmured.
“What’s going on?”
His voice was sleepy and slurred, and then the car door slammed, and he jumped violently.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“Where the fuck are—”
“High street,” John said. “You had a seizure. Attracted a bit of attention from the police, and they’ve called a paramedic. They just want to make sure you’re okay.”
The frowning copper looked at ease again. The paramedic—a young woman with blonde hair in a high ponytail—squatted down by John’s side, snapping on gloves and firing off questions. At first, John answered and Chris simply lay there, clutching his arm and frowning. And then, slowly, his brain came back online.
“You called an ambulance?”
“I didn’t.”
Chris scowled. “Right. Well. I don’t need an ambulance. I want to go home.”
“I just want to check you’re—” started the paramedic, but Chris made as if to get up, and she had to back up or be headbutted.
“I’m fine,” Chris said shortly, fumbling for the pavement and John’s arm to orient himself. “Look, I have a bracelet and everything. This is embarrassing. I want to go home.”
“You really ought to get checked over at a hosp—”
“I’m not going to hospital, and you can’t make me go,” Chris said. He sounded pissed. In both senses of the word. “John? Ring a taxi, let’s go. I’m knackered.”
John helped him to his feet, bracing Chris’s weight entirely until they were completely upright.
“Sir, we just want to make sure—”
“I know my own damned disease!” Chris flared up.
John winced and could see the coppers beginning to frown again. This was going to get ugly.
“Hey—” He caught both of Chris’s shoulders in his hands. “Calm down. Come on. Let’s go. There’s a taxi rank at the bottom of the road. We can get one there. Come on. No,” he said to the copper’s mate, who reached out as if to stop them. “He’s fine; you can see that for yourselves. I appreciate the help, but we just need to go home.”
The paramedic fell back almost at once, but the policemen tailed them right down to the taxi rank, and it was only when John shut the door of a black cab on their faces that he felt able to breathe again.
And then he groped for Chris’s hand and bent to put his own head between his knees.
“John?”
“M’fine…”
“You sure?”
“In a minute.”
Chris’s hand rubbed soothingly at his back. It was clumsy and his words were slurred, but it helped all the same. “What’s the matter?”
“Cops,” John mumbled.
“Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Or theirs, really. Just…had a bit of a panic,” John admitted.
“How bad?”
“Didn’t freak out and start crying or anything. Just…you know. Felt like crap. No air. The usual.”
Chris hummed. “Yours.”
“What?”
“I want to go to yours.”
John straightened. “You need to go home.”
“I have two doses still at your flat. And your bed’s bigger than mine. I need a nap, and you need a hug.”
John couldn’t really argue with that. He sighed, then shouted the change of address to the cabbie. Chris leaned against him, sagging bonelessly into his shoulder, and John winced. He forced the worry aside. Now wasn’t the time. He slid an arm around Chris’s back and pulled him closer.
“You okay?” Chris asked sleepily.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “You?”
“Think I’ve bashed my wrist, but I’m okay.”
John buried his face against cool, damp hair.
“John?”
“Mm?”
“Y’handled it.”
“What?”
“You handled it.”
“So?”
“So, you’re getting there.”
John lifted his face free again.
“I still wigged out.”
“Only on the inside, by what you said. You sounded calm when I came round.”
John opened his mouth to argue—and subsided. Yeah. He had, actually. He’d completely bricked it on the inside, but on the outside…
He squeezed tight until Chris wriggled in protest.
He was getting better.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I THINK YOU’RE too hard on yourself.”
Nadia’s voice was firm. Their gaze was equally so, and John fought to hold it.
“In a single week, you came out to your rugby club, an old friend, and you managed to keep your anxiety under control until you were in a position to deal with it. That’s very impressive and would take a toll on anybody.”
John fidgeted.
“I—they were trying to help, and I was shi—losing it.”
“You didn’t sound like you were losing it to me.”
“It felt like it.”
“Of course it did. That’s how anxiety works,” they said calmly. “But from the actions you took, I think you handled it excellently. You’re still a long way from not having the attacks at all, but that you can keep yourself functioning long enough to ride out the situation is a hugely positive step.”
“I guess…”
“After all, you couldn’t do that with Chris’s stepmother, or his father. Could you?”
John opened his mouth…and slowly closed it again.
No.
He’d wigged out immediately, both times. He’d not had a hope. This time…
And this time had been cops. People primed to think the worst. People who had, when Daniel had falsely accused him.
“No.”
The timer beeped.
“Well, that’s all for today,” they said, sitting forward. “Do think about what I’ve said, John. You have wounds. Perfectly normal, understandable wounds. It’s going to take time for those to heal, no matter what relationship you’re in now. Don’t beat yourself up for needing that time.”
John nodded. He shook their hand, and thanked them, and kept his face perfectly impassive, all the way out to the van.
Only then did he crumble. His eyes burned. His lip wobbled dangerously.
And then he sucked the lip in and squared his shoulders. He hadn’t fallen apart in the street, when the coppers were scowling and Chris was seizing on the floor between them. So he wasn’t going to do it now, when he’d only talked about it.
His phone started ringing in the glovebox, and John scrubbed both hands over his face before reaching for it. Unrecognised number. So, customer.
Deep breath.
Then: “Hi, John Halliday.”
“Oh.” A woman’s voice. “Hello. Is this Reet Breet Electrics?”
“Yep.”
“I’d like to get a quote for getting a cable laid out to our summerhouse and some plug sockets put in. Is that something you can do?”
“’Course,” John said, maybe a little too flippantly. “I’d need to see the property to quote you though. Price really depends on the cable length and how much earth you’d need to disturb. Might need a landscaper or a builder out as well.” Rhodri, ideally, but some people chose their own.
“You’d have to bury it?”
“Yeah, can’t leave live cables exposed to the weather or your gardening.”
“Oh. Well. All right. When can you come over?”
John glanced at his watch. A quote wouldn’t take long. He wasn’t meeting Chris until dinner, and the girls were all at work.
“Could do it now, if you’re free.”
“Really? Oh, that’d be marvellous.” John raised his eyebrows at the odd choice of words. “Yes, that’d suit nicely. Have you got a pen for the address?”
It was oddly familiar when John jotted it down—maybe a repeat customer—and he hung up with the sense that he was about to earn a lot of money. Posh women wanting cables laid? He got his best markups on those kinds of jobs.
The address was a way away, and he stopped off for petrol halfway there, but then he found himself winding his way into vaguely familiar streets. The satnav announced his destination at a spot he distinctly remembered, and he hauled on the handbrake with a frown, squinting up at the house.
There wasn’t a Land Rover on the drive.
But he could have sworn he’d kissed Chris right here on the pavement, under this streetlight, when it had been snowing.
The voice on the phone hadn’t been Lauren’s though. She’d spoken with a broad Sheffield accent, not that cultured southern sound. John racked his brains, trying to pull up anything else, any other female relative Chris had mentioned that might live there. Grandparents were all gone, weren’t they? And he’d implied his Aunt Kelly was gone too.
Slowly, John pulled the satnav off the windscreen. Scrolled through the recent destinations list.
Yes.
There. Before the first time he’d gone to the flat at Parson Cross.
Same address.
John swallowed tightly and glanced up at the house. Christ. So it had to be Lauren. Because that was Chris’s dad’s house.
Damn it. Damn-damn-damn-da—
John shook himself and shoved the satnav in the glovebox. No. Time to stop wussing out. And, anyway, maybe they wouldn’t remember him. Maybe Chris had never mentioned what he did for a living.
He threw out his chest and threw open the van door.
His fist hammered on the door in time with the hammering of his heart in his throat. He took a good four or five steps back so he wouldn’t loom so much. Prayed silently for Lauren, and for Chris’s dad not to be home.
And then the door opened, and John’s jaw sagged.
This was not Lauren.
A thin woman wearing nothing but a pair of fluffy slippers and a dressing gown stood in front of him. Her hair was long and frizzy, and soaking wet from a recent wash. It was dark like Chris’s but obviously dyed. Her wrists were covered in silver bangles and bracelets that clinked musically as she tucked a clump of hair behind her ear and beamed at him.
“Caroline,” she said. “Come through, come through…”
John swallowed. Great. Chris’s dad was having an affair, and here was John, right in the middle of what could turn into a World War Three scenario in about five seconds.
The house smelled of incense. It was airy and light, wooden floors everywhere, and pictures on every spare inch of wall in the kitchen. He saw several of Chris and had to suppress the urge to pinch one of him as a chubby baby, those big blue eyes still recognisable twenty-four years later. But apart from the pictures, the place was pristinely tidy. Almost like a show home. It had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life, and he could see the tracks of a vacuum cleaner as he was lead through the building to the back. Glass doors opened onto the long garden, and at the end stood a glorified shed.
“There.” She threw out her arm, and the dressing gown almost opened. John stared determinedly at the shed.
“So you want a cable laid out to give it power?”
“Yes.”
“What are you planning to do with it?”
“It’s going to be my meditation space,” she proclaimed.
“Right,” John said slowly. “So, uh. What kind of electrical items would you use in a meditation space?”
She gave him a look like he was an imbecile. “Lamps. Stereos…”
