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“Please don’t ask me that. It’s not fair.”
Which was no answer at all but told me everything.
CHAPTER 21
CHARLES
Marcus had landed our biggest client yet. As I cracked open a bottle of bubbly, he was almost quivering with excitement. My offer of a cup of tea was brushed aside.
“Nice-looking boy.”
Florian had slipped out via the back door and now we sat opposite one another across the vast kitchen island. I’d scrubbed my face clean, hurrying, and trying to ignore the whirlpool of orange circling my head. I sipped at the champagne, only pretending to drink, nausea pooling in my belly with every acidic drop.
Never very far out of reach, Marcus’s laptop squatted like a toad between us. The expression on his florid face was amused. “I always fancied you might be that way inclined.” He saluted me with his champagne flute. “Whatever floats your boat, old chap. Chapeau, as the frogs like to say. Cheers. Here’s to us.”
And just like that, my dear Florian, and everything pure and good he represented was dismissed.
Life was a game, one Marcus played to win. A bottomless pot of coffee soon replaced the showy champagne, my paints and brushes swept aside to make way for boxes of papers that spilled out across the table and onto the floor. Not long after, three more laptops stood to attention between us; what space remained turned into a mobile office littered with post-it notes.
Marcus hadn’t been exaggerating; the deal was huge, daring even, spectacular in its arrogance. The one person with the sheer audacity to pull it off was him, and the one person capable of joining the dots was me. His clever fingers flew over the keyboards as we got down to it.
Day turned to night, and, like putting on an ugly worn pair of slippers, I slid into my usual role. Nit-picking for flaws, pre-empting every ruffle in the plan, revelling in the complex black and white numbers, shuffling them around as if they were nothing more than a series of particularly challenging sudokus.
“It’s going to happen because we’re gonna make it happen,” Marcus repeated every time I threw in a spanner. And then we’d spare a second to grin at each other, co-conspirators against the rest of the world before ripping up the rules we didn’t like and rewriting some new ones. Contracts, figures, proposals, and projections began to stack up. And zeros. Did I mention the number of fucking zeros? Like big fat ostrich eggs. Rows and rows of them, all in a line.
And therein lay the craziest part of all; Marcus didn’t give two hoots about the money. He never had done, not really. Not once he had enough to keep the wife in handbags and the kids in posh schools. And neither had I. My share sat in the bank, accumulating interest, which was a total misnomer; it held no interest for me whatsoever. At most, the money was an easy measure of progress, a gold medal to pin on our chests, a door to the winner’s enclosure. Another notch on our bedposts. The thrill of being the first to the kill was where the real excitement lay. Hunting it down, galloping out ahead of the pack. Leaving the rest in our dust.
As darkness thickened, my belly settled down and orange relaxed into a seat on the back burner. After all, what did I have to be anxious about? Marcus was my oldest friend; he cared about me. He’d visited me in hospital when I was sick. I trusted him. It was the shock of him turning up on my doorstep, that was all. He’d soon stop me if he felt we were pushing things too far.
Green had gone walkabout too, which isn’t to say my mind became a blank canvas, because new colours took over, filling the gap. Black and white settled in for the long-term, clapping me a warm welcome back, their regular rhythmic applause swelling and cheering me on as neat rows and columns stacked up. My old friend navy joined in too, with its sharp angles and no nonsense blockiness, telling me we were close to winning. I hadn’t fully explained navy to Florian; I couldn’t explain it myself. Progress and order, or discipline perhaps, was the closest I came to it, like the colour of a strict schoolteacher. Neither friend nor foe. And as dawn lifted its head to welcome in a new day, on our fine navy steeds we cantered on, never turning around to see if forest green or, God forbid, buttery yellow were keeping up.
And my fragile, shimmering silver? It never left the starting blocks.
CHAPTER 22
FLORIAN
“You’re going back, aren’t you? He persuaded you.”
I cycled over to Charles’s house with the intention of playing it cool. Of congratulating him on the big deal then waiting to see where it left us. Before employing a whole host of underhand tactics to remind him what he’d be missing, orbiting around pleasuring his dick with my mouth.
But the acrid stink of bleach and freshly mopped floors put paid to that. As did Charles’s pale pinched face and new grey shadows cupping his red-rimmed eyes.
“He didn’t need to persuade me. The ramifications of securing this client are huge. Our company needs me. There are parts to our business that I do better than anyone.”
“He told you that, did he?”
“Yes, because it’s true! I’m the details man and Marcus is the personality. I’ve explained that. It’s how we’ve built it up to be so successful.”
The brief glimpse I’d had of Marcus’s personality had not been to my taste. “But you’re not ready to go back to work. You said so yourself.”
Should I mention the floors? They were getting pretty difficult to ignore. “What about the nightmares?” I demanded instead. “The doctors told you to take at least three months. You’ve only had eight weeks.”
He waved me away. “They give the same standard advice to everyone. And last night, I didn’t have a single nightmare.”
His eyes slid away from mine. Coffee cups were piled high in the sink. Over his shoulder, papers lay scattered everywhere, covering the sofas, the low table, the huge island in the kitchen. As if someone had charged through the house with a leaf blower. And he was deathly pale. Shaky too, from the caffeine. And dressed in yesterday’s rumpled shirt. Oh, fucking merde.
“You haven’t slept, have you, Charles?” I pressed my hand into his. “Have you worked all night?”
