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Falling back into Nicky’s bed once might have been an understandable mistake, but twice was something else. Twice was a need that had never gone away, salve for a hurt that had never stopped aching, and a damned stupid way to go on. He couldn’t even blame Nicky. It had been his own doing, start to end.
Where the devil did he go from here?
‘If I offered you a penny for your thoughts, would I want my money back?’ Nicky enquired.
‘You’d certainly be overpaying. What are we going to do?’
‘I had in mind Trafford’s on the Cornmarket.’
‘Not for dinner. In general.’
‘I have no idea why you’re asking me,’ Nicky said. ‘I sit in a litter of dead language, making myself unpleasant to students. I’ve done that for three years and, barring unexpected eventualities, will do it for another thirty. If you’ve another plan, please let me know.’
‘I don’t have a plan, except to keep asking questions. Nicky?’
‘Here.’
‘Suppose I found out who killed Toby.’ Nicky’s breath hitched, perceptible in the slight judder of his chest under Jem’s head. ‘Suppose it was someone who, well, who was provoked.’
‘Whoever did it was provoked. None of us were given to assassination as a hobby.’
‘But suppose one looked at the reason and thought,I could not justify reporting this to the police.’
‘Have you found something?’
‘It’s a hypothetical question.’
‘Possibly one you should have considered before you started on your stone-turning career,’ Nicky pointed out. ‘Are you asking me what I think, or what you should do?’
‘Are they different?’
‘Obviously. If you want to know whetherIwould tell the police the murderer’s identity, the answer is no, because I don’t want more harm done. Whereas you seem to believe that revealing the murderer would do more good than harm. Or are you changing your mind?’
‘It’s just speculation,’ Jem said. ‘Well. I found out something that might or might not have a bearing on things, but it’s not my secret to tell you. Not unless I was sure it was relevant and maybe not even then. Sorry, I don’t mean to be obscure.’
‘Can you assure me you aren’t going to point the accusing finger at anyone in the near future? Say, the next day?’
‘I can promise you that.’
‘Then let’s talk about dinner,’ Nicky said. ‘Because I don’t know what we’re going to do, Jem, singly or together. I don’t like any of the courses of action that seem right, and all the options I’d prefer to take seem wrong, and you seem to be in a similar state of moral suspension. Could we have the night to ourselves? Just us, without Toby’s shadow?’
‘We’ve had the afternoon.’
‘And now I’d like the evening,’ Nicky said. ‘A meal in civilised surroundings where you and I can have conversations that don’t pivot around the knife in Toby’s heart as though we’re a pair of compasses and that the spike. I want your company for a decent stretch of the evening, and that ought not to be too much to ask when other people get lifetimes. I wouldn’tdreamof asking for any such grace as is granted to most of the fucking country without question. I’d just like dinner with you.’
‘Then we’ll have it,’ Jem said, because the sudden crack in Nicky’s voice wasn’t right. ‘Let’s do that.’
Nicky brushed a kiss over his hair, very light. ‘Thank you. I’d like to say you won’t regret it, but that’s probably a promise too far.’
Jem didn’t regret dinner, as such. The food was good, simple English cooking, of the kind he liked, rather that the French cuisine Nicky always praised. They talked, though not with the animation of that first dinner, because they’d moved beyond rekindling a friendship, into—Jem wasn’t sure what. They’d had attraction and desire and uncertainty ten years ago, and not for very long; he had no idea what they had now.
I think it was Nicky, because he loved Toby.
Prue had said that, he reminded himself. Prue, who had her own bitter motive. Jem hung on to that as a lifeline, trying to keep fears and beliefs in a suspension in his mind, as though they could exist together.Prue. Nicky.
He didn’t know what the devil he was doing, but Nicky had asked for the evening, and Jem felt he owed it, whether to his old friend or to his younger self. So they ate, and talked, and walked back to Anselm’s together, and Jem slept well in his solitary bed, his skin sensitised with the memory of touch.
He felt rather less content the next morning. He couldn’t afford more than a week at Anselm’s; after this, he’d have to return to London, find work, give up. Or, worse, not give up, and become one of those obsessive little men poring over yellowed newspapers and coming up with contorted theories. He didn’t want to do that. He wanted to be able to speak to Hugo and Aaron again, to stand friend to Prue, to knock on Nicky’s door.
