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Owen laughs. ‘Brought you some water. Hot in here.’
‘Ah. Thanks.’ I clear my throat, reach up again, for attempt number one thousand and fifty-nine because I don’t know what else to do with my hands, with my whole body, for that matter, and drag down the screen to the floor again. How did he know I was in here? Does everything get run by him or something? ‘Did you, erm .?.?. sort out Marshal?’
Owen crosses the carpet towards me, slim-fit jeans, a close fresh haircut, and crouches next to me. I almost shudder at the mushroom cloud of nostalgia. I could do without Owen today, because I’m feeling wobbly. My resolve a little weak because of Mum, I think. I feel alone with it. Yes, Cate and Ralph know but Dad doesn’t and he’s the one who really needs to know. Plus, even if I told my brother, what could Kieran do, all the way in Michigan from his busy life? It would just be another person in my phone, texting.Hey sis, what’s happening today?It would be another thing to do.
‘Do you need a hand?’ Owen asks.
‘No, no .?.?.’ The corner unravels, but Owen catches it with his forearm, me, with my hand.
He turns his face towards me and smiles, placing the bottles of water on the floor, one next to the other, like soldiers. ‘Let me do it,’ he says. ‘There’s a knack.’
Owen reaches over, warm fingertips touching my hand, and I lean away. He smells like Saturday mornings. Post-gym shaving gel, and chewing gum. He’d show up at my room-share, smellingexactlylike this, in the beginning. The car parked outside, ready to drown me in .?.?.stuff.Stuff that fizzled fast and, if you were to view it on a graph, would have peaked like a spike and then dropped off a cliff. A heart, out of beats. He’d tell me I’d blindsided him – that he never expected to feel the way he felt about me, about anyone. And the ‘stuff’ felt like he’d found a language that expressed it. I remember feeling weirdly relieved when it stopped.
‘You pull right down to the floor,’ he says, ‘straight down, then as you come up’ – he clicks it into place, eyes meeting mine, like two shining pennies. ‘And there you are.’
‘That simple,’ I say, looking away. ‘To everyone else.’ I give a fake, stiff laugh.
‘Yeah, well. Never your strong point, was it? Manual stuff. Putting things together.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say, feeling my muscles tense a little. ‘I’ve got better.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Mhm,’ I mumble.
And this is what I mean by the uneasiness. I have this urge to just .?.?.explain myself.Impress him, despite knowing I shouldn’t want to. I remember the IKEA bedside cabinet. Oh, the bloody IKEA cabinet and how it almost unravelled our whole relationship. Owen had been determined we should move in together, and finally, after four months, we did. And I almost moved straight back out when we had theworstargument because the drawer of the cabinet Owen made fell apart, and mine didn’t. He swore his cabinet was the one I built. I knew it wasn’t, and who cared anyway, it was just a stupid flat-pack cabinet. But he was furious I’d insinuatedhisone was the incorrectly assembled one and we’d argued about it so intensely, he’d slept on the sofa. We didn’t speak until the following night. The ice was broken when I walked into the bedroom to find a bouquet of flowers on top of the cabinet itself. ‘Rest in peace,’ he’d said from the doorway. ‘Also, can we never fight again? We’re too fucking hot to fight about cabinets.’ It’s how so many of our arguments went. Big explosion, silence, an easy papering over, and I’d spend the next day exhausted, confused, wondering why on earth I was so uptight about it all; why I fought my corner so hard.
‘Studio B, over,’ Owen says, into the earpiece. ‘Sorry. Truck’s chatting. Never stops.’
I nod. If I don’t look at Owen in the eye, I feel better. More able to say what I want to. ‘Sorry about walking into that earlier. In the truck.’
Owen gives a shrug and watches me, fiddling with the screen. I just want to be at home, out of this studio. The heat of this windowless room, Owen’s heavy, familiar gaze.
‘Chloe wants to return the ring,’ says Owen, standing, the words breathing out in a sigh. ‘And it’s stupid, but when she came over the other night, she said she would think about it all. The whole venue deadline getting closer. And .?.?.Mumchose that ring .?.?.’ Owen tips his head back, eyes to the ceiling. ‘I feel like I’ve let Mum down. I feel like it’s all I do, Millie. I’m all she has.’
‘Of course you haven’t let her down,’ I say and the words come, almost instinctively. Automatically. Like an old speed dial button I haven’t pressed in years, suddenly pushed. This was an old refrain, of Owen’s, a story he couldn’t let go of. That he, his mum’s only child, only family member, was letting her down. ‘Owen, your Mum thinks the actual sun shines out of your arse. You know that.’
‘Yeah, but she’s down, Millie. Since .?.?.’ He trails off, but I know he means my letter-bomb of an email. The will-they-won’t-they wedding situation. Me and my stupid, stupid sent-to-all words. ‘And you know how it is,’ he carries on. ‘Family. Feeling like you’ve got something to prove. You know? Feeling like they expect something of you even though they’re not saying it.’
And there’s something about this – us two, like before, talking about things only we really understand. Owen and his mum who thinks he’s the golden child, the dad who denies his existence. My mum’s expectations. How I always feel I’m disappointing her, especially next to Kieran and his doctorates and handsome husband and literal life-saving molecular biology research.
So, before I’ve even thought it over for even a moment, I tell him about Mum. It just comes out.
Owen freezes. ‘What? Are you .?.?. are you serious?’
‘I followed her,’ I tell him. ‘And she was .?.?. meeting him? The ex-husband? He’s ill or something.’
Owen moves, like someone ducking from a baseball. Theatrical. Overt. His cheeks puffing out. ‘Fuck,Mills .?.?.’
‘I followed her to a care home. She said it wasn’t a good relationship. Alcohol. That Dad witnessed how broken she was after him. He’s saying he’s changed. He’s regretful.’
‘Well, people can change—’
‘Dad doesn’t know,’ I iron over his words with mine.
Owen watches me on the floor, still crouched, still trying to loop the screen corner on the frame. ‘Jesus. And your dad .?.?. He’s so .?.?.’
‘I know.’ Owen means traditional. Simple. By the book.
