‘I’m a pattern-maker. That’s what Hardy says we are.’
‘And?’
‘I used to think I was a pattern-finder. Passive. The patterns were there and I noticed them. Hardy’s saying we make them. Active.’
He puts the red pen down.
‘What do you think?’
I pause because the thought is arriving in real time, and Laurence has always been the first person I’ve been willing to think in front of. ‘You don’t find a Möbius strip. You twist the paper. The twist is the pattern. Without the twist, the paper is just paper. The maths is what happens when someone decides to twist it.’
‘Write that down.’
‘It’s not a proof.’
‘Write it down anyway. It’s a sentence that makes a proof worth writing.’
I pick up my notebook. The pen. I write it down. Underneath, in smaller letters, I writefor L, and then I scribble it out, because naming the dedication is the nineteen-year-old move, and I want to at least try to be older than that.
He sees the scribble. He doesn’t comment.
Evening. He hasn’t mentioned tomorrow.
Tomorrow is Sunday. Sunday is the lasagna, and my parents are coming to see where I live.
And to meet my partner.
His nerves about all of it are the size of a small house and growing since about three on Friday afternoon, when my mum texted me the time and signed itMum xx, which is the firstxxI’ve had from her since I went there.
Laurence is doing the washing-up. Back to me, spine rigid. A man carrying the weight of an event he can’t plan for.
I press in close behind him. He leans back fractionally, letting me take some of the weight without either of us saying it.
‘We didn’t have to.’
‘Yes we did.’
‘I know. Small white lie.’
He laughs, the dry one, the one that sits behind a sigh.
‘Thanks.’
‘Whatever they say, whatever he says, it won’t change anything between us. You’re stuck with me.’
He turns the tap off. Dries his palms on the tea towel.
‘Stuck,’ he says. Testing the word, trying it on. Lancashire surfacing in the vowels, faint, the tired tell.
‘Positively stuck.’
He turns around. His left hand finds its usual spot without looking.
‘Bed?’ he says—the question is shaped like permanence disguised as ordinary.
‘Bed.’
Bedroom door open. Same sheets as this morning, still clean. He’s left the lamp on his side, low.
