‘Beans on toast is aholding pattern. She wants to know if you’ve been to the Sainsbury’s.’
‘I went to the Sainsbury’s.’
‘What did you buy.’
‘Ron. Don’t.’
‘What did you buy, Ewan.’
He’s not going to stop. This is the Ron I grew up with: the one who’d stand in the kitchen doorway and ask me where the twenty quid had gone and not move until I told him. When I was twelve, I thought it was bullying. By fourteen, I’d worked out it was love, which is honestly worse.
‘Pasta,’ I say. ‘Jar of sauce. Cheese. Apples because Mum asked if I was having fruit and lying about fruit feels impossible.’
‘But you can lie about other things.’
Answering would unravel it.
Another silence. He’s thinking about how far to push. I can picture him exactly, leaning against our mum’s kitchen counter in his socks, one hand on the mug, the other one flat on the worktop, how Ron stands when he’s deciding whether to make someone’s evening harder.
‘You sound off,’ he says.
‘I’m on a bus.’
‘Not that. You sound, smaller.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Ewan.’
‘Ron.’
He sighs. Barely. A quarter of a sigh. It’s the closest Ron ever gets to showing that something is costing him.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to do the thing tonight. You’re eighteen and you’ve got a right to a bad night without me running through it with you. But I’m going to say one thing and then I’m going to let you go.’
‘Go on then.’
‘If you’re in over your head with something up there, you ring me. Not Mum. Not one of your mates. Me. I’ve got a whole life of sorting things out for you, it’s practically a qualification. You hear me?’
The bus hits a speed bump. I lurch forward, catch myself against the glass.
A whole life of sorting things out.That’s not a turn of phrase.
He means it. He doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. Ron’s not performative, not like our dad was on the rare occasions he bothered. Ron is precisely as much as he says and usually a bit more. He’s the one who found me on the roof outside my bedroom at thirteen with my face wet and worked out from the state of me that I wasn’t crying about a girl. He sat next to me on the tiles for nearly two hours and said three sentences the whole time, and one of them wasI love you, you stupid pillock, come inside before mum notices the window’s open.
‘I hear you,’ I say.
‘Good.’
‘Ron.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m okay. It’s a lot, being here. I didn’t expect it to be a lot.’
‘That’s not lying, though, is it?’ he says, and for a second I think he meansthat’s not good enough, but then I realise he meansthat’s the first true thing you’ve said in four minutes and I’m going to take it.
‘No.’
