‘Ring me. After. Whenever.’
‘It'll be late.’
‘I don't care.’ He met Neil's eyes. ‘I want to hear your voice on Christmas Day. That's not a negotiation.’
‘Okay,’ Neil said.
‘Okay.’
Rory shifted. Pushed off the sofa. Padded barefoot across the room to the worktable and came back with something wrapped in a paint-spotted cloth. A canvas, wider than his arm span. He propped it against the wall.
‘I was going to put this under a tree. I don't have a tree. I've had it behind the wardrobe for a week.’
Neil unwrapped it. A canvas, unframed, the back raw and the front worked in oil. Two figures from behind. Shoulders, the line of two spines, the space between them charged and specific. No faces, no hands. The palette warm, gold and ochre with a thread of burnt sienna where one body nearly touched the other. He recognised it from the easel. Finished now. The brushwork was Rory’s exhibited quality, the technique that sold for thousands at the Whitmore.
He looked at it for longer than the beat called for.
‘Rory.’
‘You don't have to hang it. I just wanted you to have it. It was the one on the easel. I finished it in November and I couldn't sell it. It's yours. It was always yours.’
‘Rory.’
‘You've said my name twice.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you going to say anything else.’
‘In a minute. I'm looking at it.’
He looked at it. The taller figure had his shoulders. The set of the neck, the specific tension Rory had been painting since October. The second figure stood closer than a colleague would. Anyone looking at this painting would see two men, gold-toned, close. Anyone who knew would see exactly what it was. The back of the canvas had a pencilled date. October 14th. Six weeks before the discovery. Three weeks after the reprographics room.
Neil leaned the canvas against the wall because if he kept looking at it he was going to embarrass himself.
‘Thank you.’
‘You're welcome.’
‘I haven't got you anything.' A Cavanaugh original. He was doing the maths. He couldn't help it. 'I haven't got you anything near this.’
‘I didn't do this so you'd get me something.’
‘I know. I'm still going to give you something. I just haven't wrapped it because it doesn't come wrapped.’
He sat up. The blanket slid. He did not care about the blanket. He looked at Rory across the ruined sofa and he said it straight, the way he'd learned to say things when saying them sideways had stopped being an option.
‘The twenty-eighth. My flat. Come for dinner. I'll cook.’
Rory's face did three things at once and settled on the fourth.
‘Your flat.’
‘My flat.’
‘Freddie's at Gemma's for the week between Christmas and New Year.’
‘Freddie's at Gemma's.’
