‘Tonight.’ Low. No preamble. ‘You're not coming directly to mine. We're going somewhere before that.’
‘Where?’
‘The Barn. I'm taking you to meet my people. Properly.’
‘Rory...’
‘Tess, Patrick, Kieran. They know about you. They want to meet you. As Neil. Just Neil.’
Neil's back was against the supply cupboard door. The fluorescent light buzzed. ‘All of them.’
‘All of them.’
‘I don't think I can...’
‘Neil.’ Rory stood a foot away. Hands in pockets. ‘They're my home. I want them to know you.’
The word home sat between them. Poster paint and floor polish in the corridor. A Year 7 clattered past with a violin case.
‘Okay,’ Neil said. Too fast. Like saying okay to a dentist before the drill.
Rory drove. An old Volvo, oil paint and a vanilla air freshener Kieran had hung from the mirror as a joke that had become permanent. The road out of town climbed towards the hills, streets thinning to hedgerows and farmland, streetlights giving way to dark fields and a sky that opened overhead. January stars, cold and bright, in the gaps between clouds.
Neil sat in the passenger seat and felt sick.
A heavier sick than the nights he'd driven to Rory's flat. The gut-level dread of being introduced to people who mattered to the person he was sleeping with.
‘You're very quiet,’ Rory said.
‘I'm processing.’
‘You're panicking.’
‘I'm processing my panic. It's a two-stage system.’
‘They're going to love you, Neil. Tess already has opinions about your bookshelf based entirely on what I've told her, and Patrick will shake your hand and say two words all evening and you'll know exactly where you stand.’
‘And Beth?’
‘Beth will show you her drawings. Accept the drawings. Do not suggest improvements.’
‘Has someone suggested improvements?’
‘Kieran said it needed a longer tail. He's still in recovery.’
The road narrowed. Hedgerows closing in on both sides, headlights catching bare branches in silver. A rabbit bolted across the tarmac. The countryside had a different silence from the town, wider, less insulated.
‘What have you told them?’ Neil asked.
‘About you?’
‘About me. About us. What do they think this is?’
Rory's hands shifted on the wheel. ‘I told Tess your name and that you're a teacher and that you make me want to paint warmer colours. Patrick knows because Tess told him and because Patrick knows everything.’
‘And what word did you use?’
‘Word?’
