'That's what I said.'
'And your parents?'
'My parents will do what they've always done. They'll manage. They'll rearrange the furniture. My mother will find a way to frame it that doesn't require the wordgayand my father will trim something and neither of them will ask a direct question because direct questions lead to direct answers and direct answers require engagement and engagement is the one thing the Ashworths have never been able to do.'
'Sounds like you're ready.'
'It sounds like exhaustion.' Neil put his coffee down. 'I've been avoiding things since I was fifteen. I avoided the drawing. Avoided the feeling. Avoided the word. Avoided the strangers. Avoided Gemma's question for eight months. Avoided you for three weeks. Avoided the birthday party. Avoided my mother's eyes.' He paused. 'I'm done avoiding.'
'You're done.'
'I'm done. You're my partner. I wiped paint off your face in my own hallway because that's what I do, because my hand knows your face, and my mother can put on her coat and button every button and leave and the leaving is her choice. Not mine.'
Rory's hold closed around him. He blinked once, hard.
'Alright then,' he said. Rough. 'Alright.'
They didn't have sex. They didn't need to. They sat on the sofa and drank the coffee and Rory's feet were in Neil's lap and Neil's hand was on Rory's ankle and the flat was quiet and still and the lock was unchecked and the wall had a painting on it and the man beside him was not leaving and Neil was not asking him to.
Tomorrow, the phone would ring. His mother, in that quiet house, already choosing her words.
He had no idea which ones she'd pick. He'd been wrong about her before.
14
FREDDIE IN THE PICTURE
The conversationwith Freddie happened on a Saturday in February, two weeks after the party, and it was nothing like Neil had planned.
Fourteen evenings of checking his phone. The lock had been replaced by the screen. Every night after Freddie was asleep: the glow in the dark hallway, the notification bar empty, the silence from his parents louder than anything Malcolm had ever said with words.
Gemma had asked, once. 'Have they rung?'
'No.'
'Either of them?'
'No.'
The Ashworths didn't ring. They recalibrated in private, constructed their positions, and emerged with a finished product. The silence wasn't punishment. It was engineering.
He'd planned it. Of course he had. Three drafts on his laptop, opened, stared at, deleted. A conversation map on a Post-it stuck to the inside of his desk drawer at work, hidden from Sue Dhillon's omniscient gaze.
Key phrases circled: _someone special_. _A friend who's more than a friend_. _You know how Mummy has Owen_. Gemma had vetoed the second draft on grounds of overcomplexity ('You've written a brief, Neil. He's six. He doesn't need a brief.') and the third on grounds of cowardice ('If you say _special friend_ one more time I'm going to scream. He's your partner. Use the word.')
It had happened at Gemma's kitchen table on the Thursday before the Saturday.
Freddie was upstairs watching something with a talking dog. Gemma had made tea neither of them wanted and Neil had brought the laptop and the Post-it and the three drafts, and Gemma had read all three of them with an expression he'd last seen on her face during the divorce mediation.
'Read it aloud,' she said.
'I don't...'
'Neil. He's six. You're going to sit in front of him on Saturday and your voice is going to do something and your face is going to do something else and we need to find out what, now, so you can fix it. Read it.'
He read it. Out loud. To his ex-wife. In her kitchen. The sentence arrived in his own voice like a stranger's.
'There's someone special in Daddy's life. A friend who's more than a friend. You know how Mummy has Owen? Daddy has...'
