I stay a little longer. Then, when it feels right, I gently withdraw my hand. His shadow relinquishes it slowly, like it’s making a decision.
I pick up my tea from the side table. It’s gone cold. I don’t particularly care.
“I’m going to make more tea,” I say. “Do you want me to put the TV on?”
Something shifts in his expression. Not quite a smile. Something softer than that, and quieter.
“Yes,” he says. “I think I would like that.”
I put the television on. I go and make more tea. I come back and sit on the sofa and we watch something neither of us will remember later, something gentle and inconsequential, and the flat feels different than it did this morning. Not better or worse. Just different. Like something that has been held very tightly for a very long time has been allowed, just briefly, to open its hand.
I drink my tea and don’t say anything else. Some things don’t need saying.
Chapter 19
In Sickness and in Health
Iamfine.Iamabsolutely fine, and there is nothing wrong with me and I am perfectly capable of working a full shift, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
This is what I tell myself at six in the morning when I wake up with a throat that feels like I’ve been gargling gravel and a head that has apparently been stuffed with wet cotton wool overnight. I tell myself this again while I’m making tea and my eyes are watering for no particular reason. I tell myself it a third time when I catch my reflection in the kitchen window and the person looking back at me is grey-faced and glassy-eyed and looks, if anything, slightly haunted.
I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m going to work.
I mumble something at Dis, but he’s already engrossed in BBC Breakfast, watching the smiling presenters on their red sofa, chat to a guest who appears to have a duck on their lap.
He mumbles something in return, and I flee down the stairs before he can comment on the state of me.
The morning starts badly and declines from there. The coffee machine seems louder than usual. The overhead lights seem brighter than usual. My head feels like it’s stuffed with damp insulation, and every time I move too quickly something behind my eyes makes a pointed complaint about it. Bunny arrives for his shift, takes one look at me, and opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” I say.
He closes his mouth. Opens it again. “Felix…”
“I said don’t.”
“You’ve caught the cold I had. I smeared tea-tree oil all over my entire body and ate a ghost pepper, and that blasted everything out of my system.”
Silence falls as I battle the mental images that are threatening to form.
Bunny’s eyes narrow. “You look terrible. I think it’s too late for tea-tree and ghost pepper.”
“I look fine.”
“You look like something the cat dragged in and then had second thoughts about.”
I give him my best withering look, which lands somewhat less effectively than usual because my eyes are watering again. “Make the coffee,” I say. “We open in ten minutes.”
We open. Customers come in. I serve them with the focused determination of someone who refuses to acknowledge that they are clearly, demonstrably, not well. My voice has gone slightly rough around the edges, which I attribute to the early hour. My hands are a bit unsteady, which I attribute to needing more coffee. I am fine. Everything is fine.
By ten o’clock I have sneezed four times into my elbow and my throat feels like it’s full of something dense and unhelpful. By eleven I have sneezed six times and Bunny has started watching me with the particular expression of someone biding their time. By half-past eleven a customer comes up to order, and I feel a sneeze building with the inevitability of a natural disaster, and I spin away from the counter just in time, but only just, and the customer takes a startled step backwards.
“Bless you,” she says, looking alarmed.
“Thank you,” I say. “Sorry.”
She collects her coffee and leaves faster than strictly necessary.
Bunny appears at my elbow. He’s wearing his bunny ears, which he does most shifts now, because nobody has told him not to, and customers find them delightful, which I find baffling but have stopped fighting. He puts both hands on my shoulders, gently but with unexpected firmness, and turns me toward the stairs.
