Page 79 of Secret Paths

I take another bite to avoid giving him the satisfaction.

He sees straight through it, of course.

Between mouthfuls, he tells me Bernard disgraced himself at the quarry, and I am grateful he waits until I have finished eating before he provides detail. I tell him about a patient who tried to book an appointment for a recurring knee problem and brought in a typed timeline going back to 1998.

“How many pages?” Peter asks.

“Eleven.”

“Font size?”

“Ten.”

He winces. “Committed knee.”

“It had footnotes.”

“No.”

“It did.”

“I respect them.”

“I wanted to frame it.”

We clear the bowls together. Peter washes without asking. I dry because standing beside him with a tea towel feels less alarming than sitting down and admitting I enjoyed this.

His shoulder bumps mine at the sink.

I do not move away.

Neither does he.

Afterwards, I pour the last of the wine into our glasses and consider the table, the sofa, the stairs.

Peter looks at me. “What?”

“I am too full to have sex.”

His mouth opens.

Then he laughs.

Not a small laugh. A proper one, head tipped back, eyes creasing at the corners.

“I made cottage pie for a dick appointment and sabotaged myself.”

“That was poor planning.”

I pick up my glass. “We could nap for a bit.”

“Radical.”

“There is a bed upstairs.”

His eyebrows lift.

“Fully dressed,” I add.