Page 70 of Read My Lips

In the kitchen an espresso machine gurgled and growled. Simon clattered crockery. Coffee wafted in.

At night, outside would be lit up like all those bright, happy, perfect homes I peeped in on from the train on my commute as it snuck past all the back gardens, rocking and sighing over the points. This was up there with all those glass-windowed extensions going through Dulwich, with their stripy close-clipped lawns and their brimming borders. And he deserved it all. Good for him.

Out the window, it wasn’t garages instead of football goals, PVC patio doors with yellowed net curtains pulled half across, or dodgy lean-to conservatories with the guttering leaking green down the brickwork. The brambles did not grow up higher than the grass, knotting up into sleeping beauty fox-hole tangles no one was ever going to slash through.

Simon brought two mugs out on an actual tray.

And I turned back to the bookcase, pretending I hadn’t been having a silent crisis about my lot in life compared to all this.

A colour-faded photo of another Black man, maybe in in his late forties, stared me in the face. The cut of his jacket was almost as sharp as one of Simon’s and just as old-fashioned. The lines around his mouth crinkled up like baking paper, and I bet the smile never smoothed out of him. Over his shoulder, the side of an old-style London bus blurred into the background.

Simon set the tray on top of the piano.

“Great Uncle Morris. Absolute style icon, as you can see.”

“Must run in the family,” I teased, looking back at him.

“Actually, I inherited a suitcase of his clothes when I was about fifteen. Or rather, when Grandad was moving closer to us, Dad found it stashed in the attic. I convinced him to let me keep it. So, the world has him to blame for my sixth-form fashion choices, and everything after that too.”

I could picture Simon as a defiant teen, going to school with his shoulders high, dressing like Prince Charming’s wet dream while the rest of the class rolled up looking like junior estate agents stuck on lettings to fulfill the obligatory suit requirement. A stage I’d never graduated past.

“Were you two close?”

Simon shook his head. “Died when I was very small. Wish I’d really known him. When I came out, Dad told me all these stories. How he and his partner at the time used to take Dad up to London when he was a kid and spoil him rotten – free choice in the toy department, or the coolest backpack going. Then they’d end up having tea with a drag queen in an underground bar, or crowding into a house party in a tiny upstairs flat off Dean Street.”

Simon’s smile warmed his words. The layers of memory from each retelling folded into them like the ingredients from the recipes his father had taught him. A complicated wash of jealousy cleaned me out. Maybe I’d be as outgoing as Simon in a parallel universe where someone who loved me told me I only ever had to be myself.

“Thank god for Great Uncle Morris,” I muttered, and I meant it. The world would be a shitter place if Simon dulled himself down like I’d learnt to.

“Exactly.”

I examined the photo again. It hit differently now I knew how similar he was to me and Simon.

“What happened to his partner?”

Simon shrugged carefully. “They spilt up before he died.”

“Oh.” Why had I been hoping they’d had a happy ending? Real life didn’t work like a romance novel.

“Right – coffee.” He handed me one. “Two sugars. Careful. It’s hot.”

“Cheers.”

Had he remembered how I took it from me tearing open sugar packets at that breakfast place? Both of us studied the contents of our cups like we were set on reading the grounds. Silence stretched. Simon clattered his cup down on top of the piano.

“Do you play?” He flipped the lid open, planting his fingers on the keys. “Aside from Chopsticks, I mean. Everyone knows how to play Chopsticks.”

A vaguely familiar tune filled the room.

“Not me.”

His hands stilled. “I see.”

Flexing his knuckles with theatrical exaggeration, Simon leaned back to fix me with a faux-serious expression. His hands splayed out over the keys, and he effortlessly trilled out the chorus of Hotel California without even looking.

I snorted. “Bet that comes off like a magic trick in a room full of hearing people.”

Abruptly, the music cut off. Simon studied me for the longest moment of my life before he closed the lid so gently it didn’t make a sound.