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‘It catches you up?’
Aleksey thought about this, enjoying the feel of Ben’s fingers. ‘That is a very good way to put it, yes. Pain is like a stalker: it eventually catches me up.’
‘This time last month you were barely on your feet at all. Don’t sweat it.’
‘Come to bed.’
Ben nodded and returned to the bathroom. When he returned, he slid in alongside him and they spooned. Aleksey lifted his aching leg and laid it over Ben’s to elevate it. He sighed with tiredness and relief both.
Then he closed his eyes and it was still there: his green jewel of perfection set in blue flecked with white.
He dreamed that night of an emerald necklace slipping through his fingers in a place he could not recall. However hard he tried to stop the stones leaving him, he could not—they had their own places to be, their own stories to tell, and they had been his only so long as they had needed to be. For him to keep them safe. But in loving them, he knew he had to let them go.
When he woke in the middle of the night, spasms from the pins he could swear were shifting position in his bones, he recalled vividly a sense of loss, but also that he had felt lighter for the absence, the lifting of responsibility.
Unused to dreams still, he didn’t know how to interpret this one. Then he recalled he didn’t believe in omens or portents; that was Ben.
He believed you made your own fate.
And that thought returned him to the very interesting realisation he’d had whilst teasing Ben about the helicopter landing pad which Ben had apparently added to the yacht he was buying.
If he owned a boat, or a plane, or, indeed, a helicopter, he would never have to worry about coming through customs ever again.
He had plans to bring back a lot more useful stuff than shortbread on his future island adventures.
As much as he enjoyed living almost entirely on things made of sugar, it was another crystal substance he saw in those glinting flecks of white playing in his mind’s eye.
One that did a little bit more for pain.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
The wait was excruciating for them both. That they’d fallen into a shared island psychosis was the only way he could rationalise it. Ben could talk of almost nothing else, and he was almost as bad. They speculated, which was something he would have previously abhorred. What was the point ofdo you think, I wonder if, maybe we couldwhen none of it meant anything? It would be what it would be. But now they passed hours doing just this: planning, conjecturing…dreaming.
One day, he woke and realised it had been two weeks since he’d seen Phillipa in the little Barton Combe church. It was almost as bad as an itch that could not be scratched. He knew a lot about those recently.
Breakfast, when he slouched in near midday, cheered him up no end. Ben had foregone his usual start to the day of meat and blood, and all of that fried as far as Aleksey could see, and had prepared batter for pancakes. When they were cooked, he brought them over with something in a jug. It smelt very good. Very…sugary.
‘What’s this?’
‘Maple syrup.’
‘Huh. Will I like it?’
Ben flicked him a glance over his own, very considerable stack. ‘You do realise you sound just like Gregory when you say that, don’t you?’
Aleksey reared back a little and thought about this, about a restaurant and seeing again the man who had once almost swallowed him whole.Will I like this?‘Gregory knew exactly what he liked, Ben, his entire life, and I don’t recall him ever being uncertain about anything. Until the end.’ He did not like Ben thinking they had anything in common.
Ben laid a finger on his wrist. ‘I’m sorry. You’re not like him in any way, or you wouldn’t be here, would you, AlekseyRider-Mikkelsen?’
Aleksey smirked. ‘So, what do you think? Will I like it?’
‘Try it and see.’
He did, and he liked it very much indeed.
He liked it so much that when Ben had finished his food, which he usually did before Aleksey had even lifted a utensil, he glanced up from the book he was browsing, apparentlyMental Maths for Pilots: A Study Guide,and asked suspiciously, ‘Are you rubbing maple syrup into your gums?’
