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“So what did you think?”Harry had asked.
“Well, it’s not like the novel at all,”he’d said.“And yet it’s so much more.”
Now, here in Bron’s room at Greenwood, the lovers’ on-screen tension was breaking, their admission of love and theirslow coming together in the blue-green-tinted darkness enrapturing him—the sunlight perfectly angled their chins and flooded between the two bodies, but he was stirred by a noise outside his bedroom. Hitting the space bar, the screen paused to a closed-eyed Keira Knightley and a featureless face that could have been any man. Bron opened the door into the hallway. Nobody there.
Aspects of the movie he had seen chinked against the layout of the house as he made his way downstairs through the almost silence—Birdie was twittering in her cage, the washing machine was lightly churning—and he glided gracefully and barefooted, as though he were living in a dream and roaming his own castle. Suddenly he wasn’t himself, but a character, walking the hall with nowhere to go. Until he caught his foot on the upturned corner of a rug. In the kitchen, the flagstone floor was icy-cold and quickly stirred him from his light stupor, reminding him of the chilly floorboards at St. Mary’s. He entered the breakfast room, suddenly hungry and wanting of some cereal. But a figure was sat at the table, holding a glass of juice and munching on toast. Flicking through a newspaper.
Madame Clarence immediately rose, knocking her chair back. “Sir, you startled me.”
“Sorry, please, please,” he said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, do continue. I was just—”
He backed out of the room, despite the housekeeper’s plea for him to please sit, join her—“It’s fine, I’m fine”—he scrambled back into the hallway. He dare not sit in there, alone with Madame Clarence and her keen-eyed stare. But then he heard the shuffle of feet, some gentle humming. Half expecting to find Mr. Edwards there, he turned to behold Darcy descending the stairs instead, wobbling and impish in baggy joggers and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. A snail in his shell. He was holding what looked like a weightless purple dumbbell in his hand. It was strange to see him ungroomed and disheveled in this way, and in such mundane circumstances. Had he just finished a workout? Until now, Darcy had existed only in the mostprominent situations, in chapters dog-eared as noteworthy, but here he was roaming the unseen footage of in-between scenes, the trimmings of the cutting room floor. Bron tried his best to make himself small, to fade into the walls, but Darcy, spotting him there, stopped his humming. He pulled the blanket away from his shoulders in one quick swoop, bundling it in his arms, ran a quick hand through his hair, hoisted up his joggers—all the while addressing him: “Ah, Bron. I see you’re up early. Ada told me you liked to sleep in.”
Bron scrambled for something to say. “I’m not—I mean, I do, usually like to sleep in. I was just looking for something … for some, er …” He could give any answer, really. “Some granola, actually.” He twisted toward the breakfast room’s closed door, as if to say,“The goods, the granola, is in there.”
“Granola?”
“Yes, it’s one of the better cereals,” he said to Darcy’s puzzled face. He embellished it with “And I’m hungry,” to demonstrate the truth of it. He rubbed at his stomach.
Darcy continued to look at him blankly. Bron wanted to die.
“Well, alright. And I see you’re avoiding Clarence in there. Good idea—she likes to ask a lot of questions in the morning. But if it’s cereal you’re after, I know where the good lot is kept. Come with me.” Darcy led Bron back toward the kitchen, where the cold floor stung his feet again. He placed his dumbbell onto the island. On closer inspection, it turned out to be one of those grotesquely large three-liter water bottles, with motivational messaging notched at timely intervals with statements like “Great start!” “You got this!” “You’re halfway through!” “Almost there!”
Darcy opened the fridge, the light illuminating him to look almost vampiric. Affixed to the fridge door by a magnet was a yellow note in what must have been Clarence’s hand, which read:cheddar (extra mature),leg of lamb—which had been struck through—red onions, basil, parsley, painkillers. And then, in another scrawl that he recognized as Ada’s:chocolate pots (white), cheese strings, tangerines (no pips), grapes (no seeds!).
Darcy placed a glass bottle onto the kitchen island—“It’s milk,” he said. “For your cereal”—and gestured toward the pantry, where, Bron guessed, the spare granola must be kept.
“Thank you.” Bron stabbed at the inside light switch to illuminate the cupboard. Finding a wide variety of cereal boxes and a bowl in there too, he dispensed the granola as quietly as possible before bringing it to the island. Pouring the milk was its own kind of torture, the flow of its decanting a kind of ASMR that felt, in that moment, like something intimate.
He watched as Darcy filled the electric kettle with water, and was grateful when he returned it to its base and pressed its switch, the whirr helping to silence his own crunching as he brought another spoon to his mouth.
“I haven’t seen you around lately. Been sneaking into any more colleges?” Darcy asked, reaching out to the island to grab his water bottle, where he refilled it at the tap.
Bron wasn’t sure how to frame that he’d been very much around, that it wasDarcywhose absence had been noted, who made himself scarce, and who Ada asked after every morning and through every evening. He was always on the lookout for him too, solely so that he could avoid him, of course.
He spoke to Darcy’s back. “No, but I quite intend to. I just haven’t had the time. It’s been a task, keeping up with Ada.”
“She’s a tricky one, isn’t she? Quite the handful.”
“I suppose,” he agreed, feeling bad for doing so. “Though ‘tricky’ isn’t the word I’d use. But she’s who I’m here for, anyway.”
“Hmm” was Darcy’s only reply, and he folded himself deeper into his blanket. With his coffee made, his bottle filled, he motioned to leave the kitchen. “If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me.”
Bron nodded.
“Right, good morning, Bron.”
He watched him as he walked away. He was left alone with his cereal.
When he returned to his bedroom, he waited till seven thirty. Hearing the bark of the dog through the hall, and Ada rushing down too, he waded again downstairs. Ada and Mr. Edwards sat at the breakfast table, Clarence entering to pour the tea, and not looking his way. Instead, she went straight to Mr. Edwards’s side and poured a cup especially for him. She didn’t offer this to either Bron or Ada, and he noticed the tea’s odd coloring in the cup, its murky, amber yellow. But his attention to the housekeeper’s movements was quickly overridden by Mr. Edwards’s casual announcement of another party, a second ball, in fact, which he quickly learned he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“What, another one?”
Ada cheered for Halloween—“All Saints and All Souls,” Clarence corrected—and when she caught his sigh, Ada ordered him to “just have fun. What else is there to do around here? It’s a big old house. We might as well use it.”
And have a repeat of the last time?He wanted to confess to his little companion the things he’d overheard her brother utter. But he couldn’t—his duty to her overrode his feelings. “I’ve never been good with people. You—you’re so good at talking. I wish I could be like that. I’m just so timid, and good at fading into the background.”
“No, you’re not,” she said.
