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“No, that’s Seeoban. She doesn’t speak to me anymore.”
“But why?”
To my surprise, he shifted beside me, leaning too, so our bodies found their own equilibrium, places where we touched and were touched at the same time. “I…fucked up a lot when I was growing up. I thought I was the man of the family or some bullshit like that. Felt I had to take responsibility.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Maybe. But love, immaturity, and fear make you a shitty substitute father.” He spoke matter-of-factly and without self-pity, butI ached for him a little. The boy who had made mistakes, and the man who lived with them. “Miffy just got her head down, got scholarships, got out of Stoke. She’s a barrister now, lives in London. Mum and I see her pretty often. She seems happy. Sorted.”
“So you must have done something right.”
“God, I tried.” Old sorrow broke in his voice. “I tried so hard. Probably too hard. I just keep thinking if I’d done something differently, if I’d been a bit older, or less bewildered by the hole in my family, maybe Seeoban… Oh, it’s daft, I know it’s daft.”
“No…um…dafter than me trying to f-find the reason Marius left me.”
I felt him nod, his hair whispering against the edge of my cheek. “People take their successes with them, which is absolutely the way it should be. But it does tend to leave you with the bad stuff. It’s not like I sit around late at night congratulating myself that Miffy is having a good life. I sit around fretting about whatever I did or didn’t do that failed Seeoban so bloody terribly.”
I glanced again at the photograph, at the other girl, who had turned away at the last possible moment, so she was just a blur of white and red, a candle flame caught by the breeze. “Where is she now?”
“Last time I saw her I was dragging her to rehab for something like the fifth time.” He shrugged, and it rippled through both of us. “I like to imagine she got clean and she’s living somewhere with some family of her own. Or whatever it is that would make her happy.”
“Adam,” I said, my voice tight with urgency and my desperateneed to be heard, “you know it’s not your fault, don’t you? You’re no more responsible for the bad stuff than the good. People make choices.”
“Yeah, I know. People make choices, and sometimes they just leave. And, afterwards, we gather up our hearts, pick up our lives, do the best we can with them, and see what comes.” He smiled, a little crookedly. “I like to manage waterways. Stop people flooding. It makes me feel useful.”47
I smiled back at him, just the same, just as certain and uncertain. “I like to look after books and papers.”
His eyes held mine. “People come as well as go, you know.”
And that was when I…I looked away, blushing and cowardly and wordless. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand him or want what he was so gently offering, it was simply that my heart was a craven animal, balking now, instinctively, at the very last.
I didn’t want to be left again.
After a moment or two, the silence turning thick and stale around us, Adam cleared his throat and stepped away from me, taking all his warmth and the promise of fitted-together bodies. “It’s, uh, late. I should probably be heading off.”
“Do you live nearby?” I heard myself asking idiotically.
“Deddington?” And when I gave him a blank look, added, “It’s about half an hour’s drive to the north. It’s nice. I mean, murder-village name aside. But I’m actually staying at the Travelodge at the moment. Because the life of a civil engineer is a glamorous one.”
He ran a hand through his hair, fire falling wildly through his fingers, and I stared, hopeless and envious, wondering how itwould feel against my fingers. And while I was staring, he turned and vanished into the hallway. I heard the rustle of fabric and the scrape of a zipper as he pulled on his coat.
“Thanks for having me round,” he called out. “Sorry for giving youThis Is My Life.”48
The last two days whirled through my mind. Adam and his sandbags and his game theory. His hand on my elbow. His freckles and his smile. My books. Mrs. P. Marius. Seeoban.
And now.
Which was already too late because the door was shut, and Adam was gone. The quiet settled like dust.
Ridiculous scenarios flashed through my mind: rushing after him into the night, no words needed as we kissed in the pouring rain.49
But I didn’t move.
I let him leave.
My choice, this time.
The living room is mainly full of sofa.
