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His breath against the side of my neck was perishingly sweet. And I turned my head away in case he unravelled all my resolve with only the air from his lips. I would have expected the length of the boat in front of us to be obstructive, but there was so much spacearoundus that it didn’t matter. The blue-grey river, still ice dappled, the soft rucking of the water, creased like sheets between a lover’s fingers, to mark our passage. Behind us, transient arrows left upon the surface fading into nothing but dreams and stillness. And everything else—the promise of sky. Endless, unreachable light.
“Okay.” Leo’s voice was a world away. “Over there.” He indicated a spot just before the footbridge I had skittered over on Christmas Eve. From there, it was less than a minute to Abingdon Road itself.
“You mean I have to park this thing?”
“Unless you want to swim?”
I did not want to swim.
“Approach at about a thirty-degree angle,” Leo said. “Remember she turns from the middle.”
None of that should have made sense to me. But somehow, it was beginning to—on an instinctual level, rather than a practicalone. Leo reached for the throttle, dropping our speed, and I turned the tiller, bringing the boat around in a surprisingly smooth arc. I must have looked…something because Leo grinned at me, his nose and the tops of his ears glowing piglet pink in the chilly air.
“See?”
I rolled my eyes. “Wonderful. Yes. I have acquired a skill for which I will have zero use.”
A pause like a fraying rope. Then, “Hold course until the bow touches the bank.”
“Won’t that—”
“Just do it, Marius.” I had never heard him sound quite so…tired of me.
As soon as we nudged the bank, Leo threw the throttle into reverse and then back into neutral, stopping the boat almost completely. An extra burst of power and a turn of the tiller arm brought the back of the boat in. And then Leo had the centre line in hand again and was stepping onto the towpath to secure us.
“Well, then.” He looked up at me, expressionless. “This is you.”
“This is me,” I repeated. Which should have been more than enough. Except I was being stripped, flayed, slayed by silence. “Thank you for…for everything.”
Something in him relented. But I wished it hadn’t. Because what came spilling through the cracks of him was sadness, and had I not borne enough of other people’s sadness? Was I never to be free of it? Or the guilt of it? “Don’t worry,” he said. “You were right. It was fun.”
I picked up a bag, stuffed awkwardly with Tupperware, towels,and clothing, Mr. F balanced on the top so he could see where he was going. “I’ll get everything cleaned and leave it with Mum for you.”
“Okay.”
Why wasn’t I leaving?Fucking leave. “You know that…that even if he’s not—even if he can’t… Mr. F…thinks you’re…quite something, Leo Dance.”
“Well”—the possibility of a smile gleamed on his lips like sunlight through clouds—“maybe I’ll see Mr. F around some day.”
I flexed my foot and winced. “He should probably avoid towpaths for a while.”
“He should definitely take better care of himself.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“I know.” Leo held out a hand to help me down from the boat—and I made it to land, without much elegance but also without much pain. “I can walk you to—”
“No need,” I said quickly. “Edwin’s meeting me at the bridge.”
“You’re sure he’ll be there?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Because people aren’t always reliable?”
A shadow of old pain fell grimly over what, to all intents and purposes, was my heart. “Edwin is always reliable. He’d never let anyone down.”
“It’s just, if he can’t pick you up—”
