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“Our p-place…”
Ourplace? It sounded horrifyingly natural. The way it never had whenourhad meant us.
“Or your p-p-par…p-p…” He kicked the back of my chair again, though this time his frustration was self-directed. “Your mother’s. Choose.”
“I can get a hotel for the night.”
“Fucking choose.”
And because I had never won an argument with Edwin, not even once, I sighed and gave in. “Your place, then.”
“Well,” said the lumberjack, “this is going to be fun.”
The front door was still green, albeit a darker shade than I remembered. I might even have preferred it.
“What happened to the door?” I asked.
“There was a s-smallish flood.” Edwin was already unlocking it. “And the timber got very damp.”
“New hall carpet too.”
“Same flood.”
I had run out of banal observations to make about Edwin’shouse. And unless I wanted to tell him and his lumberjack that I’d changed my mind—that I’d rather go to my parents and drown in their care—I’d have to go inside.
The walls closed around me, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Edwin had always loved this absurd twist of a terrace, its tiny rooms and narrow corridors, the staircase where I kept banging my head. I recognised the farmhouse table Edwin had seen some obscure magic in. The sofa I still thought too big for the room. And through the open door to the kitchen—where the light had always been too soft, like butter left to turn—the windowsill where Edwin’s pots of herbs bloomed riotously green.56
I couldn’t breathe.
Edwin touched my elbow. “Are you all right?”
“I’m just tired.” It was less a lie than I might have wished. Hospitals were exhausting by default. My foot hurt. And…the rest of me hurt too.
“I’ll get you a duvet so you can sleep down here.”
I would probably have felt more comfortable in the attic. Then again, it wasn’t my attic anymore—if it had ever been—and I didn’t want to see what Edwin had done with a space he’d once loved for me. Besides, two flights of stairs, one of them wobbly at the best of times? Forget it. Dragging myself into the living room, I deflated onto the sofa. “Look, I hate to ask”—a further not-lie—“but can you put some laundry on for me?”
Edwin stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.
“I mean, not for me. I fell in the river, it’s a long story, butwe had to borrow towels from a drug dealer. I said I’d get them cleaned.”
“So you want me to clean them for you?”
The door opened again and Aidan, who had been parking the car, came in, getting tangled up with Edwin—as we’d once tangled with each other—as he tried to take his shoes off in that too-small space. “I can do it. What setting should I use?”
“The getting river water out of fabric setting?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “That one. And it’s okay for me to go through your things?”
I was too…anything…nothing to care. “They’re in their own bag within the bag. Ignore my pants.”
“Was intending to.” He hunkered down in the hallway and began unpacking with military efficiency. And, to give him credit, a complete lack of interest in the slutty pants my mother had decided were part of a vital care package for her injured son, stranded on a narrowboat over the Christmas period. “This long story about you ending up in the river. Did someone push you? At a wild guess?”
“You wish.” I sighed. “I suppose I sort pushed myself.”
Edwin squeezed past his lumberjack. “Oh, Marius. Must you always be your own worst enemy?”
I gave him a private smile. “It’s what makes me bearable.”
