Dedicated to LJ.

Copyright © by Richard Rider 2009

1 7 B L A C K A N D 2 9 R E D

1.

April 2010

It's coming up for summer, supposedly. It's halfway through April, but the rain is

whacking at the cab windows and Pip's head is throbbing as if leaning it there against the
glass means he can actually feel each drop landing like a hammer. It's not even real rain.
He likes real rain, the stuff they got in St-Lizier. Real rain comes down in big fat drops
and makes little splashy stalagmites on the surface of the swimming pool. Everything's
green on the ground and the sky's all sorts of blues and greys and purples like a great big
bruise, except when the sun shoves a finger through the cloud and brightens everything
up. There's something magical about the light down there in the mountains. Dawn and
twilight and the special way the light has when it's stormy, there's nothing like that in
London. London rain doesn't fall, it just kind of hangs in the air. There's no colour in the
sky, everything's this one miserable murky shade of grey. There's a feeble anaemic sort of
sun trying to get through now, but the cloud's having none of it.

London at night is a million wonderful neon colours. London on a rainy afternoon

is grey. Just grey.

He hasn't got much life left in his phone, he stupidly left the charger plugged into

the wall socket at the hotel in Toulouse. He turns it on anyway to check if he's got any
messages, not surprised when he hasn't, and punches in a text to Olly.

put kettle on m8 will b there in 10 xx

He could have driven up himself and got the ferry, but then he would have had to

sell his car in London anyway and live with the miniscule chance that he might see
somebody driving it. Much better this way, even if it meant flying and having a panic
attack because he didn't have his monkey to hold on to. The girl in the seat beside him
held his hand and whispered calm French nonsense at him until they were level in the air
and he could breathe properly again, but it wasn't the same. He misses Mister Bollo. He
misses Lovecattt. More than anything he misses Lindsay, sharp like a knife in the guts,
but there's nothing he can do about any of it so he keeps his eyes closed and his aching
head against the cool window, waiting for things to make sense again.

Olly's got the front door open before Pip's even finished paying the driver, and he

leans there against the doorframe obviously trying really hard to look casual. It's not
working, he just looks worried. "Swish bastard, you never got a cab all the way from the
airport, did you?" he says, as Pip's coming up the path with his bags. "What's wrong with
the train?"

"I sold my car, thirty thousand euros cash, thought I'd splash out." He drops his

backpack down off his shoulder and hands it to Olly then follows him into the house, but
he doesn't get any farther than the front hall because he starts crying so suddenly he even
surprises himself. He's not sure exactly what sets him off, but he can't breathe or see or
move, he can only stand there shaking and snivelling like an idiot.

"You ain't starting all this again. Joe don't cry as much as you and he ain't even

two yet." Olly sounds terrified but he's there right away, hugging Pip fiercely which kind
of makes it worse because he's not tall enough or big enough, he smells wrong, he doesn't
do it properly. He hugs with his hands on Pip's back, still and clutching. When Lindsay
does it he puts a hand in Pip's hair and strokes him there at the nape of his neck, or he
rubs big warm circles into his back with the palm of his hand. When Lindsay hugs it's
something alive and ever-moving, ever-changing. Olly's doing it wrong. It's not his fault,
he just doesn't know, it's nobody's business to know how your ex-boyfriend hugged you
so it's not his fault.

"I sold my car," he says again to explain his hysterics, spluttering and

stammering, and Olly laughs a bit against his neck but not in a mean way.

"Yeah, right, that's the biggest problem you've got, is it?"

"Shut up."

"You're the one creating."

"I don't know what to do."

"You could blow your nose for a start, you look like a swamp monster."

That makes him laugh, and he starts to calm down. Ten minutes later, nose blown

and face washed, they're curled up at opposite ends of the couch with cups of coffee and
he's trying to explain again. "I don't know what to do," he repeats, picking at the chipping
black paint on his fingernails because he doesn't feel like looking up.

"Can't you phone him and... just talk or something?"

"No. I ain't phoning him, he's got to phone me, but he won't cos he's a stubborn

fucking arsehole."

"How do you know he won't?"

"Cos I know."

"Okay."

"I know him. He just won't." Pip stops talking and has a drink and picks at his

nailpaint some more. He's been thinking about what to say, whether to say anything. Olly
is the only person in the world he never kept secrets from, until Lindsay, but all of what's
happened is so horrible he's not sure he can say it and risk Olly hating him as well. "I left
cos he was being all cold and wouldn't talk to me or nothing but he was only like that cos
I done some things and said some things I shouldn't've. So I ain't sure if I dumped him or
he dumped me first just without saying so, but I know it's my fault. So I'm leaving him
alone cos I don't wanna make him sad no more. So I can't phone him."

"You know who else is a stubborn fucking arsehole?"

"Shut up."

"Alright, I've gotta pick the girls up from school anyway. Joe's sleeping, you mind

staying here? You won't slit your wrists or nothing if I leave you on your own, will you?"

"Might."

"Drama queen." Olly unfurls his legs from under him so he can put his boots back

on, but then he doesn't stand up, he just sits there looking at Pip, biting his lip as if there's
something he only half-wants to say. "I'm glad you're back," he eventually says, very
quickly and very quietly. "Not the reason, but... yeah."

Looking back on it later Pip thinks here is where it really started - but then maybe

it started years ago and this was just where it changed.

2.

Dear Phil and Beverley.

I've started this over like 8 times because it keeps going wrong I cant make it

sound right. I'm not doing it again, this will have to be good enough.

I just wanted to say I know I was probably dead horrible to live with. Its easy

when your a stupid self absorbed bratty teenager to feel like nothings your fault when
really looking back on it now I cant think of that many times you were horrible to me
when I wasnt the one who started it, all that mouthing off and swearing and stuff and
staying out too late and not saying where I was and everything. I was awful and I'm sorry.
Somebodys got to be the one who says it first and it should be me I think because
sometimes it feels like the only thing I'm any good at is fucking screwing up and I dont
want that no more. Again: I'M SORRY.

I been living away for a while but I just moved back to London litrally today and

you might not even want to see me or nothing after how I acted last time I come back and
when I seen Dad Phil Dad in town last year but I had to let you know I was back just in
case. Its ok if you dont want but I would like to see you. God this sounds all stupid and
formal I knew it would. I'm ending it now. Here is my email address -
[e-mail] Thats the best way to get me for now because I left
my phone charger behind because I'm an idiot so I'm borrowing Ollys internet until I buy
a new one.

I hope your both ok and I will see you soon.

Love (if you want)

Pip

***

There's a face at the living room window long before he gets up the nerve to stop

peeking through the hedge and actually let himself in the gate. Of course he's spotted
right away, and he doesn't even have to knock on the door before it's opened and his
mum's there, smiling sort of nervously, and his dad just behind her, wearing an
unreadable expression. For a second nobody speaks. Then Pip starts to say hello, but
halfway through he looks down because the eye contact is getting uncomfortable and the
rest of the word sticks in his throat and stays there, lodged so tight he can barely even
breathe.

His mum is massively pregnant.

"Oh," he manages eventually. He can't stop staring, just standing there staring at

the bulge. He's too surprised even to feel anything much, except this sudden need to get
away, but he can't because his dad swears and chases after him, grabbing him tight just
above the elbow.

"Please, Philip. You've gotta stop running away any time you've got a problem!"

"Then you've gotta stop putting your hands on me when you've got one," he spits

back, wrenching his arm away and cradling it to himself. His broken finger is singing
again. He broke the same one punching Lindsay clumsily in the face as his dad broke one
time Pip told him to go and fuck himself when he was asked to take off his nailpaint.

Phil steps away, raising his hands like surrender. "Let's not make a scene, alright?

Come inside, let's talk."

"I don't wanna talk to you no more, this was a fucking stupid idea."

"But it was your idea."

"Yeah, and it was a fucking stupid one!" he shouts back, but then he accidentally

catches his mum's eye again and he's talked into staying without any more words being
spoken.

The house is different - or the house is the same, but things in it are different. He

takes his boots off automatically as soon as he's through the door, but the rack isn't there
where it used to be so he leaves them lying lopsided beside the stairs. The living room
furniture is different. They've got more photographs up than they used to. There's one he
doesn't remember seeing before of him as a toddler, engrossed in building a messy
sandcastle too close to the lapping waves on a beach he doesn't recognise. There's one of
him and his dad playing with Harry Potter Lego one Christmas morning, one that gives
him a painful jolt in the stomach of him aged about six holding his grandad's hand and
walking in the park. Pictures of him when he was older too, pulling an exaggerated tragic
face in his Claudius costume from a school play in sixth form, and a big one right in the
middle of the mantelpiece of him standing between his mum and dad making a really
camp OK sign with his thumb and finger and winking at the camera on A level results
day. Tucked into the bottom of the frame is a small ultrasound scan of a fuzzy blob that
must be his surprise brother or sister.

He feels horrible. He feels sulky and bratty and difficult again. It must be this

place, memories or habit or something, and now shock. He sits at the same side of the
smallest couch he always used to when he lived here and curls up, knees to his chin and
socked feet on the cushion, hiding his face in his folded arms and taking some deep, slow
breaths to calm down. Somebody sits beside him - his mum, he realises from the way she
sighs as if she's in pain. He has to look up then to check, but she just smiles tiredly and
speaks to him for the first time as she's brushing a bit of fringe away from his eyes.

"I'm alright. She's been giving me hell for a week, she's ready."

"She?"

"Yeah."

"Right." Nothing for a minute. He's still got his knees hugged to himself, but he's

resting his chin on top now instead of hiding. He came here with only the best intentions
but now he's all shaken up like he's been tumble-dried and spite happens so easily when
he's upset. "You still drinking like a fish? She's probably got two heads." He doesn't miss
the tiny frown she makes at that, but he doesn't feel any sense of victory from it, he just
hates himself.

"She's got one head, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes. I haven't had a drink

in almost two years."

"Is it his?"

The frown is deeper this time, but she doesn't look angry, just upset.

"Of course."

"You could call her Karen. That's a nice name, ain't it? Dad," he adds, very

quietly, looking up at Phil and kind of almost willing him to lose his temper and come
over to throw a punch because that'll give him a proper excuse to leave. Nobody moves,
the silence just gets more and more painful. He's not supposed to know about this girl,
this sister he's never met who was born when he was five after his dad had an affair with
some slag at work. He never did know, not until after the Lottery win when there were all
those hushed furious late-night conversations about maintenance payments the woman
suddenly wanted. He was always good at finding out things he wasn't supposed to know.

"I'm having a smoke," he says suddenly. He can't get out of there quickly enough.

The back patio door bounces open again when he closes it too sharply, but then he can't
close it properly because his dad's there in his way, following him out into the garden.
"You ain't stopping me smoking, my life ain't none of your business no more."

"You wanted to see us, remember?" Phil says, deadly calm.

"It's nice," Pip says awkwardly, searching desperately for something non-

argumentative to say as he shakes a cigarette out and lights it. "The garden and stuff. It's
different. You get someone in to do it?"

"No, we did it ourselves. Well. Mostly me since Bev got, you know."

Pip holds his breath for as long as he can manage, letting the warm smoke calm

him then blowing it straight up in the air. He's still holding his lighter, the novelty
revolver that shoots a little flame out the barrel when you pull the trigger. He wonders
what he'd do if the gun took real bullets. Nothing, he realises lamely, and draws on his
cigarette again, trying to ignore his dad's eyes.

"Nice lighter," Phil says after a minute. He sounds just as awkward as Pip did,

fumbling for words. "Where's it from?"

"Don't know. Someone gave it me for Christmas." And suddenly, horrifyingly, he

can feel the corners of his mouth turning down, a wobble in his chin he just can't stop.
Don't, he tells himself fiercely. Just don't. He can remember so clearly that second
Christmas he and Lindsay had together, their first where they woke up in an empty house,
just the two of them, and opened presents that were immediately returned to boxes ready
for their move to France. They went back to bed after that for hours and hours, moving
carefully not just because Lindsay's shoulder still hurt him but because they were wearing
paper hats from crackers and it was like an unspoken challenge, the first to lose the hat
loses the game. He'd settled Lindsay comfy against the pillows, riding him carefully with
the hat drooping down over his eye and making them both laugh, and he remembers now
something Lindsay said to him that day, drowsy and quiet just as they were dropping off
in the early afternoon. I love how shameless you are. He'd smiled at that, smirked really,
stretched all languid like a cat and said Yeah, I bet you do and Lindsay said No, you're not
getting it, I love how you drop all your stupid pretensions around me. It's the only time
you don't care if you look an idiot. Pip briefly considered being hurt that Lindsay thought
he was a stupid pretentious idiot, but he was too tired so he ducked under Lindsay's arm
and emerged somewhere near his chest, squirming up to press a kiss against his prickly
face and letting that speak for him instead.

"What?"

"I said it was a Christmas present."

"I heard what you said. What's wrong?"

"I'm... it's my... me and my... fuck."

He stops again. There aren't words, especially not to his dad.

"You know I know you're a queer," Phil says suddenly, and Pip closes his eyes

and concentrates on finishing his cigarette.

"Sorry."

"It's alright."

"Is it?"

"It'll have to be, won't it?"

"Yeah."

"You're still my kid."

"Yeah," Pip says again, very quietly - not sarcastically, not like he doesn't believe

it. More like he's trying the idea on for size, trying to get used to it again. He stamps the
half-burned cigarette dead and goes over to sit on the stone steps leading from the patio
up to the raised lawn, folding his arms on top of his knees again and resting his forehead
on them. He feels tired and out of place. More than tired, he feels drained, as if he needs
recharging like his lifeless phone. He can hear his dad's footsteps and feel his presence
there beside him when Phil sits down, but he can't get up the energy to move and look at
him.

"What happened to you?" Phil says after a moment. He's speaking very quietly as

well. The back door's still half-open, maybe he doesn't want the words to be heard inside.
Pip starts when he feels a touch on his wrist and he does look up at his dad then, but he
makes himself settle. Phil's touching the scar he's had on his left wrist bone for a few
years now, a deep rope burn he got one time Lindsay was too drunk to be careful and he
was too drunk to feel it biting into his skin and making him bleed. He felt it well enough
later, when it went all disgusting and infected.

"I got tied up too tight." It's not a lie.

"Was that the people who...?" He drops the sentence and leaves it hanging, as if

he really doesn't want to have to say it, but Pip says nothing so Phil takes a slow breath in
and out and finishes. "When you got kidnapped."

"Yeah." It's still not a lie.

"What happened?"

"I really don't wanna talk about it." And that's not a lie, either. They sit there in

silence for a while, then Phil puts his hand on Pip's back, high up right near his neck. The
tiny sensible part of him knows it's meant to be comforting or like some awkward manly
show of awkward manly love but he has to make a real concentrated effort not to go all
stiff and hostile about it. It's just habit, even if it's unfair. He did mean what he said in
that stupid letter, written out on a whim while he was wandering round the big empty
house waiting for Olly and the kids to come back, but after spending so long going out of
his way to make his hatred obvious it's difficult letting that go.

"Your mum was going out of her mind. She wanted to get the police in but I

wouldn't let her. I seen films, I weren't taking them chances."

"It's a bit different from films."

"Are you ever gonna tell me what happened?"

"I said I don't wanna talk about it."

"Alright. So are you ever gonna tell me what happened with your..."

"Boyfriend?"

"Mm."

"It ain't a dirty word, you're allowed to say it. Don't make you a queer, just

acknowledging that I'm one."

"Be a bit fucking difficult not to."

He'd actually felt the need to tell them, back when he was sixteen and all the mess

happened with Olly. It was at dinner one night; his mum was three-quarters down a bottle
of wine already, his dad was in a shit mood about something, and Pip was having trouble
eating because it felt like all the food was sticking in his throat, so he just pushed it round
his plate for a bit while he gathered his courage then made himself say all in one
panicked rushing breath,

"I've gotta tell you something, I'm gay." His dad just looked at him stonily and

said, "Philip, we ain't idiots." That was that.

"We just had lots of fights," he says. He doesn't want to explain it again, it's like

sticking a knife back into a healing stab wound to see if it still fits. "I was making him
miserable. So I went. That's it."

"Yeah, well. He's too old for you anyway."

"Like I need your advice on who bums me." That makes Phil move his hand away

from Pip's neck and struggle for words again, which is good because now there's a bit of
space between them Pip can breathe more easily.

"Ain't he like my age?"

"Uh, NO. He's younger than Mum. A bit."

"Still too old, you want someone your own age."

"I don't want no one. People my age are dicks."

"Well, ain't that what you want?"

He whips his head up to stare at his dad, mostly horrified but suddenly very nearly

laughing. "Did you just make a joke?"

Phil just shrugs, not really looking at him, still obviously searching for the right

thing to say. He finally settles on, "I don't wanna fight with you no more." Simple, to the
point, then nothing else and he sits there with his eyebrows slightly raised like he's
waiting for a reaction, but Pip can't find the right words either so he has to go on. "I know
we ain't been very good friends," he says, slow and awkward. He was never ever any
good at heart-to-hearts, only shouting and thumping when he didn't get his way. "You're
right, you was a nasty little shit. It's like you pushed me on purpose."

"I did."

"Why?"

"Don't know."

"But I wasn't very nice either."

"Not really."

"I ain't very good with my temper."

"I noticed."

"I'm trying."

"Right."

"I could've broke your neck fifteen times already today but I never."

"Thanks?"

"Cos you shouldn't talk to your mum like that."

"I know."

"So why do you?"

"Don't know." Pip pulls a face at himself, realising he's slipped back into the

moody awkwardness of his teens. "Sorry. I'm glad she ain't drinking no more."

"Me too."

They're sitting on the top step and Pip falls down backwards so he's lying half on

the step and half on the neatly-trimmed lawn. It's nice out now, nothing like the drizzle
and chills of the last few days. Everything's blue and green, pale spring sky and dark
leaves overhead where trees surround the house like sentinels. Tipping his head back a bit
lets him see the old treehouse that's still there in one of them; looking forward at the
house, he can see the back windows of his old bedroom. He claimed that one
immediately when his parents brought him to see the place before they settled on buying
it - it wasn't as big as the room they thought he'd want and it didn't have the ensuite
bathroom, but it had a black wrought-iron balcony at the front and he fell in love, even if
Olly pissed himself laughing about it when he came round to help unpack boxes.

"The baby ain't having my Juliet balcony."

"Are you moving back in?"

"No. It's still mine."

"You can if you want."

"Yeeaah, I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Probably not. But just so you know. If you ever need. You can. Or anything. If

you ever need anything-"

"-then I'll work for it myself, thanks. I ain't taking stuff off people no more, I feel

like a whore." Then he feels stupid because his mum appeared in the doorway just as he
was saying 'whore', too late for him to stop. He sits back up a bit, propping himself up on
his elbows, and tries on a smile. He's got no idea whether it looks like it's supposed to. It
feels clumsy and like it doesn't fit his face, but maybe it's okay because she smiles back.
It makes her look pretty. She's not been pretty for a long time. He can vaguely remember
being very little and thinking she was the most beautiful thing in the world, but that was
before she lost the plot a bit and fell into a wine bottle and started shouting at him all the
time and only giving him a cuddle when she was plastered and reeking of drink.

"Aren't you coming back inside?"

"It's nice out. You come out here."

She takes the steps carefully and Pip has to hold her hand to steady her when she

sits down at his other side. She doesn't let go after so neither does he, not even when her
breathing starts to sound wet and trembly and she presses her face against his shoulder to
hide her eyes. It's like a strange, stilted parody of happy families, dad and mum and son
and baby all sitting together out in the garden on a nice sunny day.

He wonders whether it's ever going to stop feeling like that, whether anything is

ever going to feel real again.

He wonders what Lindsay's doing right now, and makes himself stop.

3.

oly can u cum 2 hospital

im at work m8 wots up? u ok??

mums havin bb n we cant get hold of dad aint answrin fone HELP

calm down it wont happen 4 ages yet ok?

ITS HAPENIN NOW WE R IN CAB CUM QUICK MEET THERE

Y AINT U TXT BACK??

OLLY U BASTARD ANSWR UR FONE

AINT WATCHIN MUMS FANNY SICK OUT A BB ON MY OWN

SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS

fuckin hell ok im on my way

Of course it doesn't happen for ages. They're there four hours before anything

even really changes, and he'd managed to get hold of his dad ten minutes after he sent his
last text to Olly so he feels a bit stupid about panicking so much.

"Dunno why you even looked at a girl again after the first time," he says to Olly

outside the door, shuffling around impatiently with his hands shoved in his back pockets
so he can't bite all his fingernails off. "Don't you feel bad making them hurt so much?"

"It's worth it after. Course, I can say that, I ain't the one doing it."

They have to move out of the way when the door opens but nobody comes out, it's

just one of the nurses. "Philip? Your mum says can you come inside. She wants you
there."

"Can Olly come?"

"Hey, I don't wanna see your mum giving birth."

"Neither do I!"

"I'll wait out here, alright?"

"Oh, God."

He finds out very soon that there are things nobody tells you about childbirth, like

accidental shitting and the stench of fluids that belong on the inside and how primal it all
is. How can people walk on the moon and know how to clone animals but still have to go
through all this writhing screaming uncivilised ordeal? It's even more terrifying than

when Lindsay got shot, and again he doesn't know what to do. He sits there beside the
bed, stunned and helpless, and wishes he'd stayed at Lindsay's just one week more and
put up with all the coldness because then he would have missed it.

It's different after, when the drama is over and everybody's cleaned up and Olly's

gone home to sleep for a couple of hours before it's time for the school run. Pip's
knackered too, but he can't leave yet. Everything's peaceful now. His mum is holding this
tiny pink scrap of sleeping baby with miniscule fingernails and fine blonde hair that won't
lie flat. It's hard to remember how awful it was while it was happening, like you can
never remember pain after the bruise has faded, only that it was there.

"She's a fucking ugly little thing, ain't she?" he whispers. He doesn't want to wake

her up, he doesn't want her to start crying or anything. He just wants to look at her for a
while and get used to it all.

"She's not as ugly as you were. You were like a little mutant."

"Shut up! I seen photos when I was a baby, I was gorgeous."

"Not for the first week. I kept expecting people to send condolences cards instead

of congratulations."

He doesn't want to wake her but he can't help touching her, brushing a fingertip

very gently across her head. "Was it that traumatic when it was me?"

"Worse. I thought I was dying. Of course, I was very young." Older than Olly

when his two oldest were born, but not by much. He's always known that's the main
reason his grandad hated his dad so much, some raging fatherly instinct that wouldn't let
him get on with the rough kid off some scummy East End estate who'd knocked up his
daughter a month before her sixteenth birthday. Pip can't even imagine it. He always
chipped in with the babysitting any time Olly needed a break, and he's always got on
better with children than with most adults, but actually having a baby you're not allowed
to give back is a concept from another world and he can't fit his head around it.

"I started knitting her a blanket but it ain't finished yet, I'll bring it round when it's

done. And a little toy bunny rabbit. And hats and socks and all sorts and a little West
Ham hoodie, I got all overexcited and started like twelve things at once so nothing's
finished”

"You knit?"

"Yeeaah." He stops prodding at the baby and sits back in his chair a bit so he can

see them properly. It's so weird. They don't know each other at all. It's not even that
they've not seen each other in years - even when he was living at home, they felt like
strangers. "It ain't girly or nothing, it's just making stuff. It's just like drawing or taking
photos or whatever."

"I've still got all those lovely things you made in college, you know. I don't think

it's girly."

"Oh." He kind of wants to cry at that and doesn't know why, so he says, "Can I

have a hold?" to distract himself but that doesn't work at all. When he's settled there in his
chair with the baby in his arms the urge is worse than ever. "You ain't picked her name
yet?"

"No." His mum looks exhausted, but he can't remember ever seeing her so happy

before. "I was so scared of something going wrong. I didn't want to think about names, I
thought that might jinx it, I wanted to see what she looked like first."

"She's proper ugly, she looks like a little muppet. Call her Annie Sue, that's quite

subtle."

That makes her laugh, and she settles back against the pillows with her eyes

closed. "Your dad suggested Dorian after my mum. I thought that was quite sweet of him,
but it just makes me think of Dorian Gray."

"No way, you could call her Dory for short, like Hunky Dory, like you named her

after a Bowie album! I was always having Lindsay on I wanted-" He stops himself short.
Wanted babies called Ziggy and Aladdin, just to see how scared and annoyed he looked.
"I changed my mind, you're beautiful," he says to the baby instead. She's awake now,
squirming gently and making tiny sleepy whimpering noises. "You are, you're gorgeous,
you deserve a Bowie name, don't you? You wanna be Janine or Julie? You could be
Maggie and work on a farm but that was Dylan's. Or you could be Emily but that was
Pink Floyd. You can't be Ramona or Miranda, I already used them for my cars, but you
could be Baby Grace or Hermione. Can't call you Angie, nobody deserves that, but that
don't mean you ain't the prettiest star in the whole world."

"She's not a replacement," his mum says suddenly. She's watching the two of

them with tears in her eyes when Pip looks up, but her voice is steady. "Just in case that's
what you were thinking. She was an accident, a good one but still. She was never meant
to be a replacement."

"I never thought that," he says quietly, although it's the only thing he's been

thinking since he found out.

He goes to find his dad a bit later on, when his mum and the nameless baby are

both sleeping. He's still there outside, phoning everybody he knows to pass on the news.
Pip lights up a cigarette, not because he really wants one but because he wants to show he
can and there's nothing anybody can say or do to make him stop. It's just gone six in the
morning and it's light, but it's that strange hazy light that lets you know it's going to be a
blazing hot day in a few more hours. Phil half-smiles at him and puts his phone back in
his pocket.

"Everything alright?"

"Yeah. They're sleeping."

"You should go and get your head down too, you look like hell."

"I'm alright. You should go and be with them, can't other people wait?"

"Yeah. I thought you and your mum might want some time on your own, though."

"What for?"

"Dunno. Never mind, I'm going in now. We'll be home in the afternoon if you

wanna come round."

"Yeah, maybe." Pip leans there against the brick wall, blowing smoke rings that

won't hold their shape because there's too much of a breeze, then quickly says, "I just
wanna tell you something," because doing it quickly without thinking too much means
he'll actually say it and not just let it fester inside. "I just wanna say, I know was a fucking
nasty monster and I wound you up and I was shit to live with and I probably would've
battered me too, but if you ever touch her I'm actually genuinely gonna kill you. I ain't
joking around, you don't even know what I could do if I was pushed. Even if she's worse
than me, I don't care. Even if she runs out in traffic and you wanna slap her so she don't
do it again cos you're scared, even then don't touch her or I swear to god you're dead."
He's half-expecting a punch himself now, he's bracing himself for it, but nothing happens.
He doesn't look up but he hears the automatic doors open and close and then he's alone

out there in the morning sun.

4.

Lindsay takes the rented car very slowly up the driveway because that's going to

give him more time to decide whether or not it's a good idea before he's seen and can't
turn back. The gravel is crunchy under the Mercedes' tyres. Overhead, the sun is
squinting through dark green leaves and flashing off the puddles at the side of the road.
It's a beautiful day. The house is beautiful too, but a bit ridiculous and unbelievable like a
film or a fairytale. Even now he gets a shock from it, that first sighting as you take your
car round the corner and out of the trees and find it hiding there in the hills.

It's too late to turn back now; he can see a couple of figures standing on the lawn

by the entrance, so they must have seen him too. The crunching gravel sounds like
thunder. He remembers thinking that on the day of the funeral, too - how rude and
disrespectful it somehow seemed, making all that noise behind a car taking his best
friend's corpse to the crematorium.

One of the figures is Ellie, he sees as he gets closer. He recognises the other man

as the gardener, but he turns and walks off over the lawn and he's gone by the time
Lindsay pulls the car in and turns off the engine. He sits there behind the wheel for a
moment. Too late to turn back, but that doesn't make it any easier to actually get out of
the car. He's not been back here since the funeral. He's not even spoken to her on the
phone.

"Are you going to stay in there all day?" she says.

"Might."

He presses the button to roll the window back up and finally gets out the car.

There's a weird moment then, hesitant false-starts because he's not sure what to do. Kiss
her hello, like always? Hug her? It's awkward because she's holding something. She kind
of hugs him back but with only one arm, and she kisses his cheek quickly like she's not
sure how to act either. The wooden box she's holding bumps against him, and it's only
after he's stepped back he realises what it is and then he wonders if she's going crazy, like
a child who won't go anywhere without her teddy bear.

"Why...?" He can't think of the right way to word it so he just gestures.

"I don't know what to do. I don't want it sitting in the house, it upsets the girls. We

thought we might bury him somewhere on the grounds but we can't have a headstone
because it'll only get vandalised, did you see what people did to Danny's? I was going to
get James to dig him into the flowerbeds so at least we'd have something nice to look at
to remember him, but he hated them. God, that sounds horrible, dig him into the
flowers..."

Lindsay takes the box off her and puts it on top of the car she he can hug her

properly. It feels less strange now, like nothing that happened matters.

She's just an old friend who needs comforting, like she did for him when his dad

died halfway through their first year at university. He's never forgotten it because it's the
only time he's ever ever cried in front of somebody except his mother since he was about
ten - properly cried, helpless and shameless like a child. He didn't want her there at first

but she told him to stop being stupid and sat with him in his bedroom, Lindsay in his
uncomfortable new black suit and Ellie in her uncomfortable new black dress, and she
stroked his hair and didn't say anything for ages while he cried himself dry - then he
pulled himself together and washed his face and went downstairs to help his mum accept
people's useless stammering condolences as if the breakdown never happened. That's
how you know a good friend is a best friend, when you can almost sense each other's
thoughts and know when to keep quiet and just be there. She calms quickly and just
stands there with him for a minute, resting her cheek on his shoulder and sniffling lightly,
and then she's bright and smiling again, wiping her red eyes with her fingertips and
straightening his collar for him where she pushed it crooked.

"Tea?"

"Please. Sorry I'm just barging in, I should've phoned first."

"Oh, be quiet." She takes the box off the car roof and he follows her inside, up the

marble staircase and through several immense hallways to the bit of the house they
actually live in, where sixteenth-century portraits are replaced by children's felt-tip
drawings on paper pinned to the walls and stuck to the fridge with magnets.

"Are the girls here? I brought presents."

"No, they'll be sorry they missed you. Ty's grandma's having them for the

weekend."

"How's she doing?"

"As well as can be expected."

"Yeah."

"What about you?"

"I'm alright," he says, awkward again because he's always hated lying to her.

Mainly because she's too sharp to be fooled. She doesn't say anything, though, just gets
on with finding cups and a tea strainer and half a pack of biscuits tucked into a corner of
the cupboard. She only brings it back up when they're sitting there at the kitchen table
drinking tea in uncomfortable silence.

"Is Pip not with you, then?" she says. She sounds far too casual. She knows. How

the hell does she know? He's not even told his mother yet, and somehow he can't believe
Valentine would have come round here for a nice cosy girly chat about it all.

"Evidently not."

"Can I ask why?"

"You can but that doesn't mean I'll answer."

"I know you told him." She doesn't sound accusing or angry or anything, just

blank. That's even worse, somehow.

"Have you spoken to him?"

"He wrote the girls a letter. Hang on, it's here somewhere." She finds it in a

drawer, a pale pink envelope with Valentine's messy scrawl on the front, and pulls out the
single folded sheet for him to read. It's High School Musical stationery, white paper with
pink lines to write on and stupid little pink hearts and that arsehole Efron's face in the top
corner. Valentine's drawn a bigger heart around it in red felt tip and Lindsay feels
suddenly, sickeningly violent towards them both, as if they're the ones who were
shagging around behind people's backs.

Dear Mellissa and Katie and Alice

I dont know if you heard yet but me and Lindsay arent boyfriends no more but

that dont mean I cant still be friends with you ok? I mean if you want. I'm living in
London now where I grew up, London isnt that far from Cheshire. If you ever want I can
come up and see you in like 5 seconds or if you want to come down here for a visit thats
cool too, I would love to see you and I can take you the zoo and all sorts, Londons
brilliant, we could go shopping and see the art gallery's and everything. I wrote my
address at the top there, thats my mates house and I dont know if I'm staying here but he
can pass things on if I move, my phone and emails there too so please please stay in
touch cos I dont want to stop seeing you just cos I'm not in love with Lindsay no more.
Tell your mum I said its ok for you to come down here any time you want, I mean if she's
ok with that too. If she trusts me.

I hope your all ok, I know your having a horrible time now and I wish so much I

could take it all away from you cos it isnt fair and nothings your fault and you shouldnt
be going through all this. Look after each other and look after your mum too and I hope I
can see you soon

lots of love from Pip xxx

"I know you told him," Ellie says quietly, "because this is the only letter he's ever

written to us that wasn't addressed to me as well."

"That's not why we..." Broke up sounds so fucking juvenile. He just pulls a face

instead. "It's nothing to do with you. It was going to happen anyway. We've got nothing
in common. He's better off in London, that's where he belongs. I always knew he'd get
bored." Now it sounds like he's trying to justify it, or convince himself that he's not
talking crap, so he shuts up and just stares at the cooling dregs of tea in his cup until Ellie
takes it out of his hand and puts it in the sink with her own, then finds glasses and a bottle
of red in the wine rack instead. He's suddenly glad the girls are away - you can't get drunk
at five o'clock when there are children about, and you can't spill stupid embarrassing
personal details when you're sober.

"I'm glad he left," Lindsay says several hours later, having to make a huge effort

not to slur his words and not to spill his drink all over the cream coloured sofa because
when he's drunk he talks with his hands and that's a bad thing when you're holding a glass
of red wine. "Because. I'm glad he went, I'm fucking glad! Cos I asked him to fucking
marry me, I must be losing my mind, I only said it to make him stay I swear but he still
didn't, good thing too, imagine being married to that, he'd only run off with fucking
fucking Zac Efron and steal half my money."

"I think you're drunk," Ellie says, but she is as well. He can tell because her

cheeks are flushed and she's giggling, she never giggles. She's sprawled on the sofa half-
across his lap, resting her head on him, and he tries to cover her mouth with his hand but
his aim's a bit off and he accidentally puts his thumb in her mouth instead which only
makes her laugh more.

"Whoops."

"Stop drinking."

"Never."

She pulls his arm down across her chest in a crooked sort of half-hug. He drains

the wine glass in his other hand and lets it fall onto the carpet so he can start stroking her
hair again. It's dark blonde, exactly the same colour as Valentine's was when Lindsay first
knew him. That makes him feel a bit more sober. He pulls his arm out of her grip and
starts trying to stand up without making her have to move.

"Where are you going?"

"Toilet, do you need any more details?"

"No thanks." She rolls gracelessly off the sofa and finds his glass lying on its side

on the carpet, standing it upright on the coffee table so she can carefully pour the last inch
of wine out of the bottle. "Get another bottle on your way back, I don't feel drunk
enough." Drunk enough for what? he wants to ask, but he's scared of what the answer
might be.

She's crying again when he comes back in the room, but when he sits next to her

and tries to find out what's wrong, when he pulls her hands away from her face, she starts
laughing as well. "Maybe I am a bit drunk," she manages to say.

"A bit?" She settles against him, under his arm, and lets him wipe her cheeks dry

with his shirt cuff. "I think the technical term is 'wankered'."

"You'd know."

"Trust me, I've got an English degree."

"Like every other job-dodger in the country."

"Like you?"

"I could work. I just choose to sit in my mansion and get wankered every day."

"It's a nice choice to have."

"Indeed." She's holding his hand now, winding their fingers together and looking

at the shapes they make, but Lindsay thinks he was the one who started it without
realising. There's one very specific memory he's never been able to forget, even though
so many of the others got hidden in a fog of drugs and hangovers - that night dancing in
an airfield where colours were impossibly brighter and scents were sharper and Ellie held
his wrist and sucked a pill off the end of his finger and Ty got jealous and punched him in
the face but he was so out of it even the pain felt like magic.

"I have to go," he says, but he doesn't move.

"Go on, then."

"Really. I should go."

"You're right, you should." Her hand is slack in his, she's not holding on any

more. It's like she waiting for him to let go but he still hasn't.

"I mean it. I'm going."

"Get out of my house."

"Ah... shit. I can't. I'm drunk. I can't drive."

"So stay."

"Alright."

"But I won't be your rebound."

"I was yours."

"That wasn't a rebound, that was just a hug that didn't know when to stop." She

dissolves into those out-of-place giggles again, and then she's back to crying too hard to
breathe. Lindsay doesn't know what to do so he doesn't do anything. That worked for

them when it was the other way around. He just strokes her hair gently until she's calmer.
"I'm really drunk," she says, muffled because she's wiping her wet nose on her hand. "I'm
going to bed."

"Me too."

"Not with me you're not."

"As if I want to sleep with Supermum anyway. It's like waving a pencil in a cave."

"You're disgusting. Go to hell." But she kisses him goodnight just like she always

did and for a second it's like nothing's changed, like Ty and Danny could be in the next
room or outside for a smoke.

***

Morning is horrific, a hangover that feels like his head's being crushed in a vice.

Ellie can't be feeling much better, going by the way she looks when Lindsay manages to
drag himself into the kitchen and pour a cup of tarry black coffee. She only lifts her head
from the table long enough to give him a wan good-morning smile.

"Coffee?" he says, and she groans and carefully puts her head back on the

tabletop.

"I'll be sick."

"Water?"

"I'll be sick."

"You might feel better if you're sick."

"Ugh."

He talks her into a glass of water, then a cup of coffee, and then she looks and he

feels more or less human. She even lets him open the window and have a smoke without
going outside, because the girls aren't here.

"So what are you going to do?" Lindsay says, stubbing the cigarette end out on

the brickwork outside the window then dropping it into his empty cup. The wooden box
of ashes is still on the kitchen table where they left it last night. He doesn't want to look at
it, it seems offensively small and plain for what it is, what it's holding.

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'll just put it in the bin. He wouldn't like

people being all sentimental about it, you know what he was like about funerals."

"I'll take it, if you want."

She doesn't even look surprised. "What would you do?"

"No idea. Keep it safe until you decide, if you don't want it in the house."

"If you take it, you can do what you like with it."

"Yeah?"

"It'd be one less job, to be honest." She pours more coffee but doesn't drink it, just

spends too long stirring milk and sugar in before she speaks again as if she's putting off
the moment she has to say the words. "Do you remember my old friend Ann? Annabel
Spenser?"

"Your bridesmaid? She copped off with Danny at your wedding."

"So he said. She swore blind it never happened."

"What about her?"

"She married a Canadian. They live in Quebec. Would you come and visit us if

we lived in Quebec?"

"...Jesus. Are you serious?"

"The girls don't want to stay here any more. Well, Alice is too young and Katie

just says what Melissa says, but Melissa's all for getting the hell out of here. I know
people are going to forget if we give it enough time but I'm not keeping them locked up
in here any more. They can't even go to school now because the other girls give them
such a hard time, you know how much they loved their school."

"I know."

"I think it'd be good. Get away and start over where nobody knows or cares who

we are."

"It's an awful long way."

"But it's not as if we can't both afford the flights for visits, right?"

"Right."

"You could come with us," she says quietly, still not really looking at him. "I

feel... I don't know. I don't want you to be on your own."

"I've just spent years sharing my house with a man who splashes hair dye all up

the bathroom walls and thinks a sugar sandwich is an acceptable meal. I love being on my
own." He doesn't know why he's lying. He can't stand it. The house is so quiet. He left
everything as it was for almost a week before he got used to the fact that this wasn't just
the kid having an elaborate tantrum, and then he spent a couple of days slowly packing
all his things away in case he ever got in touch and wanted it back. Valentine's bedroom
became a junk room, full of stacked cardboard boxes and paint-stained dustsheets, and
when Lindsay was finished he shut the door on it and tried to forget the room was there at
all. The only thing he left out was the monkey, and even that ended up abandoned on top
of his wardrobe because he couldn't stand seeing it. And Lovecat. The stupid little furball
jumped on him when Valentine drove away, as if it knew he needed company, and
wouldn't leave him alone. The empty house got unbearable very quickly and he had to get
out, but giving the cat to Aurelie to keep permanently was so hard he spent a week
dithering and living out of his packed suitcases before he could actually do it.

Ellie's clearly not fooled, but she doesn't push it. "Alright. So what are you going

to do? Are you going to work?" There's the tiniest hesitation before 'work', he knows
what she means.

"No."

"You could do something else. You're smart, you're good at business, you could

start something up again like your old company."

"No." He feels sick and restless. He gets up out of his chair again and goes over to

the window, but he doesn't light another cigarette, just fiddles with the packet because it's
something to do. "I don't know. I might just go. Travel places. I've never been to New
Zealand. I've never been to Iceland or Peru or Japan."

"Japan's near Canada."

"I'll pop round for a coffee, shall I?"

"Please do." He hears the scrape of her chair legs on the floor, then she's there

behind him slipping her arms around his waist. He puts his cigarettes down and turns
round to hug her properly and they don't speak for a long time, until she clears her throat

and says very quietly, "I might miss you quite a lot."

"I'll visit. I promise. I'll send hilarious comedy postcards."

"Everything's fucked."

"It'll get better."

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

"Do you still miss your dad?"

"Every day, but not all the time. It'll get better."

"I can't believe I'm this old and I've never really known anybody who's died

before."

"You're not old."

"I feel old. I feel like the fucking cryptkeeper."

"But you still look like Veronica Lake so shut up."

"God, I knew I should've married you instead." She's laughing a bit and he lets her

go, finally lighting up that cigarette as she starts making more coffee.

"Do you remember Fantazia?"

She looks up, as if she's surprised by the sudden memory. "Which one?"

"All of them. July at Donington."

"I think I was a bit out of it."

"You were beautiful. Ty said that's the night he knew he was going to marry you

or die trying."

"That's a bit soppy for him, isn't it?"

"Well, he was a bit out of it too."

"Match made in heaven."

"Something like that."

They fall silent, comfortable and thoughtful. Lindsay has his smoke and Ellie

drinks her coffee and the wooden box of ashes stays there on the table, impossible to
ignore as if it's lit up in neon.

5.

The strangest thing about being back in London is the way he's treated by people

who used to be his friends. It's his own fault really, Pip thinks; he never put that much
effort into keeping in touch either, but then maybe it was their fault after all because they
all started being weird with him years ago after the Lottery thing. People off the estate
who'd spent years picking on him were suddenly asking him out, inviting him to parties,
propositioning him. Trying to get knocked up so they can claim millions in support, Olly
had said sagely, and Pip just laughed at how fucking stupid they were, as if he'd forget all
those years of angry spitting swears and taunting jibes and bruises and fall into bed with
the first slapper who tried it on. The girls were always the worst. They knew he was a
queer, they'd spent all that time forcefully reminding him with their fists and fingernails
and nasty words, so why would he get amnesia now? He couldn't get out of there quickly
enough. His real friends, the people he and Olly were in the band with, Ricky and Jono
and Kelli and Tom, they were less weird about it but it was always there all the same,
hanging over their heads like a thundercloud. Meeting Lindsay was like escaping. Right
or wrong, it was a way out of that vague sense of awkwardness he suddenly had around
everybody and couldn't shake off. Coming back into it all now, he feels fifteen and
embarrassed again, as if a surprise twenty-one million in the bank was something
shameful. Two million of it was his right away when his dad transferred it over to his
account in a fit of jubilant glee he probably regretted when the adrenaline faded away.
They went wild on it for a bit, he funded trips out to Alton Towers and loads of new
clothes for everyone and a group adventure holiday in Cornwall doing shrieking bungee
jumps and the most expensive bottles of champagne they could buy on their fake IDs, just
because he could, but it felt stale right from the start.

"They're still being funny with me too," Olly says, as they're walking into the bar.

He holds the door open and Pip ducks under his arm to get inside, feeling a bit like a girl
with a hilariously chivalrous boyfriend. "Since you bought me that house," he goes on,
having to speak up over the music and voices. "Like they think I'm well above myself
now just cos I'm living somewhere nice. I know it's just cos they're jealous, I know I'm
dead lucky and everything, but y'know... I wouldn't've got somewhere this nice on my
own but I was always gonna get something. They just sit round all day waiting for good
things to happen like the world owes them a favour, they ain't even trying." Olly goes
behind the bar and kisses the girl there hello, then gets on making Pip a double Malibu
and Coke without even being asked. He puts a neon pink umbrella in it too, and a green
twirly helter-skelter straw, smirking when he hands it over. "Kitsch night, innit?"

"In my world every night's kitsch night."

"Yeah, but just wait til you see these twatty cocktails."

There aren't any seats by the bar, Pip just stands there a bit self-consciously,

waiting for the place to fill up a bit. "Do you miss them? Everyone."

"I got four little Starlings, mate, I ain't got time for nothing else.

Anyway, I still got you, ain't I? You're worth all of them put together." Pip feels a

thrilling rush of pleasure at that - it's not that he forgets they're best friends but he still

likes hearing it - until Olly adds, "Well, I say 'worth', I mean you're more trouble innit,"
and then he's laughing. Olly grins, making himself a drink of plain Coke because he's
working, and clinks it off Pip's already half-empty glass. "To the baby, yeah? What's it,
fucking... Doris?"

"No she ain't Doris, it's Dorian!"

"That's just as bad, your mum and dad's both fucking tapped

"Well, we known that for years, ain't we?"

Pretty soon it gets too noisy and busy to chat. Olly's showing off and spinning

glasses and bottles around so Pip turns to push through the crowd to get to the dancefloor.
He can hear Olly's voice behind him yelling, "No going home with dirty old men who
only break your heart!" and he can't help laughing. Alright, he says, but so quietly he
can't even hear it himself. It's an easy enough instruction to follow - the place is teeming
with kids, younger than him. He probably couldn't find a dirty old man if he tried. He is
the dirty old man, he realises with amusement a bit later, throwing himself round the
dancefloor to Don't Stop Moving by S Club 7 and eyeing up a blond boy who seems
oblivious to everything else, singing his head off and cackling with laughter every time
he accidentally bumps into someone. He smiles happily when he catches Pip's eye,
breathless and sweaty from dancing, then cheers and punches the air when Waterloo
comes on, launching himself back into his clump of friends.

Pip elbows his way back over to the bar. He's too sober to do this.

Whatever 'this' might be. He's not been planning to do anything with anyone, but

why not? It's not like he's ever going to see Lindsay again, probably. It's not like he'd be
cheating.

"You can buy me a drink if you want," the kid says, suddenly appearing at Pip's

shoulder. He turns round a bit to look at him, trying not to smile.

"That's generous of you."

"Ain't it?"

"What makes you think I'd wanna buy another man a drink?"

"Cos your t-shirt's got a unicorn on it."

"That's a bit shallow. How do you know I ain't married with kids?"

"Are you?"

"No."

"Well, then. Smirnoff Ice, please."

Olly shakes his head in mock-disgust when Pip yells the order to him. "I ain't

funding your bad drunk decisions, this one you're paying for."

"Come off it, it's just a drink!"

"Is it?" the kid says in Pip's ear. "Cos if it is I'm gonna go and find someone else,

alright? No offence, just don't wanna waste your time or nothing."

"Don't move. Stay there." He digs in his jeans pocket for change but Olly sprays a

jet of lemonade at him and Pip gives up, laughing and nicking a bar towel to wipe the
side of his face on and chucking it back at him. "No, forget it, you just wanna go?"

"Yeah."

"You got somewhere?"

"Yeah, I'm in halls, I ain't sharing a room or nothing so it's okay."

Halls. This is officially going to be the youngest shag he's ever had.

That seems a bit funny, but then he's a bit drunk. They're only in the cab ten

minutes, pulling up somewhere near one of the parks with lips wet and red from kissing,
interrupted by the long-suffering driver saying with exasperation, "We're here." Pip pays
him and he speeds away, and then they're just standing on the empty street in front of the
building.

"We're here," Pip repeats, and the kid laughs.

"Yeah. Um, should've asked before but what's your name?"

He briefly considers giving a fake one, but what's the point? "Pip."

"I'm Michael."

"Beautiful boys on a beautiful dance floor..."

"Yeah, cos I never heard that one before." But he seems pleased, he's flushed and

smiling as he gets his key card out his back pocket. Pip slings an arm across his shoulder
as they're walking upstairs, standing very close behind him and wrapping his arms round
Michael's skinny body and kissing the side of his neck while he's trying to unlock the
next door. He's breathless and laughing, fumbling with the card. "You ain't being
helpful."

One more door and they're in his bedroom. He starts scurrying about picking

clothes off the bed and floor, mumbling something about not expecting company, but Pip
holds his wrist to stop him and pulls him closer.

His blond hair is clumped together with dried sweat, flopping over his forehead

and into his blue eyes, and Pip brushes it out the way to look at him but then he doesn't
know what to say so he just kisses him instead. Michael's tongue is forceful against his,
jabbing into Pip's mouth like it's looking for something. Pip strokes his face gently,
cupping his jaw in both hands, slips one round to thread through the hair at the back of
his head, trying to coax him to do it just less. Michael was so cocky and flirty in the club
but he seems nervous now they're inside. Pip wonders whether he's actually brought
anybody back before. It's not like it matters, but he's not used to being the most
experienced one. It's weird. It's kind of cool.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," Michael mutters. He lunges back in with his tongue. Pip manages to put

up with it for about ten seconds, then he twists away to start kissing down Michael's neck
again. He can't put up with any more of this kid trying to swallow his tonsils. Lindsay
always kissed like he'd invented it, like he was the world champion or something.
Sometimes they could lie in bed or cuddle on the couch for hours and hours at a time just
kissing. Pip didn't even care about stubble burn - any time Lindsay kissed him, he never
ever wanted it to stop.

Then he makes that bit of his brain shut down and concentrates on getting

Michael's t-shirt off over his head instead, then his own, then they're both trying to
unfasten each other's skinny jeans at the same time, falling onto the bed and giggling like
little girls. Michael's got a small black Chinese tattoo just above his hipbone. When
they're both finally naked, Pip moves down the bed to kiss it and takes Michael's cock in
his hand at the same time, stroking slowly. "What's that mean?"

"Chow mein. I thought it was funny. My sister's got one it's meant to say peace or

something but I said I bet it's chow mein cos you're never gonna know what it actually
says if it's wrong, are you? You're just trusting they know what they're doing. So I got it.
I like yours, you got loads ain't you? I-oh." Pip shuts him up the only way he knows how,
by drawing a wide wet line up the length of his cock with his tongue and then swirling

round the head, dribbling spit all down him then closing his lips in a tight circle and
sliding down all the way and then back up, again and again until Michael's thrashing
about on the covers and making pleading whimpery noises instead of that slightly
hysterical nervous babble from before. There's not a lot Pip knows he's really brilliant at,
but he knows he's a good kisser and he knows he's good at this because it's the only thing
that ever made Lindsay properly lose it. He was always so in control of himself, but this
could make him fall apart and- Pip realises he's thinking about Lindsay again and frowns,
stopping what he's doing long enough to dribble over his fingers as well so he can put his
hand down between Michael's legs and start carefully stroking over his arsehole.

"Can I?"

"Oh, my god why are you even asking?"

"Have you got a johnny?"

"I... oh fuck."

"It's alright, I think I got one." Pip leans over to find his jeans on the floor, turning

one of the inside-out legs the right way so he can get at the slim red wallet in his back
pocket. He emptied it out earlier so it wouldn't make his arse look fat and lumpy so it's
only got a credit card, an emergency twenty-pound note because his grandad told him to
always keep one just in case and he's never forgotten, and two foil-wrapped condoms and
little sachets of lube.

"Mate, you shouldn't go out pulling if you ain't got nothing."

"I know, I just never thought."

"You sure you want to?"

"Yes I'm sure I want to!" But he looks scared and Pip feels a bit sorry for him,

enough to slide back up and risk kissing him again. It's alright this time because he
doesn't go mad with his tongue, he just lets Pip kiss him and then doesn't really look at
him when he moves back.

"You ain't done this before, have you?"

"I done this loads of times."

"Yeah right. I don't care, I ain't gonna stop just cos you're a virgin, not if you

don't want me to, but you just gotta calm down, okay? Cos I don't wanna hurt you but it
fucking killed me the first few times cos I was scared and I wouldn't relax. Just so you
know."

"Alright," Michael says in a wobbly whisper, squeezing his eyes shut and

obviously trying to steady his breathing. Pip sits back on his heels, ripping into the
condom packet and rolling it on, watching Michael's face the whole time. He still looks
terrified when he opens his eyes again a minute later, but slightly calmer. He even smiles,
and it doesn't look fake. "I'm alright. Sorry.

Yeah, I want to."

Pip takes it slowly, wet fingers first to get him used to what it feels like and then

pushing Michael's knee up against his chest and easing inside him so slowly it feels like it
takes all night. They left the light on and everything seems offensively harsh and bright
so Pip settles down on top of him to kiss him again and while he's doing it he tugs on the
dangling cord to turn off the light, thinking it might make him feel better. The darkness is
sudden and startling, but there's a streetlamp somewhere outside and there's a
constellation of glow in the dark plastic stars stuck on the wardrobe, another on the size
of the desk. He can just about see Michael's face when his eyes have adjusted, all dark

shadows and gentle orangey highlights from the streetlamp.

"I only done this to one other person before," Pip says suddenly. He doesn't know

why he says it, it just falls out. "If that... I dunno, makes you feel better or something.
One time. I ain't usually on top."

"You're doing alright, though." Michael's voice is quiet and shaky, but it doesn't

sound like he's in pain or having second thoughts so Pip starts moving slowly, trying to
interpret the gasps and whimpers. He forgot what it feels like, it was so long ago that one
time Lindsay actually let him. He remembers now what he felt before, how hot and tight
it was and how absolutely, sickeningly terrified he was. He can't even remember why,
only that he was so scared he was almost crying. He wanted it to be good, he wanted
Lindsay to feel what he felt every single time but all the way through Lindsay just lay
there in silence, no movement and no sign he was enjoying it.

He could have just stopped, said 'sorry, that was a mistake, let's do it properly'

but he was too embarrassed so he carried on through the agonising nothingness and had
to think up really good dirty fantasies in his head so he'd get off more quickly and get it
over with. Lindsay didn't even come, he wasn't even close.

Pip had to suck him off after anyway.

"Am I?"

"Yeah. Go harder."

The reflex to do as he's told is still there, he doesn't think it's ever going to go

away. He starts moving faster, thrusting in harder and trying to stroke Michael's cock at
the same time, clumsy and losing his rhythm until Michael reaches down to do it himself.
It doesn't take very long, it's over in a few minutes. Michael comes first, arching his back
and stretching his neck so he's looking up, as if his broken gasps are secrets he needs to
tell to the headboard and pillows. He puts his arms up round Pip's neck to pull him down,
kissing him furiously, and maybe it's the accidental hairpull that does it but Pip comes
almost straight away then, crying out into Michael's mouth and around his insistent
tongue.

It's all a bit strange and awkward after that. Pip's forgotten what this feels like too,

the strangeness after a one-night stand when you're getting dressed again. It's not even
eleven o'clock yet. It feels too early to go home, like even after what just happened it'd be
a wasted night to go home now.

"It's still early," he says, trying to find his other boot and zip it on in the darkness.

"You wanna go back out?"

"Can't really, I got lectures."

"Fair enough." He's ready to go. He doesn't want to turn the light on to check how

crap and smudgey his eye make-up is now so he just wipes his fingertips under his
eyelashes and hopes for the best. "Can I get out without your key card thing?"

Michael's still on the bed, suddenly shy enough to have pulled a blanket over

himself when he was finished wiping his own come off his body with tissues. "Yeah,
everything opens from the inside."

"Alright. See you around, yeah?"

"Yeah, maybe."

An hour or so later he's bent over a skip behind the club with his jeans round his

ankles, getting fucked by a man whose name he didn't bother asking. It's rough and fast in

case they get caught, hard enough to make tears roll and drip down the length of his nose,
although he's not properly crying. It's just watering eyes from the vicious burning stretch
of the cock inside him and the rotten stink of bins. Flakes of rust are prickling his palms
where he's holding on to the rim of the skip, stinging and grazing like crumbly splinters.

The man, whoever he is, throws the knotted johnny over Pip's head into the bin

when he's done and leaves him there exhausted and shaking with wobbly weak knees that
don't seem to want to hold him up any more. He feels disgusting and used and ashamed
but, weirdly, kind of better. Olly won't understand, he never did. Pip doesn't bother going
back inside to get judged for the second time tonight. He just brushes the red rust off his
palms, pulls his jeans back up, and wanders down the alley to find the main road and a
cab back home.

6.

August 2010

The noise of the airport is harsh, like its electric lights. Lindsay's had a headache

more or less since take-off back in Heathrow, all through the flights, all through the wait
between planes. Flying first class doesn't mean you can't still hear all the people in the
back, screeching babies and bored children who keep running to the front and trying to
evade the hostess bimbos to get a look in the cockpit.

"What are you running away from?" his mother had asked him gently when she

came to see him off. He'd just shrugged his shoulders, a bit awkward, a bit sulky and
monosyllabic like he was fifteen again and embarrassed by the idea of being seen in
public with her. "You're still going to miss him whether you're here or Mars."

"I'm running away from you and your constant fucking nagging," he snapped

back, but she just gave him a look and went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and hug him,
one of those big warm mum-hugs you crave when you're five and feel stupid about when
you're pushing forty. She knew. She always knew everything. Valentine always said
that's why he was so repressed, because he'd grown up with a mum who knew how to
read his moods and he never had to be nice to be understood or get his way. Scowling
and rubbing his slapped face five seconds later, Valentine said See what I mean? and
Lindsay slammed the front door and went off for a drive, screeching tyres noisily just to
make his point.

There's the greasy, meaty stench of fast food coming from somewhere. Lindsay

wrinkles up his nose and moves on with his case, weaving between idiots in shorts and
dayglo t-shirts until he finds a coffee shop and downs a double espresso. It doesn't make
his head feel any better, but it's the strongest drug he's allowed now... not that there's
anybody around to stop him any more, he realises. It's not a realisation, strictly speaking,
it's more that he's letting himself think it for the first time in ages instead of resolutely
ignoring the vague idea that's been simmering somewhere beneath his consciousness for
a while now. It's stupid. It's really really fucking stupid, but why not?

He gets his phone out his pocket and thumbs in some numbers quickly, before he

changes his mind. She answers on the second ring, and very quietly he says, "Hey, Elsie."
He didn't mean to use the silly pet name he had for her when they were eighteen, it just
sort of happened. He rests his elbow on the table and rubs at his eyes, willing the
headache away, wishing for a time machine or a cheat's book of answers.

She sounds surprised when she replies. "Lin. Are you okay?"

"I don't know."

"You sound far away."

"I'm in Peru. I'm in the airport in Lima."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Alright." There's a little pause, just her breathing and the gentle static on the line,

then: "Lindsay. Are you okay?"

"I hate this place already. Everybody's shouting and banging into people with

luggage trolleys."

"I think that's just airports, hon, it'd be the same anywhere you went."

"The cunt on the plane found out my name and did one of those looks to the other

one. Like professional laughing, taking the piss without making it obvious enough to
complain about."

"Surely you're used to that by now."

"Not off some bulimic peroxide bint from Essex after I've paid thousands to be

treated like a fucking king in first class."

"Or a queen. Stop your bitching

"I'm not, I'm just..." He doesn't know what. "I'm tired. I've got a headache. I'm

sorry, what time is it? It shouldn't have bothered you, I don't even know what I'm talking
about, I'm just..." He still doesn't know what so he shuts up.

"It's nearly ten. I should get to bed, we've got an early start."

"Everything's packed?"

"Yeah. Everything we need. Just some clothes, favourite teddies, books. Most of

it's been shipped already."

"And tomorrow night you'll all go to sleep Canadians."

"Not quite. It's just holiday. We might hate it."

"We'll be on the same landmass. Just an equator and a dozen borders between us."

"What are you doing in Peru?"

"I don't know. Have you been?"

"No."

"So no suggestions."

"No.

Well. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"I suggest you come to Quebec," she says, very slowly, very quietly, very lightly

like it means nothing but it does, he's known her a long time, it does.

"You're as bad as my mother. Why do you women fuss over me all the time?"

"Somebody's got to."

"I'm a big boy now."

"Big boys can still self-destruct."

He almost wants to laugh at that - miles and miles and timezones away and people

still know what he's thinking. There's no escape. "I don't know why everyone thinks I'm
carving my wrists up over him."

"It's not your wrists I'm worried about."

"I'm on holiday, Elsie. It's sunny. I'm going to a nice hotel and hiring a nice car

and driving round nice places and I'm not spending a single second in a clothes shop or a
shit gay disco."

"Right." She doesn't say anything else for nearly half a minute, and neither does

he - he wants her to say something first, anything at all, but she won't.

"I'll buy you a stupid tourist present. 'My dead husband's best friend went to Peru

to have a breakdown and all I got was this hilarious t-shirt'."

"Don't waste your money, I'd never wear it."

"Heh."

"This must be costing you a fortune, are you on your mobile?"

"Mm. It's alright. I don't know if you know this, but I'm quite rich."

"Oh, well done, now you'll get mugged and murdered by South American

gangsters and dumped in a ditch somewhere."

"Racist."

"Show off. Your money doesn't impress me."

"As if I'm trying to impress you."

"Why are you calling me Elsie?" she asks quietly, and he doesn't have an answer

so he hangs up instead and rolls his case down the hall to find a car.

One of the wheels is squeaking noisily and he feels guilty and terrified like there's

a bomb in there and he's drawing attention to himself, but it's not a bomb. It's just a stupid
little toy monkey.

***

They might not exactly be friends, but Lindsay knows enough people around the

world through work. Work's a good excuse for travelling, it makes it feel less like
running away and the weeks and months speed past like lightning. He goes to check up
on the hotel he owns in the centre of Madrid, where his mum lives through the winter,
and fucks a chambermaid in his penthouse suite. She's blonde and tall, a bit overweight,
nothing at all like Valentine and that's what makes it so good when she's on her back in
the crumpled bed with her legs wrapped round his waist and her bare polished fingernails
pressing sharp semicircles into his back. It's been years but he still remembers how it
works, like the time in a sleazy noisy bar in Majorca when a girl totters over to him, all
stilettos and alcopop breath, presumptuous enough to sit on his lap even before she asks
his name. He doesn't tell her, just fingers her under the table until she comes, wide-eyed
and whimpering. It's her own fault for not wearing knickers under her skirt. She kisses
him clumsily, sloppy and too much tongue, and wanders off back to her friends but he
gets up and leaves before she can point him out to them.

He meets a man in the toilets of a bar in San Francisco who's got a smudge of

white round his nose, and through him he meets a woman with purple hair and a lip ring
who looks at him like she doesn't trust him when he asks if she wants a drink. Three
vodkas apiece later, he leans close to her ear and says, "I've got three hundred and forty
dollars cash, what'll that get me?"

"You mean aside from robbed and murdered?"

"Yeah."

"I don't have that much left. Give me a hundred."

They make the swap smoothly, almost professionally. It is for her. Strange how

easily it all comes back to him, too.

"Do you come here a lot? Will you be back tomorrow?"

"You sure you can handle it, grandpa?"

"Oh, please. I've got a very big nose." That actually makes her laugh, but she

doesn't sleep with him until a few weeks later because - she even says so - she doesn't
want him to think she's a whore.

"A dealer with morals," he says, watching her use his credit card to separate off a

little white heap. "That's a first."

"I'm not a dealer. Everyone needs a job through college, I guess I just don't have

the right look for poledancing."

He's just showing off now, rolling up hundred-dollar bills into tubes.

"What are you studying?"

"Law," she says, smirking faintly, and it doesn't really register what she's said

until his first couple of lines are gone off the tabletop and he's swallowing the medicine
taste in the back of his throat and waiting that split second for the hit to take hold - it
does, then he realises what she said and can't stop laughing, slumped there in his armchair
feeling as if he's being dragged along behind a jet like a rattling can tied to the back of a
wedding car.

"You've hardly got the look of a lawyer either."

"Don't be so middle-aged, Sammy." They've been giving each other false names

since the night they met, different ones every time like it's a game.

They've been Sonny and Cher, Luke and Leia, Danny and Sandy. Two days ago

they were Rick and Ilsa. Tonight they're Samson and Delilah. He wonders if maybe that's
a bad idea, like a curse, but it's alright. He could snap her neck like a twig if she tries
anything, but he doesn't think she'll try anything.

Nothing bad, anyway. He watches her take her turn, the play of expressions over

her face. She catches him looking and laughs, bright and euphoric. A while later, a couple
more lines down, she's grabbed his hand to pull him out of the room, out into the
corridor, running through the red carpeted halls without bothering to close his suite door,
running downstairs in her platform heels until she stumbles and he grabs at her to keep
her from falling, slings her over his shoulder like a fireman and into the lift for the last
ten floors. The operator is there in his pristine uniform, clearly trained not to react at all
to rich stupid people doing stupid illegal things. He doesn't even blink, he doesn't look
twice.

"Where are we going?"

She's struggling against his hold on her but she's laughing as well so he doesn't let

her go. "Asshole, put me down!"

"No."

"Put me down and I'll tell you."

The numbers light up one by one like a countdown, then the G. The doors whoosh

open and Lindsay stands her back on her feet and lets her hold his hand again, drag him
running and laughing through the lobby and out the door to run down the street for no
reason at all.

***

It's all a bit calmer after that, three nights later when his phone beeps a text

through:

sid- takin it easy 2nite, last dance w/ mary jane? -nancy

She rolls joints like she's been doing it for years, lightning-quick and perfect, and then
makes a move like she's going out onto the balcony but Lindsay stops her with a hand on
her wrist.

"It's raining. We can stay in here."

"What about the smoke alarms?"

"Disabled. This floor's private property, hotel rules don't apply. I own this whole

building."

"You own this place?"

"Yeah." He leans in closer to catch a light but doesn't feel like moving back again

after so he stays there in the middle of the couch with his leg pressed against hers. It's not
even the contents of the joint making him feel like this, it's the whole ritual of smoking,
even when it's just tobacco. That's why he started rolling his own years ago, it was
something about the feel of the paper under his fingertips, the way you control the whole
procedure from construction to stubbing out the end. "Property. All kinds. Lots of hotels,
holiday homes, bars. I don't do anything, I just own them."

"Are you like a billionaire or something?"

He laughs at that, blowing a lungful of smoke up into the air above his head. "Not

quite. Oh, wait, maybe. Dollar billionaire, I think, not pounds."

That includes slightly more illegal profits, but he's not going to tell her that.

"And I'm gonna be paying off my student loans until I die."

"I'll pay it. How much do you need?"

That was the wrong thing to say, for some reason. She looks a bit annoyed and

curls in on herself in the corner of the couch, frowning slightly. "I said I'm not a whore."

"Come on, I'm not even asking anything back. If you need help I can help you, no

strings."

"Why are you being so nice to me if you don't want sex?"

"Are you really that jaded you think people are only nice when they're trying to

get a blowjob?"

"Is that what you want?"

Maybe at first, weeks ago. Chemical highs and a forgettable fuck. Not any more.

It's unexpected and nonsensical, but... "I like you."

She smiles then, kind of halfhearted and unsure. "You sound like you're in fourth

grade. You know, sending a note with 'circle yes if you like me too'."

"Would you circle yes?"

"I really wish you never told me you're a billionaire. If I circle yes you'll think it's

for that."

"No I won't. You can circle what you like."

She's giggling now behind her hand, trying not to. "Okay."

"What does that mean?"

"Okay, yes. I'm circling yes."

She waits for him to finish his smoke, then stands to put both ends in the ashtray

on the table. When she turns round she's right in front of where he's sitting, looking down
at him with questioning eyes like even after all this flirting she's still not sure what to do -
at least until Lindsay puts both hands on her hips, sliding up inside the hem of her dress
to rest them there on the border between her clothes and the warm bare skin of her waist.
She gets it then, smiling that pretty crooked smile again and dropping down to sit astride

him, brushing his hair away from his face and then, suddenly, kissing him.

He's never kissed anybody with a pierced lip before. She's not wearing the ring in

it this time, it's a silver spike instead, jutting out just below the centre of her lower lip,
and it jabs at his face as they're kissing, all panting breaths and roaming hands. She's got
a short black dress on and electric blue leggings, thin enough she can obviously feel him
getting hard beneath her; in return, he can feel her smiling against his mouth, a faint
murmur of words he can't quite hear until she's kissed across his cheek to nip gently at his
earlobe and breathe, "Quit being a gentleman and just fuck me, okay?"

"This passes for gentlemanly behaviour in your world?"

"Hey, it beats fucking college boys who think a Big Mac counts as foreplay. Tall

dark handsome rich old British dude, this is what daydreams are made of."

Old. That bit makes him hesitate, suddenly uncomfortable, kind of embarrassed.

He's too tall, he's getting this comical middle-age spread, he keeps finding too many grey
hairs to yank out, and she's half his age, bright and laughing, all smooth tanned skin and
long aubergine-purple hair. She's younger than Valentine and he feels like a paedophile,
except paedophiles probably don't get laughed at very often when they're trying to get
lucky and he's a hundred percent sure she's going to start giggling again in a minute, tell
him it's a joke or something.

She doesn't. Once they're in the bedroom she starts unbuttoning his shirt for him,

tugging it off where it's cuffed around his wrists and throwing it onto the carpet. She's
only as tall as his shoulder, he almost has to stoop to kiss her. It's better when they're
stretched out and entangled on top of the covers, both topless and kissing furiously. She's
got a swirling tattoo down her side, black thorns and red roses starting on her shoulder
and wandering down her ribs, curling underneath the curve of her small breast. He
follows this with his fingertip on his way down her body to unbuckle her sandals and take
down her trousers, and she rests there against the pillows just watching him, pink-
cheeked and breathing rapidly like she's just won a race.

"And you," she says. This would be so much easier if he could somehow get

inside her without letting her see him naked, but she won't stop watching him.

"What's your real name?" he asks, but he suddenly remembers asking Valentine

that very same question the first time they got each other's cocks out in that ridiculous
stolen car and then he doesn't want to know. "No. Don't tell me, it doesn't matter, I don't
care."

"I kinda told you already," she says anyway, a whispery whimper against the

corner of his mouth. "Mary Jane."

"Pleased to meet you." She's so wet there's barely any friction at all slipping a

finger down between her legs to stroke her in gentle circles. She makes a noise, half a
gasp and half a laugh and holds his wrist until he's got two fingers inside her; he forces a
third in and the noise she makes is so shocked and hungry he nearly falls apart.

"Do it now," she says, fierce and urgent. She starts laughing again when he can't

unwrap a condom quickly enough, but somehow it's alright now, it's not at him, she
doesn't seem bothered he's so much older than her or anything else. She's flushed and
glowing and looking at him the way Valentine always used to look at him, like he was
something amazing.

He kneels between her parted legs and takes a moment to calm down, just

breathe. It's better after that.

"Hi," she says, quiet and smiling and shining. "So what's your real name?"

"You'll laugh." He starts moving, slow and deep, and she closes her eyes and

sighs raggedly.

"You seriously think Mary Jane Blunt makes fun of other people's names?"

"Lindsay."

"Oh my god, that's so British."

"Not when you have to grow up in Bradford." He's holding her hand against the

pillow, he didn't even realise he'd done it - fingers woven together, her small hand in his
huge one. It's how he used to hold Valentine, even if they weren't playing rough. He
always had to hold him there, pin him down like a butterfly so he couldn't fly away. He
lets go hastily, but Mary Jane finds his hand again where he's pressed it against the
mattress beside the pillow to prop himself up, stroking across his knuckles until he relents
and goes back to how they were. She's got the other hand clenched tight in the hair at the
back of his head, kissing insistently and not letting him move away, shifting her hips
under his weight to ask for more, and when she comes it's with her mouth on Lindsay's
neck muffling a guttural cry he might think she'd faked if he couldn't feel the pulsing
waves of her orgasm right up and down the length of his cock.

"Don't stop," she says, laughing again, helpless and breathless.

"Change places with me, don't stop." She comes again only a few minutes later,

riding him hard and rubbing herself with two slick fingertips. That's enough to send him
toppling over the edge as well, the shameless disgusting incredible view of this girl
straddling him, fucking him, fucking her own fingers, arching her back, whining his
name.

He feels drained after, completely exhausted like he could fall asleep in two

seconds flat and never wake up again, but it's a good sort of feeling he's not had in ages.
Empty fucks with anonymous women just don't work any more. Maybe he really is
getting old, maybe he was spoiled by years of monogamy, but it's so much better being
with somebody with a name, a face he'll still remember tomorrow, a sense of humour.
The most unlikely friend in the world, some American kid with a pierced lip and pretty
laugh who studies law and gives him coke.

Of course in the morning she's gone, with all the cash from his wallet and all the

gear she sold him over the last few weeks that hasn't already disappeared up his nose.
Lindsay packs his bags and flies to Japan in the afternoon. He always hated America
anyway.

7.

June 2011

Waking up after a night out is always a struggle, but Pip drank even more than

usual this time so he feels rougher than ever, dry mouth and the threat of a blinding
headache thrumming just behind his skull. He kicked the sheet down in the night but he's
still too hot - fighting sluggishly closer to consciousness, he realises there's another body
pressed up close to his and that isn't helping at all.

"Get off," he tries to say, but it comes out in an incomprehensible mumble. Olly

mumbles something back, just as unclear, and nestles in closer with his arm over Pip's
waist and his face lost somewhere in Pip's messy hair.

He feels lips press gently against the back of his neck, Olly's morning-hard cock

sliding against his arse...

"Oh shit, it's you," Olly says, a sleepy little mutter right against Pip's ear so the

breath tickles and makes him shiver. "Sorry. Serves you right. You shouldn't use girly
shampoo, you smell like one."

"Sorry." He bites his lip to hold back a protest when Olly shifts away a little bit,

trying to resist the urge to follow him and nudge their curves back together like spoons in
a drawer. "Morning glory, innit? Nothing to worry about."

"I need a piss."

"Not in bed you don't, get up."

Olly laughs and staggers to the bathroom wearing only his boxers.

Pip's feeling too lazy to move at all so he stays where he is, pressing his face into

the pillow to make the inside of his head as dark as possible. He's not expecting to be
disturbed again because usually when Olly gets out of bed he's out for good. There's
always something that needs doing, screaming fights that need breaking up or breakfast
that needs making or whatever, but now Pip hears the flush of the toilet and the tap
running, footsteps on the carpet again, and then he feels the lurch of the mattress when
Olly gets back in bed behind him.

"Ain't even six-thirty yet, what kind of fucking time is that to be up?"

"Really? Shit, I thought I was tired. Shut up, lemme sleep."

He rolls over onto his back, scrubbing at both eyes with his fingertips. They feel

filthy, crummy with last night's make-up and sweat. He feels filthy all over, disgusting
and grimy from dancing all night and not showering before bed. If it's already this hot
this early, the day is going to be unbearable. He's just trying to decide whether it'll be
cooler to kick the tangled sheet away from where it's wrapped round his calves or save
the energy and just leave it there when Olly clears his throat gently and says, "You know
you got a bit of a tent going on there, mate?"

"So? So did you." He turns back over onto his side anyway. He's not exactly

embarrassed - they've known each other long enough not to be embarrassed by anything
any more - but it's only polite. "I was having a wicked dream."

"You slag."

Pip's wide awake now, still so tired he could die but suddenly not at all sleepy. It

feels like before, years ago, sharing beds as teenagers when they stayed over at each
other's houses, only this time Olly knows he's lying there breathless and hard. He was
always asleep before. It was like this massive guilty secret. Sometimes Pip would lie like
this, his back to Olly's warm sleeping body so he could spin out late-night fantasies about
him maybe waking up and touching him, furtively from behind because not looking
makes it less bent or something. Sometimes he'd go further, carefully shuffling back until
they were touching, and he'd go to sleep like that and pretend it happened accidentally in
the night while they were both passed out. A couple of times Pip turned over and stayed
there for ages like a creeper just watching Olly sleep, sometimes sharing his pillow,
sometimes touching his hair or gently holding his hand. One time he kissed him, but
Sleeping Beauty didn't wake up.

Thank god. All those years of wanting it and it only ever happened in stupid

games of truth or dare, or because boys kissing boys made girls at parties giggle and
swoon. The one time it went too far when they didn't have anything to blame, Olly
punched him and split his lip. Even that wasn't enough to put him off, not really. It
dimmed when he met Lindsay, but it's crept back now and he didn't even realise. Funny
how not-awkward it feels. Maybe that's the tiredness. It all feels woozy and slow, like it's
a dream. He can feel Olly's knee nudging at the back of his, and the warm slide of his
bare thigh as he fits their bodies together from top to toe, draping an arm over Pip's naked
chest and kissing the back of his shoulder quickly as if he's not sure whether it's a good
idea. Empty bladder or not, he's still hard.

Maybe it's a dream. It feels like one. Well then, it doesn't matter what he says if

it's a dream.

"You can put it in if you want," Pip murmurs, and Olly's breath tickles his ear

when he laughs softly.

"Yeah, I bet you say that to all the boys."

"No, I don't."

"You do, you shagged half of Shoreditch."

"I wouldn't, if you told me not to." He finds Olly's hand and pulls his arm closer

around, entwining their fingers above his heart. "I mean it. If you want. You can."

Olly sounds hesitant and completely unsure of himself, and that's not normal. "I

don't know how."

"You're a fucking liar. As if them dirty slappers you go with don't do anal."

"In the drawer," Olly says after a moment. Pip has to let his hand go to reach over.

He can't help laughing at the heap of condoms in there - maybe the idea of accidental
conception only actually sinks in after it's happened four times, but it looks like he's not
taking any more chances. Not that it matters now. Pip lifts his head just enough to turn
the pillow over to the cool side and take his pants off, and then just waits there on his side
with his knees up against his chest, hugging the pillow and listening - the faint metallic
crinkle sound of the wrapper, wet spitting noises. He holds his breath at the first touch,
Olly's hand on his arse spreading him open, and lets it back out in a long wet ragged gasp
when he pushes inside.

" Oh..."

"Shh, my mum..."

She's been babysitting and they got back too late for her to go home so she had

Pip's room, that's the only reason they're having to share. He's always loved her, but he's
never loved her as much as he does right now.

"You could always gag me."

Olly laughs at that, quiet and breathless in Pip's ear. "Baby steps, princess."

"Alright."

Pip lets Olly move him about, turn him onto his front. He's drowsy from not

enough sleep and a growing hangover that's really not helped by what they're doing. At
least he's going slow. It's nice. It's wonderful. He's not even that hard any more but it still
feels amazing, the sweaty slide of Olly's chest against his back and the way his breathing
doesn't seem to make that much sense any more, patchy staccato gasps against Pip's ear
and lost in his hair. He bites Pip's shoulder when he comes so he doesn't make any noise.
It's hard enough it's probably going to bruise and for a moment the thrill of pain is almost
enough to wake Pip right up, but the hangover wins in the end and then there's a horrific
high-pitched scream from somewhere else in the house and he groans in agony and hides
under the pillow, whimpering.

"DAAAAAAAD! OH MY GOD DAAAAAAAAAAAD!"

"WHAT?" Olly yells back. Pip wonders whether maybe something's on fire but

he can't work up the energy to move and find out. He can hear Olly thundering round the
room, presumably finding a pair of jeans or something, then the slam of the door hitting
the wall and his bare feet thudding downstairs.

"DAISY'S LOOKING AT ME!"

"JESUS, I THOUGHT YOU WERE ON FIRE."

Pip smiles at that. People always did say it was like they could read each other's

minds. He drags Olly's pillow over his head as well, muffling the rest of the argument,
and doesn't realise he's fallen asleep until he wakes up again closer to noon, to a silent
house and a knifing beam of sunlight cutting through the room where there's a crack
between the curtains. The dull throbbing headache is still there but he doesn't feel tired
any more, he's only going to feel worse lounging round in bed all day. Drinking a
stomachful of icy cold water straight from the bathroom tap helps a bit, and a long cool
shower. When he wipes the misty mirror clean he can see the purple shape of teeth on his
shoulder.

Olly's in the living room when Pip goes downstairs. He's asleep. He always sleeps

in the day, he gets it out the way while the kids are at school so he never has to miss a
breakfast or a school run just because he's tired after working late nights. Joe's sitting in
his playpen, quiet and serious, turning brightly-coloured plushie bricks over in his hands
like he's teaching himself the finer points of architecture.

"Alright, Joe-joe?"

"Alright, Pip-pip." He smiles then. He's got the best smile in the world, and mad

hair that won't do as it's told. "Daddy sleeping."

"Yeah, lazy bastard, ain't he?" He goes over to lift the baby out - he's not a baby

any more, really, he's two and a half and just lately he seems to outgrow all his clothes in
seconds. He's got tiny combat trousers on and a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt, both only a few
weeks old, and they already want replacing.

"It's nearly lunchtime, you hungry?"

"Nana."

"Banana, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Alright."

"No, Sian's having him," Olly mumbles sleepily. He sits up, wiping his mouth

where he's dribbled and laughing at himself a bit self-consciously. "I never meant to fall
asleep, sorry."

"It's okay."

"Yeah. Sian's coming round any minute, she's having him today. You gonna be

good for your mum, mate?"

"Yeah," Joe says, but then he throws the soft brick he's still holding right at Olly's

face, so it doesn't look likely. Olly cracks up laughing again and heads into the kitchen to
start packing some stuff in a bag for him, and when he steps around Pip to get to the door
he touches him lightly on the hip. No words, just a casual touch as he's passing. It's better
than words, in a way. Nothing's changed. Nothing's weird or awkward.

Half an hour later, when Joe's gone and Olly's cooking them pasta for lunch while

Pip makes coffee, Pip turns round from putting the milk back in the fridge and says, "You
do know you owe me two now, right?" It's just to see what he says but he doesn't go for
it, he just slaps Pip on the arm with a tomato-saucey spatula and tells him to shut up.

But later on, when important things like food and tidying up and stripping off the

mangled bed are all done and there's nothing left to waste time on except conversation,
Olly flops down on the couch where Pip's flicking through the Sky channels and takes the
remote off him so he can hold his hand. The telly stays there on Kerrang, blaring out
some inane emo rock song while they sit there in silence and Olly traces his finger over
the number 15 tattooed on Pip's wrist.

"You know if you was my boyfriend I'd never walk out on you like all them stupid

women, right?" Pip says quietly.

"Yeah. I know."

"And I wouldn't get pregnant."

"Thank fuck. Your mood swings are bad enough already."

"I'm housetrained. I'm good with kids. I'm very very rich. I swear I'm better in bed

when I ain't hungover. I can do your hair for free. I'm-"

"You had me at 'you can put it in if you want'," Olly interrupts, and Pip creases

laughing and kisses him.

8.

February 2012

I don’t know why I started writing my diary again. I feel well stupid. I think the

whole reason I started it years and years ago when I was like 13 was ‘cos I always knew I
was gonna be famous and then I'd need notes for my auto biography later on. That’s
stupid as well. I dont want to be famous no more, I was kind of famous for a bit but not
for nothing I did, just cos of my Mum and Dad winning the lottery then cos of the kidnap
thing and that ain’t the same. I just want people to like me. Haha what a wanker. I feel
stupid writing where nobody gets to see it but then I don’t WANT people to see it cos its
stupid. I dont know how people write diary's, I never really worked that one out. Who are
you writing to? I dont know how your supposed to write. Is it like your talking to
someone? Like on LJ you write as if someones reading, even if nobody comments you
know its out there and people can read it so your writing to them.

Maybe I COULD write my auto biography. People who done less in there life

than me get book deals all the time. I know how people like to nosy in to other peoples
lives. I dont know what it'd be like tho. Ok I hope. I hope would come across ok.
Whingey and spoilt and vain and bitter and slutty and foul mouthed and a really fucking
excellent grudge holder and a massive stupid drama queen attention whore yeah, but at
least I'm honest. Like this is me. Warts and all. (Except I aint got no warts.) Please dont
think I'm a twat. I just want people to like me. Is that clingy?? Like I dont mind no more
people dont do a double take in the street cos I never earnt it but I wish I was good
enough at something so I could do something ace and then people would know me
everywhere in the world cos I did good paintings or I was in a band or something but I
aint good enough at NOTHING. I want to be good at something cos I need people to like
me. Aint that vom inducing?? I hate myself a bit but thats what its like. Cos I just think
being ignored and forgot would be the most horrible thing in the world. I just want to
make people happy. I just want people to like me. Is that a fair trade??

I dont know. Like going back and finishing my degree. I can go somewhere with

this I bet, I'm having a wicked time, I like doing it and I like the people on my course and
thats the one thing I'm sure on more than anything else I like doing. Aint arrogant if its
true right? I know I'm good enough to do it and I aint scared of hard work. I just dont
realy want to. Like learning tattoo's off Rob, I love it and I'm getting dead good at it but is
this my whole life forever??

I DONT KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO.

The stuff I'm good at is stuff I like and maybe it wont be fun no more if its my job

or career or whatever, what if I'm doing it everyday and it like sucks all the joy out?? But
we need money. Ok we dont NEED more money I spose cos we're pretty well off but
more wont hurt. Put it away in the bank and keep it safe for the kids cos me and Olly
turned out ok in the end but the end aint the bit what matters if you get dragged through

hell on the way right?? Honest to god I would rather DIE than have them put up with
what we put up with, I mean we never got properly hurt or nothing, theres loads of kids
who had it worse, like we only got battered when we deserved it and stuff, but just
growing up where we did and seeing dead raped murdered people dumped in the stairwell
and never having new clothes or going nice places on holiday or whatever and going that
shitty arse school where if your lucky like Olly you dont get picked on cos your brothers
well hard but if your me you get your head flushed. I spose you could be all snow white
and nice and give your money to starving Africans if you got a ton of it like I have but I
dont want to.

Dont care if that makes me a selfish bastard, thats ok. Them kids are getting a

good house and nice things and proper education and money saved up for when there
older and there never going to want for nothing cos I wont let it be like that. I feel weird
living here. Not being with Olly but everything that goes with. Kind of being peoples
other dad now. Not really that. Kind of. ARGH. My brain goes all weird thinking about
it. They dont CALL me dad or nothing cos I'm still just Pip but I'm shagging there dad
and living with them and we got joint bills and stuff and I take them places to there sports
and clubs and everything and help with homework and make dinners and do baths and
tell them off when they act up and they have to listen to me cos I'm the 2nd boss. I'm
basicaly there stepdad. Its weird WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD I cant get used to it cos its
WEIRD. But then it aint realy weird at all. Its brilliant. I shouldnt be peoples DAD, how
stupid is that!?!! But its working. I love them so much.

And Olly.

He's been awful good to me since I come back to London. To me and FOR me.

All this shit kicked off and I never been this miserable in my whole life but Ollys put up
with me being a fucking sulk and he aint complained once. I spose its just cos he knows
me right? Me and him know each other better than just about anybody else in the whole
world. I know when he wants to get left alone so he can deal with his pissy mood at his
own speed, he knows when its the right time to come and drag me out my self indulgent
whiny emo brat tantrums and take me out shopping or something. He even lets me eat
peanut butter and cheese and onion breviles without no fuss if he thinks its gonna cheer
me up. That's true love there. I think it suprises people sometimes we're still mates, like
we lived in each other's pockets right through growing up in the flats and we picked all
the same year 9 options so we didnt have to go in diferent classes and how many people
still REALY stay mates that close after one of them has 4 kids? My dad says he couldnt
live with me again cos he would go fucking loopy and clearly Ollys a nutcase as well
risking his sanity like this but I think he's teasing. I think, I cant ever realy tell. Well
anyway, our house is big enough we wouldnt ever have to see each other if we didnt want
to. We want to, though.

I wonder sometimes how long its going to last. I spose its diferent now we're

together like boyfriends not together like house mates, there aint going to be no awkward
shit about someone feeling like they got to move out cos the other ones settling down or
whatever. Even if we wasnt boyfriends though he'd fucking better not try to kick me out.
Its a big house. We could put a big wall up and split it into 2. I would even let him have
the best half. I just dont like the idea of living where he isnt. God this is sounding WELL
clingy and co dependent. Maybe it is. I think I might calm down a bit and feel better
about the idea of living apart if I give it enough time. I know he aint in love with me. Its

ok cos I know he LOVES me, that aint the same thing but its ok, its good enough for
now. Its just I had these fucking awful things happen with someone whose supposed to
love me just turning on me cos of an ACCIDENT and then you cant even depend on
family either, there better than before but I still cant proper trust my dad and I dont know
if I ever will. But Olly is the one person whose always going to be there. I'm a bit dodgy
about trusting people sometimes but with Olly I never have to think about what he might
do to screw me over cos he just won't. Its a good thing to KNOW so certain. Grass is
green, water is wet, I love Olly. See I can say it here cos it aint to his face. Boys are
funny bastards. Its alright for girls, there allowed to swan about in public giggling and
holding hands and kissing each other hello and goodbye and shopping for knickers
together. Blokes don't DO that. Well maybe I do but I'm hardly the average man am I?
And maybe he used to but not no more, he's gone well grown up cos of the kids, he can
still get cuddly if he's had a drink or its in private but he wouldnt hold my hand in public
or nothing, thats like alien behaviour, it just aint the sort of thing what gets discussed
even when its there. And so I write it cos I've had a few glasses of wine (a bottle is glass
right?) and it suddenly seems dead important. I love Olly. I dont believe in soulmates no
more but if I did I would claim him as mine cos girlfriends and boyfriends will come and
go (haha litrally) but in like 70 years he is still going to be the biggest part of my life and
thats really something. Its almost enough to make you START believing in soulmates
again aint it? Soulmates and really fucking fantastic luck or a really kind God that you
can meet somebody by chance cos the council just happened to put your mum's in flats
near each other when your little and form this connection that cant ever get broken by
space or time or tantrums or girlfriends.

Thats one of the things Lindsay always kicked off about when he got in a mood. I

never said nothing to Olly cos it was stupid, it was just Lindsay getting jealous and being
cruel cos he KNEW the worst thing anyone could ever say to me was I didnt mean it
when I say I love you, he always used to wank on about shit like how every time we
come to London for a visit I just run straight round Ollys house and abandoned him in the
hotel and obviously I'm just in love with him and always was and I should just go and
stop wasting his time, it was horrible and unfair and I felt like I was getting GUTTED
every time he said it cos that werent true AT ALL, only maybe in a way it kind of was.
Maybe not being IN LOVE but yeah. I would of done ANYTHING for Lindsay, I would
of died for him, most people say that and they werent even in the situation where you
actualy decide your going to do it but I was and I meant it too, I would of died with him if
it come to it, BUT if the one thing I could of done to prove I loved him was to stop seeing
my best mate...... no way. Nobodys worth that, specialy not someone who uses it like an
ultimatum. If ANYBODY says to me "Its me or Olly!" then sorry but you know where
door is.

Haha I'm in the living room with my notebook and biro and Ollys in the next

armchair watching telly, he just asked me what I'm doing, I said I'm drawing and he tryed
to see so I belted him with a cushion and moved down the other end of the couch. I dont
know why its so weird telling him stuff like this when I'm always telling other people, I
used to tell Lindsay I love him every single day. I hug and kiss all my other mates hello
and goodbye ON THE MOUTH even the girls and thats people I dont even have sex
with. Not Olly. Anywhere outside the house its like we never stopped being "just mates".
Well he is just going to have to suck it up this one time and let me get it out my system

cos I might feel better then. Oliver Starling I LOVE YOU. Dont be embarrassed. Feel the
love. No I dont mean put your hand in my pants. Just let me say it. You dont even have to
say it back. I know. Its brilliant, its like one of them rare things you KNOW even without
words or all this melodrama. I just want everybody else in the world to know too cos its
so important to me. I dont know HOW to say it, all these words sound so shitty and trite
but its there. I love you. Dont ever kick me out, I cant do without you. The best times of
my whole life have been with you. Not even big things but little things most of all.
Making the playdoh into rude bum shapes in juniour school. Racing bikes through the
corridors in the block and playing knock-door-run on that old bag down the way til she
got really angry. Running round the hills at Tintagel singing Camelot and doing coconut
hoof noises like we aint grown up enough to know how to behave ourselfs. Getting sick
of takeaways every night and braving the supermarket.

That time in the photo machine thing when we was like 16 taking them pics of us

snogging and leaving them there in the tray to horrify the old bitch next in the queue who
gave me dirty looks cos my fingernails had a bit of paint on.

Giving me your Labyrinth video when mine got chewed. Knowing on first

meeting we had found someone special even though we werent even old enough for
school yet. Love at first sight right? Go on, admit it. You cant resist me. I know I cant
resist you.

Is this too poofy?? Yeah ok I'll stop now. You can beat me up if you like. I wont

mention it again. Out of my system. And you fucking better not ever ACTUALY read my
diary you bastard or next time I suck your cock I'm biting it off.

***

Two days later when Pip comes into the house to find Olly fingering that girl

Roza he works with at the bar, he wonders whether he jinxed things by actually putting
all that Olly-won't-ever-hurt-me crap into words. He doesn't say anything at first. Even if
his throat wasn't closed up as tight as the eye of a needle, what kind of words are right for
something like this anyway? He just stands there dead still in the doorway staring at
them, trying to make sense of all the little details - the brown of Olly's hand, the contrast
with her milk bottle skin and the turquoise gypsy skirt bunched up in a doughnut of fabric
creases around her waist. She's got plain white cotton knickers pulled down and stretched
tight across her parted thighs, like a repulsive mockery of innocence, and her slender
fingers are wound through his hair to hold his face so close they're breathing in each
other's exhalations.

Olly sees him first. In a show of chivalry that's so pointless and ridiculous it

almost makes Pip laugh despite feeling like his guts are being yanked out of his belly
button, Olly gives Roza a cushion to cover herself up with before he actually says
anything.

"You're meant to be in work."

"Yeah. I got a cancellation, nothing else booked after that, thought I'd come home

early and surprise you. Spose I did that alright."

Roza's not so pale now, she's blushing a furious red. "Do you mind not just

walking in and staring like a pervert?"

"Do you mind getting your fanny off my boyfriend's fingers?"

"Your boyfriend?"

This just keeps getting better. "I ain't sure no more," he says. He's calm now, but

only because he's numb. It feels as if there's something waiting to bust free like in Alien,
but not yet. "Let's ask him."

"God," Roza mutters when Olly doesn't say anything. She throws the cushion hard

at his face and straightens her clothes, pushes past Pip in the doorway with only a quiet
helpless apology, and slams the front door behind herself. Nothing then but a sort of thick
solid silence, suffocating and nauseating. Olly puts the cushion neatly back in the corner
of the couch where it belongs. Still nothing. They've been friends long enough for Pip to
know Olly will never be the one to say something first, when something needs saying.
He'll just sit there staring out the window, scowling, sulky lip, just waiting for Pip to
make it all better again - which he always does, rolling over like a puppy and taking
whatever he can get, no matter how crap and unfair it is. Not this time, not when Olly's
still sitting there with wet fingers from sticking up some girl.

"Don't mess me round just cos you think you owe me something," Pip says,

forcing his voice steady. "You ain't my whore. I never bought you nothing cos I wanted
paid back, you don't owe me nothing. If you don't wanna be my boyfriend just say so, cos
if you're in bed with me and you're cringing and feeling sick and you hate being with me
and you just wanna be with girls...I can't stand it if you're just doing it cos you think you
have to."

"I never said I was your boyfriend," Olly snaps. He's worse than all the kids

together when he gets in a sulk. Funny, that. He likes to think he's the grown-up sensible
one.

"Alright, but you never said you weren't neither."

He's waiting to get angry but it won't come, like sometimes you bang into the

coffee table but the bruise never shows up on your shin. He kind of feels like he should
force it, shout or slap him or throw things at him and run up all four flights of stairs to the
bedroom he had before they started sharing and slam the door so hard it chips the paint.
Maybe he'll feel it for real then. Or maybe it's better not to feel it at all, just let this blank
non-emotion run itself out like a road that disappears so gradually you don't even know
it's happening until there's grass under your tyres.

He counts his slow measured steps going down to the front door. Seven to the top

of the staircase, thirteen down the stairs, six to the door. Nearly half a minute for Olly to
call him back and... what? Apologise? Maybe. Of course he doesn't. The house is silent,
just the gentle thud of Pip's boots on the carpet, the rumble of the washing machine in the
back room, humming traffic outside.

He goes back to the studio, because he doesn't know what else to do, and tattoos a

dashed "cut here" line and a tiny pair of scissors over the blue veins inside his left wrist.
Then he feels stupid.

***

There was a time several years ago when he always felt bad going into the

Princess bar dressed like a girl, because he didn't mean it. It felt rude and wrong, like
saying prayers he didn't mean to a god he didn't believe in because it made his grandad
happy. It seemed kind of disrespectful, putting on a dress for a giggle and going out
dancing when all those people really meant it, like he was taking the piss out of their lives
or something. Now he feels weird going into the bar dressed like a man. A girly man in
polka-dotted skinny jeans, a jade green feather-trimmed coat, sparkly red cowboy boots,
a Take That t-shirt, eyeliner, nailpaint, the works - still a man. There's faint stubble on his
face and his hair needs washing.

It's still early, the DJ isn't even there yet. The bouncer lets him in for a kiss on the

cheek - that makes Pip laugh, the first time he's felt anything remotely pleasant for hours.
His boot heels click loudly on the empty dancefloor. It's weird seeing the place like this,
without the scatter of discoball lights bouncing off the walls or six and a half foot tall
drag queens dancing in a circle around a pile of handbags, and even weirder when he gets
through the stage door into the corridor leading down to the dressing rooms. He's only
ever seen it full of people before, discarded tiaras and feather boas, broken shoes,
emergency make-up applications between songs.

He taps gently on the second door, just underneath a glittery gold plaque shaped

like a star with the name 'Tess Tosterone' written on it in black script. "Hey, are you
there? Ian let me in."

"Come in, hon, it's open."

He closes the door behind himself, then nearly breaks something in his haste to

cover his eyes up with his hands. "Shit, I'm sorry, you should've said you were naked."

"I don't mind, it's only you."

He peeks through his fingers, feeling inexplicably embarrassed at seeing Tess

without her wig. Tess without her wig is just Barry Kersley in his titsuit, and that's weird.
Not for what it is - maybe for what it isn't. Pip can't forget being seventeen years old and
completely lost, constantly shouted at and mocked by his dad for wearing eyeliner and
girls' t-shirts, all the wankers in his stupid posh Westminster school who would have
hated him for being dirt-common anyway even if they didn't have the tranny angle to
tease him from. He tried explaining it a million times, being bent and sometimes wearing
make-up didn't make you a tranny, but everything was always so black-and-white to
other people. He remembers the first few times he crept into the club on fake ID, how
Tess laughed at him for it but didn't kick him out. He remembers being a bit drunk on
cheap alcopops and making some crack about how he wasn't used to being the least girly
one in the room, the warm foolish glow he felt when he made people laugh. Hugs at the
end of every night, swapped make-up tips, sharing hairspray, how it only took a couple of
weeks to start feeling like their friend and not their pet - even so, he always felt a silly
little thrill any time he got a lipsticky kiss or an invitation backstage or somebody told
him he looked pretty. There was always something a bit magical about the place, and
about the people - partly because everything was fabulous, fantastical, you couldn't get
the stray glitter off your skin for a week never mind how many showers you took, but
mostly because for the first time in his life he felt part of something that made all the shit
outside seem meaningless and far away. He remembers hanging out in the dressing room
before the New Year's Eve cabaret show when he was eighteen, Tess asking how he
bruised his face. He tried at first to make up some fumbling lie about how he fell out of

bed but he started crying instead because he was tired. That one was my dad and that one
was my boyfriend cos I don't know when to stop mouthing off, he said, and Tess hugged
him into that massive squashy fake bosom and murmured vague threats about what they
could do with six-inch stilettos until Pip was laughing through his tears when two
minutes earlier he felt dead and empty and like he'd never laugh again.

He feels better when the wig is on, a towering auburn beehive with curls at the

sides, and crosses the room to lean over Tess's shoulder where she's sitting at the dressing
table and kiss her hello on the powdered cheek. "Hey, beautiful. Stop losing weight,
you'll disappear."

"Get away. I've not been less than sixteen stone since I was about eight months

old, you're helping me celebrate tonight."

"Alright. I brought you that dress, you need to try it on cos it'll want taking in.

You don't have to do it now, though, just whenever."

"Yeah, I wasn't expecting you til tomorrow, am I going senile?"

"No. Just don't feel like being at home."

"Ah." It's a knowing sort of 'ah', Pip's not fooling anyone. He never intended to,

he realises lamely. Why else would he come here, to the place he always felt safest when
he lived in London before? The story tumbles out in a mess of spat swears, as he's
helping her into the white dress he made and trying not to jab her with pins in his rage.
She doesn't say anything else, just calmly lets him rave on until he can't keep the pace up
any more and trails off pathetically, staring at the 15 on the back of his right hand.

"I ain't good enough for no one," he adds, a bit more calm now the worst of the

poison is gone. "That was like the point with Darren, he just wanted someone to push
about so it don't matter I weren't ever good enough, but Lindsay always had a go cos I
was too girly even though he got a proper rock on any time I dressed up, and now I spose
Olly don't wanna be with me no more cos I ain't girly enough..."

"Well, you know what the answer to that is, don't you?" She turns gently from

side to side, watching the folds of fabric swing in the mirror. "Marilyn, Seven Year Itch?"

"More like Wilma Flintstone."

"Cheeky bitch."

"I'm kidding, you look well fit. I'll bring it back at the weekend when it's done.

What's the answer?"

"Does he know Ophelia?"

Oh.

"Yeah."

"Biblically?"

"No."

"There you go. I mean, that is if you want to. Personally, I'd break all his cheating

fingers off and kick his nads up to his tonsils, but maybe I'm just old and bitter

"You ain't old."

"I'm forty-six next month. I'm practically dead."

"Shut your face, I never known anybody so alive as you." He's leaning against the

dressing table now just to the side of the chair, fiddling with a little pot of cream he
picked up from the mess of cosmetics littering the surface just for something to do. He
still can't feel properly angry. It's not even simmering any more, it's just nothing. He can't
feel sad either, hurt, upset, anything. He just feels tired. "Everyone always knows what

they're doing," he says abruptly, still not looking up from his hands, the little plastic pot
and the old tattoo and the new white dressing on his left wrist. "You know what you're
doing, you got your work and your friends and everything and miserable headfucky little
teenage girly boys think you're amazing and, I don't know, you might've saved my life,
who knows? I might be dead if it weren't for you and Olly but people can't keep looking
after me all the time cos that ain't healthy neither, that's just as bad as people not giving a
fuck at all. And, like... I'm trying to sort my head out and be a proper grown-up and get
my degree and go to work and look after them kids and make sure my dad ain't kicking
my sister round the house like a football but it's just so hard all the time, and I know I
ain't got no right to complain cos that's just life, ain't it? Everyone's the same, least I ain't
got money worries or nothing. I just don't know what I'm doing, everything's too hard. I
can try and try forever but I can't be good enough for no one so what the fuck's the
point?"

Now he's feeling something - for the first time in a long time he misses Lindsay

so sharply it's almost physical pain instead of something deep down and hidden. He
wonders whether that might be better after all - trapped and desperately lonely in a
centuries-old house in the middle of nowhere in a country whose language he can't speak,
no friends, no college, no tattoos, no London noise and pollution, never ever being
forgiven for that one stupid awful mistake, always having that hanging over him like a
massive storm cloud or a neon sign saying "Never forget how much you really hate me".
All that, just to be able to breathe again. There was a kind of weird freedom in giving up
control of his life so completely, not having to think about bills or exams or other
people's welfare. Even the stuff that seems really bizarre now he's no longer in the middle
of it, being ordered to bed when he was tired and bratty even if it wasn't late, being
smacked with a belt or a hard hand when he played up, being sent to stand in the corner
with his hands on his head or the time Lindsay told him he wasn't allowed to get dressed
today and he had to just get on with it all confused and embarrassed for a whole day,
watching telly naked and sitting at the table for three meals naked and even coming out
for a nighttime drive in the mountains naked, all without ever getting an explanation.
Sometimes Lindsay wrenched his arms up and tied him to the bedstead and didn't even
stop when Pip broke down crying, just slapped him round the face and told him to shut up
and kept on fucking him so hard he felt it for days. All of that and Pip never said his
safeword and meant it, not even once. He said it to be a brat, to test if it would still work
when Lindsay was ten seconds away from coming. He never said it and meant it, even
when the ropes or handcuffs bit too tight into his skin or the slapping got too much to
bear. He just put up with it, all the maddening pain and humiliation and snarling words
chipping him away to nothing because that meant he could start again from scratch - he
wondered, back then, if something as simple as a big warm morning cuddle would still
mean as much if he didn't have that contrast. He's not had that in ages, but now it almost
feels the same. After all this, he thinks if he goes home and Olly just gives him a smile
then that's going to be enough to fix things.

Tess is watching him, he can feel her gaze like it's actually touching his skin.

"You can go on stage if you want," she says quietly. "If that'll make you happy."

"Yeah. I don't really feel like it."

"You want to get dolled up and work the bar for me tonight? Have some

company, might cheer you up a bit."

"I don't know. I might just go home." Home is a stupid word.

Nowhere he's ever lived in his whole life has felt like his home, not the flat and

the house he grew up in, not Lindsay's houses like gilded prisons, not even the house he
paid cash for to give to Olly and the kids. "Sorry for dumping all my shit on you again."

"I wish I could help."

"It's alright, it's like food poisoning, it just needs getting out. I'm alright."

Saying I'm alright never fools anybody, but as least they're good enough friends

by now that she'll let him go without any more pushing. It's still light outside, breezy and
cold and dazzlingly bright. This is the kind of mood that calls for drizzly dusk, but it's
one of those good winter afternoons you never get enough of. He starts walking with his
little purple wheeled suitcase, weaving around people going home from work and people
already dressed up in outlandish costumes for a night out dancing. It's nearly an hour to
walk home. It's darker by the time he turns up their street, and much colder. His feet hurt
because he just doesn't own any shoes that are designed for walking three miles in one
go. Funny how shoes never hurt when you're walking a hundred miles round shops to
find the perfect pair of skinnies but when you're walking a couple of miles for no reason
except a need to get somewhere it kills.

The house is dark, too. He wonders whether Olly's gone out, but he's there in the

living room, sleeping with his head on the cushion he gave to Roza to cover herself up
with. Bit sick, really. Pip leaves him there and goes upstairs, right to the top of the house
where his old bedroom is. He uses it to work in now, just like his old bedroom in
Lindsay's house in France. It's full of dress rails and mannequins, sketchbooks and
canvases, boxes full of tattoo ink, his sewing machines, an old record player he found in
Oxfam and all of David Bowie's albums from Space Oddity to Never Let Me Down on
vinyl. Maybe he was wrong about never feeling at home - maybe this is home, an attic
room full of his junk, lit by massive skylights in the day but too dim to work in at night
because electric lightbulbs somehow don't seem enough to fill the space. There are weird
shadows on everything when it's dark outside. "This is what it's like inside my head," he
said to Olly one time when they got stoned up here and tried to fuck but gave it up
because they started giggling too much. It wore off a bit before long and they lay there on
the rumpled bed, naked and holding hands and staring up at the dark skylights, wondering
how many stars each one would hold if the English weather and London lights didn't
make them invisible. "Stars and art and fashion and music and creepy horrible monsters
that'll eat my brain from the inside if I don't trap them on canvas before they get their
gnashers in. That's what it's like living in my head, every day. It never ends."

He hears a sound and looks up - Olly's standing there in the doorway, rubbing his

eyes. His hair's sticking up weirdly on one side, he's got dark lines grooved into his face
where the creases from the cushion dug in. "I rang but it went straight to answerphone,
thought you might've jumped off a road bridge or something."

"And you was so bothered by that idea you fell asleep, yeah?"

"Come on. I knew you was just off having a sulk somewhere."

"A sulk," Pip repeats under his breath. He unzips the case and takes the dress out

carefully so he doesn't dislodge the pins in the waist seam. It looks strange when it's
hanging on the end of his dress rail, it's gigantic compared to everything else there.
Bridesmaid dresses he made for Lillian and Daisy earlier in the year, scraps of fabric he
managed to form into tiny size 6 garments for college. The next rail closest to the wall

holds some of his own clothes, things he made for dressing up when he was in college the
first time and can't bear to get rid of, even though he's put a bit of weight on since he was
a twig-thin teenager and can't fit into them any more. He starts straightening the hangers,
sliding them squeakily along the rail so they're all the same distance apart because that
means he won't have to look at Olly any more and feel this nothing where he should be
feeling crushed. Right at the end it's his goth Alice dress he wore for the O'Flahertys'
New Year party all those years ago, a huge mess of red lace petticoats and rough black
silk under his fingertips.

"Pip," Olly says, very quiet.

He pulls the dress out a bit so he can look at it. He can hardly believe his waist

was ever that narrow, it looks like it wouldn't fit a child. "What?"

"I'm really sorry."

"Alright."

"I didn't mean it."

"Okay."

"She come round to borrow my key, she was all over me."

"Fucking Poles, coming over here stealing our jobs and our men..."

"Something like that." Olly hesitates, then says, "Can I come in?"

"It's your house, mate, you can do what you want."

"Right." He doesn't move, he stays where he is. There's another long pause. Pip

won't make this any easier on him, he won't speak first and he won't look at him. Finally
he hears a heavy sigh and Olly mutters, "Just mate, then?"

"If you want."

"I will be your boyfriend, if that's what you want."

It's so stupid. Like he hasn't known all this time. He's supposed to be the smart

one. "Don't sprain something in all your excitement. You know I stuck up for you every
time some woman run off with your kids and I never even asked questions, I just stuck
with you and hated them on principle? Yeah, now I feel like a dick cos how do I know
you weren't just slagging behind their backs and they found out?"

"I said I'm sorry, I can't do no more. Don't have a fit."

"Tess says if you want a girl I should put a dress on and you can lift my skirt up

like some schoolgirl in a porno and fuck me over the table or something but how gay is
that? If it's too bent being with me anyway you might pop a vein in your forehead having
to do me when I've got a dress and stockings on."

Olly finally comes in the room and sits down just on the edge of the bed. He's

biting on his thumbnail, a nervous habit he picked up from Pip years ago, and when he
looks at Pip it's not quite at his face but at some vague spot over his shoulder. "Don't
make it about me not wanting to be a bender cos it ain't nothing to do with that. I'm just a
stupid slag who can't say no, it don't mean I don't like being with you."

"Yeah, well. I could go down town right now and pull in two seconds flat but I

never would cos I thought me and you were all in love or something."

"How come you ain't angry?"

"Don't know."

"I seen you get in tempers when Darren was playing round, you remember that

night you come round our flat and cried so much you was sick down my bed?"

"And Kaz freaked out cos she thought it was Lilly and she slapped you for not

taking her down the hospital."

"Cos she thought you was upset Lilly was dying and I was comforting you instead

of doing something about it."

"I never understood that girl's head."

"Yeah, me neither."

Silence, but it's not quite as strained as before. Pip takes the Alice dress off its

hanger and holds it up in front of himself, pulling at the fabric to try and make it stretch
across his waist. "Fucking look at that, I'm Godzilla."

"Put it away."

"Would you fancy me more if I was a girl?"

"You are a girl."

"I'm serious."

"Put it away. You wanna know when I fancy you most?"

He'd love to be able to say no and act on like he doesn't care, but the curiosity is

blazing like fire now. "When?"

"When you got just your jeans on. One of your band t-shirts or them ones with the

stupid slogans on and when you're cold you put your grandad's old shirt on, the blue and
white checks and you've got to roll the sleeves up and up cos his arms were that much
longer than yours. When you ain't got no make-up on and you need a shave, just like
now. When you ain't trying to impress nobody, you're just lounging round home all
scratchy face and greasy hair, wearing a crap old shirt, and... who gets to see that? You
won't even go round your mum's without getting tarted up. It's mine. That bit's mine. I
love it when you don't care."

"Oh." He's still waiting to feel something. Outrage about earlier, happiness about

now, but there's still nothing much there, not really. Just something kind of warm.
Resignation, about the bad stuff and the good. It's always been like that. It probably
always will. That'll have to be good enough. "You gonna be my boyfriend, then?
Officially?"

"Yeah. If you like."

"And no touching other people?"

"Can I look?"

"Spose. No touching."

"Alright."

"Shake on it?"

Pip drapes the dress over the top of the rail and goes over to the bed to offer Olly

his hand, but instead of shaking it Olly holds his fingers and kisses him there between the
knuckles and the wrist. "You know you'll always be my favourite princess," he says,
wearing that smile he's got. It's the only reason he keeps getting away with all the shit he
pulls, that incredible smile.

"Shut up. You did wash your hands, right?"

***

On what is officially his and Olly's one-week anniversary, Pip drives up the M6

and along the A55, past Llandudno and Conwy to that hidden little road that leads
through dense trees to an empty stretch of grass at the top of a cliff. There's not even a
barrier at the edge, or any visible tyre tracks turning the green to patchy mud. It's silent
up here, just like he remembers it, except for the gentle crash of waves, the rustling
leaves, the occasional seagull squawk. The first time Lindsay brought him up here and
they spent an hour just talking and drinking wine and fooling around, he felt so strange
making Lindsay do all those noises. He can remember it like it only happened an hour
ago - bending over from the passenger seat, how his heart fluttered when he took
Lindsay's cock in his mouth for the very first time, the way he got a fit of giggles when
he kept banging his head off the bottom of the steering wheel and how Lindsay kept
holding his breath then gasping it out as if he felt uncomfortable about breaking the
silence as well. He only whispered some words at the very end, stuttered and jumbled:
yes, yes, oh fffuck oh yes, oh my g- oh christ yes, Philip, please, please don't st- oh oh!

It was Gary Numan back then, and some Mint Royale. Now it's Tom Waits

crooning through all those strange growling love songs and dirges on Blood Money. It's
like some kind of apocalyptic carnival, swooping strings and a mad calliope as Pip turns
on his laptop and starts methodically deleting ancient LiveJournal entries about being in
love. It'd be so much easier to delete his journal altogether, but just forgetting isn't going
to be enough. He's got to remember first, and - that is the part you throw away, Tom sings
just then. He always did have the best way with words. All of your letters burned up in
the fire, time is just memory mixed with desire. He turns the volume up and lets the CD
play round and round on a loop while he reads about the kitten they had and deletes it,
about his twenty-first birthday when Lindsay took him to see all the Picassos in
Barcelona, and deletes that too. Trips to England, smiley-face emoticons about how
Lindsay's being so wonderful and not whingeing too much when he runs off to go out
dancing with people - all deleted. A ridiculous IM conversation he saved and posted from
when he was upstairs and Lindsay was in the living room, too drunk to brave the
staircase. That one makes him laugh, wet and shaky because he started crying like an
idiot somewhere and didn't realise. Deleted. He finds one he forgot, a love letter he put on
his journal once when Gmail was down, when Lindsay went to Cheshire to see Ty and
Danny and Pip stayed in London, and he has to stop reading that one halfway through
and get out of the car for some fresh air because there's a lump in his throat that feels
about the size of a tennis ball.

Dear

Lindsay.

i think i promised you a dirty email didnt i? :P gmails crapping out on me, you

can have it here instead. i just rolled in, been out dancing all night haha, always feel the
big man when i stay up all night cos i cant always manage it XD

time's flying tho, felt like 2 minutes til the sun was coming up. i aint even drunk

much, i drunk some but i aint wankered or nothing, i dont wanna get too wasted if your
not here cos you knowwww what i get like when i been drinking haha ;) aint even like i
can go off and have a dead good long slow wank cos i'm in petes and that just aint on, bit

imoral i reckon i should get some kip but im too wired still haha! i'm buzzing, why aint
the clubs open all day as wel as all night?

i miss you x

i know i been a horible selfish brat about stayign but i dont want you to think i'm

not..... i dont know, grateful sounds fucking stupid dont it? just yeah getting it all out my
system, haha i'm gonna be too knackered after all this to even THINK about partying for
like 3 years ;) my favourite thing in the whole world is still sharing the arm chair and
tryign to crawl into your ugly old man cardi cos its cold and i dont even wanna be away
from you long enough to put more coal in the fire, honest to god thats the best thing in the
world i'm gonna miss that now its getting to summer. i miss what you smell like when i'm
kissing you, ciggy smoke all caught in your beard. hahah that sounds well foul on screen
XD it aint tho, its lovely

haha theres 2 pups trying to sit on me now XD worse than Lovecattt, double

attack. i mis him too. i phoned Aurelie yesterday, i felt a bit homesick, aint that weird?
what i wish most is if i could get all the people i love and we could live all together in a
big castle like a weirdo commune, you and me can be king and queen. i dont care where i
am long as theres people, thats why i miss you, nobody does cuddles like you. mainly cos
nobody else ends there cuddles by stripping me off and ropeing me to the bed ;P aahh too
knackered to be dirty. bet you'd hate me if i rang you up now, bet your sleeping. hope
your dribbling. your beautiful when your sleeping, your cheeks always go red, its cos you
nick all the covers and you over heat. its ok i dont mind, i get too hot anyway.
compatable bed habits. that means we're meant to be i think, we're like jigsaw bits fitting
togethr. ooh err that sounds like it migt be a bit dirty too if i could be bothered hope your
having a good time ___ that lines cos i dont know what to call you, i aint got a good easy
sweet name for you like you got for me. Lindsays nice.

everybody calls you that tho, thats your NAME. i aint got somethign i can call

you all for myself. probably best anyway, there all a bit gross. darling. honey. barrrfff.
Cariad i like that, even if its welsh, fucking welsh weirdo's they just get boners over
consonents. CYMRU what even IS that? it aint a word, welsh is fucking stupid. dw i'n dy
garu di that aint a nice thing to whisper in some ones ear its just nonsense. je t'aime is
nicer. ARGH now i wanna read that book again that Julian Barnes thing, cant even go
and buy a copy cos its easter now so everywheres gonna be closed today aint it? happy
easter Lindsay. x haha thats a bit stupid.

happy jesus's deathday and rebirthday, darling honey cariad, lets stuff ourselfs

with chocolate to comemorate when a hippy got tortured to death by a load of bastard
italian squares

can we go to your old house before we go to your mums?

cos i dont think i can be with you for them 3 days and not touch you i'll

EXPLODE and i still feel weird doing it in her house haha. i will tho. i cna be dead quiet
if you can, cant make a noise if my mouths full anyway. OH WHOOPS there i go, thats

quite dirty. i aint got the energy to make a proper efort, you shoudl just know if i
WANTED to write you a dirty email it'd be the fucking best dirtyest email anybody in the
whole world ever ever read.

i love you. your gonna get bored of me saying it. i swear it aint just to fill up

silences or something or cos i dont know what else to say, i swear i mean it all th etime. i
just want you to KNOW. i know you say you do but you dont realy cos even I dont,
sometimes i wake up in the middle of the nihgt and i'm looking at you and i love you so
much i even suprise myself XD i'm like WHOAH TOO MUCH its like in supernatural
when the psychic saw the angel on acident and her eyes fell out cos humans just aint built
to cope with that, i dont know what to DO or say or nothing. aw fuck it everything just
sounds wank. its a proper cliche but i never felt like this befor eover anythign. even the
time i met David Bowie (<3) and i was sat in a room with him just him and me for like 10
mins when i was skiving off i was mant to be taking people drinks but yeah right like i'm
going ANYWHERE when he's started a convasation with me!! i remember i thought this
is IT, this is true love, my heart was going that fast and i couldnt breathe properly and
every time he looked me in the eye i wanted to bust out crying and laugh and kiss him
and throw up all at once (lol not throw up ON him i would have to kill my self) and thats
what its like now EVERY DAY EVERY SINGLE MINUTE ALL THE TIME with you,
its like it aint even feeling love when i see you or think about you or nothing its like
feeling every single feeling its posible to feel all at once even the bad ones, like love and
lust and beign happy and safe and all the normal stuff but then as well i'm scared cos one
day your gonna stop being amused by me and that'll be it. thats stupid.

i know you love me. i dont know why you do but i believe you. maybe thats the

scary thing, i aint used to KNOWING, i'm used to hopeing but not propelry knowing.
whateverrr.

lol emo bitch. i love you too. xxx

wow ok. i only started typing so i could tell you i miss you and how much i wish i

had your cock down my throat right now,got a bit carried away and it turne dinto some
fucking soap opera soliloquy (although that bj statment is still true) haha this is why i
never wrote a love letter before XD except to David Bowie but that dont count cos it was
a bit stalkery i think. good it all got vommed up maybe, i cant say it in person cos i cant
make my mouth work on words, its only good for 1 thing ;) well 2 cos i'm quite good at
eating haribo too

so yeah i'm gonna go and have a little sleepy now i think, i feel all naughty cos

this is only the 2nd easter saturday night of my whole life i aint wasted on church / feels
quite nice getting one over on the fuckheads who kept threatning me with all sorts of
nasty eternal peril, i was chucking myself round the floor gettign high on basslines while
they had their stupid little holy water fights, quite briliant. i wish you was there though. i
mean not realy cos it aint your scene i know you would of hated it. or maybe not? you
used to like it, you liked it enough to get that tattoo. haha its still there inside you i bet
like a dormant volcano, just needs the right tune to wake it up again..... we can investigate
this another time maybe

ok seriously. hope your having a brill time cos i am, i miss you loads but maybe

its best yeah? friend time or whatever.

but i cant wait to see you again. thursdays a million years away

SLEEP NOW

i'm drinking more tonight, i might ACTUALY drunk dirty phone you this time,

hope your somewhere private :P

love and love and LOVE,

your Valentine xxx

It was later on in that week he took a video of himself in a dress, all pink and

corset and ribbons and huge white petticoat after a night out in Princess, going all out for
the camera with fake-shy smiles and coy glances through heavy eyelashes as he inched
the skirt up his thighs and started stroking himself, talking quiet filthy nonsense the
whole time. When he hired a car a few days later and drove up north to meet up with
Lindsay they didn't even make it to his mum's house like they'd planned - Lindsay let Pip
kiss his cheek hello then told him to get in the car, and when they reached the nearest
Travelodge he carried Pip's bag up for him and told him to get changed and he fucked
him there bent over the dressing table, hard enough to bruise his hipbones, hard enough
he kept banging his forehead against the mirror and leaving sweaty smudges there. I love
you, I love you, Pip kept saying, when he had enough breath to speak at all, and Lindsay
kept saying, You're a disgusting filthy little bitch, is that what you want to hear? and
yanking hard on his long hair, yanking harder on his corset strings so he couldn't breathe
at all and when he came he did it half-blind, with black and colours creeping into his
vision until Lindsay loosened the strings and slapped him back awake. God, I missed you,
Pip said, laughing and gasping, and Lindsay pulled his jeans back up and went to sit on
the bed, smiling a bit nervously. He was always embarrassed after. Pip hopped up to sit
on the dressing table, swinging his bare legs and waiting for his thudding heart to calm
down. Do you love me? he said, and Lindsay got up again all in a rush to kiss him in a
way that was almost an attack, passionate and furious with his fingers tangling tight
through Pip's sweaty hair. You know, he said, losing the words into Pip's mouth - and later
on that night, when they were curled up together in the bed Lindsay slept in as a teenager,
surrounded by old relics of rockstar crushes and favourite books, Pip played that bit of it
over and over in his head like a stuck record. You know. He found Lindsay's slack hand
under the covers and kissed his fingers gently so as not to wake him up, and he finally
fell asleep there beside him, holding his hand.

"I always play Russian Roulette in my head," Tom Waits drawls from inside the

car. Pip kind of laughs at that, not because it's funny but because he's singing his life.
Seventeen black or twenty-nine red, choices and chance and just maybe a bullet in the
head. He leans back through the driver's side window and pushes the button to eject the
CD just after I'll always remember to forget about you - then he skims it out into the
empty space past the cliff edge, like a silver frisbee glinting sharply in the sunlight until it
runs out of motion and disappears out of sight.

The Great Orme, the huge hill peninsula where they used to live, is far enough

away down the coast to the east that he can't actually see their house, but he knows where

it is. Alice Liddell's house is there too. He always felt stupidly excited waking up every
morning and knowing he was looking at the more or less the same view across the bay to
Anglesey that she saw all those years ago, although the Liddell's house wasn't as high up
the hill as Lindsay's. Desperately sad, too, driving past the rundown wreck every time
they went somewhere in Lindsay's big shiny maroon Jaguar. It seemed rude and wrong,
just letting it go to ruin like that, but he didn't know what to do about it so he didn't do
anything, he just felt a bit strange and heartbroken every time he saw it. He wonders what
he'd feel now. The same, maybe. Not nearly as bad as he'd feel driving past Lindsay's old
house. He wonders whether maybe Lindsay's sold it or rented it out. Maybe it's empty.
Maybe he's there, Pip thinks suddenly, and feels a dreadful lurch in his stomach at the
idea that just maybe he's standing twenty miles away from Lindsay right now.

He gets back into the car, with the booster seats in the back and crisp crumbs

ground into the carpets and storytapes in the glovebox for keeping four bored children
amused on drives to Brighton, and when he gets to the turn for Llandudno he stays in the
fast lane with his eyes fixed resolutely on the whizzing road in front of him, just wishing
he could leave some things behind as easily as he's leaving the miles.

9.

March 2012

He thought he was coping with it before, but the first time Lindsay got lost in

syringes and needles it happened so gradually he barely even noticed, and by the time he
did it was too late to feel like it mattered. Now it's a calculated trainwreck, planned to the
detail and carried out methodically with all the self-control he had to use to stop it last
time. He knows it's stupid. It doesn't matter. He remembers all these things he wanted to
tell Valentine but never did - not because he wouldn't understand, but maybe because he'd
understand all too well. These stupid, crazy, dangerous things. Driving too fast through
slippery narrow mountain roads, a crumbling cliff face to one side and a sheer drop to the
other, sixty miles on hour on the ice just to get that thrilling shot of terror when your tyres
lock and skid on a corner. Stealing things he didn't need or want, just to get the pleasure
of winning. One time after they hijacked a jeweller's van years ago, he and Ty bought a
girl who thought she was too classy to be called a hooker - she kept insisting she was a
personal escort, as if that's something else - and they blindfolded her with her own silk
stockings and fucked her on a hotel bed dotted with hundreds of loose glittering
diamonds, far too high on adrenaline to feel the sharp stabbing points in their hands and
knees, or to care how uncomfortable it was for her or that they were never going to pick
them all up when she was gone.

So his second first-time is in a Thai hotel, tying off and shooting up in a room in

Pattaya after buying all the gear through friends of friends of friends in Bangkok and
driving down the bay with it tucked into his unfastened battered old school bag on the
passenger seat. He was after that same old stupid deadly thrill, being so blasé about it all,
but it was a bit of a half-hearted attempt. Even the threat of harsh foreign laws wasn't that
dangerous, not really, not when he had almost a billion dollars in cash and assets. He was
fairly sure he could bribe his way out of anything if he needed to. Forget the barely-
existent danger - it was all building up to this, the scratch of the needle slipping home
into a vein and the thump of poisoned blood.

That's life, for a week and then two and then he's not sure because he doesn't care

about keeping track of the borders between day and night any more. It's not working. It
worked before, it was worth feeling dreadful between doses because there was always
something or someone to keep him occupied - always a new job to plan, or his business
to run, or his mother he had to play straight for in more ways than one. People always
said you couldn't be addicted to jabbing yourself up and keep your normal life running at
the same time, but he managed to keep them both going like juggling balls and he
thought he was doing fine, until the end. That night, that horrific family party in his
mum's house full of cousins he barely knew and great-aunts who wouldn't stop telling
him how much he'd grown since he was little as if they expected him to be the same
height at thirty-one as he was at ten. He thought he could do it just for one night... or he
thought he thought he could do it, but then why would he have brought it all with him
and hidden it in his old bedroom? He couldn't find anything to use for a tourniquet in

there, he wasn't wearing a belt or shoes with laces. The only way to stop the shaking was
to fall down on the carpet, tucked between his mother's bed and the cream painted wall,
and unplug her hairdryer to use the cord. That's where she found him later when she
realised he wasn't downstairs - curled up on her bed with sweat drying in his hair and
pupils like pinpricks. He found all this out after, too out of it at the time even to notice if
the world exploded; while his mother was kicking everybody out of the house saying she
had a bitch of a migraine, he just lay there on the flower-patterned bedspread feeling
warm and lazy. She quietly tidied away his syringe and spoon and dirty cotton wool, and
when morning came and it all started to fade away she was still there, sleeping next to
him with red eyes and smeared make-up.

He needed to throw up but she was holding his arm so he couldn't pull away fast

enough and had to vomit all down the side of the bed. She woke up then, the noise and
movement and stench of sick, and he couldn't look at her any more, not even when she
uncurled her fingers from his shirt and touched his face instead to make him.

"I think I'm going to need some help," he said very quietly, and she sighed long

and slow and started stroking his hair away from his hot forehead so she could kiss him
there.

"You think? Let me tell you something, I'll kill you myself if you don't sort your

life out starting now

"What are you going to do, ground me?"

"Actually, yes I bloody am."

She sat with him through a week of sweating and throwing up and spasms and

cramps and fever and maddening itchy blood, she forced him out for walks when he was
up to it, she ignored his shouting and pleading. There was one time he got frantic and
angry enough to lash out at her with his fist but even that didn't put her off; she just
slapped him hard round the face - the first time she ever hit him in his whole life - and
locked the door on him and left him there to rot. Tough love, or something. He was glad
of it after. He wasn't still too far gone to feel sick at himself. He could have broken a
window and got out easily onto the porch roof and down the trellis if he really wanted to,
but he gritted his teeth and stuck it out. Those were the worst days, even though he was
past the worst bit - doing it alone, knowing she was upset and furious but not too upset
and furious to still bring him food and leave it outside his door.

He took her on holiday when he was better, down to all the sun and noise in

Madrid where she fell in love with an old building and he bought it on the spot.

"Do you want it?" he said, over coffee the next morning. "It's yours."

She gave him one of those funny mum-looks, exasperation and amusement and

love. "What the hell am I meant to do with it?"

"I don't know. Whatever you want. You said you liked it."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to buy it for me, just because I like it."

"Why not?"

"I like Bali as well, are you going to buy me Bali?"

"If you want. I mean, I'll have to sell everything I own and take out a hellish

mortgage... do you want Bali?"

She started laughing and it was amazing, he hadn't seen her really laugh like that

for so long. "You bought me coffee, that'll do for now."

"It won't."

"Stop it." Serious again, as sudden as turning off a lamp. "Don't."

"But-"

"Don't."

"But-"

"Lindsay. That's what mothers do, they hang around waiting for their idiot sons to

get more money than sense and then fuck up their lives so they can swoop in like Wonder
Woman and fix it. It's the only time I've felt useful since you stopped falling off climbing
frames and skinning your knees, please just let me have this one thing to hang over you
for the rest of your life."

Disgusting and very very unwelcome mental image of his mother dressed up like

Lynda Carter, then. He started laughing, he couldn't help it, it was the only thing that'd
keep him from bawling his eyes out.

It's all different now, the second time. He forgot how quickly he got hooked

before but he can't forget the agonising cold-turkey withdrawal when he made up his
mind to stop, so he just doesn't make up his mind to stop. This was supposed to help, all
this travelling. (Running away, he amends in his mind, who are you trying to fool?) It's
not helping. The drugs aren't helping, not on his own, not now he's old and pathetic and
wasting away in some supposed foreign paradise. He feels stupid, when he's sober
enough to feel anything at all that isn't dozy warm euphoria. Things weren't meant to be
like this. He never had a plan - he always knew something was going to go wrong, just
not like this. It was meant to be a three musketeers thing, all for one, they'd get bored of it
and retire and die together aged a hundred with all these stories locked up safe away from
great-grandchildren who'd only pass them off as senile ramblings anyway. That or they'd
go down together, muck up and die with bullets slamming third eyes into their foreheads.
He thought the risk was worth it for the thrills they got through all the chases and plots
and robberies, until his mother dragged him back to life. Until Valentine.

"Fucking Valentine," he mutters, voice trembling and weak under his breath

because it's been too long since the last go. He stabs the woollen monkey through the face
and chest with his old needle until it's dead. Until it would be dead if the fucking stupid
thing was actually alive. God, he's starting to think like Valentine. Lindsay throws the
thing into the corner of the room where it stares at him cheerfully through the floppy
tangle of its limbs, watching him get his stuff ready until he can't take it any more and
throws all four pillows off the bed and across the room to brick it up alive like Elizabeth
Bathory.

***

It's easier when he runs out of cotton wool and all his needles are dull. Just don't

go out and get more. Simple. He throws what's left of his stash out the window, as hard as
he can like he's skimming a big pebble across a lake that's twenty stories up. He doesn't
turn the telly on for the rest of the day in case there's a report on the news about
somebody being killed by a zooming bullet of black tar falling out of the sky; he just
stays in his bed, sleeping restlessly and scratching his arms to shreds. It's not so bad as
before. It's not nearly so bad. He's only been here...he has to check the date on his phone.

It's only been seventeen days.

He types in some numbers. This is getting to be a habit and he's not sure whether

it's any less dangerous.

"Elsie," he says when she answers, before she can even finish her hello. "Are we

still on for that cup of coffee?"

"Where are you?" The line is clear. She could almost be right there in the room.

"Hell," he says, and she laughs a bit but not as if she finds anything funny.

"Phone your mum. She's worried."

"She's always fucking worried. She doesn't trust me."

"Should she?"

"That's not the point."

"Grow up."

"That's the problem. Everything was easy when I was ten."

"When are you coming?"

"Give me some time. A week. Next Saturday. Are you busy?"

"Nothing that can't be cancelled."

He listens to her breathe for a while, covering his phone with his hand because

he's irrationally paranoid that she might be doing the same thing. "I won't if you're busy."

"I said I'm not busy. Do you want me to pick you up at the airport?"

"I don't know what time. I'll hire something."

"Will you be in a fit state to drive?"

"Fuck off," he says quietly, and turns off his phone.

***

Lindsay considers hiring something really stupid to get from the airport to Ellie's

place, a BMW convertible or a sleek scarlet Porsche just to show off to the girls, but he
dismisses the idea quickly enough and gets... well, it's not a lot more sensible, but at least
it's less obvious as a mid-life crisis. Jaguar XKR, deep blue instead of the maroon colour
of the car he loves too much to sell but can't bear to drive any more. It's rotting in storage
in Toulouse. There's probably still a stray knitting needle in the footwell and crumpled
sweet wrappers in the door pocket; he couldn't bring himself to clear it out, only lock it
up forever and try to forget it. Maybe it was a bad choice, this car. It feels the same, it
sounds the same, it even somehow smells the same. The only thing missing is the idiot in
the passenger seat.

It's easy to find the house. The car's satnav takes him straight to a wide, quiet

street in the Montreal suburbs, purring directions at him in a disconcertingly attractive
French accent, and as he pulls into the drive he sees two little faces at the window. He
turns off the engine and gets out the car just as the front door is flung open and Katie runs
at him like a rugby player, screeching his name. He picks her up when she throws herself
at him because it's the only way to keep her momentum from knocking them both over,
spins her round and sets her back on her feet so he can look at her - and then he regrets
not having visited even once since they moved here, because she's barely even a child
any more. She's eleven, tall like her mother with Ellie's long straight nose and Ty's

piercing blue eyes and something about her mouth and smile he's only ever known as
Katie.

"Why haven't you visited before?"

Always straight in with the tricky questions, kids. "I've just been busy,

sweetheart." She tugs on his hand, pulling him to where the front door is still half-open,
and then he gets his first look at it all - bookcases crammed with Harry Potter and
battered Narnia paperbacks instead of the dusty things in the library in their old house
which nobody had read for two hundred years, wide windows with bright scatter cushions
on the seats, an upright piano in the hallway still with sheet music open. There's no sign
of other people, until he sees a tiny girl with frizzy blonde hair peek at him from behind a
door and then dart away again.

"Alice, don't be rude," Katie says. She sounds so aggravated and grown-up

Lindsay has to fight not to smile in case it hurts her feelings.

"Alice doesn't know who I am. Do you want to introduce us?"

"You know Lindsay. Don't be so stupid, come here." She disappears into the room

after her sister. Lindsay's not sure whether or not to follow, but then he hears footsteps on
the staircase behind him and the decision is out of his hands.

"Tiens, un revenant..."

Ellie gets close enough to hug him hello while she's still standing on the lowest

step; it makes her taller than he is and it's a strange, slightly awkward hug because of that,
and maybe because of how long he's been away and what she knows or thinks she knows
about what he's been doing. Even so, it's still a warm, real hug, lingering just a second
too long.

"Sorry I'm late."

"Yeah, you could've helped us carry in some boxes."

"Anything still need doing?"

"Just go and put the kettle on."

Ten minutes later, properly armed with tea and Girl Guide cookies and listening

to Alice jabber away at him as if they're old friends, it's like he never went away at all,
like the years and women and needles never happened and he's always been here with
them - at least until later on, when Katie and Alice are in bed and it's just him and Ellie
left in the living room with the last of the cookies and a million and one conversations
that can't all be started at once. He asks where Melissa is and Ellie tells him she's sleeping
over with a friend and probably wouldn't want to see him anyway because she's going
through that I-hate-the-world phase and she's started wearing too much black and pierced
her own nose with a needle last week. She wants to know where he's been, how the world
is doing, what's his favourite new place, and he tries to sound enthusiastic. Small-talk can
only be dragged out for so long, though. In the end, Ellie sighs and starts twisting her hair
up behind her head as if she just wants something to do with her fidgety hands.

"So what are you on right now?" she asks, securing the twist with a couple of

pencils from the coffee table and not quite looking at him.

He considers trying to make a joke of it, but what's the point? "Right now?

Nothing."

"When did you last?"

"The day before I phoned you. Eight days."

"Do you feel as shitty as you look?"

"I'm alright." He's not, but he damn well will be as soon as he stops feeling like he

died three weeks ago and it's just taken his body this long to realise. "I wasn't doing it for
too long. A couple of weeks, not a lot, just... enough."

"You're a fucking idiot."

"Yeah, I know."

"You swear on your mother's life you haven't brought any of that crap into my

house?"

"Of course I haven't, I swear. My mother's life and father's grave, anything you

want."

"Good." She visibly relaxes after that, some kind of tension in her face he hadn't

even been aware of seems to ease. "Do you want to talk about anything?"

"No."

"You can if you want."

"No."

"Fine."

***

When it happens two months later, it's unplanned but kind of expected. The girls

are all asleep. Lindsay brings Ellie a bedtime cup of tea like he's done every night since
he came here, and he sits on the bed so they can talk about things that don't matter, just to
make the quiet less lonely. She's going through her hair with an old-fashioned silver
brush and Lindsay shifts right to the edge of the bed so he can take it out of her hand and
do it himself. It doesn't need any more brushing. He does it anyway, and she lets him.
She's wearing blue men's boxers and a white vest, and her dark gold hair falls smoothly
down her back to rest just on that bare stripe of skin between the two. She shivers when
he touches her there, and that's how it starts. It feels inevitable, not quite like fate but
something similar.

Everybody else is gone. They've been friends a long time. He bought himself a

vasectomy for a graduation present because he always knew he'd rather be dead than be a
father and she had her tubes tied after Alice was born, so that problem doesn't exist. She's
not allowed to find his needle scars repulsive because she's riddled with stretchmarks.
Their minds aren't blown, they don't bring the roof crashing down, but it's sweet and
comfortable. She's taller than Valentine. They match up better, there's no gurning face
pressed against his collarbone. It's not the same as it was twenty years ago but he still
remembers that trick with his tongue that makes her fall to bits, she still remembers how
to stroke his back with the very tips of her fingers so he does the same.

"Now I know for sure ghosts don't exist," Ellie says after, when her hair's all in a

mess again and she's resting her head on Lindsay's shoulder while he runs his fingers
through the tangles. "He would've moved heaven and hell and everything in between to
come and get you for that."

"Are you always going to think about him after?"

"Probably."

"Me too."

***

He never quite gets used to it. He has to go to a meeting with Melissa's teacher

one time Ellie's sick and can't make it, and talks to this woman as if he's got some kind of
influence over his girlfriend's bratty teenager's behaviour. The girls give him cards on
Father's Day, although they never call him that. Ellie makes him laugh and keeps him
sane and he does the same for her.

He's happy, but he's restless and itchy and doesn't know how to say so. Months

drag past, slow like crawling slugs, then a whole year, and then another. Lindsay wonders
if this is how Valentine felt in France, every ticking second like a sledgehammer to the
face no matter how happy he claimed he was.

Ellie finds him holding the monkey one day. It's been crammed into his old

leather satchel in the back bottom corner of the wardrobe for two years; when she comes
into the bedroom calling his name, she finds him there sitting on the bed with the thing in
his hand. It's all loose floppy limbs and gormless embroidered expression. He hates it.
He's always hated it, it's just so stupid. He used to spin out huge elaborate daydreams
about throwing it on the fire or unpicking a seam and unravelling it row by row until it's
nothing but a heap of twisted wool and stuffing. For two years he's barely thought of it at
all. Today he saw its foot by accident when he dropped some coat hangers and dislodged
the unbuckled flap of the bag, and he brought it out with every intention of getting rid of
the fucking thing for good - but that was twenty minutes ago and he's not got any further
than sitting on the bed turning the monkey over in his hands, feeling the loops of knit and
purl under his fingers.

Ellie comes to sit next to him and strokes some hair away from his face so she can

press a kiss to his temple. He leans against her, half-thinking he should make at least
some attempt to hide his ex's favourite cuddly toy from the woman he's been living and
sleeping with for the last few years, but she's seen it, there's no point, and he doesn't want
to keep things from her anyway.

"Did you want something?" he says quietly. She just shakes her head.

"Nothing important."

"I need to... I don't even know. Get rid of it. I don't know how."

"You could give it back to him."

"I don't want to."

"Don't be cruel, you can't just throw it in the bin."

"I don't want to see him."

"Yes you do."

"Of course I do, that's the point, I can't. He's like... the worst of everything. He's

like crack and poison. Killer speedball in a skin suit. I can't do that again."

"Is it as bad as pretending you're happy, though?"

"Love, I'm not pretending." How convincing does that sound? He can feel himself

pulling a disgusted face and tries to smooth it out before she sees in case she thinks it's
directed at her and not himself. "I'll just throw it out. Sorted."

"Come on. If you were going to do that you'd have done it years ago."

She's being so fucking calm, he can't bear it. He stands up abruptly and throws the

monkey into the bottom of the wardrobe, slamming the door on it with a loud crack like a
gunshot, and that's where it ends - until Ellie buys him a one-way ticket to London the
next day and tells him to get out, and that's where it ends.

10.

August 2014

You shouldn't put your phone number on Facebook, idiot. Can we meet?

Lindsay

r u in ldn??

Yes.

were??

Where's best for you?

were r u rite now?

British Library. Euston Rd. starbux half hr?

Fine.

***

Lindsay sees him through the window first. He's wearing a newsboy cap, and a

Tom Baker scarf looped around and around and trailing down past the hem of his jacket
right to his knees. It's all new, the gunmetal leather jacket, the hat and scarf and
everything, his boots and jeans, the bag he's carrying... the baby he's carrying, girlishly on
his hip. Lindsay's never seen any of it before but Valentine looks exactly the same. He
suddenly feels ill, and wonders if he can escape without being seen. It was a stupid idea.
Stupid stupid stupid.

But then Valentine pushes the door open and spots Lindsay before he can even

put his mug down, never mind run away.

He's smiling, sort of. Very faintly, very crookedly, but it's there. He's breathless.

"Alright?" he says quietly, and Lindsay wants to say yes and no at the same time

but there's no word for that. He looks away instead, then back again, then down. He can
feel that same almost-smile tugging the corner of his mouth.

"I owe you a drink, don't I?"

"Yeah, I think you fucking well do." Valentine kicks at the spare armchair to get

it out from under the table and sits down, settling the little girl on his lap so he can
unwind his scarf and take his hat off.

"Hazelnut vanilla cinnamon caramel mocha?"

"You remembered."

"Who's this?"

She's got dark blonde hair held out of her face by a neon yellow plastic alice band,

she's got tiny black painted fingernails, she's wearing red jeans and a Ramones t-shirt and
little Doc Martens, and she's sucking her thumb and cuddling a knitted bunny and staring
at Lindsay with startling green eyes. He feels a bit mad, then a bit sick, then a bit mad
again, brain whirring trying to work out dates. He's never been much good at guessing
people's ages, especially children. Is she about three? More than that? Less than that?
Valentine shifts his grip on her so he can brush a stray bit of hair out of her face with his
free hand and tuck it back under her band, and the way he's looking at her...

"This is Dory. You wanna say hi to my old friend, honey?" She suddenly gets shy

and hides her face in her bunny, and Valentine laughs quietly and kisses her hair. "Yeah,
it's alright, he is a bit scary, I know..."

"Dory like... the fish, in that film?"

"Finding Nemo? No, Dory like Dorian, like my nan."

"Right. Jesus." He can't make himself stand up to get more drinks now, he can't

stop staring. Valentine looks back, raised eyebrows, waiting. "What?"

"Nothing. I'm just..." Stunned. Horrified. "Nothing. I'll get drinks. What's Dory

having, double espresso?"

"Milk, smartarse."

He can still hear Valentine's voice when he's over by the counter waiting in the

queue, talking nonsense to Dory. She seems chatty enough when it's just the two of them.
Typical response from kids. They never like him at first. Not that he cares. She shuts up
again when Lindsay goes back over with their cups, just looking at him anxiously and
standing up on Valentine's legs so she can put her podgy little arms around his neck.

"Ow, OW, god, don't stand there, babe, my nuts ain't a trampoline... you gonna

say thank you Lindsay for your drink while I go to the toilet?" She looks scared and
clings on. Valentine laughs a bit, standing up and putting her back in his empty seat.
"Come on, honey, you don't wanna come in the stinky boys' toilets, it's gross in there. He
won't bite you. You're okay watching her for a sec?" he adds, looking at Lindsay. You
can't really say no to that without sounding like a wanker, so he nods.

Dory stares at him over her bunny's head, as if she doesn't even trust him as far as

she could throw him. Lindsay wonders what Valentine's said to her about him. Probably
nothing. He's just being paranoid. What could you say about it to a child her age,
anyway?

He clears his throat and drinks some coffee, even though it's still too hot to be

comfortable and burns his tongue. "You like the Ramones?" he asks, because he's got no
idea what else to say. Nothing for a while, she just stares at him, then she nods her head
shyly.

He wants to laugh then. Bonding with your ex's surprise baby in a packed coffee

shop over a band you liked three decades before she was even born. That's just weird.

"Do you think I should believe you?" She nods again, looking indignant, and he

does laugh this time, he can't help it. "What's your favourite song?" She still won't say
anything, she just goes really shy again. She curls her knees up under her chin and
presses her bunny against her face and she looks so much like a miniature version of

Valentine it's unreal. "What's your rabbit's name? Does he like the Ramones too?"

"No, cos he's a rabbit," she says, dripping with scorn, and Lindsay laughs so

much that people look over to try and see the joke. He's still at it when Valentine comes
back from the toilet.

"What's funny?" he says, picking Dory up again to sit her on his knee.

"I just got told off."

"Yeah, she's a bossy little madam, ain't she?" She hits him with her rabbit and

scowls, but she's pacified by a cuddle and settles down against his chest, sucking her
thumb again. "She's tired, she wouldn't go to sleep, her and Joe are proper little shits
when they're together."

"Who's Joe?"

"Olly's?"

"Oh, right, yeah. You're still living with Olly, then?"

There's a tiny pause, then Valentine says, with pointed emphasis, "Living with

Olly, yeah."

"...Oh. Well. Congratulations?"

"Come off it, we ain't married or nothing." He's obviously trying to make light of

it but now things feel stiflingly awkward again, as if they've only just remembered
exactly why they haven't spoken for over four years. They drink in silence and look
around the room at people, Lindsay fiddles with his phone, Valentine plaits a tiny piece
of Dory's hair then untangles it again. "So how come you're in London?" he says
eventually.

"For work."

"Work or work?"

"Work."

"What you working for, ain't you still loaded?"

"I was bored."

"What you doing, houses again like before?"

"No." He knew it was going to happen but it still gives him a bit of a strange

feeling in his stomach. He hates thinking about 'before', any of it. "One of my old
lecturers died a few months back. I was good friends with him, he sorted me out a bit
when my dad was dying, we stayed friends after I graduated. So when I sent a
condolences letter to his wife she asked if I wanted to help her go through his things, all
these books and papers he collected and never bothered cataloguing. She doesn't know
where to start. I wasn't going to do it, but it's time for a change, so... yeah. I'm sorting out
rooms and rooms of musty old rare books."

"Sounds riveting."

"It is, thanks." He can't shake off the sick feeling he gets every time Valentine

strokes Dory's hair. It'd be so much easier not to look, but he can't make himself do that
either. "So what have you been up to?"

"Oh, this and that."

"Bit vague."

"Yeah, but I done a lot. Like I was gonna go back to college and change my

course and do knitwear instead cos Jones says his mate done it. Imagine getting a knitting
degree, how cool's that? But I went to talk to someone about it and showed them my stuff
and they're like 'Yeah, that's nice and everything, but we use machines'. So no thanks, I

don't wanna get into mass-marketed shitty machine-knit fugly jumpers, where can you go
from that? Work in a fucking factory? Don't think so. So I mooched round for a bit in a
sulk and I got a job with my mate Rob learning tattoos, then I went back to college
anyway to finish my fashion degree, else that's just a wasted first year and what's the
point of that? But I'm still doing the tats now I'm all finished cos it's good pay, I mean the
course was well expensive and I had to buy all the materials and stuff and then our house
and car's all paid for so we ain't got a mortgage or nothing but there's all the other bills
and three kids living there full-time and Sam and Dory are always round too and I don't
just wanna sponge off my mum and dad. So yeah. Just been doing stuff. Working like a
dog. It's good, though. I like being busy. I can't stand doing nothing, I'd rather be dead
than bored."

"I remember." He remembers, too, how Valentine always used to ramble on when

he was nervous, just to fill the awkward silence. He feels a bit better knowing he's not the
only one who's absolutely incurably freaked out by this... whatever this is. Reunion.

Silence. Silence between the two of them, anyway. The shop is busy, full of

people chatting, hissing machinery, some dire imitation of jazz playing through the
speakers, but Lindsay says nothing and Valentine says nothing and Dory drinks her milk
and watches them both with a weird look on her face as if she's only just realising what
idiots adults can be. She stands up on Valentine's legs again so she can brush his hair out
the way and whisper something into his ear behind her plump little hand.

"Somebody... what?" He starts at Lindsay, all confusion and disbelief. "Someone

put something in her drink?"

"What? Nobody touched her drink, I was here the whole time."

"No," Dory says insistently. She cups her hands around Valentine's ear again to

whisper.

"She says tell you someone put something in her drink? What's going on?"

It doesn't just click, it clangs like a bell. "The Ramones. I asked what her favourite

song was."

"Oh!" Valentine starts laughing - just like that, everything's suddenly easier.

Lindsay can look at him without wanting to throw up. Nothing's changed from two
seconds ago, not really, but it's get over it or have nothing to do with him at all for the
rest of their lives and when Valentine's laughing like this, free and bright and loud
without any apparent self-consciousness about all the nosy bored people in the queue
who are still staring, never getting to see him again is the bleakest idea Lindsay's ever
known.

"She's got good taste. You've trained her well."

"Ain't I just? She's got a Cavalier puppy called Diamond Dog and I never even

had to tell her what to name him, she done it all herself."

"She's just like you." He can't get over it. He never got to see any of Valentine's

baby pictures but surely there's nothing between them. Maybe he wouldn't have been
dressed so well, he probably had shorter hair... so maybe she's not like him, she's like a
little dolly of what he wants to have been. That's probably not entirely healthy, but she
looks happy enough.

Valentine seems pleased at that, almost a bit shy when he smiles.

"Aw, no. She's loads prettier than me. Ain't that right, babe?"

"Yeah."

"Don't chew Rab's ear, that ain't fair on him, you wouldn't like your ear getting

chewed."

"Hypocrite," Lindsay says quietly, before he can stop himself.

Valentine doesn't look up for a moment; when he does he's not smiling any more,

there's something darker and almost pained there in his face instead.

"Sorry I ain't perfect."

"I brought you..." Lindsay trails off and just goes in his bag to bring out

Valentine's little knitted toy monkey, laying it on the table like a peace offering. "I
wanted to give it back, I thought... I don't know, you probably miss it or... something. It's
yours. I didn't know if this was going to be... shit. Weird or... whatever. Awkward. Even
if we never meet up again I wanted to give it back, but... I mean, I don't know, it's up to
you, but... you know, if you want. I'm in London for a bit doing this work, if you want
to... this, anything, coffee, pub, whatever. God, I hate saying this, you'll get so bloody
smug - it's too quiet. Everything's too quiet and sensible without you there mucking it all
up and getting in my way. I should've phoned or something years ago, I never meant to
leave it so long, just... life. Gets in the way. I know we're... I know it's been..." God, now
who's rambling like an idiot to fill up the silence? "Friends," he settles on, sounding like a
half-strangled moron. "If you want."

The monkey sits there between them like something awful, a declaration of war or

a massive barrier, a raggedy old knitted Great Wall - at least until Valentine reaches out
to take it, and then it's an olive branch. Years ago, when he was very tired or he got upset
over something, Lindsay would let him bring it into the bed, and he's holding it now like
he held it then, with his hand around its body, its gangly limbs slotting perfectly into
place between his fingers. The newer stitches stand out like they're neon, from where
Valentine had to sew its arm back on after the fight with Ty.

Lindsay realises Valentine's about to cry, and feels sick and inexplicably terrified.

"Don't."

"What?"

"You know what."

"Sorry." He squeezes his eyes shut and cuddles Dory close to him, hiding his face

against the top of her head. She twists round to try and see the monkey he's clutching
behind her back; after a few seconds he lifts his head back up, perfectly calm, and shows
her. "Remember I told you about Mister Bollo?"

She looks unconvinced. "He ain't so nice as Rab."

"Spose not. Rab's only a baby, Mister Bollo's twenty-six, he's a proper old git

now."

"Oh." Then she completely ignores it, sucking on her rabbit's ear again instead

and looking round the room at people, fidgety and restless on Valentine's lap.

"She's bored. We should probably go."

"Alright."

"Thank you for the drinks."

"Yeah."

Valentine picks a bit of fluff off the monkey's nose, gently rubs its faded ear

between his thumb and first finger like he used to do in his sleep. Lindsay's not sure if he
even knows he ever did that. "Thank you for looking after him. I weren't sure you would.

I... god, I don't know. Thank you."

"It wasn't difficult, it's not like it eats much..."

"Don't take the piss, I'm being serious. It's... you know how much he means to...

oh fucking hell, shut up, Pip, shut up shut up." He stands abruptly and puts Dory back in
his chair. "Just one more minute, honey." Then to Lindsay: "Hug."

"What the hell for?"

"Cos that's what friends do."

This is probably the fucking worst thing Valentine could ever ever ask of him and

the idiot doesn't even know. Lindsay gets up and hugs him tight, hoping it'll be less
hideous if it's on his own terms, if he gets to direct how close it is, how long it goes on
for, where their hands go... nice idea, but it collapses on on itself the second Valentine
touches him. He can feel warm breath against his neck, smell that same kids' cherry
shampoo he still uses, and he almost almost slips his hand up into Valentine's long hair to
rest at the back of his neck like he always used to do, but he stops himself.

"I'll phone you," Valentine says. The words come in a soft breath right against

Lindsay's ear, and he suppresses a shiver. "We could... I don't even know. It's your
birthday soon, ain't it? We could do something."

"It's Thursday. You and Olly can come round if you like, I'm having some people

over for dinner. If you want."

"Yeah. Okay, cool, that sounds ace. I mean, he's meant to be working but I'll see

if he can swap nights with someone."

"You've got my number now, just... whatever. Phone. Yeah."

"Yeah. I will. Alright." He finally moves away and gives Lindsay that familiar old

massive smile. "It's really good seeing you again. You ain't changed at all."

Something a bit wry and bitter creeps into Lindsay's voice when he replies. "I

have a bit."

"Alright. Then I can't wait to hear what you been up to. So, see you on Thursday,

yeah?"

Lindsay just nods. He watches Valentine swing Dory up onto his hip again, leans

back in his chair to watch them through the window for as long as he can. Valentine's still
got that stupid little monkey in his hand, completely shameless, not bothered at all that
anybody might see him with it.

They disappear out of view, and Lindsay finishes his cooling coffee wondering

whether it might have been better to stay in Canada after all.

11.

The party's a bit fucking horrible. It shouldn't be. It should be fun, it's a party,

there's good drink and a nice house and Lindsay's a brilliant cook and he likes meeting
new people, going over and over their names in his head so he doesn't forget, Amy-Giles-
John-Susan-Stephen-Andrew, but he just can't relax. He hung out his bedroom window to
smoke a couple of joints before he came out, hoping it'd calm him down a bit, but it's just
made him ravenous and paranoid. Lindsay's friends won't stop giving him snotty looks.
They're all too clever. It's not like there's anything wrong with being clever, but they all
seem the kind of people who use big words on purpose because they know it's
intimidating for the pretty Cockney rockstar man in nailpaint who looks as out of place in
a beautiful Georgian house in Dulwich as a platypus would.

He gets annoyed with it before long. As if it makes them something special just

because they got their degrees in Cambridge or wherever. He's forgotten their names
already but one of the women, Susan or Amy, actually laughs at him when the subject
comes up.

"So where did you get your degree?" she asks, smirking gently behind her wine

glass as if she's expecting him to admit he rolled out of secondary school without even a
GCSE. Fuck that.

"I done A levels in Westminster and I just finished in London College of

Fashion." That makes her falter a bit, nasty bitch.

"Oh, well. I don't suppose they send many children off to study fashion from

Westminster, that'll have been an interesting change for them."

Pip doesn't know what the fuck her problem is, but the urge to look at Lindsay

and plead for help with his eyes is almost unbearable. He doesn't do it. He can't any more,
he doesn't have the right. It's so hard not to kick off, absolutely cut her apart with some
amazing bitchy vitriol, but he doesn't want to do that either. He just drinks some wine and
tries to think up a subject-change that's not going to be completely jarring and obvious as
an escape route, but then Lindsay clears his throat and Pip looks at him after all.

"That painting up there above the fireplace. That's Valentine's."

"What?" He whips round in his chair to try and see, tilting back on two legs and

craning his neck. The layout of the house, the open-plan living room turning seamlessly
into the dining room, means he didn't notice it from his place at the table but he can just
about see it now, skewed and foreshortened because he's too close to the wall it's hanging
on. It's a huge oil he did for Lindsay's birthday five years ago, a disembodied pair of
hands dancing on the keyboard of a baby grand piano in the middle of a sawdusty circus
ring under a ragged knackered old red and black striped Big Top - thirty square feet of
headaches and sleepless nights because he was always shit at managing his time properly.
He had thought six weeks was long enough, but he was still working on it at four in the
morning on the day he had to give it over. He couldn't even wrap it up in a big faggy pink
satin bow like he'd planned because the paint was still wet, so he just had to tell Lindsay
where it was and then run out of the house and down the hill into town to buy bread and
milk for the day because the idea of being there when he saw it and having to see his face

made him feel queasy. He didn't mind if Lindsay hated it, he could take being told it was
all wrong, he just didn't need to see the sneering. He felt stupid afterwards, trying to slink
quietly back into the house without being seen and getting caught tiptoeing through the
back door. Lindsay took the paper shopping bag off him without a word, put it on the
kitchen table, and kissed him until he calmed down. What's it going to take to make you
realise how wonderful you are? Lindsay murmured against his ear, holding him close
and stroking his hair, and Pip just closed his eyes because he didn't have an answer.
Nothing ever looked like it did in his head, but how can you explain that? He can hardly
believe Lindsay kept it, but: "Of course I've still got it," Lindsay says, like he's reading
Pip's mind. "Do you still paint much?"

"Not really. Ain't got much time, I just doodle tattoo designs."

"Well, then, there you go. That's my retirement. You might be worth a lot in a few

years if it all stays so rare. Susan's an art dealer, she was raving about that one before you
got here."

Susan, then. She shuts her mouth and looks like she's trying to fade back into her

seat, just a bit mortified. Pip wants to bust out laughing but manages to hold it in. He tries
saying thank you with his eyes and a little smile and Lindsay gives him a wink. The
night's a bit better after that, he starts enjoying himself, stupid things like finding out that
posh git Andrew is a massive Bowie fan and they've got the same line from Ashes to
Ashes tattooed on their arms, or the bit where he mentions his sister and Lindsay looks at
him really oddly.

"What?"

"What sister?"

"What do you mean what sister?"

"I mean what sister, you never said anything about a sister."

"You met her, you spaz, Dory."

"She's your sister?"

"Uh, yeah."

"God. Oh... god, I thought she was yours."

"EURGH! Lindsay, Jesus! I don't know how you managed to miss the fact I'm a

little bit queer..."

"The world makes sense again now. For a while there I thought the universe was

on the brink of collapse."

Pip feels a bit stupid then, realising the others are just watching them crack up

laughing. Do they know? He's got no idea, he's never met them before, he doesn't know
how close they are to Lindsay, how long they've known him, which bits of his life they're
aware of. It seems like it'd be polite to explain, but accidentally outing your ex-boyfriend
to a gang of people who seem judgemental at their most friendly...

Lindsay does it for him. This week's full of surprises. "Sorry," he says, laughter

fading off to the occasional uncharacteristic little giggle. "Valentine and I lived together
for a while."

"Yeah, I was his mid-life crisis."

"You little bastard, mid-life crisis? I wasn't the one driving the cock-replacement

Ferrari."

"You bought it!"

They're alienating people again, having their own little party across the dinner

table. This has to stop. Pip shows Lindsay his middle finger and turns round to talk to
someone else, but every time he accidentally looks over and catches Lindsay's eye they
both start smiling again.

***

It's honestly not as if he meant to lurk round and be the last one left, but Pip goes

out in the back garden for a smoke and when he gets back inside the place is empty.
"Hello?"

"In here." He goes through to the kitchen. Lindsay's there stacking plates in the

dishwasher, and Pip starts taking off his jewellery so he can run hot water into the sink
and wash up the wine glasses. Lindsay finds this funny for some reason, looking at him
sideways with a little quirk on his lips that's threatening to turn into a proper laugh.
"Olly's housetrained you."

Pip flicks some bubbles at him. "Shut your face. Where's Giles and Amy?"

"Gone. They've only got a babysitter til midnight."

"Nice of them to pop out and say bye."

"Oh, don't. They weren't being like that, they're just in a rush."

Very quietly, unconvinced: "Yeah." He concentrates on wiping the delicate

glasses clean, rinsing off the bubbles, the gentle tinkly noise when he upends them on the
draining board. "Your mates think I'm a dick."

"No they don't."

"Yeah they do."

"Well I don't think you're a dick, so pack your sulking." Of course that makes him

smile, giddy and happy, but only for a moment. There's no noise coming from behind
him now, Lindsay must have finished with the dishwasher but he's still standing there.
Memories roar like bile: the time Lindsay slapped him for playing with his gun and then
bent him over the kitchen table and fucked him so hard he had matching angry black
bruises on his hipbones where they crashed against the wood. Helping with the washing-
up that first Christmas at Fran's house, when Lindsay crept up behind him and swept his
hair out the way so he could kiss his neck so softly, slip his arms around Pip's body and
just stand there cuddling him until the water was too cool to wash with. The other time
with the gun, the Russian Roulette and the deadline and that puddle of tea on the lino.
Smelling something burning once and both of them trying to fumble at the right oven
dials without looking because Pip was on his knees with his mouth full and neither of
them could bear to stop, not even to prevent a potential disaster. He remembered he came
downstairs in the morning sometimes and Lindsay was sitting there in the kitchen with a
cup of coffee and a cigarette and the newspaper, pretending he wasn't the one who wrote
"I love you" on the fridge in neon magnetic letters. The bad things, too. Lindsay proper
punching him in the face for the first time ever after what he did to Ty's car. And after
everything kicked off, cringing in the living room while Lindsay yelled himself hoarse
and tore the kitchen apart.

He twists a bit to look over his shoulder. Lindsay's just watching him, but he

drops his eyes when he gets caught. "Leave that, I'll do it later."

"It's alright, I'm finished now." He stands the last glass on the drainer and dries his

hands while the water gurgles away down the plug. "I should go, it's late." He should, but
doesn't want to. He wastes time slipping his rings and watch and bracelets back on,
hoping hoping hoping Lindsay's going to say-

"It's not that late. You want another drink?"

It's a bit awkward and horrible ten minutes later, sitting in the living room

drinking beer and not saying much. It feels like it's been working up to something, right
from that first reunion in Starbucks, but maybe that's wishful thinking; it's probably all in
his head, he thinks, picking at the label on his bottle so they don't have to look at each
other, and the tension's only there because Lindsay knows what he wants and doesn't
want it too. If he wanted it he would have texted four years ago, the second Pip got in the
car to drive away. Everything's different now. Different and awful. He wonders whether
it might have been better if they never met up again at all, and then he wants to cry.

"What are you thinking?" Lindsay says, quietly. Pip looks up, and his face feels

hot because he didn't know he was being watched. He fakes a little laugh, fakes a yawn.

"Nothing. Sorry, I'm just tired, I ain't much company..."

"You got new tattoos. I saw you showing Andrew earlier."

"Stretched my ear as well, since there was nobody telling me I weren't allowed."

That was stupid. He curses himself, drinks half his beer in one go, tries to blunder on to
make it sound less like an accusation or a plea. "I can put my little finger right through,
wanna see?"

"No. That's disgusting."

"Alright."

"You do know when you're old all that ink's just going to blur together and your

arm's going to look like one massive bruise, right?"

"I don't care. I'd rather love it now and hate it then than not do it at all."

Silence again. He tries not to rush his beer because then he'll have nothing left to

do except talk, and talking's when it gets excruciating, but the silence drags on and then
his bottle's empty and he's not sure what to do. He blows across the end like a flute, but
then he stops that as well because he always used to do it every single time he drank from
a bottle, it was like a compulsion, and Lindsay always used to get annoyed. It's horrible.
It's too weird. There's nothing that doesn't have pages of memories attached to it, and it's
too much. He's just about to make his excuses and leave when Lindsay speaks.

"Can I see?"

"What?"

"Your arm."

Lindsay shifts closer, onto the empty cushion between them, and Pip doesn't

realise he's holding his breath until it escapes him in a quiet little sigh, when Lindsay
slips the buttons at his cuff through and starts rolling the sleeve up above his elbow so he
can get at the words. He holds Pip's wrist in his hand and tilts his arm towards the dim
light from the floorlamp, and as he's reading he follows the words with a fingertip like it's
Braille. Pip squeezes his eyes shut but he still knows what Lindsay's reading, all the song
lyrics and book quotes all in different fonts and different sizes, trailing up from his wrist
and covering every bit of his forearm in words and numbers and playing card symbols,
want an axe to break the ice and curiouser and curiouser and burn burn burn like
fabulous yellow roman candles and don't dive shallow in deep dark water and so it goes

and the silent guns of love will blast the sky and-

"This one," Lindsay says. His voice sounds strange, like he can't really remember

how you're supposed to move your mouth to make the right sounds. It's trembling, hardly
more than a whisper, and Pip's still got his eyes closed because Lindsay's stroking his arm
with his thumb and he can't bear it.

"Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé."

"Oui."

"Tu le crois?"

"Oui."

"Ouvre tes yeux."

"Non."

"Open your eyes."

"No."

The next he feels is the gentle bump of nose and tickle of whiskers, Lindsay softly

kissing the domino inside his wrist just like he always used to. A tsunami of goosebumps
rushes across Pip's skin and he puts his other hand over his face, over his eyes even
though they're already closed, because this is a good thing, or it should be, but he feels
sick and exposed and completely flayed open. Stupid, considering everything in the past.
Really stupid, considering how much he wants it.

It gets easier after a minute. Lindsay isn't rushing, he's just ghosting those tiny

little kisses all over his arm, following the inked words again. Pip moves his hand off his
face, up into his hair to push it out the way at first but then he's not sure what to do with it
so he leaves it there, curling long bits of black around his fingers and just watching.

"Do you want me to stop?" Lindsay says, a muffled murmur against his skin. Pip

nods his head for yes but his mouth misbehaves and says no in a tiny cracked little
whimper, and that's the turning point, that's when it gets better. He pulls his arm out of
Lindsay's grasp and kneels up on the cushion, swinging a leg over and straddling him,
sliding fingers into the back of his hair, not brave enough to kiss him yet but now he
knows that's going to happen he doesn't feel so sick. Lindsay's the first one to actually
stop staring and make a move; he leans in to press a scatter of kisses on Pip's neck, soft
and hesitant and then with a bit more confidence when Pip can't hold back a pathetic little
moan any more, kissing the hollow at the bottom of his throat and yanking him closer at
the hips.

"I can't breathe..."

"Do you need mouth to mouth?"

"You old charmer." Now they're laughing, mood swinging like crazy, and Lindsay

traces the waistband of Pip's jeans round to the front and starts working on his shirt
buttons instead.

"Take this off?"

"Yeah," he says, whimpers, but he doesn't do anything about it himself, he lets

Lindsay undress him and slip the shirt down off his shoulders to drop onto the backs of
his legs where he's kneeling, and then there's more kissing, following the line of one
collarbone, sweating fingers pressed into his waist to hold him still and then the tickle of
breath against his chest when Lindsay finds the tattoo above his heart and reads it -
Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt - and then kisses him there as well, shaking
and clumsy until Pip tugs on his hair to make him turn his face up and leans in to nuzzle

at his cheek like a cat. The scent of his beard is startlingly familiar, cigarette smoke and
hints of soap and coffee, and he kisses him there because it's an excuse to breathe him in.
Lindsay's breath is warm and damp against his cheek and ear, coming too quickly and
threatening to turn into a whimper, and that makes Pip's heart race because he always had
to really work at getting Lindsay to make these desperate noises before. Lindsay was
always such a control freak, he was always the one making Pip lose his mind a little bit,
and now they haven't even kissed but Lindsay's falling apart and it's terrifying and
incredible.

"Do you-" he starts, breathlessly, but then Pip kisses his cheek again, snuffly and

lingering, and he breaks off with a tiny sighing gasp and slips his fingers into the long
black hair to hold Pip where he is.

"Hmm?" Another kiss, and then more, working down Lindsay's jaw, down to his

chin so his nose is brushing Lindsay's mouth and he can feel the breathed words.

"Come upstairs?"

"I don't think I can walk."

"I'll carry you."

"Like a caveman."

"Ug."

"You spaz." They're laughing, but they stop when they both reach hands down

between their bodies to brush fingers softly over straining zips. Pip bumps his nose off
Lindsay's again, and just looks at him. He's close enough to see the faint outline of
Lindsay's contact lenses. Now he's noticed he can't stop looking. Lindsay's cock is hot
and familiar under the palm of his hand, and Pip strokes the other over his cheek again
and up into his hair, all the while just looking at him, not breathing, relearning the colour
of his eyes.

Then his phone rings.

They both jump, startled by the splintered silence. Lindsay's hand tightens on his

hip. "Leave it."

"No, shit, what time is it? I was meant to meet Olly out of work, shit..." He finds

his phone in his jacket pocket, where he slung it carelessly over the arm of the couch, and
hits the button to answer before the wait gets long enough to seem guilty. "Hey! Yeah,
sorry, I lost track of time, I'm just leaving now. See you at home? Yeah, bye. Fuck!"

Pip stands up and gets his shirt from where it's caught in his waistband and

tangled round the back of his legs, but he can't put it on when he tries because then
Lindsay's standing up as well, wrapping his fingers round Pip's wrist so he can't get his
arm in the sleeve.

"I love jazz," Pip says, quiet and desperate. Lindsay stops breathing for a moment

but he doesn't let go and Pip feels panic stab him in the guts like a knife then because it
always worked before, always, that was the rule and now it's not working. "I said the
words," he whispers, trying not to be shrill and sound like he's freaking out, trying to
keep calm. "You have to let me go cos I said the words, you have to."

"I don't want you to go."

"I love jazz. Let me go."

"I don't want-"

"But you have to, that's the rules, please-" There's no point trying to pull away,

Lindsay's stronger, and now he's got Pip's other wrist as well, gripped tight and

immovably. He tries anyway, yanking himself backwards but Lindsay won't let him, he
just pulls him closer and Pip's about to knee him in the balls when he talks again,
devastatingly intense and pressing his fingertips into Pip's arms like that's going to make
him think he means it more.

"You said if I told you to come back you would. I'm telling you now."

It stops being scary, then. It's just horrible. He's got his eyes shut and he leaves

them like that, because he can't stand seeing Lindsay's face so close any more.

"I waited in Toulouse for two weeks," he says, trying to keep his voice steady and

very nearly succeeding. "I thought, yeah, he'll phone, let him have his sulk then he'll
phone tomorrow, but then it was tomorrow and you never phoned or emailed or nothing,
then it was tomorrow again and still nothing, and I waited there in this hotel like a mug
cos I thought you were gonna phone and tell me to come back and you never did. And...
this is stupid, and I can't no more."

Nothing, for an eternal second, then Lindsay lets him go. Pip puts his shirt back

on and focuses all his attention on the feel of the fabric and the little buttons slipping
through the holes because if he's concentrating on something that isn't the burn in his
nose then maybe he won't bust out crying like a stupid little girl.

"I ain't your property no more, you can't tell me what to do."

"Mais tu m'as dit que tu le crois."

"What?"

"Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé."

"You never apprivoiséd me."

***

It's half an hour in the cab driving home, and Pip spends the time with his eyes

closed and his forehead resting against the cool glass of the window because he doesn't
want to see the pounds ticking past. It's not like he can't afford it himself, but Lindsay
insisted on using his cab account and Pip was too tired to argue any more. He's tired all
round.

Maybe there's something a bit psychic in him, maybe the streets feel familiar or

something, because when he opens his eyes the car's right near home in Shoreditch. The
driver slows to let somebody cross the road and when the man waves a thank-you Pip
sees it's Olly. "Just pull up here, mate," he says, going for his wallet before he remembers
and then feeling stupid and awkward. He has to run a bit to catch up, then he puts his arm
round Olly's waist and sort of hugs him hello as they're walking, trying not to loathe
himself quite so much. "Good shift?"

"Not bad. Good party?"

"Not bad."

"Yeah?" He reaches behind himself, pulling Pip's arm away so he can hold his

hand instead, swinging it back and forth.

"Well. Fucking horrible, honestly."

"Ah. You got your key?"

They get inside and Pip promptly trips over a remote-control car that's parked just

in front of the door. He sprawls against the wall, swearing under his breath because the
kids are asleep upstairs, Olly's sister is probably asleep upstairs. Olly just laughs, very
quietly, and clicks the door shut, very quietly, then they fall easily into their nighttime
routine - Olly puts the telly on softly, one of the music channels, and collapses on the
couch with his arm flung over his face while Pip rattles around in the kitchen capping two
bottles of beer.

"So how's Lindsay?" He sounds far too casual to be casual. Pip's known him long

enough to be able to read his tone of voice like a book.

"Alright."

"What were his mates like?"

"Alright. Clever. Boring. They didn't like me."

"Their loss, ain't it?" Olly takes his arm off his face and looks at Pip, but he

doesn't seem angry or upset even saying what he does. "So did you fuck him, is that why
you left late?"

"What? No!"

"No, sorry, I forgot. He fucks you, don't he?"

"Olly!"

"I don't mind." He sits up and gestures for Pip to park himself next to him, taking

his beer and drinking half in three long swallows. Pip just watches him, waiting for...
something. He's not sure what to say or where this is going but he feels like shit about it
all, like the world's spinning away from him and he can't hold on any more.

"Why don't you mind?" he finally says, voice trembling. "You're my boyfriend,

why wouldn't you mind if I fucked someone else?"

"You ain't my property. You can put it round where you like, I ain't telling you

what to do with yourself."

"But why?"

"Because! That ain't how it works for normal people."

"I think it is. Anyone else's boyfriend'd be round there like a shot kicking his face

in."

"Oh right, so you did?"

"No!"

This is impossible. He's gearing up for a fight, until Olly reaches over with his

free hand to push a bit of Pip's hair out of his eyes and says gently, "You know since we
was tiny the only thing I wanted was for you to be happy?" and then, sudden as a
gunshot, Pip's crying. It's completely pathetic and helpless, shocking in its intensity
because he didn't feel anything building up, he just broke. He used to cry so easily over
everything in the world just like a girl, but there's no room for that when you're playing at
being four people's extra dad. Now he can't stop. He twists his face up like a gargoyle and
bites his tongue and tries every trick he knows not to break down but nothing works and
it just keeps coming. Olly takes his beer bottle off him and puts it on the coffee table and
there's no noise for a moment except his miserable sniffling and hitching little breaths. He
hates that it's happening, he hates that he can't stop it, he hates the reasons for it and he
fucking hates Olly being so nice about it. He's stroking Pip's hair again like he doesn't
know what else to do, then he shuffles closer on the cushions and puts both arms around
him and that's enough to make him dissolve all over again.

"You fucking baby, grow up. If I wanted to deal with this all over again I'd be

shagging women, wouldn't I?"

That makes him laugh, though he's not sure anybody else would be able to tell the

difference because it's lost there in his hysterical gulping sobs. "Sorry."

"Yeah. Calm down, princess, I ain't in a mood with you or nothing."

"I never kissed him, I swear."

"That makes it okay, does it? Not kissing?"

"No but I never did nothing else either, I swear." That's not exactly the truth but

it's too late now, he swore. "I mean," he adds hastily as if that's going to cancel out the
fib, "we... he started it. I told him no. Me and him ain't healthy, I don't wanna live like
that again. I don't love him no more, I love you." Funny, the other lie sounded so genuine
but this one's flat and hollow like a bad actor reading bad lines.

"What did he start?" Olly says after a little pause.

Pip scrubs at his nose with the palm of his hand and twists up to look at him.

"You what?"

"He started it. What did he start?"

"Please don't kick off, they'll never find your body."

"I ain't kicking off, I just wanna know what he started."

"Why?"

"I always fancied him a bit." He smiles, more like a smirk, and glances down at

Pip as if he's waiting for a reaction. Pip's too surprised to give one at all for second, then
he bursts out laughing through his tears. Mostly from shock.

"No you never!"

"A little bit. Maybe it weren't proper fancying, I never thought about him

bumming me or nothing. He's just like... cool. But not cool at all but that's why he's cool.
Bit dangerous. And when he smiles it's like a slap in the face cos he don't do it enough, he
always looked so serious til you always said something stupid and made him laugh."

"Get out of my head."

"Maybe I was jealous too. Cos every time you and him come over here I always

saw him looking at you like you was his, like he could kill anyone who took you off him
for too long even just chatting, he always looked like he was even gonna follow you in
the toilets to make sure you never got set on by nobody. He would've had you on reins
like a toddler if you let him. And any time I talked to him he was like 'Oh yeah, Valentine
says this' or 'This one time Valentine did that' and I always liked him cos he made you
happy but then sometimes when he said stuff like that I hated him too cos who the fuck is
Valentine? He thought he knew you, he don't know you, he weren't there when you was
trying to jump off the roof, he never had to hold your tissues on your nose when it
wouldn't stop bleeding cos you was shaking too hard to do it yourself."

"He started it like this," Pip says suddenly, because there's something sharp and

twisting up inside him and he can't bear to listen any more. He swings his leg over both
of Olly's, straddling him and threading his fingers through the shorter strands of hair at
the back of his head. With the other hand he finds Olly's and brings it down behind him
to rest low on his back, just above where his waistband and the curve of his arse starts.
"Both hands. Kiss me here." He touches his own neck with his fingertips until Olly starts
kissing him there on the quickening pulse. "It was my tats first, he was reading my arm,
then he kissed me there, then other places. He took my shirt off. I kissed him here, and

here, and here-" He breaks off between words to kiss Olly's cheek and nose and forehead,
and reaches a hand down between them to press his palm against the front of Olly's
drainpipes, the growing hardness behind the zip. "I did this but I never properly kissed
him and I never fucked him, I just... sat on him and he got hard. And then it stopped."

"Don't stop."

"Alright."

When Olly kisses him it's like nothing even happened. It's not slow and sweet and

silent like it often has to be early in the morning or late at night when they're in bed and
grabbing the opportunity while the kids are sleeping; it's more like the times the kids are
all at school or with their various mothers and the house is empty so it doesn't matter how
much they lose it - hard, wet, forceful, but more so than ever. It doesn't feel like playing
any more. Olly bites down hard on Pip's lower lip and Pip makes an odd little hungry
sound into his mouth, slipping both hands round to cup his face, his high cheekbones and
the carefully-trimmed stubble on his jaw. "You like that," Olly says, and Pip can't do
anything but mumble something incoherent and pull him back again for more rough
kisses. He can taste metal in his mouth, not blood but that strange tang you get from a
blister. His mouth is throbbing where Olly bit him and he kisses harder harder harder so
he can feel it better, shifting in place where he is so he can feel Olly's cock beneath him,
so he can grab Olly's hand and bring it between them to press against his own.

"I love you," he says, husky and breathless and desperate. "We're okay, yeah?"

"You like being hurt."

"I don't care, I just wanna be with you forever." He leans forward for more kisses

but Olly stops him with a hand on his chest.

"I can't hurt you."

"It don't count as hurting if it's good."

"I couldn't do it if someone had a gun to my head."

"So don't, just kiss me."

"But that won't ever be enough."

"I'm sorry, last time I checked I was the only one living in my brain." He tries to

kiss Olly again, as if that's going to fix everything like a button or a magic spell, but Olly
twists away and now he's got that agonising lump in his throat again and the helpless
burn of tears in his nose because everything's about to change. He can feel it. "We're
okay, right? I never did nothing, I never even kissed him, I wanna be with you." No
reaction. Panicky now, he whispers, "Do you love me?" His voice doesn't crack until the
very last word, and then Olly drops his head back against the cushion and mutters oh my
god very quietly with his eyes closed. Pip's got no idea what that's supposed to mean, but
it should have been a yes and wasn't.

He's crying again when he slithers down off the couch onto his knees between

Olly's legs and unzips his jeans. Olly's not trying to stop him but he's not being very
helpful either, he just doesn't react either way. Pip gets Olly's clothes down, bunched
around his ankles in a pile of black denim, but it's incredibly difficult to focus on what
might be a relationship-saving blowjob when you're sobbing like a little girl. He can't
help it. It only gets worse the more he tries to stop it. It's horrible, it's embarrassing - the
kids don't even cry this much unless there's something really wrong. But maybe that's it.
What could be wronger than this?

"I just wanna say, getting a blowie off someone who's crying is the worst feeling

in the world."

"Sorry." He can hardly even talk, it's ridiculous. "I want to. I can make it good, I

swear." He tries to focus, to break it all down and really focus on everything because
maybe that'll calm him down. The taste of him, the way he still smells faintly of soap
from the shower he had just before work, the familiar feel of his cock in Pip's mouth, but
every time Pip thinks he's over it and ready to stop acting like such a tit a fresh wave of
guilty terror crashes over him and it starts all over again.

"Stop it."

"No, please, I promise I can do it." He can't, he's shaking too hard. He rests his

head against Olly's thigh instead, sniffling miserably and stroking him firm and steady.
"You can... if you want. I don't mind. You can come on my face, you want to?"

"If you ain't done nothing wrong how come you're acting on like you need...

punishing, or something?" Olly says the word like the taste of it makes him feel ill, even
though he's breathing shakily and his fingers are clenched white-knuckled around the
edges of the cushions.

"Why don't you love me?"

"Fucksake, I love you, you fucking idiot, you know I love you, you're my best

mate."

"I don't wanna be your best mate, I wanna be your boyfriend." Pip keeps his hand

moving, somehow in control of what he's doing there even if he can't make his breath
stop hitching. Olly's close, they've been together long enough he can always tell. He
suddenly realises with a jolt to the stomach that he's been with Olly longer than he was
with Lindsay. "I promised you I'm never walking out on you like all them stupid bitch
women."

"Like I need your charity when you'd rather be somewhere else."

"I don't wanna be nowhere, just here with you- oh," he exhales when Olly grits his

teeth and comes with hardly a sound. The splash of it hitting his cheek and the bridge of
his nose is hot, cooling almost straight away as it drips down the slope of his face. He's
got his eyes closed and there's some caught there on his eyelid as well, it's in his hair and
there's a drop pooling at the corner of his mouth. He feels sick and dizzy like he's been
spun too fast on the waltzers - filthy, disgusting, ashamed. And better. He's finally
stopped snivelling.

The room is very still and silent for a moment, until Olly says, "Serves you right. I

told you to stop."

"I told you I don't mind."

"Is this what it was like? You and him. All them years he was just horrible to you

and you let him?"

"He weren't just horrible. He was nice too. He looked after me."

"But you don't need looking after, you been looking after yourself just fine since

you come back."

Pip doesn't know what to say to that. It's true. He wipes his face with the palm of

his hand to waste some time but it doesn't help much, it just smears the streaks of come
onto all the parts that had stayed clean. "I'm tired," he manages, very quiet and finally
calm.

"Yeah, but that's life. Oh, fuck it. You know what, I can't do this no more. You

and him deserve each other, you're both fucking sick in the head."

Olly stands suddenly, yanking his pants and jeans up. He doesn't slam the door on

his way out but there's that same finality in it anyway, so obvious that it's hours before
Pip wakes up from his uncomfortable nap on the couch and dares to go upstairs. Olly's
asleep, curled up on his side of the bed like it's habit even though there's all that space.
Pip sits down carefully on the edge of the mattress, trying not to disturb him, but he's
become such a light sleeper since the kids were born and he rolls over onto his other side,
rubbing his eyes and blinking up at Pip blearily.

"What time is it? What do you want?"

"Gone four. I want you to not hate me even though you should cos if I'm sick in

the head already I don't know what I'm gonna do if you don't wanna talk to me no more."

"If it was even possible for me to hate you I would've kicked your face in years

ago."

"You don't hate me?"

"Shut up." He reaches his hand over the empty bit of bed to touch Pip's back

lightly, very low down just where the waistband of his pants is showing above his jeans,
the bare patch of skin where he was always threatening to get an ironic tramp stamp but
never did because it made Olly scowl remembering how all his babies' mothers had them
without trying to be funny. "Saves me the trouble of chucking you, anyway. I miss
shagging people with tits. I ain't even saying that to save face, I been thinking it for ages."

Strange how that doesn't make him want to kill himself any more, like he thinks it

would have done only a few hours ago. He just slips his shirt and jeans off and gets into
bed, falling asleep with his fingers tracing idle heart shapes on Olly's bare chest because
he doesn't know what words are right to use any more.

12.

hey i duno wot 2 say but i dint want u 2 fink im ignorin u cos im not. r we ok?

Yes.

is tht all ur sayin

What else is there to say? You asked me a question and I answered.

y r u so dificult

Why can't you spell why?

ur a cunt sumtims u no

"Lmao."

me n olly just broke up wot u got 2 say bout tht?

Hello???

god i h8 u sumtims anser ur fuckin fone

ok u no wot fuck u 2 u fuckin coward u cn go 2 hell n stay out my fuckin face u

ruind my life

? I'm sorry I sometimes have to go in the shower and can't answer texts for 10

mins at a time.

omg sorry 4t u was ignorin me

sorry x

hello???

OMG LINSAY R U IN THE SHOWER AGAIN OR WOT??

4get it just fone me if u want
ps x

I forgot how clingy you are. You barnacle.

u wanna meet

Why would I want to do that?

i duno im askin u

i mean i aint askin y im askin if

??? HELLO?

I can't type as fast as you. Don't have a stroke.

ok w/e cum or dont up 2 u in regents nr b&st&

Please phone me next time. I don't know what you're saying.

dear lindsay please come and meet me at regents park near the bandstand if you

want i will be there all afternoon until about 3 love valentine x tht fuckin took me like 5
mins u best cum now x

***

Valentine is easy to see even though the park is fairly busy. He's wearing a black

t-shirt sequinned in blue and red, glinting in a million sharp shards of reflected sunlight,
and he's got those stupid red skinny jeans on. Maybe they're a new pair, surely he won't
have had the same pair for all these years. They look the same, though. It's just one more
reminder of the past. He's so engrossed in knitting something small and bright yellow on
five clicking needles that he doesn't notice Lindsay until he sits down on the pink tartan
blanket next to him - then he jumps and drops some stitches and mutters swears under his
breath while he picks them back up again.

"You always creep round like a fucking cat burglar," he says, then he seems to

remember and looks a bit sheepish. "Oh. Well. Hey, how's it going?"

"Fine.

You?"

"Fine."

"I'm sorry about Olly."

"Really?"

"No."

"Be nice. He's still my best mate. You can't get jealous or nothing when he's still

hanging round cos nobody in the world's worth falling out with him, not even you."

"Why would I get jealous? You're not my boyfriend."

"Yet," Valentine says, wearing that familiar bright sunny faux-innocent smile.

He's finally reached the end of his needle, and he tucks the knitting back inside his bag so
he can shuffle closer on the blanket and lean against Lindsay. It's not quite a hug, but he

rests his dark head there on Lindsay's shoulder and starts following a crease in the thigh
of his old blue jeans with a fingertip. There's a gentle breeze blowing little bits of his hair
so they catch in Lindsay's beard like it's velcro. "Do you love me?" Valentine says softly,
and Lindsay breathes out very slowly and puts an arm around him so it is a proper hug, or
very close to it.

"I can't stay, I've got things to do in the library. I just wanted to bring you

something... here." He rustles in the plastic Boots carrier bag he dropped on the grass
next to them when he sat down and brings out a tube of sunblock. "You'll burn sitting out
here for hours. I know you forgot."

"Oh shit, yeah I did. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

There's a little pause. Valentine frowns, but more like he's thinking than annoyed,

then he breaks back into that massive smile. "You can bring me flowers next time if you
want," he says, and Lindsay swats him gently round the back of the head and stands up.
He's half-expecting some kind of filthy comment from Valentine about exactly which
part of Lindsay's body his face is aligned with when they're positioned like this - of
course, he gives it right away with a slow smirk, one side of his mouth curling up gently.
"Alright, or let's get straight to it."

"I've got to go."

"Me too, I got some mates booked in at three." He starts rolling his blanket up and

shoves everything into his bag, talking as he does it. "My mates Gem and Andri off my
course, they say it'll be dead funny to get BA (Hons) 2:1 inked on our middle fingers so
we can show all the people who thought we couldn't do it."

"You got a 2:1?" Lindsay says, then feels mean about how surprised he sounds.

Valentine gives him a black look.

"Gutted, I should've got a first, my big show was ace. You should've seen it, it

was like neo punk Bollywood, I wanted to do for ikat and bandhani what Vivienne
Westwood did for tartan, it was class. Nothing wrong with what I do, I just can't write
about it, well pissed me off cos that shouldn't matter. I weren't doing an English degree, I
was showing people how good I sew. Still, least I never failed, right?"

"Are you mad? 2:1 is brilliant, you should be pleased."

"Spose."

He looks pleased now, a bit pink in the cheeks. Maybe it's too much sun. Lindsay

takes the tube back off him and swipes a fingerful of suncream across his nose, Adam
Ant style, and Valentine cracks up laughing and starts rubbing it in. "Thanks. You in a
hurry? Share a cab if you like, it's on my way."

It's kind of a bad idea, being in a car with him. It feels stuffy and claustrophobic.

Of course Valentine has to sit right next to him so their legs are pressed together instead
of sharing the space properly like a normal person.

He's glad the journey is only a few minutes. A tiny little idiotic part of him wishes

they never had to move anywhere ever again, but he's mostly glad the journey is short.

"My dad's doing me a 'thank fuck you ain't actually a useless waste of space who

won't ever do nothing with your life' party in his bar tonight," Valentine says when the
car pulls up at the side of Euston Road, speaking very quickly and not looking at
Lindsay's face but down at his hand instead, where his sweaty fingers are curled with
Valentine's in a way they're very obviously both trying to make look casual. "Please

come."

"I might." He reluctantly pulls his hand out of Valentine's grip and slides across

the car seat to open the door, but Valentine plucks at his shirt to make him stop.

"Like you've got a social life. Please come."

"I said I might."

"Have I got to get down on my knees right here in the street and beg?"

The words tear through him like a comet, not the idea of him actually doing it but

some kind of abstract lust that makes his throat constrict. "Alright, I'll come."

"That's the spirit," Valentine says softly, smirking again and shifting over the seat

to lean against the opposite door in the space Lindsay just vacated. He's twirling a bit of
hair around his finger, making a big show of looking coy. He's never been any good at
subtlety.

Lindsay's phone beeps before he's even inside the library, just as he's about to turn

it off. He can still see the cab halted in traffic just down the road, an indistinct patch in
the corner of the window that must be Valentine's head.

missed you nagging me about my textspeak x

He lingers there outside the door for a minute, not sure how to respond, eventually

settling on "missed you full stop" and sending it quickly before he can change his mind.
Then he turns off the phone and goes inside to do something sensible.

13.

It'd be so easy to get blind drunk tonight. There's so many people shoving glasses

and bottles at him. He's in that kind of mood where you could drink and drink forever and
know it's not going to make you miserable, only delirious and giggly, but he stops
himself just when he's starting to feel it, when he can feel his cheeks flushing and the
edges of things going a tiny bit fuzzy.

Lindsay's in a corner booth and Pip is pretending not to watch him.

He's been doing it all night, this pretending, but he keeps catching Lindsay's eye

by accident and after about the twentieth time it feels a bit pointless so he gives it up and
goes over.

"I'm being a shit host. You want another drink?"

"You're not the host, the party's for you."

"Still."

"I'm okay, I've still got this." Lindsay sloshes half an inch of beer around the

bottom of his bottle.

"Give me a hug," Pip suddenly says, before his brain can be sensible and talk him

out of it.

Lindsay just looks at him for a moment then sort of smiles. "Why?"

"Cos I want one."

"Fair enough."

He moves his jacket onto the table so Pip can slide onto the bench on his side of

the booth. The table is too close and it's awkward, it's not at all comfortable, but they try.
Pip ends up leaning against Lindsay with his knees pulled up and his feet on the
cushioned bench, pulling Lindsay's arm around his body and stroking the fine hairs on the
back of his wrist. "Ain't this cosy?" he says, and when Lindsay laughs he can feel the
warm breath first, close enough to ruffle his hair, and then the pressure of a clumsy kiss
bumping off the top of his head.

"Come home with me," he murmurs, and Pip can feel tingles dancing down his

spine. There's no point resisting any more. He picks up Lindsay's hand and puts a kiss
right in the middle of his palm, closing his fingers over the top of it like a secret present.

"Lemme just go and say bye to my dad."

He finds Phil leaning against the bar just people-watching. Pip-watching, really,

it's quite obvious. He smiles a bit when Pip dodges around people to get to him and says,
"What you drinking?"

"Nothing, I was just gonna say I'm off now."

"Alright. Your mum took Dory home ages ago, she couldn't find you to say bye

but she-"

"I ain't going home, I'm going with Lindsay."

"Oh." Something seems to pass between them, not in words or looks or gestures

or anything, it's just there. Phil's face is expressionless and he drinks half his beer before
he speaks again. "Have you got anything?"

"Any what?"

"Christ Almighty, Philip, do you need a diagram?"

Pip's not sure whether to laugh or be sick when he realises. "Oh. Fucking hell. I

ain't talking details with you, don't think it's none of your business, is it?"

"Well yeah I think it is, actually, unless he can give me a list of everywhere he's

put his dick the last four years."

"DAD!" he yelps, laughing at the same time but only because he's horrified. Phil

doesn't even crack a smile, he seems deadly serious, and that only makes it funnier and
more awful.

"I ain't kidding around. Here..." He digs in his pocket for change and holds the

pile of coins out. "Three quid, go in the gents' and buy a pack."

"Oh my god." Pip does as he's told, though, laughing and blushing all the way

over to the toilets and giving Lindsay a helpless shrug and a 'just one minute' gesture
where he's waiting by the door. It's years since he had to buy johnnies from a vending
machine in a bar. There's something horrific about it, it feels disgustingly sleazy. He can't
even look at the machine on the wall while there are still other people in the room. As
soon as he's alone in there he drops the coins in and turns the handle so quickly he almost
sprains his wrist and goes back to report to his dad. "Happy now?" he says, showing him
the little box hidden in his palm so nobody else can see.

"Not really."

"I'm twenty-six. I'm old enough to choose what goes down my throat and up my

bum, you know."

"Ain't even that." He's not really looking at Pip any more, he's scanning the room

and ends up with his eyes fixed on Lindsay, smoking and chatting with someone just
outside the door now. "Don't care if it's a bloke or what, you shouldn't be copping off
with no one. You should be playing your Lego and riding that twatty bike you had with
ribbons on the handlebars."

"I ain't a kid no more."

"You're my kid." Pip hugs him then, for the first time in about a decade. He

doesn't know he's going to until he gets the sudden overwhelming urge and can't stop
himself. Phil seems surprised and like he's got no idea what to do. He finally manages an
awkward couple of pats on the back and doesn't want to make eye contact when it's
finished. "Fuck off then," he says brusquely. "And don't forget you owe me three quid,
you little poof."

***

The taxi seems to take forever, even though the roads aren't particularly busy.

They don't talk the whole way. They're not even touching this time, they're sitting at
opposite sides of the back seat looking through opposite windows. Pip watches Lindsay's
ghostlike reflection for movements, trying to work out what he's thinking. Sometimes it's
so obvious, even when he thinks he's hiding it. Sometimes it's impossible, like now.

Lindsay's house is dark. There must be a lamp on somewhere, dimly glowing

around the corner of the stairs and bleeding into the downstairs hallway, plenty to see by

but not enough to make this feel like anything more substantial than a dream. It's the sort
of faint light that makes things look strange and crooked, like a fairground hall of mirrors
or The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Pip unzips his jacket and hangs it up on the coatstand by
the door, but he goes in the pocket for something before he steps back. "What's that?"

"Remember it?"

Pip shows him the orange plastic ring on his finger and Lindsay's eyebrows shoot

up, then he looks like he's trying not to smile.

"I can't believe you've still got that piece of tat."

"I told you before I'll stop wearing it soon as you buy me something big and

diamondy."

Lindsay's hands are huge. He holds Pip's in both of his and it almost disappears;

he feels silly and small like a child, but then Lindsay kisses over his knuckles and
everything's okay.

"I don't know. You'd look stupid in diamonds. You suit plastic kiddy jewellery."

"Thanks?"

Lindsay drops his hand to take his own jacket off, then they stand there by the

door for a while, shuffling and embarrassed and not doing anything, not wanting to be the
one to make the move. "Do you want a drink?" Lindsay says, and Pip shakes his head and
takes a breath and steps closer.

"No," he says, and he slips his arms up around Lindsay's neck and kisses him.

Nothing like the hesitant terrified kisses on the face and neck yesterday, but a proper kiss
on the lips, frantic and hungry like he can't get enough. Lindsay makes a strange happy
sound through his nose and brings his hands up Pip's back to clutch at him and hold him
closer. It's rushed and clumsy and not very good, their noses feel like they're getting in
the way and it's too wet and their teeth clack together. Pip pulls away after a moment,
laughing and wiping his sloppy mouth on the back of his hand. "This ain't gonna happen
if we can't do no better than this."

"Come upstairs."

He can't help the prickling, thrilling rush he gets from that, being told what to do,

being led upstairs by the hand. Lindsay kisses him again as soon as they're in the
bedroom and this time it's so so much better. Pip falls back against the closing door and
Lindsay moves with him, pressing him there and pinning his wrists above his shoulders.
He's been wondering for ages what it'd be like, whether it'd be strange or easy kissing
Lindsay again after all these years without. It's the most natural thing in the world falling
back into it, feeling all the old ways rushing back. He makes a quiet, helpless noise into
Lindsay's mouth and tries to move his hands, just to see what happens, but Lindsay slams
them back against the door and bites his lip and Pip submits happily with another shaking
little sigh, not moving at all, just letting himself be kissed. He's got his eyes open and he
can see the bed. Tingles dance up his spine and into his brain, chasing the thought: This
time it's actually going to happen.

"Take this off," Lindsay says. His voice is quiet, rough with deadly intensity. He

lets Pip's wrists go and fumbles between them for his buttons, and when the shirt's off his
shoulders Pip puts his hands right back where they were because he's not been told to
move them. Lindsay is reading Pip's tattooed arm again. His bottom lip is wet from
kissing and Pip keeps his eyes fixed there, he can't look anywhere else. He can barely
even think anything else, just Lindsay's mouth and the soft brown curls of his beard and

the taste of his tongue.

"Lindsay," he says, faint and breathless. He's trying to focus but Lindsay's face is

too close. "C'est vrai. Si tu m'apprivoises

"Can I?"

"What?"

"Tame you? Is that even possible?" He bites down viciously on Pip's shoulder and

rakes hard parallel lines into the small of his back with his fingernails, making him
whimper helplessly like a scolded puppy. It's ridiculous how easily he's come unwound.
He can hardly even stand up. He sags against Lindsay and finally has to let his hands
drop from their place on the door, draping over Lindsay's shoulders and slipping his
fingers into his hair to pull him back for more kisses.

"You can try." He stops talking and kissing long enough to get Lindsay's shirt off,

pulling it over his head when he can't do the buttons quickly enough. "What are we still
doing here? You gonna fuck me up against the door like a porno?" He's not forgotten the
rules of the games. He makes it just brash and cocky enough for Lindsay to raise an
eyebrow and then slap him across the face. It's not hard, but it's quick and sharp and Pip
feels like his heart is leapfrogging beats.

"Don't talk like a slut."

"I ain't being a slut, I even got johnnies, my dad said I had to."

"What?" Now it sounds like he's trying not to laugh, and that sort of bursts the

bubble.

"He wouldn't let me leave til I got some out the machine." Pip's jeans are getting

uncomfortably tight now and he pops the button and zip before getting the box out his
pocket to show Lindsay. "You wanna see a trick?"

"Is it impressive?"

"Nobody ever asked for their money back."

"Alright."

He tucks the box away for now and slips his fingers into Lindsay's waistband,

teasingly stroking the hot skin just under the fabric. "You gotta take all your clothes off
first." That's easy and quick enough, with both of them working at it. "Then you gotta go
and sit on the bed."

He does, although he looks embarrassed and unsure of himself now, just like he

always used to when Pip saw him completely naked in anything more than pitch black
midnight darkness. "And then?"

"I spose then you just watch."

It's a few years since he's done it, but it's impossible to forget and infinitely more

fun than riding a bike. He gets the box out of his pocket again, never looking away from
Lindsay, slides one of the little foil squares out, tears a ragged strip off one edge, and puts
the rubber in his mouth. It tastes as foul as ever but he hides it well, dropping to his hands
and knees and crawling the few steps to the edge of the bed so he can slide his hands up
Lindsay's legs and gently mouth it onto his cock, all lips and sliding tongue. Lindsay's got
both hands bunched tight in the covers and Pip strokes his fingers softly until he lets go
and follows the direction to hold Pip's hair instead, twisting his hand sharply so the tug
hurts and makes his eyes water.

"Where the hell did you learn that?"

"Some dirty little princess I went home with the month after I come back to

London."

"The month after?"

"You should've phoned

"You really are a slut, aren't you?" He wrenches hard at Pip's hair until he gets the

message and stands up to let Lindsay pull him onto the bed, right on top of him, and kiss
him until the nasty rubbery taste is gone.

"No I ain't a slut," he says, fighting the words out in the tiny gaps between kisses.

"If I was a slut I'd be doing it without."

"We never used to."

"I was your boyfriend then. I don't bareback unless it's my boyfriend."

"Will you be?"

"What?"

Lindsay doesn't answer for a minute, then forces out the words. "You know."

"No I won't be, if you won't say it."

"My...mine," he settles on, curling his fingers tight around Pip's cock and starting

to stroke him slowly. Pip decides that's the best he's going to get and struggles not to
smile just as much as he's still struggling to be sensible about it all.

"Ask me again when you're sober, yeah?"

"I'm sober."

"You taste like beer."

"But I'm not drunk."

"Ask me again in the morning and I'll say yes."

"Alright."

"Just don't say nothing now. Just, you can... I mean, if you want..."

"What?"

Pip doesn't answer straight away, just leans forward and kisses Lindsay again,

hard and forceful and too much tongue, until he gets a strong hand wrenching his hair
hard, silently telling him to stop. It makes involuntary tears spring up in his eyes again,
spilling over this time and wetting his cheeks and the creases at the sides of his nose.
"That," he says. His voice is jagged. "If you want."

"If I want? How selfless of you."

"Olly won't. He don't like hurting me, he seen me duffed up enough at school and

round our estate and at home and everything, he won't do it, I tried telling him it ain't the
same thing but - ah!" He can't help the noise he makes when Lindsay winds his fingers
back through and yanks his hair again, vicious and relentless.

"Don't talk about him when you're in bed with me."

"Sorry. I won't."

"Is that what you want? It's not enough to just..."

"No, no, it's enough, it is, I swear." Lindsay's fingers are still tangled there close

to Pip's scalp, and he moves his head again to feel the tightness just on this side of pain
when the hair pulls taut. "It's okay if you don't want. But if you want. I mean... nothing's
changed."

"Everything's changed," Lindsay says quietly. He carefully untangles his fingers

and sits up, and they stay there in silence for a while. He's completely naked. Pip is still

wearing his jeans, although they're unfastened and flapping loose and falling down his
hips so his cock and the stark darkness of his hair show in the V between the two halves
of his zip. "How can I hurt you?" Lindsay eventually says, stilted and awkward like he's
not sure how to word it. "You've done nothing wrong."

Pip thinks for a moment, then he sits up too and bites Lindsay's shoulder - quickly

enough to do the damage before Lindsay can pull away, hard enough to leave a ring of
purple teeth-marks that'll bloom and bruise by morning. He has to laugh then because
Lindsay says, "Ow!" in such a shocked, injured way he sounds like he's five. His hands
shoots up to cover the teeth marks, wiping away the spit and carefully feeling around the
edges, trying to see it although it's too close to his neck to look at comfortably.

"What about that?"

"You're unbelievable." Quicker than Pip expected, Lindsay grabs him round the

wrist and flings him face-down so he's resting awkwardly over Lindsay's lap, tugs his
jeans down around his thighs, and starts slapping him lightly. It feels strange - of course
everything has changed. Strange and embarrassed and clumsy, like Lindsay's forgotten
how to do it, or like he's forgotten how not to be ashamed when he's the one who's meant
to be in charge. He stops after half a minute and spits on his fingers to slip down between
Pip's cheeks instead, circling carefully and maddeningly slowly. That's okay too. For
about three seconds. Pip sits up again when he can't stand any more teasing and rolls the
drawer open in the cabinet beside the bed, finding a bottle of lube there next to a box of
condoms - unopened, he notices happily. Not that that means or proves anything. Five
years ago it would have driven him mad with rage thinking about Lindsay with other
people, but it doesn't seem to matter now. He can't help wondering what they were like,
how many of them there were, whether they were good, but it doesn't make him want to
do a furious sobbing murder-suicide like it would have before.

"What?" Lindsay says, defensive and self-conscious as if he knows what Pip's

thinking. Pip just smiles and shakes his head, sliding the drawer closed and flicking up
the bottle cap so he can squeeze out the contents gracelessly over Lindsay's cock, spilling
onto the sheets and his legs.

"Nothing."

"Why are you smiling?"

"Cos I'm happy, you berk." The sentence doesn't end properly, but turns into a

ragged gasping little whine when Lindsay puts his hand down between Pip's legs and
starts stroking him very gently with two wet fingertips this time. "Oh. Please. I mean... do
you want to?"

"Why the hell would I have my fingers rammed up your arse if I didn't want to?"

"They ain't rammed, you ain't even put them in y- OH, hello!"

"You were saying?"

"Nothing." He tries to stay still and not squirm but it's just not enough and he

starts wriggling impatiently trying to get more, which of course only makes Lindsay
move his hand away altogether. "Come on, I did say please."

"You're such a tart. I think you're ready, aren't you?"

"Please please please-"

"Do I have to gag you as well?"

"Yes please." Then Lindsay's hand is over his mouth, the other is back on his

cock, and he's inside him in one vicious thrust. Pip's mouth falls open against Lindsay's

palm, breathing noisily through his nose and making pathetic little muffled curses until
the delicious burn eases off a bit and he shuts up.

"Go slow," he says, a hot breathy whimper against Lindsay's neck as soon as the

hand is off his mouth. He feels Lindsay nod and slow down, but not for long; after a
minute he's driving in hard again, deep and fast with the crook of his arm hooked up
behind Pip's knee and shoving it against his chest to get a better angle, and it's good, it's
amazing, but it's not right, it's not what he wants. He grabs Lindsay's chin and tugs so
they're face to face, noses bumping clumsily. "Go slow," he says again, and Lindsay
frowns and bites his hand.

"Don't-"

"Tell you what to do, yeah, whatever." Lindsay's stopped altogether now. Pip

kisses him again, gentle and placating. "Go slow," he repeats softly.

"And look at me."

Lindsay always had a problem with that, actually making eye-contact when they

were in bed, anything that might be interpreted as romance or intimacy or tenderness or
some other disgusting soppy emotion. He does as he's asked, he starts moving again
slowly and smoothly, but he keeps dropping his head down to hide his face against Pip's
shoulder or his bristly cheek in Pip's hair; every time he does, Pip holds his face again
and gently brings it back. "Look at me," he keeps saying. "Slow. Please." It seems so
important but he can't find the words to explain so he doesn't offer any, not until Lindsay
makes a frustrated, awkward sort of noise and asks him.

"Why? You always liked it..."

"What?"

Halting and embarrassed: "Hard. Before. You always wanted it rough."

"Not always."

"Nearly always."

"Mm." Lindsay's hiding again. Pip winds his fingers through the hair at the back

of his head and tilts his face up, kissing him on the mouth and the nose and forcing eye
contact. "You was my boyfriend before. I lived in your house. I weren't going nowhere
after. But what if... right, after, what if I go home and you spaz and you don't wanna see
me no more cos you think it's a stupid mistake and you regret everything?"

"I won't."

"Go slow. Don't stop. So it goes on forever and nothing goes wrong again."

"I won't. It won't." He pulls Pip's legs up around his waist so both hands are free

for him to stroke through Pip's hair, cup his face and kiss him and, finally, look at him
properly, so direct and intense it's like the awkwardness never happened. Pip winds his
arms up around Lindsay's neck and kisses him back, and this time he's the one to close
his eyes and escape into darkness so there's nothing in the world except the soft curls
under his fingers and the touch of Lindsay's breath on his mouth and the slow, sliding
friction.

"Lindsay, do you still hate me?"

"I do when I remember to," Lindsay says quietly, but he doesn't stop moving and

he doesn't stop kissing him for a long time, on his trembling mouth and his sweaty
forehead and his wet, closed eyes.

14.

Lindsay wakes in the morning, slowly and with difficulty like he's swimming up

through treacle and can't quite make it to the surface before he gives up. He can't make
himself open his eyes, he can only lie there where he is, motionless except for his hand
reaching out to the other side of the bed. It's empty but still warm from Valentine's body.
Lindsay splays his fingers out over the creases in the sheet and yawns so wide it hurts his
jaw. He can hear Valentine moving about in the bathroom. He hasn't bothered shutting
the door - it must have been the sound of the shower that woke Lindsay up, although it's
off now.

He should move. He really, really should move. He can't do it. He's too warm and

comfortable. The bed smells like it should, stupid girly cherry shampoo and sweat.

"Good morning, starshine," Valentine says from the doorway in a loud stage

whisper. "You awake?" Lindsay's not awake enough to answer, but he's not too sleepy to
smile. It's a big ridiculous dopey smile, he knows he must look a complete idiot, but
there's no way of stopping it so he doesn't bother trying. There's a grin in Valentine's
voice as well when he speaks again, coming over to get back on the bed and nuzzle his
face in against Lindsay's neck. "Heyy. Lazybum. Wake up. It's sunny. Sunny Sunday.
Laaazy Sunday afternoon," he sings softly. "Ain't really afternoon, though, ain't even
eight yet. Ain't Sunday neither. You don't have to wake up, stay in bed. I've got work for
like two hours then Lillian's got a hockey match but then nothing and that means me and
you are meeting up for lunch, okay? I don't care where. You can pick. I'll phone you in a
bit when you're awake. I'm gonna text you less-than-threes all day and well get on your
nerves but you'll let me off, right?" He starts pressing tiny tiny soft little kisses over
Lindsay's face, up his jaw and across his cheek and over his nose and down to his mouth
until, sleepy or not, he can't help laughing.

"Leave me alone."

"No."

"Alright."

"Never never never."

"Alright."

***

The day cools down by the early afternoon. The sky's still blue and the sun is still

glowing but there's a chilly breeze biting at Lindsay's face and he wishes he'd brought a
coat with him but then Valentine appears and hugs him hello and the cold doesn't seem to
matter very much any more.

They don't say hello. They don't have to say anything, they just walk for a little

while. Valentine's trailing one hand against the river railings, making gentle bumpy
staccato noises. He's got the other one tucked in his jacket pocket. Lindsay only hesitates

for a moment, just long enough to ask himself whether he cares if there's anybody
looking, then he slips his hand into the little space between Valentine's arm and his body.
Valentine immediately takes his hand out of his pocket and winds their fingers together
instead. Still no words. They just walk and walk, and then they stop.

"I don't wanna be your boyfriend," Valentine says. "I wanna get married." He

pulls his hand out of Lindsay's and lifts himself up to sit on the railing. Lindsay grabs at
him so he doesn't fall, but he looks like he knows what he's doing. There's a gang of
teenagers doing the same thing a little way down the river, nonchalant about the drop and
looking like they're not scared of anything. Lindsay wonders if this is how Valentine used
to be all those years ago, hanging round the river wasting time after school because he
didn't want to go home.

"I'm not having your stupid flouncy name."

"We can do a mash-up. Remember Brangelina? Valenbrown or something.

Browentine."

"No."

"Could hyphenate it. Jones says it sounds dirty though, it'd have to be Valentine-

Brown cos Brown-Valentine's like some grim German scat festival."

"You've actually been discussing it with people already? Christ, you're a fast

worker."

"Oh, no, this was like... five years ago. I been after your ring on my finger for

ages."

"That doesn't sound much better than Brown Valentine, you know."

"You're still a dirty old man, nice to see some things never change. Fine. I don't

mind being just Brown."

"Alright. As long as there's no fuss about it. Bring me the papers and show me

where to sign."

"And I wanna live in London. Forever and ever amen."

"I've been offered a permanent job here, anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Lindsay's still holding on round Valentine's waist, and Valentine

starts playing with his hair. "Doing what?"

"Sort of... curator in the library. Archivist. I'm not quite sure, I only got asked this

morning"

"Oh Jesus."

"Yeah."

"I mean, that's brilliant. Congratulations. Fucking hell. I can't marry a librarian.

I'm a tattoo artist."

"Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller."

"Spose."

Lindsay moves closer, partly to steal body warmth, mostly because he just wants

to. "I thought you were going to be some hotshot fashion designer?"

"Nah. What's the point? Fashion's so stupid. I only did it cos people thought I

couldn't. Long as I can sew I'm alright, I don't need to do it for my job. I like my job now.
Pays well. How much you gonna make in the library? I bet you I make more, I'm gonna
be your sugar daddy."

"I hate it when you say that."

"I know. I want babies too. I wanna adopt a whole rainbow of babies from

Cambodia and Malawi and give them wicked names like Ziggy Stardust and Ruby
Tuesday."

"If you must."

"That one was a lie."

"Good."

"Would you, though? If I wanted?"

"Anything." He means it, too. "Anything you want."

Valentine smiles, bright and happy. He moves his fingers out of Lindsay's hair,

down his bristly face to cup his jaw and stroke his cheek gently with his fingertips. "Do
you love me?" he says softly, and Lindsay remembers the first time Valentine ever asked
him that, drunk and high on no drug at all, kissing in the car at the top of a cliff seven
years ago with a back seat full of ransom money. It feels surreal and far away now. It's
like somebody else's life.

"Yes."

"You could say it. You could be soppy just once in your life. You could talk like

you're in Mills and Boon. You could say 'I can't live without you' or something."

"I can live without you. I just don't want to."

"Is this gonna work, you think?"

"Won't know unless we try."

"Yeah." He puts his arms round Lindsay's neck now, resting his forearms lightly

on his shoulders, and checks there's nobody too close before he speaks again. "You're
being very agreeable. What's all that about? I wanna go on top sometimes, what've you
got to say to that?"

"Don't push your luck when I'm holding you above the river."

That makes Valentine laugh, but it's not loud and shameless like Lindsay

expected. It's quiet like a secret, a Tic-Tac scented gust of air breathed out against his
face before Valentine kisses him. It's doesn't even matter any more that they're in public,
fifty yards away from the very worst kind of people to kiss another man in front of - but
if the teenagers down the path say anything, he doesn't hear them and he doesn't care.