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had the advantage of momentum and temper and knocked
my arm aside. I swung round to follow him.  Lou, you
bastard 
But there was no need to worry or at least no reason
apparent from Aaron s elegant slouch in the kitchen chair.
He was fully dressed and had somehow contrived to look as
if he had been there for hours, drinking coffee and reading
the papers. From where I was standing, I could see Lou s
face. The change in expression was fascinating, if not
pleasant viewing. Like a landslide. From irritation, through
a brief blank as he took Aaron in and then& disgust, a
disappointment, as if despite everything, he had been
holding out hope. I found myself wondering how long that
had been going on. Me, Joe and Lou. We loved him, of
course. He was part of our world. But always on the
outside&  Okay, he said slowly, never taking his eyes off
Aaron.  Kitchen looks all right. But for the future, can you
let me know if you re gonna bring home one of your& 
Aaron sat up. Then, unhurriedly, he got to his feet. He
wasn t that much taller than either of us, but as I d seen
before, he could make that inch or two look like ten. Lou
went white. Aaron said pleasantly,  One of his what?
Lou took a step backwards. As soon as he did, Aaron
turned his attention to me, and it was like the beam from a
powerful flashlight, dropping the rest of the world into
darkness.  You don t want to sell this place, do you?
 No. I ve got no fucking choice.
 Okay. I tell you what. Go and grab the things you need,
and come over to mine until it s sorted.
I stared at him. I think if I hadn t been leaning on the
wall, I d have dropped to my knees. He was so bloody
beautiful, so real. Lou, his mouth hanging open, looked like
Harper Fox / 63
a cardboard cutout in front of him.  That& that could take
ages.
 Fine by me. He walked past Lou and past the poor
estate agent, whose eyes were wide. He took me gently by
the arm.  Come on. You ll be out of the way, and&  He
paused, glancing back, sweeping Lou with those unsettling
green eyes, as if he knew him inside out. He looked almost
amused, and his voice became more devastatingly mild with
every word.  And if Joe, Lou and Marnie want the place
tidied up, they can come in and do it themselves.
It took me less than a minute to fill a holdall. I did so as
steadily as I could. I had to do something to match Aaron s
poise and not let him lead me out of my flat as if it were the
wreckage of a crashed plane. I managed pretty well: walked
past the agent and Lou in the hallway with my face straight
and my gaze front and centre. I heard Lou say my name in
what sounded almost like alarm, but I didn t look back.
Out on the pavement, Aaron s arm went round my waist.
I seized his hand.  Thank you.
 It s quite all right. Jesus, Matt if they d bust in five
minutes sooner& 
I looked at him. I suspected my expression was
absolutely grim, but something about it was making Aaron
smile. I flashed back to our grinding, white-hot culmination
on the kitchen chair the passion that seemed to have fed on
the slaking we d given it earlier and shook my head.
 They d have had to bloody wait till we were finished.
***
I lived with Aaron for a week in the Quayside flat. If I say it
was the best time of my life, that doesn t quite cover it,
because up until the previous June, my life the adult part,
anyway had been rich and good. Joe had made me happy
in a thousand ways I could never dismiss or forget. But it
was as if Aaron opened the windows. The air in his mass-
produced little apartment was breathable in a way I had
64 / Life After Joe
never encountered before. I can t describe the difference
even now. With Joe, I d moved along an expected track in a
world I helped create from day to day. Aaron I don t
know; it was as if he carried a larger universe around with
him, stars in his black hair, far horizons in his eyes.
He was dead serious about his engineering degree, and if
he let me drag him off to bed two or three times a day on
top of bruising, increasingly uninhibited interactions at
night he put in long hours at his desk in the living room
too, turning over pages of the huge textbooks, his face grave
and abstracted in the pale light from his laptop. The sight of
him reminded me of a time when I, too, had happily lost
myself in study. I made one brief and targeted run home to
pick up my medical books, making sure no one was there,
looking neither left nor right. Aaron made no comment
when I lugged the pile of texts into his living room just
smiled and pulled up a chair for me on the far side of his
desk.
I went to see my supervisor at the hospital on Monday
morning. Lou had been right. I d been sailing close to the
wind, and it took a lot of persuading and a fairly clean breast
of my crimes to convince her I was serious about my career.
She set me a batch of catch-up assignments large enough to
take my breath away. Well, I knew I needed to prove myself
again. When Aaron saw the essay list, he whistled, took the
sheet from me, kissed me until I was seeing flashing lights
from anoxia, then declared a moratorium on sex until the
work was done. This proved a marvellous incentive. I put in
forty-eight hours straight, and we spent the next day in bed
making up for lost time.
It was almost a shock to realise Sunday was Christmas.
I d worked A&E wards over previous festive seasons and
watched the suicide bids roll in. Nothing like a month or so
of consistent reminders, from TV, colleagues and shop
windows, that this was the season of family joy, to knock
Harper Fox / 65 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]