“Yeah, I’m sure.” He opened his car door, stopped and turned to me. “I miss you, Nova,” he said before he got in. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah,” I replied.
As his car disappeared in the traffic heading for London, I realized that I had to tell him I loved him.
I haven’t cried.
Since Leo started sleeping at the hospital, I haven’t cried. I think the only person who’d be more surprised than me at that is Leo. He thinks I cry all the time at the most ridiculous things. He’s right, I do. But then, I don’t. Not really. He’s the person who experiences me crying the most, because, like me shouting, he’s the one who causes it the most.
Very few people can make me cry. Leo often does it without trying. When he was four and had just started nursery school, there was an “incident.” In one of the lessons, the children had been asked, “What does your mum or dad do?”—I think they meant for a job. Leo had said “She cries” about me. The teacher had asked him about it and he had repeated, “My mum cries. All the time.” Before too long I was “invited” in to speak to the teacher. The school nurse sat in on the meeting as well, and it took an incredible amount of time to convince them that, yes, although I was a lone parent I had a lot of support, I wasn’t feeling isolated and lonely; yes, Leo was exaggerating and I didn’t cry all the time. And, yes, if I was feeling depressed, or even a little down, I would seek help. They pressed upon me the numbers of several excellent counselors—obviously they didn’t realize the irony of that—and told me to get in touch if I needed anything. Absolutely anything.
When I’d asked Leo later why he’d told them that, he looked at me and said, confused as anything, “But you do, Mum. You cry.” When I told my mum, she asked me if I had told them I was a doctor. When I said no, her silence basically said, “Well, it’s your own fault, then.” Mum thinks that my Ph.D. can protect me from virtually anything, so I should brandish it a little more often. Cordy laughed so much she dropped the phone. I’m sure somewhere there is a file that still has a note in it for people to keep an eye on me because I cry. All the time.
Keith and I have agreed that we’re not allowed to be anything but normal in front of Leo right now. We have to talk as normal, as though nothing is wrong. And that means no crying. I don’t want him worrying because I am sure he can hear us. Even if I wasn’t, crying around him would change the energy of the room, would make it sad and heavy and not at all the sort of place he would want to return to.
But away from there, I don’t cry. I don’t even feel the inclination. Crying, I suppose, would be admitting I’m scared. More scared than I am. I’m terrified, of course I am, but crying about it would be like showing Keith, the universe, myself, that I think this is all out of our control. That I think there is a chance …
He is coming back to us. He is.
And when he does, he’s going to go back to doing what he does best: making me laugh, making me crazy, making me shout, making me cry.
When you’re as close as Leo and me, it’s something you can expect. It’s the ones you love the most who can lift you in an instant, and destroy you without trying.
Mal’s car spluttered its way into a parking space beside King’s Cross train station, where I was getting the coach back to Oxford.
His car was very little more than scrap metal, but he’d bought it with the money his dad had left him. It was almost as though his dad had given him the car himself, the love Mal heaped upon it. Given that he professed to hate his father for everything he put his mother through, everyone thought it odd that he would not let it go. There was so much wrong with it, and he’d had it repaired so many times, I often wondered how much of the original vehicle actually still existed. It was forbidden to say anything against the car, especially not that he could have bought a new car for the amount he had spent having it fixed.
We climbed out and he took my black rucksack from the back seat—the boot wouldn’t open for some mysterious reason—and hefted it onto his shoulder. I had come to visit with very little: a few clothes, underwear, toothbrush, face wash and moisturizer, and two pairs of shoes. I was leaving with three Pyrex bowls of food (rice, stew and plantain), a cake wrapped in foil, a blanket, a bottle of Vimto and two framed photos Aunt Mer had given me of Mal, Mum, Dad and Cordy that she’d taken at our house the day I left to go back to college after Christmas. Cordy, of course, was center stage in both of them.
Last Night, in all its glory, climbed out of the car as well—it had accompanied us for the entire drive here, sitting between us on the gear stick like a third person, and now it chose to accompany us to the coach station. Very few times in our lives had Mal and I been so awkward with each other. Not even when he walked in on me getting changed in the bathroom at his house over Christmas, after I had removed my knickers and had just taken my bra off. He’d blinked at me, blinked at my bare body, then quickly turned away, slamming the door shut behind him. I’d thought I’d locked it, but hadn’t pushed the bolt into place firmly. It wasn’t even this awkward after what happened during that last visit, three weeks ago. Now, Last Night slung one of its arms around each of us and hugged us close as we walked beside each other.
I suppose I’d never done what I did last night, before.
On Friday night I had traveled down from Oxford to allegedly visit my family but in reality it was to see Mal. Because when I saw him, I’d know if I had come to the right decision to tell him I loved him or if I was absolutely out of my mind even contemplating it.
In the last three weeks, he had called me every day, which was unusual even for us. Every phone call he would ask if I’d met any new people, if anyone had asked me out, if there was anyone I was interested in. Whenever I said no, I would hear the relief in his voice, for the most part hidden, but there, as clear and true as the ringing of a bell.
Once I saw him, it would all become obvious what I had to do. When he had dragged me out of bed at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning to “do stuff,” I knew I had to tell him.
I tried to tell him as we stumbled through the frozen wastelands of Wimbledon Common. I tried to tell him when we proved how grown up we were and played Knock-Down Ginger at one of the big houses in Raynes Park and stood around the corner laughing and puffing from our quick getaway. I tried again when he bought us ice cream at the petrol station on the way back home. I tried to tell him again as we stood outside my house, chatting as though we weren’t simply going in to shower and change before we met again in an hour to go out clubbing.
It was simple. It was easy. All I had to do was say, “Mal, I’ve fallen in love with you.” “Mal, I’m in love with you.” “Mal, I love you, but not just like that anymore.”
But every time, every time I looked into his eyes, my mind went blank. Now that I knew how I felt, I couldn’t look at him and not think about what I wanted. What we could mean to each other. And I wanted some time to enjoy the thrill of it. The thrill of being with the first person I was in love with.
As it was, I blurted it out. Someone bumped him in the club we ended up in, his drink went all down my white T-shirt, making it instantly see-through as it clung to the lacy edges of the black bra I wore underneath. He grabbed some napkins from the bar and started to dab me down, apologizing profusely as though I was a stranger, not the person he’d actually been throwing food at for most of his life.
“God, I’m sorry,” he said, dabbing at my right breast again. “We have to go home, get you changed.”
I smiled up at him. His beautiful, honey-blond hair, his dark eyes so genuinely concerned, his beautiful mouth.
“I love you so much,” I said without thinking.
He blinked, like he had blinked when he saw me naked. “I love you, too,” he said.
I grinned, warmed by the heat of his easy, instant reply; wobbly and giddy with happiness.
“You’re the best friend I’ve got,” he added. “It’s funny, someone was talking about this new film that came out just before Christmas.” H
e spoke quickly, not giving me space to speak. “It’s about how men and women can’t be friends without sex getting in the way. One of the girls in my class was going on and on about it and saying it was true. And I said to her my best friend is a girl and it’s never been an issue. And it never will be. Because the quickest way to damage a great friendship is to talk—or even think—about sex. But the most certain way to end that friendship is to talk about love in any other terms.”
He stopped then, but wouldn’t look at me, instead choosing to fiddle and play with the sodden napkins wadded together in his hands. I said nothing, just watched his bowed head, his nervous hands.
“No sensible people would ever do that,” he eventually continued. “I told this girl, the one in my class who’s so opinionated, I’d never do that. I could never be interested in that way in a girl who is my friend. I would never confuse friendship for that love. Because friends aren’t meant to be lovers. If they were, they’d be frovers. Lo-ends. Don’t you think?”
I had the sudden urge to run. To tear blindly out into the street and not stop running until I was as far away from here as possible. My next urge was to crawl under the nearest table and hide. My final urge, the one I went with, was to say, “I need to get out of this top before I catch my death of cold.” I had substituted the word “top” for “club” and “cold” for “humiliation.”
“Oh, yeah.” He dumped the napkins on the bar, brushed his hands clean on his trousers. “You wait here, I’ll go get the coats.”
“You don’t have to leave now,” I said. “I’ll be all right getting home by myself. I do it all the time in Oxford.”
“What kind of friend would I be if I let you go home all alone?” he replied.
“One who’s as subtle as a brick smacked around your head,” I mumbled as he disappeared into the crowd.
We got the night bus home and we tried. We really tried to be normal. To be us. But the magic that had showered our day with happiness, fun, laughter and all that hope I had for the future was gone. In its place gestated the uncomfortable creature that had finally been born this morning, and had named itself “Last Night.”
“You know that you’ll always be my number one girl, yeah?” Mal said to me as we stood by the coach I would be catching, the two of us still and awkward amongst the frantic comings and goings of the coach station.
I stood on tiptoes, took his face in both hands. “And you’ll always be my number one cutey doggy, yeah?” I replied, shaking his head as I would a dog. I’d started doing that to him when Mum and Dad said we couldn’t get a dog. “What do you need a dog for, we’ve got Malvolio?” Cordy had said. I’d decided the instant she said it that he probably was a pooch in a previous life: I could vividly picture him as a big, gangly Labrador that would bound all over you to cheer you up when you were sad, or would lie mournfully by your side, its features drooping to show it was sad, too, depending on the type of sadness it was.
We had to joke about it. I had read the whole thing wrong, and if I wasn’t careful, this could come between us. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t feel that way for me. That I wasn’t good enough in his eyes. We had so much else—a shared history, a family, so many years together—that was far more important than some misguided romantic notion of us getting together, having a long-distance relationship for the next two years and then what, getting married? At our age? No, he was right. Friends shouldn’t be lovers. Friends shouldn’t even entertain the idea of it.
If I could keep doing that, keep rationalizing it, then I would be safe, at least until I got away from London. If I dared to feel about it, for even a fraction of a second, the chasm of pain would open up and swallow me whole. I had to consign it to the realm of the mind. To logic. To seeing the bigger picture. And make a joke of it.
“Are you getting on this coach, love?” the driver asked.
“Oh, yes,” I replied. Mal slung my rucksack off his shoulder and handed it carefully to the driver. The middle-aged, portly driver, with his white, short-sleeved shirt and tie, took my bag as though it was the most precious item he’d ever been handed, then flung it into the coach’s luggage compartment, before approaching another couple to ask if they were getting on board. I shook my head and looked away, unable to believe what I’d just seen. The framed photos Aunt Mer gave me would be in pieces, as would the Pyrex bowls of food, while the Vimto bottle Mum had pressed upon me would be leaking sticky liquid all over my clothes. All in all, a wonderful thing to be taking back to Oxford after everything. I could hear Last Night smirking at me.
“Now, does the cutey doggy want to play a quick game of fetch before I leave, or give me a hug?” I asked in my speaking-to-a-dog voice.
Rolling his eyes, he came into my open arms. We hugged and I counted the seconds, each one a lifetime, before I could reasonably end this part of the torture. I had to play the game. Be normal. If I tried hard enough to be normal, it would be normal again. Soon. Soon I wouldn’t have to think twice about hugging him, touching him, looking him in the eye.
“I’ll come see you soon, yeah?” he said as we came out of the hug.
“No, don’t,” I said.
His eyes searched mine, desperate to know why I was rejecting him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, with a huge grin. “And you’re completely right. I don’t want you to visit because no blokes will come near me because they think I’m attached. And all the really annoying girls want to be my friend because they think they’ve got a chance with you. I don’t need that nonsense, to be honest.” I added a laugh, hollow and pitiful, but necessary. Please give me space, I was subliminally begging him. Please let me go away and have the chance to get over this.
The bulge of his Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed hard, and he pressed his lips together as he nodded.
“I’ll be home for summer,” I said. “That’ll come around in no time.”
“But it’s Easter in a few weeks,” he protested.
“We’re thinking of staying up there, a group of us. Someone’s got a houseshare that will be free over the holidays. We’re going to move in. It’ll be a laugh.” For a moment I thought he might ask if he could come, so I added, “But room will be tight. I’ll see you during the summer, all right?”
“Look—” he began.
“All right?” I insisted.
He pressed his lips together again; they whitened under the pressure, his eyes narrowing. It wasn’t all right. Slowly, he shook his head, once, twice, three times. “All right,” he eventually said.
I ruffled the sides of his head. “Good dog,” I said. “There’s a good Mal. There’s a good Mal.”
“Ah, gerroff,” he said, brushing my hands away. “One of these days I will actually bite you, and then you’ll have to go for a rabies injection. Then you’ll be sorry.”
“But then they’d have to lock you up so you’d be more sorry.”
Unexpectedly, because we’d already hugged, he scooped me into his arms, lifted me off my feet. “I miss you,” he whispered, soft as an angel’s sigh. “I miss you so much it hurts.”
So why don’t you love me? I asked inside. Why don’t you love me?
“Any more, for any more?” shouted the coach driver, resting his foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the coach. He was shouting at me, I realized; he was glaring his impatience right at me. I glanced up at the coach: every window seat seemed to be taken, no one else was getting ready to board. Everyone else was ready to go. Except me, of course.
“Oh, yes, me!” I called.
“I knew that,” he mumbled loudly.
I spun back to Mal. “I’ll see you in the summer,” I said, then hurried toward the coach driver. Mal raised his right hand, the one that had slid below the waist of my pajama trousers three weeks ago, but he didn’t wave when I paused to smile at him at the top of the steps.
The next time we saw each other, everything would be different, I decided. I wouldn’t be a virgin, I wa
s determined about that. I would find someone to take that first bite with. They didn’t have to be special, that special person didn’t want me, didn’t love me, and no one would ever live up to him, so someone nice enough would have to do.
I would make more friends, now that I needed more people in my life because I wouldn’t be able to run back to London on a whim any longer.
Most importantly, the next time I saw Mal again, I wouldn’t be in love with him anymore. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it, but I knew if I still wanted him to be in my life, if our friendship was going to survive this, then more than anything I had to make that true. Or hide it so well it would be as if it had never existed.
One time, I found a note Leo wrote. I don’t know why he wrote it, but it had made me sit down on his bed in shock and read it over and over.
i hav too dads. one is a spy and livs at my huse. the uver one isnt ded. i dont no where he livs. mum lovs my to dads. she lovs me. by Leo.
He must have written it a while ago because his spelling is so much better now, but I couldn’t work out how he knew so much. He’s always known that Keith isn’t his “real” dad, even though he chose to call him Dad straightaway. I hadn’t guessed he gave much thought to who his “real” dad was. That he knew this dad person wasn’t dead. That he assumed I loved this other dad.
I hadn’t been sure what to do about it. Leo had never shown any real interest in his father, had never asked any questions about him. But it was clearly something he thought about.
I’d never wanted it to be like this. I’d never planned for him to grow up without knowing his father. He was meant, when he was conceived, to have two parents who would love and care for and raise him. I wasn’t meant to be one of those parents, of course: I was going to be the aunt, the birth mother, the person who had helped give him life—but he was always meant to know his father.
And then I became his mother, and Leo was left wondering about his dad. He was left thinking about his uver one but never saying anything. Maybe because he thought it’d make me cry. Maybe because he wasn’t sure if I would tell him. If he asked, I don’t know what I would have told him. It’s not as if I had told anyone else. My family all suspected, but no one had ever asked, so I had never told them.