“She isn’t my girlfriend.”
“No? So she’s your lesbian cousin and unfortunately you can meet her only in dreams because in real life she was kidnapped by the Taliban and has been kept prisoner for years in a cave in Afghanistan, right?”
A smile flitted over Henry’s face, but next moment he was serious again. “I’m sorry, Liv. I know what it must have looked like to you. But I had my reasons.…”
“You know what it looked like to me? Well, it looked like my boyfriend was getting into a pool with a naked woman.” I brushed away the hand he had obviously put out to stroke my cheek.
Henry frowned. “You do realize that it was only a dream, don’t you?”
“For that mermaid slut, maybe, but not for you.”
He said nothing for a second. Then he said, “If you visit someone in a dream, you have to adapt to it. That was all I did. And you shouldn’t have … What the hell did you think you were doing? Why did you follow me in secret?”
For a moment I couldn’t breathe, I was so annoyed by the way he was suddenly turning things upside down. “The question is how far you’d have adapted to the dream.”
“No, the question was why you followed me in secret.”
“I just happened to be invisible in the shape of a—” I stopped short. No way was I going to justify myself at this point. I stared intently at my feet. Stupidly, I had a tearful lump in my throat again after all. It was only with difficulty, and in a very low voice, that I managed to ask the only question that really mattered. “What were you doing in that woman’s dream, Henry?”
He didn’t reply at once, and I raised my head to look straight at him, although it cost me an effort. I was so afraid of seeing that guilty expression on his face again.
But what I saw was more like helplessness. “It’s complicated,” he said.
“Explain it, then.”
“There are things you couldn’t understand even if you wanted to.”
“Try, anyway.”
Henry compressed his lips.
“Is it because I’m inexperienced in some things?” The question burst out of me, and I was annoyed with myself, because it sounded so inhibited and Victorian that next thing I knew I’d probably have a little lace cap on my head. I couldn’t even talk about sex. But it was no good—I had to go through with this now. “Or is it to do with masculine needs that I don’t know anything about?” Oh God, this was getting worse and worse. I began to hate myself. I also thought I saw slight confusion in Henry’s eyes.
“What…? No.” He came a step closer, and this time I did let him touch my cheek. Carefully, his hand moved up to my forehead. “None of this has anything at all to do with you.”
“What is it to do with, then?” It was as much as I could do not to rub my head against his hand the way Spot always did when you stroked him. But nor could I manage to push his hand away, which would certainly have been the most sensible thing to do.
He sighed. “I did tell you it was complicated. My life is complicated. There are things I have to do because no one else is going to do them.” His fingers wandered down again and very gently stroked my cheekbone, going down to my chin. “You won’t be able to understand. In your family, you’re always there for one another, and everyone wants nothing but the best for everyone else. It’s not like that with us. My father has … Well, let’s say he’s kind of lost sight of what fathers are supposed to do. I wouldn’t mind that if it only affected the weekends when he visits to see Amy and Milo, although he regularly breaks their hearts. But I can’t let him risk their future. He calls it doing business, but in reality he’s just squandering an enormous amount of money. Money that doesn’t belong to him: it belongs to Milo, Amy, and me. My grandfather left it to him in trust until we come of age. I’d be okay without the money, but I don’t think anyone will be offering Milo scholarships later, and he’s going to need them.”
I was listening intently, hardly daring to breathe, let alone interrupt him or say that I still didn’t entirely understand the connection.
“My grandfather died four years ago. He knew what would happen if he simply left the money to my father.” He indicated a gravestone beside us, and I jumped. Bizarrely, it had Henry’s name carved on it. HENRY HARPER—BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER. Only when I saw the date of birth did I realize that Henry had been named after his grandfather. “That’s why he decided to set up a trust. The idea was to secure our future. And it was also because my mother … Well, she’s not in any shape to … to look after those things.” He was floundering more and more, and now he stopped talking entirely.
“I know,” I whispered. That was a mistake. Henry stopped caressing me and frowned.
“What do you know?”
“That your mother has problems,” I said.