Colin isn’t at choir. This concerns William more than he would have expected. There’s a fragility to all the Midnighters, but there’s something about Colin that particularly moves William. His way of holding his music so carefully in his hands. How he takes off his filthy donkey jacket and places it on the back of his chair, just so. William feels the chasm between what Colin has become and what he used to be; it settles in his chest and doesn’t go away until he’s walking home with Martin. He’s come to enjoy his sessions with the tenors. He doesn’t even mind that David always chooses to join them and spends the whole time staring at him.
During tea breaks, Colin’s told William that his ex-wife and two children live in London with her new husband, with his high-paid job in the City – though not as highly paid as Colin’s was five years ago, before he drank himself into oblivion with guilt over a miserable one-night stand. He has no visiting rights. He hasn’t seen his children for over a year. He wonders how his son is getting on at secondary school. He wonders if they call this man Dad. He wonders what his wife says to them about him.
Tonight, William takes the tenors to work on ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’. It’s not easy, because Gloria loves this song and they’re missing Colin, who always gets it first time. William is singing louder than normal to help drag them along. He wishes, as he’s singing, that he’d just once sung it to Gloria, really sung it. She’d have loved it. He could have hammed it up, but meant it as well. Ready to quash the thought, as he’s quashed a hundred thousand thoughts of her before, William decides to let it be, to let the music bring her to him. Let me feel the love and the sadness, he decides. And as he stands, beating time with his right hand, singing at almost full throttle, David steps out from the little huddle, his raised palm towards William. Everyone keeps singing as David approaches him. Inches away from him now, David’s whiskery face intent, blue eyes questioning, curious, he lays his palm on William’s chest. The pressure is warm and firm, and William feels the vibration from his singing against David’s splayed hand. The two of them maintain eye contact as David grins. Still with his hand on William, he twists round to look at the others. No one stops singing, but they all smile at the smiling David. When they’ve finished, he walks back to the group, snatching his hand into the air, as if he’s just touched something hot. A small round of applause breaks out, and although William isn’t quite sure what it’s for, he joins in.
Later, as they’re eating and loading up with sandwiches, William stands on a chair and asks if anyone knows where Colin is. No one does.
‘What do you do when one of them goes missing?’ William asks on the way home. Parker’s Piece is soggy after a short shock of a shower and the surprised earth smells strongly of the new season.
‘I run a choir, not a hostel.’
‘Aren’t you ever tempted to do more?’
‘I give them a place to be human once a week. That’s my contribution.’
The next day, William makes sandwiches and a flask of sweet tea and spends five hours wandering round Cambridge: the benches on Midsummer Common, Parker’s Piece, Jesus Green; the porticos of Eaden Lilley and Joshua Taylor. He sees other Midnighters, but not Colin. He does the same the following day, repeatedly circuiting the city centre in case the moment he’d turned a corner Colin had arrived.
‘It’s a pity if Colin misses the “Miserere”,’ Martin says the next morning, putting on his anorak. ‘He absolutely loves it. I’m going straight from work, and then we’re having cocoa after at the Copper Kettle so I’ll be late back. I’m not going to ask if you’ll come, but I bloody well wish you would.’
‘Have a good day.’
He hears Martin run down the stairs and the door opening. Instead of the door slamming shut, Martin’s steps come back along the hallway.
‘William?’ he calls up.
‘Yes?’
‘Have you looked in the Botanic Gardens?’
William almost runs there, frustrated for not thinking of it himself. After walking the pathways and a quick stride through the hothouses, William sits by the fountain for an hour and a half, the packed lunch on the bench beside him. As well as sandwiches, there are now two Jaffa cakes, an apple and a Club biscuit – as if Colin is a child or an animal he can lure with treats. His body tightens with anxiety as he imagines Colin in a gutter, Colin collapsed, drunk, or injured. In every imagining of him, William sees, buried under his layers, that burgundy tie round his neck.
He thinks of David at their last choir practice and it’s as if he can still feel the hand on his chest. It’s no good, he thinks. I can’t cope with this. I’m made from different stuff to Martin. I can’t bear the pain. Standing up, he imagines telling Martin he won’t be coming to choir any more, and asking if it’s still a condition of him staying in his flat. Maybe it’s time to go home, anyway. He likes to think Gloria’s had a few weeks to accept they’re finished, that perhaps she is ready to start thinking about a different future.
Instead of crossing Parker’s Piece, he turns right down Mill Road, an area he never visited as a chorister. Martin calls it the guts of Cambridge, which William thinks might suit him better right now than the historic centre. A tattered tweed coat and a pair of shoes with flapping soles catch his eye. The vagrant is walking down a gravel path he’s never noticed before. At a distance, he follows him into a graveyard full of wonky headstones covered in lichen, leaning into the earth at extreme angles. Tired, he sits on a bench against a wall.
‘William?’
Colin looks different. Like himself, but turned up a few notches; cheekbones sharper, hair wilder. He slumps down on the bench.
‘I’ve been looking for you for days. Where’ve you been?’
‘London.’
‘How long for?’
‘As long as it took me to beg my train fare back.’
‘Here.’ William hands him the bag.
Colin looks at him, holding the bag tentatively. ‘For me?’
William nods.
He opens it and puts a sandwich straight in his mouth. He reeks of booze. William has never been conscious of it on Colin. Some of the men drink heavily before choir, but William wonders now if Colin deliberately arrives sober.
‘Did you see your children?’ William asks, after letting him eat for a few moments.
‘My daughter. From a distance. Opposite the school gates.’ Colin is talking to the gravel path. ‘She looked happy. Laughing with her friends.’