“Ooo,” Leon said. “Someone’s feeling bitchy.”
Susanna ignored my tone. “The thing was,” she said, “after a while I started noticing that it felt like what I did mattered. Like it had weight. I’d never felt that before. All those campaigns I got involved with in school, writing millions of letters for Amnesty and fundraising for places that had droughts, and they never changed anything; the guy was still stuck in some hellhole jail, the kids were still starving to death. I used to cry about that.” To me: “You caught me once. You thought I was a total idiot, but you were nice about it.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s good.” It occurred to me that I should be feeling some kind of sense of achievement. I had got what I was after, detectived my way to the answer that even big bad Rafferty hadn’t been able to get his hands on. I couldn’t work out why all of this felt like such an enormous letdown.
“In a way you were probably right. I mean, yeah, I genuinely was crying for the guy being tortured in Myanmar, but I was also crying because it felt like I was nothing. Made of fluff. Feathers. I could bash myself to death against things and they wouldn’t budge an inch; they wouldn’t even notice I was there.” She took a sip of her wine. “Killing Dominic, though. Whatever you think about the moral issues, you have to admit it made a difference. A concrete one.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That it did.”
“I wanted to do more stuff like that—I mean, not like that, but stuff that made a solid difference. Stuff with weight. Smoking Athelstan’s hash and singing around campfires was too fluffy. It was light. I’d met Tom a month or two before I headed off to Cornwall, and he was obviously mad about me, but I hadn’t even had room to think about whether I was into him. Except when I did think about him, he felt like he had weight. Getting together with him would be serious; it wouldn’t be like snogging Athelstan for a laugh. I pretty much knew if I snogged Tom, I’d end up marrying him. So I came home and rang him.”
“Thank God,” Leon said. “He was hanging off me like a puppy. Great big moony eyes, asking me over and over when you were coming back. I’d have been a lot nicer if I’d known you were into him. I told him you’d married Ethelbert in a naked Wiccan ceremony at Stonehenge.”
“I know. He didn’t believe you.” Susanna gave him the finger. “Same for having the kids: not that it felt more important than getting a PhD or whatever else I could have done; it just felt more solid. A difference I could see, right there in front of me. We made two whole new people. It doesn’t get more concrete than that.” To me: “I know you always thought I was insane for getting knocked up so young. And I know you’ve never been crazy about Tom. But it made sense to me.”
Leon was watching her curiously. “God, I never had any of that. The exact opposite, actually.”
“But you did stuff that mattered,” Susanna said, turning towards him, surprised. “You came out, that autumn. I always thought it was because of Dominic. No?”
“Oh, totally. I’d probably still be in the closet, if it wasn’t for that. I’d been agonizing for years.”
“It wasn’t 1950,” I said. “You weren’t going to get shunned and, and, tarred and feathered.”
“I know that, thanks,” Leon said, with a flick of asperity. “I knew exactly what would happen. I’d hear even more shitty stereotype jokes, I’d lose a couple of friends, and Dad would try to convince me it was a phase. I could handle all that. It was the thought of people seeing me as something different. Not being just a person to them any more, not being just me, ever again; being a gay. If I said something snotty, it wouldn’t be because I had a point or because I was in a bad mood or because I’ve always been a stroppy bastard; it would be because gays are bitchy. If I was upset about something, it wouldn’t be because I had a good reason, it would be because they’re so dramatic. I’m sure this seems like a non-issue to you”—me—“but it wasn’t to me. On the other hand, I wasn’t mad about the idea of spending the rest of my life in the closet, either. I wanted to have boyfriends, for God’s sake, hold hands in the pub, bring them home to meet my parents; that shouldn’t be too much to ask. I just felt totally paralyzed. I thought I’d be stuck that way forever, rock and a hard place. But after Dominic . . .”
He reached for the poker and stirred the fire, which shot up a ragged, gallant spurt of flame. “The whole thing looked totally different. If people didn’t see me the same way once I came out, who cared? I’m not talking about being brave, or some YOLO shite. Just . . .” He shrugged. “They’d be out of my life soon enough anyway. Nothing lasts forever, and I don’t mean that in an emo way, I’m being factual. Dominic was enormous in my life for years, this huge presence looming over every single thing, I went to sleep thinking about him and had nightmares about him all night and woke up in the morning dreading him. And then we did this one thing, it only took a minute or two, and he was gone. Just gone. It’s hard to think of anything as permanent, after that. What you’ve got”—to Susanna—“the husband and the kiddies and the mortgage, all that ever-after stuff, it’s never felt like an option.”
“Do you wish it did?” Susanna asked. For the first time she looked worried, twisting on the sofa to peer at Leon in the dimness. “Do you wish you’d gone like me, instead?”
Leon thought that over, nudging charred bits of wood delicately towards the heart of the fire. “No,” he said. “Not dissing what you’ve got, but it’s not my style. I’m happy the way I am. It’s got its downsides—I’ve dumped every boyfriend I’ve ever had, or else made them dump me, and I feel like a total shit every time. But I like the feeling that anything’s possible. I could be in Mauritius, this time next year, or Dubrovnik.” He glanced up at Susanna, smiling. “I love places, you know,” he said. “I always have. The less I know about them, the better. The Yorkshire moors: don’t they sound amazing? All that space and heather and Viking place names? And New York, and Goa, and . . . Once I get to know them a bit, the shine wears off and I get itchy feet, but this way, that’s OK, because I’m not tied down. I don’t have to pick one; I can have them all.” He grinned. “And I also really like guys, and I don’t have to pick just one of those, either.”
Susanna smiled back at him. “Good,” she said. “Send me postcards.” She reached out a hand; Leon wove his fingers through hers and squeezed them. In the fireplace a splinter of wood caught, flared.
They felt alien, as if they were made of some material I didn’t understand and shouldn’t touch. The curve of Susanna’s cheek white and smooth as polished rock, under the layer of moving firelight. The long shadow of Leon’s arm skimming across the wall as he pushed back his hair.
“So,” Susanna said. She leaned back into the corner of the sofa and watched me. “There you go.”
“Right,” I said. “OK.”
“Not what you were expecting?”
“Not really. No.”
“Are you OK with it?”
I said, “I have no idea what that would even mean.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Susanna said. “Give it time.”
Leon was watching me sideways. “Tell us you’re not planning to run to Rafferty,” he said: joking, except it wasn’t a joke.
“What?” This had never even occurred to me. “No.”
“Of course he’s not,” Susanna said. “Toby’s not stupid. Even if he wanted us to go to prison, which he doesn’t, it’s not like telling Rafferty would make that happen. It would just kick off huge amounts of mess and chaos, and when that cleared, we’d be pretty much where we are now. Everything’s fine as it is.” She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Right?”
“Not if Rafferty still thinks I did it.”