‘Grow your hair.’
‘Already on it, sir!’ and whisked myself out of the door before he could say anything else. Normal service had been resumed.
Back in my room he was just pulling himself into a sitting position and thumping his pillows. I handed him his tea and said, ‘Hi, how are you feeling?’
‘I was a little worried it was a dream, but no, here you are and with tea. Do you have to work at being so perfect?’
‘No, it’s effortless.’
I got settled and looked at him. He still looked thin and exhausted, but the awful grey look had gone.
‘I like the beard.’
He rubbed his raspy chin. ‘Oh, that’s going as soon as I can lay my hands on a razor.’
I rubbed my spiky hair. ‘I know the feeling,’ and he laughed which was good to hear, but there was some awkwardness.
He said, ‘You don’t look so good.’
Now was the moment to say. Now was the moment to tell him. Say something. Now. I bottled out. ‘Chest infection, but all gone now,’ and sipped my tea.
To break the silence, he said, ‘I know what happened to me. What happened to you?’
I cuddled my tea. ‘Oh, you know … bitchfight with Barclay, chucked out, flat in Rushford, Mrs De Winter, found the remote, stole the pod, came to rescue my boys. Same old same old.’
He grinned at me from under his tousled hair. His eyes looked very bright. ‘I’ve got to know – tell me about the bitchfight. Were you wearing leather? Was there mud?’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘You wish! It was quite dull actually. Nowhere near fantasy standards.’
‘I don’t understand why you went to Rushford. Why on earth didn’t you go to Thirsk like good ex-employees are supposed to do?’
I snapped in justifiable exasperation. ‘Well and so I would have done if I had known, but since I got marched out of the place with less than an hour’s notice and with barely the clothes I stood up in, there wasn’t time to say goodbye to anyone, let alone conduct an exit interview.’
No sooner were the words out than I realised I had said too much. I’m hopeless.
‘Wait! You didn’t get the month’s notice?’
‘No.’
‘The twelve months employment at Thirsk?’
‘No.’
‘The references? The employment history?’
‘Again, no.’
He was angry now. I could see it in his eyes.
‘So now tell me what really happened.’
My natural instinct is to keep secrets. Not to make things any worse. On the other hand, he’d told me his secrets. Now I should tell him mine. To make it easier for me, I didn’t look at him. He got nearly everything, although I did try to play it down a little. In this quiet, warm room it didn’t seem real. I described the black mould, trying to make that funnier than it was, too. Some vain attempt to divert the conversation, I suppose.
He said nothing the whole time and even though I knew better, I kept talking to fill the silence.
‘So the mould got bigger and annexed the bedroom, but that was OK because I was into one-room living by then anyway, so I could lie in bed and watch TV. And I thought it was working, because I woke one night feeling quite hot and although I had a bit of a temperature, I was quite pleased because I was warm. Which was really stupid, because it was a chest infection and it got worse and my chest hurt a bit and I got hotter so I thought I’d better go and maybe get some antibiotics. So I went to the Free Clinic and I thought they’d just give me something and chuck me out again, but they didn’t and I was in there four days, I suppose because of all the upheaval and not eating much which wasn’t really my fault and I was too fat anyway. They kept me as long as they could, but they wanted the bed, so I went into town because it didn’t matter any more and met Mrs De Winter, who offered me a room here for a little while. I felt a bit guilty, but she insisted and I was glad not to have to go back and face the mould again. And she gave me the photo and your Trojan Horse, which I’d had to leave behind and I was so happy to have them and then the remote fell out onto the table, so I worked out the co-ordinates while Mrs De Winter got the supplies together. But I couldn’t get any closer than eleven days, no matter how hard I tried, because the computer just wouldn’t accept it. So I whopped in the closest co-ordinates I could get, crossed all my fingers, and punched it and when I saw the devastation outside I really thought I was too late; but I’m not good enough to override your computer’s safety protocols and I just couldn’t get any nearer than eleven days and I’m really sorry.’
I stopped then because I was going blue.
There was the most appalling silence. I mean, really awful. It wasn’t just him not saying anything; it was things not being said, if that makes sense. And it went on for ages. I wondered what, out of my pathetic catalogue of catastrophe, he would pull out first. I put my fist to my chest and tried not to cough.