‘Just tell me,’ I say. One of us needs to be tough now, and that person is me.
‘It all feels so sordid.’ He stares down at his coffee. I have a feeling he won’t look up until this infected cyst of a story inside him is burst and all the poison is out. ‘My whole life does. But it didn’t start out that way. At first it was … well it was wonderful. God, I loved her. Adele was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. But not just that. She was sweet and funny. Her parents didn’t approve. I was the poor farmer’s boy whose father had pissed everything away drinking, and I was nearly five years older than her, and I’d known her, on and off, for pretty much for ever. She used to follow me around while I was working the fields around school, sometimes telling me about her nightmares.’
‘She was the little girl you gave the dream book to.’
He nods. ‘Not that it helped much.’
If only he knew. It must have been that book that taught Adele about the lucid dreaming and the second door. I want to mention it – I should mention it – but I want to hear the rest of his story first, before distracting him with something so hard to believe.
‘But as she grew up,’ he continues, ‘well … it … it felt so right. She was this ethereal creature who didn’t care about my rough hands and my shitty dad – she just saw me. She had faith in me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably never have scraped my way into medical school. We were so in love. I can’t describe it. That way you can love so fully when you’re young.’ He pauses. ‘And then there was the fire.’
‘You saved her,’ I say. ‘Your scars.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I did. I didn’t even feel the burns at the time. I remember the terrible heat. I remember thinking my lungs were blistering as I breathed, but mainly I remember thinking she was dead. She was out cold. Fumes or smoke inhalation or something. I couldn’t wake her up.’
I remember thinking the same trying to wake Adele. Her cold hand. Shaking her. How long has she had the second door? I nod for him to continue.
‘Did she start the fire?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even consider it at the time, but since then …’ He trails off. I imagine he’s wondered about it a lot. ‘There was talk of arson. The police thought it could have been me. And even though I thought maybe someone could have started it, I never thought it could be her. Some disgruntled employee maybe – and there were many – Adele was too young to really grasp her parents’ natures, but her dad hadn’t exactly made his money without damaging a few people on the way. But I never thought it was her. She nearly died. If it was her, she was taking a big risk.’
‘I think she likes taking risks,’ I say.
‘Perhaps. But she was so distraught. Wouldn’t sleep. It was like she was fading away. Maybe that was some form of guilt. She said she should have woken up. She could have saved them.’
Sleep. Dreams. Was Adele even there when her parents died? Had she set the fire and gone through the second door to make sure David was coming to save her? Or was she caught up in the smoke and passed out before she could escape herself?
‘And then she met Rob?’ I say. ‘At the therapy place?’
‘Westlands, yes. She really liked him, and being friends with him helped her. I hated it a bit at the time because I thought looking after her was my job, but I was still recovering from my burns, and I had uni. Adele insisted I go back – she even got her lawyers to sort out all my finances as soon as she could, which made me feel uncomfortable, but we were planning to get married anyway, and so she said I was being silly. Anyway, meeting Rob was good for her. I understood that. He was there and I wasn’t. I didn’t like that he was an ex-junkie though, and even though I never said it, I think she knew that. I sort of thought their friendship would be over when they left Westlands, but then she invited him to go and stay at the house. She was like that back then. Wanting to help people. Or at least that’s how it seemed.’