The silence starts to make me feel itchy. I stretch out my feet.
‘Where is lover boy now? Still in town?’
I lie back on the pillow and watch his face. I know he is mapping out a typical teenage love story, all awkward limbs, promises set to moody tracks and epic stormy partings. He’s only half right.
‘No, he died. When we were in school. He jumped off the tower at the lake.’
Felix’s smile retracts like a snail into its shell. ‘Fucking hell, Gem.’ His fingers pause for a few moments before he picks up the rhythm again.
I wish that I could stay here with him doing that forever. I blink a few times but he holds my gaze, his green eyes steady. I’ve never asked Felix where this will go, whatever this thing is between us, and he’s never given me a real indication of what he wants it to be. I know he never wanted to come to Smithson. It was his wife’s idea, to move from London and have a sea change far away from the sea. Felix had loved his life in the city. He said he felt freer, more independent there. I suspect that being with me is a nod to that freedom. A lifeline to his old world where desire dominates and impulses are heeded. I also sense that his wife was determined that the move here would reset their marriage. Felix seems stubbornly determined not to participate in any such overhaul. He works late and is desperate to spend time with me. He is an engaged father to his girls and polite to his wife. I am scared to ask him point blank how he feels about her, but right now, as I look at him, I see real love and I realise how important I am to him. How important he has become to me. I squeeze his hand softly.
‘Were you there when Jacob died?’
‘No. He went there alone.’
I don’t tell him that I’ve seen Jacob’s broken body at least a thousand times in my mind. These days, I know death and I now know how he would have looked after he fell, so over the years the image I summon has changed from a cartoon-like puddle on the ground to a more fully formed version of the boy I loved. The scene crowds my thoughts and I try to blink it away but he’s there whether my eyes are open or shut.
‘He had lots of things he was dealing with, I think. He was really artistic, he could be moody sometimes, get lost in a project, so I knew a little bit of it but I’m not sure I realised quite how bad things were. Or if I did, I didn’t really want to know.’
‘Do you think that’s why you became a cop?’ Felix asks.
‘Partly, maybe.’ I can’t figure out how to explain that I didn’t really have another choice. I needed so badly to work in a world that made binary sense of things. A place where there was good and bad, right and wrong, and where I was in charge of making sure there was more good than bad.
‘Was it when you were still in school?’
‘Just after our final exams. It was actually ten years ago last week.’
‘Fuck, Gem.’ Felix fills our wineglasses and takes a long sip from his. ‘I’m guessing that having a boyfriend die like that is pretty hard to deal with. Especially on top of your mum.’
I feel tears building. I picture Dad coming into my room, his face grey and old as he sits on my bed, softly sobbing into his hands before he manages to tell me what has happened, tells me what Jacob has done. I see the dam breaking around us, crashing into the room and carrying us away. Dad and I had an unspoken agreement to never really talk about Mum, and with Jacob it was the same. We would sit side by side on the couch in solidarity, his arm around me and my head on his chest as I listened desperately to the steady beat of his heart. I was so terrified it would stop.
‘It was very hard. Very surreal. No one knew what to say to me.’ I let out a strange little laugh. ‘I don’t really know what I wanted them to say to me.’
I don’t tell Felix that it was even harder because I’d already lost Jacob. That he’d already chosen to be with her over me.
I think suddenly about the note, remembering how I traced the words with my fingers before folding the crisp paper and smoothing down the edges. I wonder where Jacob put it. I always assumed he destroyed it, threw it away. I could so easily get lost in layers of memories. Jacob, Rosalind. The small lonely version of myself from back then who had no idea how to deal with the world or the people in it.
The past is seeping through my pores and my skin starts to crawl with it. I shake my head and say brightly, ‘Anyway, that’s how I know Rodney. It was just the two of them. I’m not sure why there was such a big age gap between them but I got the sense that maybe Donna had miscarriages. She was very intense. Their dad left when Rodney was a baby and she raised the two boys by herself after that. I’m not sure she liked me that much.’
Felix has more wine. ‘He seemed like an odd kid. Rodney.’
A flash of protest courses through my body.
‘Do you think so? I always thought he was really sweet.’
‘C’mon, Gem. That was ten years ago. He’s almost an adult now.’
‘I guess.’ I want Rodney’s face to get out of my head. And Jacob’s. Both their faces. So similar. I want to stop thinking about them.
Blocking the soft lamplight with my body, I pull myself onto Felix and straddle him. I hold his face as I watch the vivid green of his irises pool with black. I rub my chest against his.
It has the desired effect.
‘Come here,’ he says gruffly, grabbing my hips and pulling me down onto him.
Chapter Fourteen
three weeks earlier
‘I was going to ask you to marry me on New Year’s Eve.’
I froze. The egg I’d just cracked leaked clear glue into the bowl. I forced my hands together slightly and the shell broke even more, collapsing into a sticky mess.
‘That probably seems like a strange thing to say.’ Scott was uncharacteristically all worked up and pacing like a lion.
I glanced at Ben; he was alternating between colouring in a rainbow with his new crayons and eating spoons of cereal. ‘I guess,’ I said.
‘We used to talk about it. I thought you wanted to get married.’
I shrugged. I got a fork and started to whisk the eggs. The yellow mixed with the translucent grey. It looked like mucus. I coughed, aware of Scott’s eyes on me. I felt ill and impatient, like I’d forgotten to do something important. ‘Do you want some eggs?’ I said, wanting the conversation to go away.
‘I can’t believe you’re trying to change the subject of marriage with fucking scrambled eggs.’
‘Language,’ I warned automatically.
‘Oh, Gem. Don’t start me on parenting. Your head is barely ever in the present. You’re so vague it’s like you’re sleepwalking half the time.’
I shoved the bowl across the bench and the sharp sound clanged through the room. I flicked on the gas and stared into the blue flame.
‘Well, isn’t it lucky we decided to raise Ben together then. The flakiness of me is counterbalanced by the reliability and general perfection of you.’