Chapter 4 #2
‘Brother. Year 13. Started September.’ Rory poured coffee, drank half standing, and leaned against the counter.
Tighter than the usual lean. ‘Good kid. Smart.
But he's eighteen and he's got a girlfriend now, Carol, and the combination of hormones and freedom and me trying not to be his dad while basically being his dad is...’ He stopped. Shrugged. ‘A lot.’
Basically being his dad.
‘Our mum wasn't…’ He stopped again. Started over, choosing his words with a care Neil hadn't heard from him before. ‘She wasn't able to look after him. Dad was long gone. So it was me or the system. I was twenty-two. Kieran was eight.’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Yeah. Barely knew how to feed myself, let alone a kid. First year was chaos. Proper chaos, not the interesting kind I was recommending to you in the reprographics room. The kind where you burn every meal and the fire brigade knows your address.’
‘How many fires?’
‘Three. One my fault. One was Kieran's science experiment. And one was the toaster, which I maintain was a manufacturing defect.’
‘Was there an inquest?’
‘For the toaster. The toaster died. I held a small funeral. Kieran read a eulogy.’ The smile came back, thinner. ‘Second year was less chaos. By the third I'd worked out you could batch-cook bolognese and freeze it and that counted as parenting.’
‘That does count.’
‘Tell that to the social worker who opened my fridge and found six containers of bolognese, a bottle of vodka, and nothing else. She wasn't impressed.’
‘What happened?’
‘She came back a month later and the fridge had vegetables in it. I'd bought a cookbook. Fifteen-Minute Meals. Changed our lives. The recipes were took forty-five minutes minimum. But having instructions gave me something to follow. I didn't know how to parent. I knew how to follow instructions.’
Neil's chest ached. That's exactly what I do. The folders. The colour-coding. The systems built not because they were efficient but because they were followable.
‘There were weeks I nearly rang social services myself,’ Rory said. Staring at the counter now, not at Neil. ‘Because I thought he deserved better. Someone with their shit together. Someone who didn't have paint on their clothes and an overdraft and a fridge full of bolognese and alcohol.’
‘But you didn't ring.’
‘No.’ His gaze dropped. The paint in the creases, the permanent stain that soap couldn't reach.
‘Because the alternative was a stranger And I'd rather be a shit guardian than let my brother be raised by someone who didn't know he's afraid of the dark but pretends not to be, or that he won't eat peas unless they're mushy, or that even now at eighteen he needs the landing light on until he falls asleep.’
The landing light. The peas.
He thought of Freddie's door. Four fingers. The hall light.
‘You did a good job,’ Neil said.
It came out unfiltered. But it was true.
He held Neil's eyes. A current passed between them that wasn't attraction, or wasn't only attraction.
Then Rory's expression shifted. Neil read it as detachment, the shutting of a door, he'd offered too much and was pulling back. A man regretting the landing light and the peas.
He was wrong.
He straightened from the counter. Reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. From it, a card. Small, well-designed. Neil caught the text, Rory Cavanaugh, Artist. A gallery address. A professional number.
Rory took a pen from the counter. Turned the card over. Wrote on the back in his slanted hand: an address and a mobile number, different from the ones on the front. He held the card out between two fingers.
‘Home studio. And my personal contacts.’ His voice had dropped below the banter, to the register that had talked about the landing light and the peas. ‘For emergencies. Or if you change your mind about that coffee. Or if you just want to see where the real work happens.’
Neil's eyes dropped to the card. White rectangle, black text, the handwriting on the back still glistening where the ink was wet.
‘No pressure, Neil.’
Neil. Slower. The sound of his own name in that mouth was different. Lower. Warmer. A word to be held rather than spoken.
‘Just an open door.’
Neil took the card. A clean exchange. Fingers didn't brush, hands didn't linger. But the cardboard was warm from Rory's pocket and he felt the temperature against his fingertips and knew he'd remember it.
‘Thanks, Rory.’ Low. Eyes down.
Rory picked up the takeaway cup. Empty now. Crushed it once before dropping it into the bin by the kettle. Rinsed his own mug at the sink. Dried it. Screwed the lid back on. Ordinary movements that had no right being loaded but were.
‘See you, Neil.’
He left. The staff room door swung shut. Neil was standing by the counter holding a business card with a man's home address on the back and the faint press of his pocket on his fingers.
He should bin it.
Instead he turned the card over. Read the address. Read it again. The handwriting, slanted, fast, the pen pressing harder on downstrokes. Matt finish, slight tooth to it. Chosen with care.
Into the wallet. Behind the bank cards, behind the driving licence, in the narrow slot where he kept nothing.
That evening. Freddie at the kitchen table, felt-tips, tongue poking out, the paper more green than white. Pasta on the hob, garlic and tinned tomatoes, the default meal. The one he could make with his eyes closed and his mind forty minutes down the A-road in a building he'd never entered.
‘Dad.’
‘Mm.’
‘Can I have more green paint? Mr Cavanaugh says I can have the big brushes again if I bring my own green because the school green's gone all murky.’
‘I'll get some this weekend.’
‘The good kind. He says acrylic's better because it doesn't go crumbly.’
‘Acrylic it is.’
‘Dad?’
‘What.’
‘D'you think Mr Cavanaugh's a good artist? Like, a proper one?’
‘I think he's very good.’
‘Have you seen his proper paintings? Not the school ones?’
‘I've seen some online.’
‘Can I see?’
‘After dinner. If you eat your pasta.’
‘What if I eat MOST of my pasta?’
‘All of it.’
‘Even the garlic bits?’
‘Especially the garlic bits.’
‘You're a hard man, Dad.’
‘I know.’
Freddie ate the pasta. Including the garlic bits, like a prisoner swallowing medicine.
Neil showed him two paintings on the gallery website, the ones least likely to prompt questions about faceless figures and bruised colours.
Freddie studied them with the attention of a critic at a private view.
His face did the thing it did when he was thinking, the slight furrow, the lower lip bitten, the stillness so unlike his usual velocity.
‘They're quite angry, aren't they? But good angry. Like when you shout at the football and then you're happy because they scored.’
‘That's actually a very good analysis.’
‘I know. I'm clever.’ He tilted his head. ‘Why doesn't the person have a face?’
‘Because the painting isn't about what they look like. It's about how they feel.’
‘How do they feel?’
‘Heavy.’
‘Heavy like sad-inside?’
‘Heavy like carrying something.’
Freddie considered this. ‘I'd draw a face. So you could see if they were okay.’
‘That's a different kind of painting.’
‘It's a BETTER kind. If someone's heavy-sad, you should be able to see their face. So you can help.’
Neil closed the laptop. Freddie, who had never once in his life hidden his feelings, didn't understand why anyone would paint a person and leave out the part that mattered.
The fridge had three calendars on it. His in navy. Gemma's in magenta. Freddie's nursery rota in green. Neil looked at the October page while the kettle boiled.
The week his. Weekends Gemma’s. He had asked for the extra nights, because he lived alone, because Freddie’s room was here, and because Gemma had said yes, alright in the meeting with Shirley Jennings, family solicitor, twenty-two quid parking at the Arndale, and Shirley had written it into the agreement, in clauses with numbers.
Neil knew the clauses by their numbers.
Clause 4.2: the child shall reside primarily with the father.
Clause 6.1: both parties agree to act in the best interests of the child.
He had disliked clause 6.1 the first time Shirley had read it aloud and he had disliked it more the second time, because best interests of the child was a container you could fill with anything.
With a photograph. With a phone call. With a sentence that began did you know that, Mr Ashworth and whatever followed after it.
He had signed the agreement in June. Shirley Jennings's office on Deansgate. Black pen, medium nib. The same brand he used at school.
He had signed. Gemma had signed. The witness had signed. Three signatures on one sheet of A4, and inside that sheet of A4 was a small boy and the right to wake him up on weekday mornings and give him jam on toast cut into four squares with the crusts off.
The kettle clicked off. Neil poured water onto the teabag. Added milk. Sat down at the kitchen table opposite Freddie, who was drawing a pirate ship with six masts and an opinion on the shape of the flag.
‘Dad. Do pirates have pets.’
‘Depends on the pirate.’
‘Mine does. A parrot. But the parrot is called Orange and he doesn't like shouting.’
‘Sensible parrot.’
Freddie nodded, satisfied. Back to the flag.
Neil drank his tea and did not look at the fridge again.
He had read clause 6.1 forty-one times since signing it. He had counted, for a while, and then he had stopped counting because counting was becoming the thing he did instead of living.
Bath time. Freddie argued with the shampoo about whether pirates washed their hair. Neil's position: the sea contained fish poo. Argument settled.
The Gruffalo, twice. Eyes drooping at the second ‘roasted fox.’
‘Dad.’
‘Mm.’
‘Is Mr Cavanaugh coming to our house ever?’
Neil's hand stilled on the page. ‘Why would he come to our house?’
‘Because I want to show him my drawings. The ones on the fridge. He'd like the dragon.’
‘I expect he's busy, mate.’
‘You could ask him.’ Enormous yawn, whole face disappearing into it. ‘You're his friend, aren't you?’
‘He's a colleague.’
‘What's a colleague?’
‘Someone you work with.’
‘Is that different from a friend?’
‘It can be.’ Neil tucked the duvet. Straightened the dragon. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Dad?’
‘What.’
‘I think he'd like the dragon.’
‘Noted. Sleep.’
Eyes closed. His breathing changed within thirty seconds, the abrupt collapse of a child whose body overruled his curiosity.
Neil sat on the edge of the small bed. Elbows on knees. Head bowed.
Is that different from a friend?
Five-year-olds didn't have subtext. And the simplicity of it cut through every system Neil had built because the answer was no. It was not different. Or it was, and the difference had to do with the card in his wallet and a voice that said Neil as though the name were worth holding.
Wallet closed. Into the jacket. Light off.
In the dark hallway, Freddie's breathing through the half-open door. Rain against the windows. The flat still. Always still after nine o'clock. The day's business done and nothing left to organise and the only company the clock counting minutes.
The following week. Rory's response to the writing prompts by email: These are brilliant. Jade Amir's line is the one. ‘The roots hold what the branches reach for.’ Fucking perfect. R.
He'd sworn in a work email. Neil read it four times.
Rory's travel mug and a takeaway cup with Neil on it in Rory's looping biro. Rory talked about the Year 9 section, ahead of schedule. One of the Year 7 root poems picked up by the school newsletter. Professional. Normal.
That same afternoon, four seconds in the courtyard. In the last half-second, Rory's mouth moved. Just the corners lifting. A signal: I know. I remember. I'm waiting.
Neil walked into a bollard, hard, clipped it with his hip, stumbled half a step. Nobody noticed except Rory, whose shoulders shook once before he turned back to his students.
Evening. Freddie asleep.
In the hallway, he stood and looked at the jacket. The wallet. The card.
Then the bedroom. Door locked, the twist of the mechanism loud in the quiet flat. A sound he'd never made in his own home, because there was nobody to lock out except his sleeping son and his own pretence.
He lay on the bed. Didn't undress.
The images came.
Rory in the reprographics room, leaning past him, the mass of his chest through the margin of air. Rory in the doorway, three inches above, saying after you in that unhurried voice. Rory's hands on the charcoal sketches, the fingers that shaped branches in the air.
He thought of those hands on him. Fingers unbuttoning his shirt. Pulling his belt free, wrapping around his cock with the same grip that held a palette knife, firm, sure, knowing.
Already hard.
Belt off, trousers pushed down, his hand on himself. Urgent.
The images sharpened, Rory's mouth on his neck, Rory's hand replacing his own, both of them pressed together on a surface, skin to skin, cock against cock, Rory bearing down.
Sweat and skin.
And a voice saying Neil, low and direct, no Mr Ashworth, no surname, no distance, just his name in that mouth with the ring against his lip.
He came hard. With Rory's name bitten off between his teeth. His hand kept moving through it, wringing out every pulse, the orgasm rolling through him in waves that left his legs weak and his breath torn and the sound he'd made still echoing in the bedroom.
After. Still. Breathing. Hand wet. A car passing on the street below, headlights swept the ceiling and moved off. The room dark again. Freddie's breathing through the wall.
He got up. Cleaned himself. Splashed water on his face. The tap dripped when he turned it off.
Bed. The mattress held his weight alone.
The card was in his wallet. The wallet was in the jacket. The jacket was on the hook. Thirty feet away. Shrinking.
It wasn't a question of if. It never had been. Since the handshake, since a man with paint in his knuckles said Rory Cavanaugh and extended his hand and changed the temperature of the room.
It was a question of when.