Chapter 11
My plan for this morning hadn’t included tanking Dair’s opinion of me. Or for him to learn why shifting furniture for a living will always be my limit. If he wants to know more, I got nothing left to tell him.
Adey must have seen and heard kids slam to a verbal stop, like I do outside a city landmark most people have no problem identifying. Anyone else would read the massive golden signage spelling Victoria & Albert in shining letters, and I’d make those shapes my focus if I could look up at them.
I can’t, not even to answer Adey’s questions.
“This is something you don’t usually share?”
My silence must tell him plenty.
“Okay, right. Let’s find somewhere quieter.” He turns to Blake. “Where?”
“Inside.”
Blake takes over, and I know there’s movement, that he hustles away a herd of other Exes. I only see their feet move, because you better believe I keep my head down.
Keep it down?
I can’t lift it. There’s no way I can make myself watch people who run companies and who rule courtrooms react to my confession.
Some of these men save lives for their living.
Others have fought for King and Country.
Somehow, this feels like the fight of my fucking life, and a man who once described himself as a dim bulb is bright enough to see it.
Dair doesn’t let go of my hand.
Slim fingers curl around my thick ones, and air floods lungs that shame just withered.
Another hand finds the small of my back, and Adey makes a promise over the roar of blood in my ears louder than the passing traffic. “That’s the worst bit done, mate. You’ll never have to say that for a first time to any of us ever again. From now on, it will get easier, not harder.”
I’m not sure I can believe that, or that I should let him steer me inside the museum. My first instinct is to head home. To hole up. And to tell Kev to go ahead and cover the Stacey & Son on his van with Kevin & Cousin, even if I’ll never be able to read it.
I’ll promise him I’ll stay in my sofa-shifting and flatpack-furniture lane forever if he’ll make the whole world stop staring like he did when I was so much younger.
One hard stare from him would make anyone laughing at my struggle shut the fuck up. Stacey could do the same at school parents’ evenings, where she reminded stand-in teachers to read up on my support needs.
Dair’s fingers squeeze mine tighter, and I lurch into movement, following the fleet of Exes I invited into a museum where I do the one thing I never needed exam certificates to be good for.
I climb flights of stairs, trudging.
These flights are swanky marble instead of piss-stained concrete, and they end at England’s finest collection of bone china, a destination I picked to help someone who now helps me by not letting me go.
Adey finds a quiet corner to pick up from where he left off. “That skull fracture you mentioned. It was recent?”
I focus on a display of fancy tea sets and shake my head.
“When you were a child, then?”
I nod, gaze still fixed anywhere but on him. Or on Dair. But that’s who guesses correctly.
“It happened when you were nine?”
“Yeah,” I choke out. “I was lucky.”
Dair knows which of my family members wasn’t. Or at least, I bet he can guess after our run-in with someone whose sister got help to escape domestic violence.
Meeting anyone else’s eyes is still too hard to manage. I fix my gaze on a gilded teapot no doubt worth more than Alice’s entire collection. “The doctors said the fracture led to the brain compression that caused my aphasia.”
Dair asks, “Aphasia?”
Staring dead ahead doesn’t stop me from hearing his next halting question.
“D-doesn’t that affect speech?” He lets go of my hand. I guess he does that to touch the logo on his jacket because he says, “It’s on the care plans for some of my residents. The ones who had strokes and who can’t speak so well. But you don’t have any trouble talking.”
I’d tell him that isn’t always the case. How every single seat aboard my struggle bus is taken by words that refuse to get off at the right stop. I can’t verbalise that right now. Can’t shape those sounds or hustle them out fast enough, like everyone else in this room could if they wanted.
Adey waits a beat before saying, “It’s an umbrella term. The effects are different for each person living with it.” He pauses until I do meet his eyes, and I got no problem reading this silent question.
Want me to go on?
That pause for my permission makes all the difference.
Thank fuck that Adey is here. He gets it. Understands that this silence is me overwhelmed in a way Kev never, ever wants me to have to deal with.
My chest heats, my throat on fire, but I nod, and Adey continues.
“Some of my toughest kids were so gobby, you’d never guess they couldn’t write their own names.
Others can read full sentences but can’t explain what they mean.
Or they can verbalise an essay from start to finish but can’t recognise a single letter on a keyboard to type it out.
Aphasia is complex. And it’s simple, because it had the same impact on every student I taught who had it.
Get them outside a classroom, and they all told me the same thing about how it left them feeling. ”
I fully expect him to say stupid.
I’ve felt that descriptor plenty. Lived it each time I’ve held a menu with no idea what’s written on it. Died a little inside and dodged telling anyone who wasn’t family, all to avoid that stupid label.
Only Adey doesn’t say that S-word.
He chooses another.
“They told me they felt silenced.”
That describes my school days. Describes too why my aunt turned as feral as Kitty each time a stand-in teacher dished out detentions.
They just saw someone refusing to try. Right now, the only refusing I do is to meet Dair’s gaze. I can’t look at him, so I do what I’ve done at the foot of so many tower blocks—I shoulder my load and keep going.
“Silenced sounds about right.” I make Adey my focus, already regretting spilling what no one could ever see as a strength, but I did that spilling for a reason.
“So hear this, yeah? I don’t know why you stopped teaching.
It’s none of my business. There’s nothing wrong with being a barista, but if you stopped even a single kid from feeling as dumb as I do on the daily, you did them a fucking favour. ”
“Dumb?” Dair almost shouts that, and I stop studying anything but him.
Don’t ask me why he’s suddenly the easiest thing in this whole building to look at.
The prettiest too in a room already full of beauty most people would describe as fragile.
Every piece of china here is in one piece.
Has stood the test of time and has lasted, so much stronger than it looks at first glance.
Dair fits that description.
He proves it by squaring up, feisty on my behalf. “Who called you that?”
He’s as furious as Kev and Stacey combined.
All I see is care, and fuck me, I’m a sucker for that.
I also spy fire, which has nothing to do with his hair colour.
It spits from someplace deeper. “Because that’s the last way I’d describe you.
” Behind him, a row of Exes nod, and Dair spits more sparks for me.
“Seriously, Vincent. Anyone who spends more than five minutes with you would say the same thing.” His brow concertinas and his voice lowers.
“You really can’t read or write at all? Not even a little? ”
I shake my head. “Not even my own name. Can’t write it.
Don’t recognise it even if I see it.” Then I shrug.
“I could before this happened.” I push aside the swoop of hair Marilyn takes care to cut just like Stacey used to so it covers the slightest of forehead depressions.
I run a fingertip across what my hair usually hides.
“Then this happened, and I couldn’t. All I can recognise are numbers. ”
An Ex clears his throat, perhaps about to ask what left a dent in my head. Or who. Just like that, I’m back in a shadowed alley.
I saw your old man while I was away. Paid him back too, for you.
Dair speaks up while I can’t. “Well, you got no problem communicating. Not with me. Not with anybody.”
I find my voice. “That’s talking.” I must have shoved my hands into my pockets. My fingers find a fountain pen I’ll never be able to write with, like I’ll never be able to read the name engraved in gold on it. “I couldn’t talk my way through my exams.”
Adey murmurs, “You could with the right support. It’s never too late.”
Dair isn’t done yet. “You’re still smarter than I’ll ever be. You must be to keep trying to solve my problems. And theirs.” He doesn’t aim this at me. “So, you two better make it worth his while, yes?”
Blake salutes. Adey mirrors that movement, if more slowly, while Dair peppers me with questions.
“How didn’t I notice? We’ve spent so much time together.”
Not enough, in my opinion. Dair isn’t done trying to figure me out.
“We’ve eaten and drunk together. How do you know what to order, like at Adey’s coffee shop?”
“Coffee’s easy. Everywhere serves Americanos. Same with food at chain restaurants. They make it easy. Their menus are online. I get my phone to read them out before I go, and if what I choose isn’t available, I can just point at another photo on a menu. Or I can order the same as the person ahead.”
“Like you did at Greggs when I ordered a steak bake.” That isn’t a question. He’s slotting pieces of me together. “Do you even like black coffee?”
“Not much, but it’s easy.” I flash a look at watching Exes.
“If the menu isn’t accessible beforehand, and I really don’t want to fuck up in front of people, I’ll rock up late after everyone’s already eaten.
Or I don’t turn up at all. Sometimes that’s easier.
Less stressful. I don’t have to spend the whole night sweating that someone will give me a wine list and expect me to order anything other than a house white or red. ”
As one, every Ex frowns, maybe remembering how many meet-ups I’ve missed out on.