Chapter 11 #2
Dair moves on to another daily challenge. “How do you even find your way around the city? And do you—” Just as quickly, he says, “Sorry, sorry. You don’t have to answer.”
Here’s the thing: Outside this building, Adey told me I’d got the worst part over.
That from now on, it would get easier, not harder.
I don’t know about that. Easy isn’t how I feel in my skin right now, but I’m used to keeping going until a job is finished.
“Go ahead,” I tell Dair. “If there’s something you want to know, I’ll tell you.
” Three little words almost choke me. “Sorry I didn’t. ”
“Don’t be.” He searches my face, perhaps checking if I can handle more before asking, “Does having aphasia mean you can’t drive? Like…” He digs a tooth into his lip. “Like if you wanted to borrow your cousin’s van sometime, could you?”
“I don’t drive.”
His expression does something complex that makes me rush to add, “I mean, I can drive. Just never sat my test, but there are ways to do that for people like me who are—” I hate the word illiterate.
It doesn’t describe who I was before more than reading and writing was stolen from me.
“I could get a driving license and use satnav to get around. Never seemed much point. Kev always takes the wheel. And as for getting around the city, the Underground is colour coded and I can count stops.” Kev taught me the names and number of stations like other dads taught their kids times tables.
“If I do get turned around by a line closure, I’ve got apps.
” Or I’ve got my cousin, who can never stop himself from checking that I won’t get lost without him.
And who always comes to my rescue, like I’d come to his if he needed.
Of course I fucking would. There’s no way I’d ever let him struggle. Not even for a minute, let alone for a lifetime.
I’m not sure that’s ever hit me harder.
This museum is full of artefacts dating back for generations. The history Kev and me share feels even older. My history with Dair is a whole lot shorter. I still need to tell him, “Believe me, I could find a way to get anywhere if I was needed.”
By you.
I’m distracted by one of the Exes asking, “What kind of apps do you use?”
“If I get turned around on the Tube? Ones that can read out signs for me. They usually work, as long as the signs are printed.” I take out my phone and point it at some display signage next to a tea set, and I turn up the volume.
We all listen to my phone repeating a description—word for word, I assume.
It states that we’re looking at an exceptional example of excellence in British ceramics.
A tea set worth a fortune. The year of production is accurate.
I see the number 1750 on the sign and hear my phone repeat it.
It also states that this tea set is perfect. And priceless.
“Speech-to-text is an accessibility option on any phone these days.” I wince. “Don’t entirely trust it, so I avoid sending anything written unless my fam can check first.”
Adey lets out a small sound of understanding. “Which is why you don’t join in on the group chat?”
“I would if I could keep up with you gobby wankers.”
An Ex snorts a laugh, and I risk making the briefest of eye contact with an American I only know as Cash Money because an app has read his group-chat nickname to me so often.
Harry told me how this Ex offered to finance my relocation if I needed.
I wish I’d seen that offer pop up in the group chat and thanked him for it.
We’ve never talked one-on-one before today.
Don’t travel in the same international banking circles his nickname suggests he moves in.
I guessed we’d have nothing in common, but I get chatty with him now about my own specialism.
“I don’t always get the chance to listen to your texts right away. Can’t always faff with my phone to listen while I’m working.” I backtrack a little. “And I can’t keep calling you Cash Money. What’s your real name?”
“It is Cash,” he promises. “The Money part is a long story. Carry on with yours, yes? I want to hear the rest of it.”
He nods so hard that I keep going. “By the time I’ve caught up, then used assistive tech to check and double-check my replies, you’ve all moved on to chatting shit about something else.”
I shut up when some more visitors to the museum pass us, only speaking again when they’ve moved on.
Then I’m even gruffer than Kev gets each time he tells me I can come home.
I know why he keeps making that offer. He’s spent years trying to save me from having to make exactly this kind of soul-sapping explanation.
“I wanted to join in. Couldn’t. Not without you all wondering why I was always so late to the party. Or why my replies made no sense. When you all use abbreviations or emojis, my tech guesses. Or it leaves gaps. I can’t always be sure I heard the whole convo before replying, so…”
Adey says, “So you don’t.”
I’m burning alive.
Cash blurts something almost as cooling as aloe vera.
“I don’t care if you reply late.” He lands a hand on my shoulder. “How can we help?”
I guess he means, how can he help me to keep communicating. Right now, something else feels more important.
“You can help me by helping Dair.” I still hold my phone.
I use it to share an inventory complete with photos of Alice’s china with the group chat.
“Because he’s got a big bill to pay and nothing to sell worth enough to clear it.
Not unless any of the china on this list is the real deal.
Like that tea set.” I point my phone at the sign my phone just read out.
“Then it might be worth entering into a specialist auction.”
Someone else suggests, “That should be easy enough to check.” He’s another Ex who once offered to help me, and I can’t count how many times I’ve wondered how he earned his nickname.
Is he called Ritz Bed Wrecker because he eats crackers in bed, or did he and Charles break a hotel bed together?
Finding out will have to wait. He says, “We can let AI do the heavy lifting. Tell it to do a reverse search on each photo on this list. Then it can fill out these description boxes for you. Won’t take more than a few minutes. ”
Dair’s fingers squeeze mine again, and I know why—we already had this conversation.
“No.” It makes a change for me to be an expert, but I’ve been fucked over enough times to know this.
Dair says, “Because you can’t trust the results?” and I nod.
“You really can’t.” I prove it by taking a photo of the same tea set they all just heard my phone describe as priceless. This time, I omit the signage, and without that written detail to draw from, a bot comes up with a different answer.
I play it aloud, so we all get to listen to a different maker’s name and a whole other year of production.
It even names the wrong pattern. “You hear those differences? Hear how much it just got wrong? This is why I need your help. Because yes, some apps stop me from getting lost on the regular, but this one legit just made up that bullshit.”
“Hallucinates,” Adey murmurs. “Says what it thinks you want to hear.”
Right now, I feel like I’m hallucinating that a host of professionals with degrees and diplomas all nod at me.
I hallucinate some more. I must do, because a herd of highly sexed cats do exactly as I order.
“Pair up.”
They do so with only a little pushing and shoving.
“Each pair, take a room along this hallway. The inventory I’ve added to the group chat has photos. Look for any matches. When we’ve cleared this floor, we’ll move down to the next floor together. Got it?”
Maybe I also hallucinate that they’re impressed with me delegating. All I know is that I’ve been smacked in the chest more this winter than I can ever remember. It happens again when Dair whispers, “Look who Adey paired up with.”
Blake.
Their heads are close together, bent over a phone, and Dair draws me away to leave them to their search.
We end up alone in an alcove where he says, “Mission accomplished. You got them together.” He looks up at me as I look down, and an unsteadiness inside me settles. Eases. Feels lighter the same way as when Kev takes the other end of something too heavy for me to carry without him.
It’s mad how much I like the feeling. And how much I like Dair still looking at me the same way he did first thing this morning.
I steal a quick kiss and don’t care if an Ex sees me do it.
I’m who Harry left in charge, even if I can’t use his pen to write my own name, let alone write any new group rules for real.
I can fucking well choose when I want to break one.
We walk then, Dair and me. And we talk, because here’s the thing about spilling—now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.
“Flynn brought me here the first time. Took me through each furniture collection and pointed out the styles he wanted for his place. Asked if I ever saw anything like them while clearing houses. Said he didn’t have the budget for the real deal, but he could let me stay at his place for free if I sourced what he needed. ”
“You found him antiques?”
“Not valuable ones. Copies like Alice’s, only closer to famous makes. Enough to be convincing. I worked on each piece. Stripped them right back like I learned during lockdown. Restored them to look more authentic.”
I use my phone to show him the photoshoot that scored Flynn the funding he needed. My gaze locks on a mahogany desk in a room I furnished right down to its chandelier. “After losing Stacey, doing all that work kept me from thinking.”
“And from feeling,” Dair offers.
“Yeah.” I have to swallow around the kind of lump that usually slows my speech down. Grief, I guess. Or something almost as jagged. “I couldn’t stand being at home.”
“Because someone was missing.”
I’ve never felt this understood, this seen and heard, yet still seen as strong.
Dair’s gaze locks on my phone screen and on who else is in a final photoshoot image. “He’s… He’s very good-looking.”
“Who is?”
For once, I’ve said the right thing at the right time.
I must have—Dair kisses me again beside more signage, and I don’t need any assistive tech after our kiss ends to tell him what that sign mentions.
Flynn read it out during our first museum visit and told me how us partnering on his project could be life-changing for us both.
I tip my head at that sign beside us. “The master craftsmen here run specialist restoration training courses. Flynn said that once his lease was up and we sold everything I restored for him, my share could fund this accreditation. I never told him that I wouldn’t be able to do it without reading or writing, but coming to a taster session here did make me want that change in direction. ”
“You want to become a master craftsman?”
Want it?
It would be a dream come true. “He said a qualification from a national museum could attract clients with real money.”
“Attract them to what?” I kinda love how his brow crinkles. “To your cousin’s house-clearance business?”
“No.” I’ve started so I might as well finish letting out all the ways I misread a one-way situation. “To my own restoration business, only Flynn fucked off and had everything I worked on taken. Probably just as well. I should stick to being hired muscle, right?”
Dair doesn’t agree. “Wrong. You’re a lot more than muscle, Vincent.” He points out a portrait right behind us. “That could be you. Lord of the manor with your own private army.”
I turn to see a life-size portrait of someone as dark-haired and bearded as me. The difference is that he most likely owns the land he guards with a raised sword. The glint of steel is vivid. So is his air of command over the men around him. “Lord of the manor? That could never be me.”
“Yes, it could.” He touches my chin. “Lift this. No. Even higher.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. For me.”
I comply with his request, only maybe not fast enough—Dair gets handsy with me, and I’m not complaining when it means he touches my jaw.
His own clenches as he sweeps hair to one side across my forehead like he wants the world to see what I usually keep hidden, and I let him.
His fingertips ask me to tilt my head, and I do whatever he wants.
Dair takes out his phone to take a photo.
Before he does, he murmurs, “For after I’m gone. ”
I find out what that does to my expression when Dair holds out his phone so I can see what he’s captured—what he somehow saw was hiding like the treasure all mudlarks hunt for in Thameside mud and gravel.
He’s caught me looking as fierce as when men carried swords instead of iPhones.
And as protective.
I’m aware of movement—a private army of Exes gathers to see Dair turning as fierce as I look on his phone screen.
“I’m saying that you make things happen.
Like you getting everyone here to work for me.
And like that midnight flit your aunt organised for someone in trouble.
It couldn’t have happened without you, could it?
” His fingers find where my life first fractured, his touch light.
I still feel it long after his hand drops.
“You even tracked down a business to buy my dinged-up chairs and tables. You made that happen.” Dair points at the portrait, then turns his phone to face me.
“Of course, this is exactly how I see you.”
Exes crowd close, each of those fuckers cooing over that photo. It takes a while to realise they aren’t taking the piss.
Blake confirms it when he hands back Dair’s phone. His eyes pierce me, sharper than any sword blade. “You remind me of my Riding Master.” I guess that’s someone high up in the Household Cavalry when he adds, “One look from him, and we all jumped to attention. No wonder Harry left you with his pen.”
He’s calling me a leader for real, and he means it.
I could turn around to hide what that does to me.
Yesterday, I would have.
Today my eyes sting, and I don’t care who sees it.