Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Ludo
I have no idea where to find Aidan. He left without telling me where he lived, and I didn’t think to ask for his number. Why would I when the only contacts in my phone are years out of date or of mental health professionals paid to make sure I don’t die?
You’re in a morbid mood.
I can’t deny it, but part of my rehabilitation has always been to challenge my negative thoughts, and I can’t think of a solution to my reactivated obsession with Aidan.
So I stop trying and worry about his welfare instead.
Aidan is a beautiful man, but there’s no getting away from the fact that when he was slumped at my kitchen table, he looked like absolute hell.
Tired, drunk, and so depressed I feared he’d gone back in time, found me from two years ago, and stepped inside my threadbare skin.
Yeah, cos he’d want to do that after he saw the wreckage on your arms.
My scars tingle. I rub my hands up and down them, but it’s no good. I’m indelibly marked by Aidan’s touch, and the empathy in his eyes as he studied my ruined skin will stay with me forever.
He understands.
An impossible thought. Aidan doesn’t know me.
But I believe it and take another step out of my house.
I’m going into town. All morning I’ve told myself it’s because I need stuff from the shops, not because I’m looking for Aidan, but I’m far from convinced.
I order my groceries online so I’ll never go hungry if I can’t leave my house.
And my cupboards are stocked. There’s no reason for me to go into town—I’ll have to think of one on the way.
The walk into town takes me exactly twelve minutes. By the time I reach the high street, I remember that I do have a reason to be there; my fortnightly meeting with my community psychiatric nurse.
Rita is my CPN. I see her once a month when I’m super well, every day when I’m not. Every two weeks is the best I’ve had it in a long time, though, and I’m happy with that. Rita makes me smile, especially when she brings me big fat slices of her Jamaican black cake.
“You need some real food in you, boy,” she comments as I devour one slice straight away and stash the other in my bag for later. “A man can’t survive on pasta.”
“It’s all I can cook. Lucky I know a hundred different ways, eh?”
I don’t mention that I haven’t cooked since I brought Aidan home, that I’ve been surviving on leftovers and toast . . . or that I haven’t put his plate back in the cupboard. Washing it was as far as I got, and even that took me a couple of days.
You’re cray cray, mate.
“Ludo?”
“Hmm?”
I glance at Rita. She’s watching me like she does, unobtrusively analysing everything about me, not just what I say. Or what I don’t. She’s better at this than any psychiatrist, more intuitive in her work than her nurse salary rewards her for.
“What are you ruminating about?” she asks. “Has something happened?”
“I’m not ruminating.”
My denial is pointless, but I do it anyway, because it’s part of the game. Much of me still resents having to flay my life open to cope with it, and I can’t help staging a weak final protest.
Rita sits back in her seat. She hasn’t eaten any cake, but an open packet of rich tea biscuits is on her desk. Her gaze flits to them, and I smile. “I thought you were laying off the biscuits before your holiday?”
She sighs. “I was, but complicated patients like you will drive any woman to eat.”
“I’m not complicated.”
“Of course you’re not. So tell me what’s got you speculative?”
I cave, like I’ve learnt to do, and tell her everything. She already knows about Aidan anyway—I told her about him when she came to visit me in the psychiatric hospital, though I don’t know if she checked he actually existed before she persuaded the hospital team to let me go.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that suspecting she might’ve done went a long way towards me believing he existed. But I’m so done with the Is he real? conundrum that I cut the thought dead and keep going with the truth.
“I don’t think he’s very well.”
Rita caves and snags a biscuit. “Physically or mentally?”
“Both.”
“That’s hardly surprising. He’s been through a lot. But what in particular do you think is wrong with him?”
I curl my legs and tuck my feet beneath me. “I don’t think he’s looking after himself, because I don’t think he cares. I think he drinks a lot and doesn’t eat enough, and there’s no one around to help him get better.”
“Well, you know how that feels,” Rita says carefully. “And you’ve always managed to get better. Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t tell me if he lives around here, and I didn’t get his number or anything, so maybe I won’t.”
“How do you feel about that?”
My mind is so completely on Aidan that I’ve forgotten that Rita’s vested interest in the conversation is me.
That Aidan’s fate—if it doesn’t affect my mental health—is of no consequence to her.
It isn’t her fault; it’s her job, but I resent it anyway.
There are already too many people in the world who don’t care about Aidan.
Or are there? I think of his cousin—Michael—and wonder what became of him. If he ever came to visit Aidan again after Aidan sent him away.
“Ludo.”
Fuck. I blink and focus on Rita. “Yeah?”
“I want to know how you feel about the possibility that you might not see Aidan again. Is it something that worries you?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation, because it’s true. “I’m worried that if I don’t see him, no one will, and he’ll never be okay.”
“But why does that matter to you? You hardly know him.”
But for once, Rita is wrong. I do know Aidan. And he does matter.
Still, the possibility that I’ll never see him again is as hard to ignore as it was before he appeared in the woods by my house, and I face up to it because I have to.
Later, I leave Rita and take the scenic route home, avoiding the high street altogether. I’ve never been a believer in fate, but while the logical part of my brain is working, I have to embrace it.
If Aidan and I are meant to cross paths again, we will. I can’t reprogramme my life to force it.
I push him as far from my mind as he’s ever likely to get and concentrate on planning the walk Bella and I will take tonight when the sun fades.
When we weren’t discussing Aidan, Rita encouraged me to take Bella swimming more.
There’s a man-made lake half a mile from my house, shallow and popular enough that there’s always someone around.
I’ll take her there. After all, it’s not as though I can’t swim . . . right?
As ever, I have little idea where I’m going with my thoughts, but as I reach the quiet street by the council offices, they taper off.
Of course they do, because the moment I’ve given up on searching for Aidan, there he is, coming out of the off-licence with a full bag of bottles and a newspaper tucked under his arm.