Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Ewan’s kitchen smells like garlic and wine and something Laurence has done to a chicken that shouldn’t be legal.
A Victorian terrace in Chorlton, books everywhere, shelves, stairs, the windowsill above the radiator where the condensation’s warped one of the spines.
Laurence moves around the stove, no wasted steps, a bloke who’d measure flour to the gram and think that was normal.
I’m sat at the table with a glass of red I didn’t ask for. The wine’s good, probably expensive; don’t know enough to tell. Ewan’s opposite me, feet up on the spare chair, jumper with a hole in the elbow, settled in like he’s been here years even though it’s been. What. Eighteen months. Less.
‘How’s the flat?’
‘Still an Airbnb.’
‘That’s not a flat, Ron. That’s a bed with delusions.’
‘It’s got a kitchenette.’
‘Has it got a toaster?’
‘No.’
‘Then it’s not a kitchen.’ Ewan picks up his glass. ‘You’re paying how much?’
‘Enough.’
‘Eighty a night?’
I don’t answer. Ewan does the look where his face doesn’t move but his eyes do. I’ve been seeing that look since he was fourteen and I was twenty-one and he came home from school with a split lip and said fell over and his eyes told the truth.
He talks with his hands, always has, the wrists loose, shaping the air around every word.
Mum used to still them at the table. Dad used to look at the wall.
I used to clock which of the lads at school were clocking it, and work out who I’d be having a word with after.
Ewan was always exactly this. Visible. I never once wanted him different.
That want was other people’s, and I stood in front of it.
Laurence puts a plate down in front of me. Chicken, roasted potatoes, some green thing I can’t name. ‘There’s more if you want it.’
‘Cheers.’
Laurence asks Ewan something about a paper, half maths, half English, the words I don’t follow.
Ewan answers without looking up, the fork still in motion; they volley it back and forth like a conversation they’ve been having for three years and never finished.
Laurence’s voice has gone Lancashire under the academic, the vowels widening with the second glass of wine.
Ewan’s gone the other way, the Lewisham slipping back, the dropped consonants Mum used to flag at the table.
I don’t follow the maths. I follow the rhythm: the way Laurence pauses for Ewan’s correction, the way Ewan starts a sentence and Laurence finishes the half of it that’s symbolic. They’ve built a language. Most of it nobody else can use.
He’s taller than I expected, every time. He looks at Ewan when he thinks nobody’s looking with a thing on his face I can’t place. Like that.
No, not like that.
He’s alright.
The problem with Laurence being alright is it changes what was simple. When I thought he was the thing keeping Ewan from. Whatever. I knew where I stood. On the outside. On the side of the brother, the one who had him first.
The wine helps. Doesn’t fix it but it helps.
Laurence pours a third time, just tops it up, not enough to make it obvious, but enough.
I’m already past the point where I’m thinking clearly about it.
The kitchen’s warm and the food’s in my stomach and Ewan’s laughing at a proof Laurence mentioned that made no sense to me when Ewan was explaining and makes less sense now.
‘Bottoms up is what you’re supposed to say,’ Ewan’s saying, but he’s laughing and it’s the laugh from school. The one where his whole body does it, not just his mouth. Laurence is watching him like he’s solving him, like Ewan’s a problem he’s been working on for months.
That look. That’s the bit I can’t place.
It’s not possession. Laurence looks astonished that Ewan’s real. Like if he stops watching, Ewan will evaporate.
I know that look because I’m doing something similar to my pint glass. Holding it like if I let go it will vanish.
Laurence catches me looking, not, not at him, around him, at the space. At the table and the wine and the two of them fitting in it like they measured the space before they bought the furniture.
He smiles, just. At me. A proper smile, not the guarded one he does when he’s not sure if I’m going to stab him with the fancy knife.
‘There’s more,’ he says. ‘Always more.’
It’s the most generous thing anyone’s ever said to me without saying it directly.
That’s the problem. Spent a year thinking he was the worst person in the world and he’s alright. Pours the wine without being asked. Remembers I don’t eat mushrooms from the one time I mentioned it. Does this thing where he touches Ewan passing the table, just the fingertips, just a second.
Ewan doesn’t flinch. Leans into it, a centimetre, the move smaller than it should be.
I eat the chicken, it’s proper good. The green thing is some kind of. Kale? Spinach. Whatever it is, Laurence has worked it with lemon and it doesn’t taste like a vegetable and that’s the highest compliment I’ve got.
‘Ron.’
Ewan’s voice. The one that means something.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re not here.’
‘I’m sat right here.’
‘Your body’s sat right here. The rest of you is somewhere on Oldham Street.’
I cut the chicken, chew. The knife’s too good for me, heavy, balanced, the kind a proper cook owns.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘You went to the bar.’
THE bar. The statement hits flat. He knows. He’s known since. Christ. Since before I moved, the phone call. The one where I said something about a table in the Northern Quarter and red nails and I keep going back and Ewan said nothing for ten seconds and then: So go.
And I went.
‘I went to the bar.’
Ewan nods, doesn’t push. Laurence is at the sink, washing what doesn’t need washing yet and the water’s running and he’s giving us the room without leaving it and I think. He’s good at this, they’re good at this, the two of them. How they’ve made it work. The silence that isn’t empty.
‘They’re still there,’ I say.
‘At the bar.’
‘Corner table. Every night.’ I look at the plate. ‘Same spot. Same laptop. Same…’ The word I need isn’t here. ‘Same.’
Ewan drinks, puts the glass down.
‘Have you spoken to them?’
‘Three nights running.’
‘And?’
And. And I sat at their table because there was a chair.
And they told me about steak and horror and the Welsh coast. And they put their hand on my wrist for one second and I’m still thinking about it two days later.
And I went home hard three nights in a row and didn’t do anything about it because doing something would make it. Doing something would.
‘And it’s good,’ I say. ‘The beer’s good.’
Ewan’s mouth does a thing. He decides no.
‘The beer.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You moved to Manchester for the beer.’
‘I moved for the contract. And you.’
‘And the beer.’
‘And the beer.’
Laurence comes back with a bowl. Puts it on the table.
Sits down next to Ewan, their shoulders touching, no gap.
Laurence’s hand goes under the table. I don’t see where it lands, but Ewan’s face changes: half a shade softer, the eyes warmer.
The glass is at my mouth. I haven’t drunk from it.
I put it down. Pick it up. The empty side of my chair.
‘More wine?’ Laurence says.
‘Yeah. Cheers.’
He pours, the bottle’s almost done. He’s already got another one open on the counter because of course he has. I wonder if this is what Ewan’s life is now. Someone who opens the second bottle before you’ve finished the first.
Ewan talks about maths. A proof he’s working on, a problem that’s been open for decades.
His eyes go bright, the same look he’d get at school when he’d found something that made sense to him and nothing else did.
Laurence watches him talk, the patience in it.
He doesn’t interrupt even though half the words are in a language I don’t speak.
He just watches. And Ewan talks faster, knocks his glass and catches it, laughs, and Laurence’s mouth twitches.
Warm.
Too warm.
‘And the contradiction’s elegant, is the thing. The proof fails beautifully.’
‘You’re losing me, Ewan.’
‘I’m always losing you. You’ve been lost since long division.’
‘Oi.’
‘True though.’
True, he’s the clever one. Always was, the one who skipped a year because the course couldn’t keep up with him. The one who went to university and found. This. Laurence, the house. The books on the stairs. The second bottle of wine.
I’m the one who left school at seventeen because school was done with me. The one who’s good with his hands and thick with his words and thinking.
Is this it?
Up close? Two people who just. Do this? The plates and the wine and the touching and the talking and someone who knows your name the way nobody says it?
The thought catches.
Night, Ronan. The soft R.
I drink the wine.
The walk home, Chorlton to the NQ. Should’ve got the bus, didn’t. The cold’s good, clears the head.
The streets are Saturday-night busy: groups going to bars, couples walking close, a woman in heels carrying her shoes. The tram rattles past; I walk.
My phone’s in my pocket. I check it, nothing. I don’t have Celyn’s number. Celyn doesn’t have mine. Three nights at the same table and I know how the tea smells and what colour the nails are and the exact sound of that’s a line and I don’t have a phone number.
Ewan has Laurence’s number. Ewan has Laurence’s toothbrush in the bathroom and a spare set of keys.
I have a circle on my wrist where a ring pressed four nights ago.
Ceiling, white, blank, eighty quid a night.
I brush my teeth. The mirror, my face, same face. I look tired. Gaz was right.
I brush my teeth. In the mirror it’s the same face. I look tired. Gaz was right.
I get into bed and the sheets are cold. Close my eyes.
Celyn’s there, behind the lids, the table. The laptop screen gone dark. The shirt. No, the hoodie tonight, the oversize one, the bare chin and the dark around the eyes.