Chapter 29
When Will showed up at Margo’s house the day after Patrick left, with a bag in each hand and one under each eye, she didn’t ask any questions. He got the impression she had heard about what happened one way or the other and knew better than to press him for more information, and she had left him to see himself up to the spare bedroom alone.
Will dropped his things just inside the door, kicked off his shoes, and got into bed, pulling the covers over his face and breathing in the scent of clean linen. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, leaving only to attend to urgent bodily functions, just that at some point the sheets were no longer quite so fragrant. At first Margo would bring up cups of tea and plates of sandwiches; then she began to send Dylan to make the deliveries. Will would drink the tea but found that even a few small bites were all he could manage, resulting in the sandwiches he’d leave on the landing outside his door looking like a family of mice had nibbled them. Every day Margo would march in and noisily gather the collection of mugs that had accumulated around the bed like votive offerings, huffing and clanking them together, occasionally yanking back the curtains to let in a few harsh streaks of daylight, and Will would pretend to sleep through it.
He knew he couldn’t stay like this forever. Knew his sister’s patience was wearing thin. Knew that at some point April would be unable to keep covering for him at the bookshop, that Faye would need him at the library, that his life couldn’t stop just because yet another man had decided he was too much trouble. He knew all of this practically, consciously, rationally. But the thought of showering and putting on clean clothes and going to work filled him with a bone-deep sense of fatigue. He felt like he had been stricken by some terrible virus that sapped him of all energy, rendering him as helpless as one of those bed-bound invalids featured in Victorian novels. That’s what he was, he decided. An emotional hemophiliac. A consumptive downer whose sensitive disposition had been stricken by ill humors.
He would have been well suited to that lifestyle. The swishy, fey, mildly sinister cousin who dispensed witty bons mots and ominous warnings to a virtuous heroine from his ambulatory chair.
There you go again, he thought. Casting yourself as the side character. That man really did a number on you. The voice, he realized, sounded rather a lot like Jordan. The knowledge came with a pang of guilt that twisted his empty stomach into a facsimile of indigestion. Each time he thought back to that awful fight, the things he had said, he inched closer to the possibility that he had been wrong. But this was a notion he was unwilling to explore further at present, and so he turned his pillow over and buried his face in the cool side until he drifted off once more.
Will was vaguely aware of the sound of the door to the bedroom opening, but then there was nothing. It was only when Margo spoke, jolting him fully into consciousness, that he knew she had been watching him from the doorway.
“Have you eaten today?” she asked.
“Not hungry,” he mumbled.
“Oh. That’s a shame.”
Silence.
“I was just thinking I might make rarebit.”
More silence. Then: “With the…”
“Gruyère and truffle? Yes. But on reflection, it’s probably a bit heavy. Not to mention excessive, making it just for myself. Perhaps I’ll just make do with a tea cake.”
Will’s head lifted ever so slightly from the pillow, an ordnance map of creases running river-like down his cheek.
“I might actually be a bit hungry,” he said, realizing even as he made the pronouncement just how true it was.
“OK.” Margo didn’t stray from the door.
“And rarebit might help.”
“Fine,” she said. “But I expect you to shower before you come downstairs. The smell in here is threatening to ruin my appetite.”
Will stood under scalding water until he was certain he had scrubbed away every inch of the sweaty film he had acquired, then stood there some more for good measure. Once he was lobster red and had shed at least one layer of skin, he threw on a clean hoodie and sweats and ventured downstairs, where he wolfed down lunch with a hunger that he hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever.
Afterward, he curled up on the sofa with his phone, watching YouTube videos and taking occasional sips from a pint of water. Margo looked like she was about to say something but then didn’t, probably having decided that having him downstairs, showered and fed, was better than leaving him upstairs to fester.
Sometime around four, the doorbell rang, and a moment later April walked into the living room, lunging forward and trapping Will in a fierce embrace. Will returned the hug, patting April’s back appreciatively, until it became apparent she was in no rush to release him from her asphyxiating affection, and he was forced to extricate himself with a heaving backward push.
“That was from Jordan,” she said solemnly.
“Oh. Right. Well, thanks,” said Will, still catching his breath and suppressing the by-now-familiar clench in his gut at the sound of that name. “And well done on a successful delivery.” He did not believe for one minute that Jordan had told her to give him a hug. It was peak April to try her best to smooth things over, but she couldn’t Parent Trap Will and Jordan into coming to terms.
“What are we watching?”
“Brandy. The beagle. She’s an amputee. Brandy the amputee beagle.”
“That sounds…super healthy for you.” April clambered onto the sofa next to him and, after a few seconds of staring blankly at the screen, relented and dug into her pocket for her glasses. “This video is from 2009?”
“Yeah.”
“And it looks like it was aggregated from an earlier source. That’s how these things work, you know? None of the videos on ImportantAnimalNews are actually ‘news.’ They’re clips that have been reappropriated and packaged more neatly.”
“So?” Will asked impatiently, irked at his attention being drawn away from his dear new friend Brandy.
“Nothing,” April said. “It’s just that…that dog is probably dead by now.”
“What?” Will felt a tightening in his chest, and April’s eyes widened as she realized just how gravely she had erred.
“No! Oh, no, no!” She rubbed his shoulder. “I’m sure Brandy is fine! I bet she’s thriving, actually!”
But it was too late. Having replenished his body’s moisture reserves, Will found himself crying again. Brandy had been through so much. She’d had such spirit. Such pluck. What a life.
“Brandy,” he wailed.
April cast a helpless glance around the room as if some whisperer of grief-stricken homosexuals might appear ex nihilo to console Will, but when none were forthcoming, she did the next best thing: grabbed the glass of water from the coffee table and tossed a good half of it in his face.
Will froze, more from shock than from the cold. The glass had been sitting there for nearly an hour, and was room temperature at best.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he said.
April, seemingly just as stunned by her own actions, replied, “Me neither.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, both seemingly uncertain how to proceed. Then Will raised a hand to wipe the dripping water from his chin and began to laugh. Not because it was funny, necessarily, but because it seemed better than any alternative. After a few seconds, April started to laugh, too, albeit nervously, like somebody who had just stepped off a roller coaster. Once their awkward giggles had subsided, she rejoined him on the sofa, avoiding the growing damp patch surrounding Will.
“So,” she said. “Patrick?”
“Gone.” Will placed a cushion in his lap and hugged it for comfort, even though Margo would be far from thrilled he was making it soggy in the process.
“I know. But…are we talking gone gone? Or more like, he just needs to cool off and then he’ll be back on a private jet with a bunch of flowers and an Oscar-worthy apology speech?”
“He’s not that good an actor.” Will sank further into the sofa. “And the first Kismet movie wasn’t that great either.”
“You watched it?”
“I watched the trailer on YouTube. And a deeply off-putting video essay about what it did and didn’t ‘get right’ by a man with a patchy beard and vocal fry. I much prefer when you’re the one giving TED Talks on this stuff.”
April smiled. “Thanks. Actually, on that subject…”
“Yeah?”
“Never mind.”
“April, what.”
“I finally found a half-decent lead on the Omega Issue.”
Will, whose face had all but buried itself behind the cushion, emerged, groundhog-like, at this revelation.
“You did?”
“Yeah. An old lady in California got in touch after I put out all those feelers online. Seemed a bit kooky, but sound.”
“Kooky, but sound,” Will echoed. “We know a thing or two about that.”
“I was going to put her in touch with Patrick,” said April. “But if we hate him, I won’t. I mean, obviously we hate him, he’s a pillock of the highest order, but…”
“We don’t hate him,” said Will. “Not really. Or at least, not fully. He’s just let a load of bullshit get inside his head and he shouldn’t be with anyone until he’s got that sorted out.”
“That’s very mature of you.”
“I would also not be morally opposed to him getting just a tiny bit run over.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing huge. A Nissan Micra or something. Just to wake him up a bit.”
“That sounds proportionate,” April said.
“You should give that lady Simone’s number,” said Will. “She’ll be able to sniff out if she’s legit or just a weirdo.”
April pursed her lips. “Nah,” she said.
“No?”
“Nah. I can’t hit the man with my car, on account of I don’t have a car, or a license, and because he is presently about five thousand miles away. But I can make sure he doesn’t get everything he wants.”
“It’s your decision,” said Will. “Honestly.”
“Filming has finished now anyway,” said April. “I doubt it would make any difference. I just don’t think he deserves this.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” April stood up. “I’m off to write some fanfic in which a series of increasingly painful and humiliating things happen to Captain Kismet.”
No sooner had Will heard the front door close behind April than Margo returned to the living room, a wineglass in each hand and a bottle of Pinot Noir under one arm. He realized that he was being watched in shifts, and felt a touch of petulance at the idea, but reached out for a glass as Margo filled it all the same.
“So,” she said. “Patrick.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Fair.” She sat down on the dry side of the settee and took a contemplative sip of wine. “Jordan?”
“Him neither.”
“Fine.”
“He was such a bitch to me,” said Will, immediately changing his mind. “He just gets so high and mighty, you have no idea.”
“Oh, trust me, I get it,” said Margo, tucking her feet underneath her and getting comfortable for the venting portion of the breakup ritual. “Remember when I came on a night out to the Village with you guys, and he acted like you’d brought your mum out with you? Telling that story about railing some twink and then being all ‘Oh, sorry, Margo, didn’t mean to shock you.’ Like I was some kind of bumpkin! I’ve given birth, it takes a lot to shock me.”
“I’m sure.”
“The smell, Will.”
“I get the picture!”
“I’m just saying, I’m not brand-new. I am very aware that gender and sexuality are a vast and rich spectrum. I’m raising a nonbinary teenager, am I not? And sure, I’m doing the whole suburban-motherhood thing, and the only person I ever loved happened to be a man, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been shipped off to Stafford.”
“Do you mean Stepford?”
“Shut up.”
“I never knew Owen was the only person you loved,” Will said.
“Who else would there have been?” Margo asked.
Will shrugged.
“I suppose I just assumed all those nights you used to go out when we were younger, you were having all kinds of outrageous love affairs.”
“Oh, I was.” Margo’s face was deadpan. “The quickest way out of my teen angst was in the backseat of an older boy’s car. But love had very little to do with any of that. And then…” She placed her hands on her stomach and made a boom gesture. “Baby.”
“Baby,” Will repeated. He remembered when Margo had called him to tell him she was pregnant. Her tone had been characteristically neutral, and he’d had to ask her whether she was phoning him to tell him he was about to be an uncle, or because she needed a lift to the clinic. “I’m keeping it,” she’d said. “If only to see the look on Mum’s face.”
“Just Owen, then?” Will asked.
She let out a little pfft sound, and repeated Will’s own words: “I don’t want to talk about him.”
Margo never wanted to talk about Owen. Ever since Owen left, taking a decent chunk of Margo’s heart with him, Will suspected her stony demeanor was becoming less of an act and more of a default. Not that he would ever dare say that to her face. He wasn’t stupid.
“He’s not the worst dad in the world,” Margo said, unprompted.
“No,” Will countered. “That particular honor goes to mine.” Margo didn’t argue; she just elbowed him and topped up their glasses.