Chapter Forty-Five #2
Roy went very still, and it wasn’t the usual theatrical stillness he used when he was about to make a point or refuse to be emotionally vulnerable on principle, but a real one.
Like something in him had misfired and needed a moment to reboot.
Augustine watched as his mouth opened and then closed again, before, very carefully, he spoke one word. “No.”
Augustine didn’t push. She just watched him. Gave him this moment.
Roy gave a short, derisive laugh. “No,” he repeated, as if that might correct the universe. “That’s . . . I’m not dead, Augustine. I can’t be. I write. I watch television with you. I listen to music—”
“I called Steven on my way here tonight.” Augustine’s voice stayed soft.
“He told me you frightened all the other tenants away. The music. The television. Moving things around. They thought the place was haunted, and they were right. Steven tried to appease you. He kept bringing you albums. Little gifts.”
“Well, I like my music. And television. And my things,” Roy argued.
“I know,” she agreed.
“I’m not dead,” Roy said again. “I’m not.”
“I’m sorry, Roy. You are,” she insisted, maintaining a calm tone. “You died of HIV. In 1992.”
Roy let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in him for decades, but Augustine didn’t stop. She wanted to be gentle, but now that she’d started, there didn’t seem to be any kind way to stop.
“I found the memorial,” she told him. “Your obituary. Your family and friends were devastated.” A pause. “But Steven . . .”
Roy’s head tilted slightly at the name, something faintly reflexive in it.
“Steven was inconsolable. For a long time.”
That name seemed to spark something within him, and Roy swallowed.
“You’ve been here a long time,” Augustine carried on. “Long enough for things to blur. For your memory to falter. For the people you’re waiting for to move on.”
Roy gave a short, brittle laugh. “So, what? You’re saying I don’t matter?”
It was so close to what Theo had said that Augustine had to take a deep breath at the memory.
“No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. You mattered,” she added. “You still do. Steven hasn’t touched this place in three decades because he was so happy here with you.”
That seemed to quieten him. Roy looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers once, like he was checking they still belonged to him.
“I remember being sick. But I don’t remember dying,” he said eventually.
“I know. Steven says you were pretty out of it by the end. They gave you a lot of morphine. It probably felt like you just drifted away.”
“You said it was 1992? You mean I missed the Spice Girls and Girl Power?”
Augustine gave a faint, sad huff of laughter. “Sorry,” she said. “I know. It sucks. At least Steven brought you the albums.”
Roy looked back up at her slowly. “He brought me a new one when he was here the other day. I watched him fix the pipe, and then he . . . he left the album on my chair. Told me I’d love it before he left.”
“Oh, Roy.”
“I thought of you when I played it,” Roy confessed. “It was called you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.”
“Olivia Rodrigo.” Augustine nodded. “I’ll have to take a listen.” She paused. “Steven loved you. He still loves you.”
“I know. We bought this place together,” Roy said, his gaze travelling over the furniture, the walls. Every inch of it that he could see. “It was our home.”
“I know that, too.” She took a deep breath. “I also know that Steven lives over in Crystal Palace now. With his . . . husband.”
Roy sat up. “He got married?”
“Yes. He’s really happy.”
Augustine felt a tight, aching knot in her stomach that had nothing to do with Theo or her own grief.
No, this pain was for Roy, and what he must be going through.
Because this, Augustine knew, was the part that hurt.
Not the not knowing. Not the jokes, or the deflection, or the half-life he’d been living in this flat for decades. It was the knowing.
Still, she held her ground, because he needed it. “Steven waited. For a long time. It was like he was on pause,” she added gently, trying to find a way to help him understand.
“What are you talking about? He didn’t wait. He left almost as soon as I died,” Roy said bitterly.
“He was heartbroken. He went home to his family. Moved in with his mum for a time.”
“His mum?” Roy winced. “Really? I mean Pamela was lovely and all, but she was a lot.”
"He needed it at the time. But, Roy, being on pause . . . it isn’t living. It isn’t peace.”
Roy didn’t look away this time.
“So, he built something else,” she said. “A life. Not instead of you. Just . . . after you.”
Roy swallowed. “And I didn’t,” he stated.
Augustine shook her head, just slightly. “No,” she said. “You stayed. You were on pause too, I think. You could’ve followed him, stayed with him, but you didn’t. You just haunted here.”
“I thought—” Roy started, then stopped. “I thought if I stayed here, then . . . I don’t know.
” He gave a weak, almost self-conscious laugh.
“He’d come back one day. Or I’d remember properly.
Or something would . . . fix. Mostly, I think I was scared to leave,” he admitted.
“Scared of what I’d find. What I’d see.”
Augustine didn’t interrupt.