Chapter 34
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Sev charged up to the back door faster than I’d ever seen her run. Frantically rattling the handle, she tapped at the glass like an out of place bird trying to get in. Except, a lot more sweary.
“Ben Cooper, you shit. Open this bloody door right now!”
Behind her, half way up the path, Mrs F brandished the inner-tube of a roll of kitchen towel in one hand, and her empty recycling box in the other, yelling incomprehensibly. Exactly like she did to get the local cats out of her garden.
Neighbourly relations – trending down.
Twisting the key in the lock, I yanked the garden door open and Sev dove inside, scrabbling to get behind me.
“You alright Mrs F?”
Our neighbour’s eyes turned thunderous.
“Do you know this one, do you?” She wasn’t looking at me, so much as trying to keep Sev locked in her sights. “Caught her sneaking around by the bins. And I won’t stand for it.” She flashed me a distracted glance, hands firm on her hips. “Do you hear me?”
“I do.” Nodding emphatically seemed like the way to go. “I definitely do hear you. I’m sorry about everyone out on the pavement.”
Oh why had I apologised? It was hardly my fault they were there.
“Don’t give me sorry. I want them gone. Scum of the earth bottom-feeders, peering in my net curtains.” The kitchen roll tube crumpled in her grip, and it sagged sadly. “I’ll tell your landlord.” Her voice quivered. “I will. Don’t think I won’t. Just because my Harry’s not around anymore.”
“I’m dealing with it.” The lie knotted my throat. Hadn’t I learnt anything about the wisdom of sticking to the truth? But she was upset, wasn’t she? And it was all my fault. No wonder she wanted us out. Mrs F’s death-glare softened, barely.
“You better do. If Charlie gets out and ravages one of them, it’ll be on your conscience.”
“Okay.” Solemn nodding implied deep understanding and remorse. Right? “Really sorry Mrs F. Thank you Mrs F. See you later Mrs F.”
The backdoor hissed softly over the draft exclusion around the frame as I slammed it closed. Sev sagged with relief.
“Why are you here?” I demanded.
“I need to show you something.”
“So you climbed over my back fence?”
She scoffed. “Don’t be dense, I used the gate. You’ve got a bunch of journalists clogging up the pavement out front – as your neighbour was rightly complaining about.”
Sweeping past me, she poured just-boiled water into one of the waiting mugs and the teabag inflated itself.
Matt’s bemusement-levels turned critical. “Come in,” he signed. “Help yourself why don’t you?” He swept an intensely sarcastic bow, and Sev patted him on the shoulder.
“Ta. Brilliant.” She thumbs-upped with emotion, signing right back at him. “You got any sugar?”
I double-took, jaw creaking open at her broad, blunt gestures, cupping an invisible mug.
“Since when do you know BSL?” Automatically, I slowed my hand gestures right down to beginner speed.
“Jo’s shown me a bit.”
“But—”My brain malfunctioned, glitching as I glanced between Matt and her. “Simon said no one in his family uses it.”
Matt snorted a gruff laugh. “He’s such a liar.” His hand reached to grow his nose from his face, like Pinnoccio.
Sev grimaced. “Sorry – can you do your thing Ben? I do not have the vocab for this.”
I nodded, already interpreting her apology for Matt, lagging a bit in repeating him back to her. She could wait. “Matt said he’s a liar.”
Sev nodded with enthusiasm. “Exactly. At this point, Simon’s entire lifeblood is rearranging the truth. I’m not marrying into a family of total sociopaths, thank you very much.”
“Why would he say that then?” I asked, speaking and signing at the same time.
“Maybe because you offered him BSL tuition instead of asking him on a date?”
Matt winced as soon as I translated. “Error.”
“No, but—”Had I really done that? The world swam sideways. “But he doesn’t even like—”
Matt punched me in the shoulder, signs slowed right down for Sev, face animated. “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.”
Well, fuck. What did he know?
“You should listen to your flatmate more. Seems like he got all the common sense.”
“Cheers Sev. Thanks. The pair of you. Why are you here again?”
She sighed. “Ok. Look. Mel’s given Simon until the end of the day to come up with a response to Luke’s article.”
“And? He’s already got one. He was filming everything we said at lunch.”
She grimaced. “Yeah. He was. And I’ve wasted yet another Saturday editing it so it doesn’t come across like the pair of you being ambushed.”
Sev being here was about more damage control. Simon couldn’t even be bothered to come himself.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Simon’s refusing to use it.”
“What?”
Mel Booker would be baying for Simon’s blood until something surfaced to push Luke and his inconvenient questions back into the long grass. He had the perfect solution, unearthing all my family’s dirty laundry. There should have been nothing stopping him unleashing it on the world.
“And you’re refusing to speak to him. And if he gets fired he is going to try to muscle in on Jo’s ad campaigns, and between the two of us, someone is going to murder him.”
I stared at her, cogs hamster-wheeling in my brain. “Why would he do that?”
Sev gave me a long hard look, both eyebrows up.
“You’re seriously confused about why – when you told him he’d crossed a line – he has not commenced plastering the internet with your private life?”
I scowled. “It’s his job though, isn’t it?”
“Oh my god, you might actually be beyond help.” Slipping off her backpack, Sev dug out her laptop. “Come here.”
She dragged me into my own hall like she owned the place.
And stopped abruptly in the doorway of the living room.
“Is that a garden table?”
“Don’t.”
Flipping her laptop open, she handed it over to me and slouched back into the sofa.
“What’s this?”
A slideshow flicked through on an automatic timer, spinning me pictures. The first one was a zoomed in version of a shot from a work social, or maybe a publicity event. Only me and Simon filled the frame.
Not what I wanted to see.
But Sev batted my hand away before I could slam the lid closed.
“No you don’t. I spent bloody hours trawling all the events over the last three years looking for passable shots of the pair of you together. You’re going to look at them.”
“What’s the point? We’re not together. We never had a relationship. And I really don’t want to.”
“I don’t give a flying crap what you want right now Ben. You’re going to sit down and look through all eighty-seven of these pictures, and then you can try telling me Simon doesn’t like you.”
Sheer murder glittered in Sev’s bloodshot eyes. Eighty-seven pictures must have taken forever to find.
“When did you get these?”
“When I was digging things out to put on Social. Jo may have helped me.”
Picture after picture scrolled across the screen. Both of us in all of them. I folded my arms, defensive already. She’d had a brief in mind – to make us look like a couple. She must have gone out of her way to find stills where you could trace the thread of a gaze from one of us to the other.
They all seemed to do that.
One showed Simon staring at my mouth while I spoke.
In another, I looked so sickeningly earnest as I gazed into his eyes, it was a wonder we hadn’t been hauled in front of HR.
Sev thought she had evidence, but it wasn’t true.
This – all of these – showed us talking, wrapped up in two-way communication with a focus not many hearing people knew how to deliver. That was all any of it was.
The next picture faded in. A little further out – Simon looking past the people he was chatting with, across the crowd, to me, our bodies tilted towards each other across the space. The connection between us was obvious. The glimmer of a laugh in his eyes matched the one in mine.
The rest of the crowd could have been in monochrome – only the pair of us picked out in colour. Two humans in a room full of waxworks.
My heart clenched painfully. This wasn’t real. It was a mirage of what I wanted. Simon had only been looking because we’d been signing across the room.
“I was talking to him,” I snapped, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyeballs. “That’s how signing works, Sev – you have to bloody look at each other.”
Sev huffed. “Oh my god, I could brain you. Listen, Ben. I think Simon is an idiot for getting into this situation, and I really would much rather he disentangled his personal life from his job. I have not enjoyed wasting hours of my life constructing the pair of you a passable virtual footprint. But open your fucking eyes and look at what is right in front of you before I flip out and shank you with my multitool.”
I swallowed hard, eyeballing her in alarm. No doubt she would do it.
“Sorry.” She held up a hand, finger stretched wide, jittering slightly. “One too many energy drinks.”
I nodded slowly, and she jabbed at the screen again.
“That,” she said, a ring of preemptive triumph in her voice, “is not communication.”
On screen, I stared down into the bottom of my champagne glass, hovering at the edge of the room.
I remembered being there. A gallery opening night. Simon in a purple jacket with velvet on the collar, and me out of my depth, surrounded by politicians.
He’d come out of his bubble, away from the crowd, and leaned against the wall, right next to me. I hadn’t realised it was me he was watching – his entire face at ease. The deep, settled contentment had to have more to do with the alcohol than me.
In the next shot I peered up at him, the same glimmer in my eyes too.
“See,” Sev crowed, like she’d proved everything.
I opened my mouth, about to protest. But she shushed me.
“And here.” She flicked to another image. Another party. Another corner away from the group. “And here.”
A team bonding exercise with Simon beaming at me, arm slung over my shoulders. “And here.”
I squinted at a figure in the background – Richard. But Simon wasn’t looking in his direction. He’d joked around with me all afternoon.
“But he doesn’t like me.”
Sev raised both eyebrows. “Really, are you still going with that?”
She slapped the lid of her laptop closed, shaking her head, jaw tight with her exasperation.
“You know what? Fine. Do nothing. Let whatever you might have had burn to the ground before it gets too real, so he doesn’t get to reject you first. Entirely up to you.
I don’t give a shit as long as you get on with it.
His wedding speech is going to be bloody awful if he’s still got a broken heart by then. ”
“Broken heart?”
“Should I try again in BSL? It might take me a while, but you don’t seem to be following.”
I swallowed sharply. The sting in my eyes took me by surprise.
“You said he wasn’t interested. You said he always does this. That it didn’t mean anything!”
Sev rolled her eyes. “Oh don’t blame me sunshine.
Since when do you let people outside of your relationship dictate your relationship decisions?
You know who does that? Total idiots.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Anyway, I didn’t say he didn’t like you.
I said he always does this. By which I meant: get tangled up and pretend he doesn’t care. ”
I buried my head in my hands. “Oh my god.”
“Did you seriously think Jo would suggest bringing you to our wedding if she thought it had anything to do with selling this fake-dating nonsense? Think for one minute, why she would let her brother hijack her already less than dream wedding for a fucking PR stunt. Because, spoiler alert – she wouldn’t.
She knows exactly what he’s like. And it looks like you’re both as bad as each other. ”
“Oh my god. It’s a bit bloody late for you to be telling me he liked me all along now. He’s basically back with Richard, isn’t he?”
Sev blinked twice. “Did he say that?”
“Oh come on. You edited the film. You saw exactly what Richard said.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking about Simon. Did he say ‘screw you Ben, I’m getting back with Richard’ at any point?”
I scowled. “He didn’t need to, did he? It just makes sense.”
Sev rested one ankle on her knee leaning back.
“Wow. You really are unforgivably spineless.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s crap. All this Richard’s better than me garbage. You’re scared, mate. You’re fucking terrified he’s going to look at you and see you. Yeah, Simon’s an uncommunicative idiot, but, I’ll give him this: I think he already does – see you. I think he has for a long bloody time.
“And what are you doing? You’ve finally figured out he actually likes you – which apparently you’ve managed to miss in your perpetual self-doubt spiral, even when he was telling you to your face.
Which, by the way, is not a good look. And you’re still sitting here fighting with me instead of doing something about it. ”
My mouth hinged itself open. Had I been reading Simon wrong the whole time? What if he’d really meant every kind thing he ever said to me?
Oh god. Sev might have a point.
“You – erm.” Everything went adrenaline jangly. I cleared my throat. “Really think he likes me?”
“Oh dear god. I cannot do this. I am not this person. Will you please get it together. Right now.”
“Okay.” I grabbed for my phone, fingers sweaty on the screen. “I’ll call him.”
Sev batted it out of my hand. “No you bloody don’t. This is an in-person conversation. Take a risk, Ben Cooper. One of you needs to wake the fuck up.”