Chapter 35
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
The milling crowd of journalists on the doorstep energised as I twitched back the living room curtain, assessing my exit route. They moved as one – cameras mobilised in my direction, flashbulbs firing.
“Shit.” Dropping the curtain, I stumbled back, blinking stars. “How am I going to get past that lot?”
All of them wanted to grill me. To get me to confirm me and Simon had faked everything. But we hadn’t. Not the important bits. And I had to tell Simon I knew it was real. But I’d never get the chance with this lot circling.
A touch to my shoulder made me startle. Matt raised an eyebrow.
“Calm down,” he signed. “Back door, mate. What are you waiting for?”
Sev nodded. “It’s how I came in.”
Squeezing out the garden gate, I bounded along the bin alley, striding over tufted strands of browning grass and straggling dandelions along the concrete tyre tracks leading down to the garages at the end.
A heat haze rose off the melting tarmac of the road at the end – a shimmering mirage of freedom. I was definitely dreaming.
And then I was out on the street, haring away from the house.
A shout followed me down the road, and I turned, jogging backwards a few steps. Sev’s head poked out of my bedroom window – peroxide blonde bright against the grimy pebble-dash. With unnecessary theatrics, she raised a hand to the side of her face.
“Run Forest, run!”
The pack of journalists pivoted, moving like sharks scenting blood in the water, all eyes on me.
“Oh, fuck.”
Sev’s laugh echoed along the row of houses, shrill against the hard frontages as they charged.
I darted back so fast my hamstrings twanged.
Mrs F opened her garden gate, and her dog lunged towards the lot of them, barking its tiny head off, straining to get to them. The first few flinched back. The leash stretched trip wire taut, and the dog darted between them, snapping at ankles. Shouts erupted. I didn’t stop to watch the carnage.
Pacing for the high street like Usain Bolt, or, more accurately, a startled rabbit with a pack of dogs chasing it down, adrenaline crackled through me. Jumping cracks in the pavement, striding long, I rounded the corner, darting past a mum with a buggy, a kid on a scooter.
Traffic streamed down the high street in a steady flow, and I kept on.
A bus signed for Clapham loomed over the cars down the far end of the road.
Simon’s house was around the corner from one of the stops on the route.
If the traffic lights didn’t change, I could get to the bus stop on the other side before the bus did.
Lungs burning, I pounded down the pavement, darting around pedestrians. The lights turned green. It didn’t swing into the empty stop. Request only; no one wanted to get off.
The roar of the double-decker accelerating towards the next set of traffic lights spurred me on.
I dug deeper, charging on, ignoring the muscle burn.
I could do this. The high sign of the next stop was within sight – a little white and red dot hovering on its pole further down the street. I could bloody do this.
Keeping pace with the back end of it, I raced to the next set of lights like an action hero. But there wasn’t a bomb on board. Catching up meant getting on. Seeing Simon. And Christ, what was I going to say to him? What was my plan?
The distance between me and the bus stretched out as the traffic thinned and it sped up. It roared ahead with no one to flag it down. No one on board dinging the bell.
The taillights disappeared over the curve of the hill. I slowed to walk, gagging on the humid air, breath shaking. Ducking my head between my knees, I wheezed, dripping sweat onto the pavement. I couldn’t catch that bus. Who was I kidding? Of course I couldn’t catch that bus.
I leaned against the nearest lamppost, needing it to hold me up. More cardio required. What was I doing? He’d cancelled all my bookings – he didn’t want to see me. I’d told him it was just convenient sex.
Of course he didn’t want to see me, no matter what Sev said.
This was unhinged. What did a bunch of photographs from before this mess started even mean? I hadn’t really known him then. We hadn’t known each other.
In my pocket, my phone rumbled.
Gran
Apples, eggs, white sliced. Check the use-by date. The last loaf went mouldy.
Tightness balled in my chest.
Without Simon, this was it, wasn’t it? My life. Nothing would change. Ever. I’d find new clients and I’d come home to a house full of other people’s things, and I’d get Gran’s shopping in, and I’d keep on failing to complain. I’d disappear.
And I didn’t want to.
Simon knew me inside and out. I had to take a chance.
Another bus sailed past, not stopping.
I knew him now. The bits of himself he downplayed, and his protective streak, and the way he watched me. Saw me. Cared.
I cared about him. All of him. Not just the perfectly curated parts he showed the world.
Down the high street, another bus was already coming. I sucked in a breath and started running. In front of me, the stream of taillights curved out of view over the hill, but they were slowing. And I was getting to the bus stop first if it killed me.
Head down, sprinting the distance, I didn’t dare look up at the rising growl of a bus engine roaring up behind me. One foot in front of the other. Strides flying. I would get there.
Fifty yards away, it made it to the stop, and pulled in. “Wait!”
But the bus doors flapped closed as soon as a woman hopped off the back and the looming chassis shuddered, lurching down at the gear change, ready to drive off. Stumbling forward, I banged a fist against the side. “Wait!” And stumbled over my own feet, diving down onto my knees.
The engine stopped juddering.
I peeled up from the pavement, and the driver hissed the doors open right in my face.
“Are you getting on, or what mate?”
Up the steps, near the back, I slumped down on a bristly double seat, swiping sweat out of my eyes.
Someone had etched into the glass of the grimy window.
When we rounded the corner at the traffic lights, the sun hit just right, and thinly scratched initials turned visible, ghostly inside a scrawny cartoon heart.
Some school kid had more guts than I did. Well, this was it. I had half a dozen stops to figure out what to say.
I lied. I like you a really inconvenient amount. And I think you like me too. Please don’t never speak to me again.
The light in the bay window where Simon had kissed me was off. The whole building was quiet, like visitors were no longer welcome. Funny how he didn’t have a crowd of journalists on his front door step. They probably took him seriously when he told them to piss off.
I made myself lean on his doorbell with all of my body weight. As though the over-loud chime going off inside would be audible to Simon if I leaned hard enough, or maybe it’d stop him ignoring the alert rumbling in his pocket.
The main door didn’t budge. The house stayed dormant. Shit. What if he wasn’t in? I rattled the handle, in case the intercom had silently unlocked it. No such luck. On the other side, a door clattered, and footsteps crossed the tiled hall.
The latch clicked and the door pulled in and there was Simon, filling the gap, arms folded tight across his chest.
Bang went my fantasy he’d pull me in for a kiss with swooping violins as the soundtrack, and I’d never have to explain anything at all.
“Hi?”
Oh what an excellent start.
“Hi.” Simon very much did not invite me inside. “Can I help you?”
Every word I’d meant to say crumpled into a wet heap, like I’d mentally written my speech on a napkin that had got soggy in the rain and now my handwriting was blown out and blurry.
“I don’t know?”
“Are you looking for PR representation?”
I wanted to tell him about the initials circled on the bus window, and how all the pictures were fantasy but if he really liked tortoises, I could be okay with tortoises too.
Because I was never going to be a bloody leopard.
Or a fox. I didn’t want it all to be a meaningless fumble on the back of a pack of lies.
And thinking how real it could be between us, if either of us let it, scared me witless.
My face flamed. I opened my mouth to try to explain. And closed it, because I didn’t know how to. “No.”
“Then you’re in the wrong place. That’s the only thing you might want that I can offer you. You’ve made that exceptionally clear.”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
“Simon. Can you—Stop being a dick for five minutes. Please.”
His eyebrow flashed upward. “You won’t take my calls, and now you’re standing on my doorstep calling me a dick.”
Oh kill me now.
“Look. The truth is”—I tugged a hand through the sweat-sticky ends of my hair at the nape of my neck hard enough to hurt—“I… Lied. Earlier.”
Simon stepped closer. Next to him, his front door throbbed dark and vibrant and solid and wrong. Tilting his head to meet my eyes his fingers shot out, solid and smooth on my chin, tugging me into line with him where I’d been instinctively trying to avoid his gaze.
“Better.” I probably imagined him lingering as he drew his arm back. But I wanted him to. “Keep going.”
“It’s – not convenient sex. Is it?”
Simon’s arms went back to bracing around his chest. The fantasy that this was what he wanted to hear stuttered like a skipping disc.
“Convenient wasn’t the word I’d use, no.”
“No.” I swallowed, locking every muscle in my body tight against the urge to look at my feet instead of holding his eye contact.
“So, I thought you should know I’m an idiot, and—”
Simon’s smile pulled tight. “You really didn’t have to come all the way out here to tell me that.”
“Well, fuck. Don’t hold back.” Everything I’d wanted to say unravelled in the face of his neutrality. Too bloody late to take it back now though, wasn’t it? His disappointment bloomed through me.
“I don’t need you.”
Ouch.
“Okay.” I frowned, balling my fists so tight my too-short nails bit into my palms. “Well. I – I’m sorry.” I owed him this, after refusing to trust what he wanted might really be me. Even if he didn’t want me anymore. “I thought you should know I’m sorry. Because it wasn’t convenient. Ever, really.”
He tilted his head, eyes softer. “I thought I needed you. But I don’t.”
My nostrils flared with the sting of that. “Right. Well. Anyway. I know you didn’t want to use that interview tape from Possimus. But it’s out there now.”
“For goodness sake, I told Sev not to let Mel have it—”
“I sent it to Mel.”
“You’re right,” Simon growled. “You are an idiot.”
All the air exited the world. “Great. Good to know.” The sounds of the street slid away from me. The world was just him, and it was spiralling in on itself, disappearing into nothing. Like a black hole. “I’ll jog on then.”
It wasn’t a misunderstanding, him cancelling all my bookings. Sev was wrong. He’d meant it. And I was a sweaty mess, standing on his doorstep when he didn’t even want me there.
I got all the way to the wrought iron gate at the bottom of the path, and stopped with my hand heavy on the sun-warm metal. A bubble of thick enamel paint had splintered and the edges of the scar were sharp.
“No.” I turned around. “You know what? You’re the idiot. Anyone else qualified could interpret for you; what I do is the bare fucking minimum. I’m nothing special. It’s a really shit excuse so you don’t have to admit we could have been something and—”
“I know.”
“What?”
Simon stepped down to the tiled path. The scuff of his soft-soled shoes on the gritty stone steps sounded ridiculously loud. My breath whooshed out of my chest, and my trainers melded to the ground.
His mouth softened with the promise of his smile, but it didn’t pick up. My optimistic eyes tracked the fullness of his lips anyway.
“Ben, I’ve needed you since the first day you turned up at the office. Told myself I did. And I thought – I’ve always thought – if I fucked up, and you left, that’d be it.”
Simon wouldn’t let up looking at me. “Well, I fucked up. And you left.”
“I didn’t leave. You fired me.”
“Yeah.” He stepped in closer. “I did. Because when it’s you, what I want is waking up next to you in the morning, and making you laugh. And all the ridiculous ritualistic, painfully sentimental time-wasting courting rituals don’t seem quite so horrendous.”
“Oh.”
His lips tipped up in a wry smile. “I want to catch you when you’re letting all those thoughts spiral – telling yourself you’re not good enough.
Because you are. And you always have been.
And I’m done watching you believe people who tell you you’re not.
You see me, in the middle of a room full of people who aren’t looking at anything apart from what I’m showing them.
And I think – I hope – I see you too.” He grimaced.
“I want to. And maybe, if I’m very lucky, you’ll forgive me for not trusting myself without you sooner? ”
“Oh fuck.” The step towards him I took wasn’t entirely down to me. Universal forces were definitely at play. “Simon—”
He held a hand up. “One more thing. I should have spelled this out days ago rather than leaving you to join the dots.”
“Spelled what out?”
He rolled his eyes, scuffing at the ground with one ombre-toed shoe.
“Oh for goodness sake. Read my lips for a change, Ben Cooper.”
Simon let the volume drop from his voice completely, laughter sparking in his eyes as he made his lip shapes more exaggerated. He spoke the last three words with soundless care, and I knew exactly what they were.
Joy expanded between my ribs like a helium balloon, rising me up on my toes, and I was laughing, shaking with it.
“I’ll have two?”
I crossed the distance in a heartbeat, launching into his arms.
Simon drew me close as I rumpled up his jacket reaching underneath to the warmth of his body. I kissed him hard, my hand firm on the nape of his neck, drawing him in, and he met me right where I was.
Simon Azie had always been mine to reach out and grab for. Fact.
A sharp, sickening whistle cut between us.
I flinched back, but Simon caught my wrist to stop me going anywhere, already clicking his hearing aids off.
Laughter hit along with the chalkboard scrape of our teeth clashing.
When I glanced over his shoulder, up towards the house, there was no one apart from the birds watching.
Our fingers knitted, and we stood holding hands in his front garden, next to the bin cupboard, smiling like it was the most romantic place in the world. It felt like it.
“I love you,” Simon said again. And I knew I would never get tired of watching the shape of those words in his ragged, blurry voice. Fact.
My thumb scuffed over his knuckles. “That’s convenient. Because I’m pretty sure I love you.”
Simon smiled like the sun had reappeared after six months of gloom, and I realised I really, really meant it. There was nothing but calm in the warmth of his eyes.
“So, what happens now then?” I asked.
“That, Ben Cooper, is entirely up to you.”