Chapter 14
Philip
By the time the taxi pulls up outside Sophie’s house in Herne Bay, I feel wrung out.
Not physically.
Though that too.
Just... scraped thin.
Like the last forty-eight hours have used up more of me than they had any right to.
I pay the driver, haul my bag out, and stand on the pavement for a second staring at the familiar front garden with its plastic football goal, abandoned scooters, and one bicycle tipped sideways in the flowerbed.
Before I can ring the bell, the front door flies open.
“UNCLE PHIL!”
Two small bodies launch themselves at my knees.
I stagger, grabbing the doorframe before all three of us go down.
“Well,” I mutter, “good to know you’re both still essentially feral.”
Jamie peers around me immediately.
“Where’s Heath?”
Straight in.
Beyond them, Sophie is standing in the hallway with a tea towel over one shoulder and the expression of a woman who has already broken up three fights and wiped something unidentifiable off a wall.
“There he is,” she says. “The elusive traveller.”
I disentangle myself from nephews and carry my bag inside.
“Hello to you too.”
She kisses my cheek distractedly.
“Noah, stop pushing your brother. Jamie, socks.”
From the living room comes the relentless gunfire noise of a video game.
Matty.
“Hi, Phil,” he calls.
Leaning slightly, I catch sight of him on the sofa, headset on, controller in hand.
“Hi, Matty.”
Sophie shuts the door, checks behind me, then returns her attention to me.
“Where’s Heath?”
“He’s not here.”
“I can see that.”
Jamie tugs my sleeve.
“Did he die?”
“No.”
“Did you lose him?”
“No.”
Sophie points to the kitchen.
“Boys. Crisps.”
They disappear at speed.
She folds her arms.
“He’s not dead, he’s not lost, and yet there is no hamster.”
I take off my coat.
“He’s staying with someone.”
Sophie goes still.
Then one eyebrow lifts.
“With someone.”
“Yes.”
She says nothing for a second, then turns and walks into the kitchen.
I follow because I know that silence.
It means interrogation with tea.
The kettle goes on. Mugs come out. She turns.
“Who is someone?”
I sit down.
“Tea first.”
“Name first.”
I rub a hand over the back of my neck.
“Mark.”
Sophie pauses.
“Mark,” she repeats. “Is that a friend?”
“No.”
“A colleague?”
“No.”
“Have I heard you mention him before?”
“No.”
She leans back against the counter. “Tea can wait. Start talking.”
So I do.
Not all of it.
Not the parts that still feel too warm under my skin.
Not the way his mouth had felt against mine in the hallway that morning.
Not the way his hands had settled at my waist like they had been designed specifically to hold me steady while every sensible instinct in me made a break for the nearest exit.
But enough.
The pub.
The conversation.
Whitstable.
Heath’s dramatic relocation and Mark taking it all in stride.
The beach house.
Breakfast.
The seagull incident, because Sophie has always understood disaster better when small animals are involved.
The fact that Mark had offered to keep Heath before I had to bring him here.
By the time I finish, the tea has been made, gone slightly too strong, and Sophie is sitting opposite me with both hands around her mug.
She has not interrupted once.
Which is how I know I am in serious trouble.
From the living room, Matty shouts something at his headset.
Noah yells, “Mum, Jamie put a crisp in the sofa!”
Sophie closes her eyes briefly and heads to the doorway.
“Jamie, remove the crisp from the sofa.”
A pause.
Then, “With your hand, not your mouth.”
I focus on my tea.
The ordinary chaos should help.
It doesn’t.
There are muffled giggles from my nephews when Sophie comes back and sits down again.
“So,” she says quietly, “this wasn’t just a weekend.”
“It was supposed to be.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
No.
It isn’t.
My thumb traces the handle of the mug.
“I don’t know what it was.”
Sophie’s expression loosens, but not enough to let me off.
“Do you like him?”
“Yes.”
Too quick.
Too honest.
Her eyes sharpen.
“Do you more than like him?”
The kitchen window offers an easy place to put my eyes while I avoid hers. The narrow strip of garden, the plastic slide, the washing line turning gently in the wind.
“I've known him for two days.”
“Again,” she says, “not what I asked.”
I press my lips together.
When I finally turn back, she is still watching me.
My sister has always been able to do that. Sit across from me and wait until I run out of places to hide.
“He felt important,” I say at last.
The words sound absurdly small for something that has managed to take up this much space inside me.
Sophie nods once, like that is an answer she understands.
“What’s he like?”
I think of Mark in his kitchen. Mark with Heath tucked safely against his chest. Mark saying better than nothing in that infuriatingly calm voice.
“He’s calm,” I say. “But not detached. He notices things. He listens properly.”
Sophie gives me a faint look.
“You are aware most people think they listen properly.”
“He does.”
“How?”
My fingers tighten slightly around the mug.
“When he looks at you, it feels like he wants the real answer. Not the easy one.”
Something flickers across her face.
Recognition.
Longing.
Maybe both.
From the living room, Matty laughs loudly at something on the game. He still hasn’t come into the kitchen. Hasn’t asked if Sophie needs anything. Hasn’t noticed one child is now running past the doorway in a superhero cape made from what looks suspiciously like a fitted sheet.
Sophie hears it too.
Her mouth tightens, then smooths.
“He sounds like a good man,” she says.
“He is.”
Immediate.
Certain.
Her attention drops to her tea.
“You know, I hate that phrase sometimes.”
“What phrase?”
“Good man.”
I wait.
She turns the mug slowly between her hands.
“People call men good for the bare minimum. He doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t hit you. He goes to work. He pays bills. Like that’s romance. Like that’s character.”
Her voice is steady.
Too steady.
“Matty is a good guy,” she says.
The words sit there.
Flat.
Tired.
“He’s not cruel. He’s not a monster. He loves the boys. I know he does.” Her gaze flicks briefly towards the living room. “But loving people isn’t the same as showing up for them.”
Something twists in my gut.
“Soph.”
She shakes her head quickly.
“I’m fine.”
It’s an old lie. Practised. Almost tidy.
She gives me a brittle smile.
“Honestly. I have a house, two children, a husband who doesn’t do anything technically awful. Plenty of people would tell me to be grateful.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“No,” she says softly. “You wouldn’t.”
For a moment neither of us speaks.
The boys thunder past the kitchen doorway, one of them wearing a cape, the other holding a toilet roll tube like a sword.
Sophie doesn’t even turn round.
“I think that’s why I envy you sometimes,” she says.
“Me?”
“You. Your world.” She gives a small shrug. “Not the difficult bits. Obviously not the difficult bits. Not Mum and Dad being spectacularly shit, or strangers deciding they get an opinion, or any of that.”
My throat tightens.
“But when a man loves another man enough to say it out loud anyway...” She trails off, searching for it. “Enough to choose him publicly. To stand there and claim him when half the world would still rather he didn’t...”Her eyes lift to mine.
“There’s something unbearably romantic about that.”
I say nothing.
Because I know she is not talking theoretically anymore.
She is talking about Mark.
“With straight people,” she goes on, “how do you know sometimes if it’s actually love or if it’s just convenience? Timing. Habit. The fact everyone expects man meets woman, man sticks around, everyone applauds because he remembered Valentine’s Day once.”
Irritatingly, a faint breath of amusement escapes me.
She keeps going, quieter now.
“Men can do the bare bloody minimum in straight relationships and get handed medals for being decent. Show up, don’t cheat too obviously, occasionally buy flowers from a petrol station, and suddenly they’re Prince Charming.”
“That is a depressingly low bar.”
“It’s subterranean,” she says. “And everyone still acts grateful.”
A reluctant smile tugs at my mouth, but she is not joking.
“What I mean is...” She twists her mug between her fingers. “When there are actual obstacles, when loving someone is harder, when claiming them means something, then being chosen must feel enormous.”
I meet her gaze.
“Not because gay relationships are magically better. I know they’re not.
People are still people. But if someone loves you enough to make it visible, enough to be proud of it, enough to say yes, this one, this is mine, when life would often let them hide...
” She shakes her head. “That has to feel different.”
I don’t answer, because I think I know what she means.
“And with us,” she says, lowering her gaze again, “sometimes I think women are expected to be grateful just because a man stayed.”
The kitchen goes very quiet.
Because there it is.
Not envy of my sexuality.
Envy of certainty.
Envy of being wanted in a way that looks unmistakable.
My grip tightens on the mug.
Sophie watches me.
“Did he ask you to stay?”
“No.”
“Did he want to?”
I don’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
She leans back.
“And did you want him to?”
A humourless laugh slips out.
“That would have been completely impractical.”
“Philip.”
“What?”
“I asked if you wanted him to. Not whether your calendar approved.”
My eyes lift to hers, then drop again.
“Yes,” I say.
Quiet enough that it almost disappears.
But Sophie hears it.
Of course she does.
“Then why did you leave?”
My focus drops to the tea between my hands.
Because I’m moving on Wednesday.
Because my life is packed into boxes.
Because I know how to make sensible choices.
Because wanting something after two days is absurd.
Because if I stayed, I might have had to admit the safe life I chose suddenly felt very small.
“Because staying felt more dangerous,” I say.
Sophie nods slowly.
“Dangerous because of him?”
I shake my head.
“No.”
“Then because of you?”
That hits clean.
My head comes up.
She gives me a sad little smile.
“That’s usually the one.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
So I say nothing.
Sophie reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers.
“Maybe Toronto is still right,” she says. “Maybe Mark was just this intense, beautiful weekend you’ll think about for years when you’re drunk or lonely or pretending you’re neither.”
My throat works once.
“And maybe,” she continues, “he isn’t.”
My chest aches.
“That is deeply unhelpful.”
“I know.”
She squeezes my hand.
“I’m your sister. I’m contractually obliged to be irritating and correct.”
My lips twitch.
It doesn’t last.
Sophie’s gaze stays on mine.
“Just don’t make safe choices and call them brave ones.”
The sentence hits harder than I want it to.
From the living room, Matty shouts, “Babe, have we got any more crisps?”
Sophie closes her eyes.
For one second all the exhaustion she usually hides is right there on her face.
Then she stands.
“In the cupboard,” she calls.
“They’re not there.”
“They are.”
A pause.
“Oh. Yeah.”
She glances at me and gives the smallest shrug.
See?
She doesn’t say it.
She doesn’t need to.
My attention drops to my tea.
To my hand where hers had been.
To the phone lying face down on the table.
Mark has Heath.
I have a flight on Wednesday.
And somewhere between those two facts, something has started to hurt.