When we left, the night was cool after the hot club. We had to wait ages for a minivan taxi. The driver wanted to know why we were getting out in the middle of nowhere.
“My uncle’s got a caravan in the next field.”
After he sped off muttering about pikeys, we waited till the road was empty and climbed over the gate. It was like the first day at the manor, only now it was night, and there were five of us, not four.
In the rose garden, the air was heavy with scent. Em had made colored-paper lanterns and put tea lights inside. She borrowed Marcus’s lighter and managed to set fire to two before he took it from her and did the job himself.
“Why don’t boys dance?” When she was drunk, Em sort of looked out of one eye at you.
“There were plenty dancing.”
“But not you three. Sitting in a corner drinking like old men.” She had the radio in her lap and was sliding the tuner between the stations, slipping between voices and static and crackling music, and I was struck by the otherworldliness of it, as though the stations were not channels but glimpses of other times and places. Suddenly a big band, loud and clear, the kind Mrs. East listened to.
“Andy and Peter can dance,” Em said. “Mrs. East taught them. Show them. Show them how you do it.” And she wouldn’t give up till we did, demonstrating the few steps we knew, gliding up and down the worn stones.
Peter’s touch was light. I fought the urge to hold him, to dig my fingers in. I had that last feeling—last orders, last dance, last summer, last goodbye. The song ended and he let me go like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Em wanted a turn with Peter. Marcus wouldn’t dance with me, wouldn’t let me pull him to his feet, so I asked David. Mrs. East said you could tell what a man was like by dancing with him. David was careful, attuned to everything, pleasant, a quick learner. I saw him cast a glance at Marcus.
“Sure you don’t want to take over?”
So I learned nothing new from dancing with him, unless it was that he didn’t want to be known.
But then, when the music came to an end and we stepped apart, David gave a little exhale when he let go of me. It was the kind you might make after crossing a fast-flowing river via a slippery log. The kind made when you thought at last you were safe.
I heard it and looked up, and saw David realize he’d been found out. But he didn’t look away, and there passed between us something I can only call complicity.
And that was it, I think, the real beginning. That quick out-breath.
CHAPTER 10
SWIPE LEFT
The bus rattled over Vauxhall Bridge, and the Thames—black and gleaming—ran beneath us. So much water, as though somewhere a dam had broken. On my lap I held the telephone box from Peter’s flat in a carrier bag Adewale had given me.
“It’s mine,” I told him.
“Of course,” he said carefully, and then, “Please will you go now?”
I rather wanted to stay. I had a friend once, an Irishman, Danny, who let me keep him company during his night shifts. He worked security at a shopping center in Stratford, ignoring the flickering feed of empty aisle and car park in favor of books he bought at a market by the river, rubbing his grizzled chin as he tried to teach me chess in the small hours. On Sundays, we walked the city.
“This is where Shakespeare washed his socks.” Or, “Here’s where Jonson killed his man, Andy.”
Danny promising to show me Galway, never showing a sign of wanting to lay a hand on me. There had always been people I wanted to talk to, and people I wanted to touch. On the whole, they had been distinct groups.
On my fingers, I counted the years since I’d been with someone, since I’d properly made an effort to get to know someone. To let someone know me.
At the lights, as though following my thoughts, the bus gave a mortal, shuddering sigh. A taxi would have been quicker, but the bus had been approaching and going in the right direction. Perhaps I’d wanted the company.
All around, heads were bent over phones. At each stop, the eyes flickered up. Danny had been proof that kindness was unavoidable, even if you weren’t looking for it. Still, who knew when one of us would start knifing another or kicking someone down the stairs. A group of beery lads got on and the beauty in the row in front turned toward the window and brought her arm up to shield her face, like a rich man concealing his Rolex within his sleeve.
The cafes were closed now, and the restaurants. A take-away glimmered here and there like hope eternal. In Chelsea, the hospital rooms were darkened, the corridors emitting a weak fluorescent glow. At Sloane Square, a man swung into the seat beside me and opened Tinder, swiping left at each woman’s picture like a person with a nervous tic. What’s wrong with that one, or that one? I wanted to say. You’ll run out if you go on like that. Only he wouldn’t, of course.
I snuck a glance at his face, youngish, not un-handsome, but his brow was furrowed, his cuticles gnawed raw, as though rather than looking for a potential date, he was grimly searching for the perpetrator of a crime that had been committed against him. The thought made me smile, and I turned to the window before he could notice.
I imagined turning back to him and saying, My name’s Andrea! I like working and have no hobbies whatsoever. Bet you can’t guess what’s in the carrier bag. And him drawing down his finger across my face. Left or right?
But after he got off, and for the last leg of the journey home, I took my phone out and quickly found myself doing exactly the same. Looking at the potentials in their sports kit and on beaches, holding puppies, or leaping out of planes. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left.
Because there were so many faces, but none of them—it appeared—ever the face I was looking for.
CHAPTER 11
ENCHANTED PALACE II
We played on through August. The animating spirit that kept the game alive, kept us circling the manor’s grounds, kept up its whisper. Under my feet grass, stone, wood. The birds at dusk. The air so thin, so endless. The light draining, the dew falling. The moon hung over the cornfields and the clouds ran in herds over her face.
David standing beside me on the steps, the shadow of the house cutting across them like a saw blade. Summer was teetering at its height, poised to fall.
Come September I’d work for Darren full-time, do bookkeeping and computer classes in the evenings. Marcus would be Darren’s right hand. Em would do her art foundation. In October, Peter would go to Oxford. David would write the letter, get off the hook. I asked him what he’d do then.
“Why don’t you look at me when you’re talking to me, Andy?”
I repeated the question. “Re-takes then Uni? Travel? A job? Must have lots of chances. Dads of kids you went to posh school with.”
“And you? Going to stay here and become a child bride? Look at me.”
I looked at him. Tiny flecks of amber ringed his pupils. In the right light, scowling, Marcus looked like a Levi’s model, but David, his bones were just right. I liked his skull, and teeth, and hair. His skin. He moved just so. I begrudged him all of it.
“Peter talks a lot of shit sometimes, doesn’t he?” David looked uncertain. He was being serious. “I mean, a pinch of salt. After we took the pills, after you’d gone, he was coming out with all kinds of stuff.”