Jack reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“How are you doing today anyway?”
“Today?” I bat my eyes, shrugging like I don’t know what he means. Jack rolls his eyes. “What’s today?” I keep it going.
He gives me a look, nods at my plate. Breakfast hash.
I push the plate away from me. It’s not as good as the ones I used to make anyway.
October 30th. My brother’s birthday.33 Barely thought of him once.
“Are you going to send him something?”
“Of course not.” I shake my head.
Jack gives me a gentle shrug. “It might be a nice peace offering…”
“I don’t want a peace offering,” I lie. And I know it won’t work. If there was ever a thing that was going to work for my brother and me to be okay again, it’s already happened and it didn’t change a thing.34
“Come on.” I clap my hands together. “I have to go and put dinner on.”
“She’s very good,” Tiller announces, pulling me down onto his lap and leaning back into his chair.
“It was a roast chicken—” I roll my eyes at him and he wraps his arms around me tighter.
“How’s it going with that guy,35 Jacko?” Tiller nods his chin at him.
“Yeah, good—” Jack tries not to smile too much. “We’ve been together a month now, bit more—”
“What’s his name again?” Tiller looks between us.
“August Waterhouse,” I announce.
“Producer.” Tiller nods. “Got it. I remember. Sick, man — I’m glad it’s going well.”
Jack smiles and opens his mouth to say something before glancing around our apartment. “Why do you have so many roses everywhere?”
I glance around at the six bouquets in the dining room alone.
“Oh—” I shrug. “Tiller sends me flowers all the time.”
Tiller sniffs a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
I turn back to look at him. “What?”
“I don’t send you flowers.” He gestures to the flowers. “These aren’t from me.”
“Are you sure?” I frown.
“Am I sure I’m not sending you flowers?” He gives me a look. “Yeah.”
“But you come in with them sometimes—”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “They’d just be sitting there at the door—”
I blink. “You’ve never sent me roses?”
“You thought I was sending you flowers all this time and you’ve never once said thank you?” He sits up.
“Oh my God.” I roll my eyes, shifting in his lap. “They’re roses, not the Hope Diamond — you pass them to me, I say thank you, that’s a perfectly acceptable exchange.”
Jack gets up and starts poking through a bouquet.
“No cards—” I tell him. Never cards. I turn back to Tiller. “I just thought they were from you.”
Tiller shifts, tensing underneath me a little. Holds me different. His face flicks into worried mode. He looks from me to Jack.
“Hemmes?” he suggests.
I shake my head. “We haven’t spoken since—”36 It catches in my thought so I catch Tiller’s eye to steady myself. “Since that night here.”
His face pulls — that was a hard night for him — but he nods.
“Romeo?” Jack throws out there.
“Hates me.” I flash them both a brave smile.37
Tiller’s hand rests on the small of my back as he sighs. “Your brother?”
I shake my head. “Also hates me.”38
A cloud settles over the room that I feel the need to swat away, so I jump to my feet and start clearing the plates.
“It’s probably just a mistake—” I shrug.
“What?” Jack and Tiller frown in unison.
“Like, someone’s got the address wrong, and they’re trying to send flowers to the fit girl upstairs.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “Dais, you are the fit girl upstairs.”
I bend over and touch Tiller’s worried face. “It’s nothing, Tills. Just some poor dyslexic’s dosh down the drain—” I give him a light-hearted shrug. “They’re not for me.”
* * *
1 Eventually. A melatonin and four guided meditations later.
2 A conflict of interests, his boss told him.
3 Doesn’t like leafy greens, my boyfriend.
4 And if Killian Tiller thinks that a rocket leaf is interchangeable with baby spinach, I honestly can’t help him.
5 Bayswater
6 Which — to reiterate — I am now.
7 Because he’s an idiot.
8 Because they’re all idiots.
9 Also possibly idiots.
10 Even though everything in me really just wanted to call my brother.
11 Yes, Jago Benz. The one from the band. He’s only here some of the time, most of the time he’s in New York.
12 I guess because old habits die hard.
13 Or perhaps because I will defend my brother whether I want to or not and til my death.
14 Somewhere in South America, Miguel told me without my asking him.
15 I managed to say that without outwardly resembling the cracked egg I feel like inside.
16 Which, to refresh you, is an investigator with the NCA.
17 I’d later find out that he’d listen out for things about me and my brother, just in case, because he knew I was alone.
18 Who was — by the way — very dramatic about the entire thing, saying I should have been living with him, that this would have never happened if I’d had a housemate, he knew we should have gotten a flat together, and I said, “With all due respect, Jack — you had a spider the size of a 1p coin in your laundry room the other day and made me come to get rid of it, so my expectations for how you’d deal with a robber aren’t currently sky high.”
19 Which, to refresh you, is an investigator with the NCA.
20 And because he was hoping to get a look at the Sexy Police Officer.
21 That absolute child of a man.
22 Still is. Concern is so cute on men like him. Endearing somehow, not patronising.
23 Makes me smile when I think about it now. It’s so Tiller to be measured.
24 The other him. The one I love but can’t love anymore, because I’m normal now.
25 And, sort of reluctantly, Taura. I don’t really know how she wormed her way in here, but anyway.
26 Try though I do, daily. I also do not let him in my house, just to be difficult. One time I did let him in to do a wee though.
27 ‘I have always liked you and I’ve always wanted some version of this.’ is what I do not say out loud to him.
28 And I don’t think I will ever.
29 The dodgy one, on Queensway.
30 More than anything and painfully so.
31 I still don’t.
32 Hhhh.
33 Thirty-One today.
34 And I don’t want to talk about it.
35 Brace yourself. Big news!
36 Since that one night where nothing changed.
37 Like saying that doesn’t make me sick to my stomach.
38 I force a smile because it’ll ward off the crying.
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