Out of the Woods - 4. Evidence, in Each and Every Room

Two years ago, in our final year of GCSEs, I had been filled by a sudden and terrible premonition: a school full of kids, some my age, most younger, but none older—and, garishly tied around the collar of each and every one, was a brightly coloured tie. A house tie.

And I was wandering through the ranks of my fellow schoolmates, arranged in lines as if in assembly—and I was lost amongst them, and unable to find my way out, and etched onto each face that I saw was the same belittling sneer. I looked down at my own tie and realised that they sneered because they already had their house tie, and I did not; and I was so ashamed.

I may as well have been naked.

And so, to avoid this premonition, in my final year of GCSEs I decided to work towards my house tie. I participated in as many house events as I could—and one of them was house choir.

It always took place just before Christmas and required months of practices.

On the night of the performance I made my way to the music department slowly, walking in the dark. I loved the school grounds in the dark; I loved being immersed in it, knowing that while I made my way over the playing fields I was swallowed up, invisible to anyone more than a foot away. I loved the feeling of passively watching for the trees on the sidelines as they detached themselves from the black, looming closer, for a while lingering within the realm of the barely distinguishable, so that I was made to wonder whether it was really nothing but my imagination. I loved, more than anything else, that I could have been anywhere in the world. I might have been walking in an empty field in a completely different universe.

Chris was leaning against the wall outside the music department, smoking. He used to smoke back then. He saw me, and I watched as his lips snaked into that sly smile at the sight of me.

Nothing was meant by any of it. I walked towards him, knowing he was playing with me just as he had played with me earlier that day, squeezing my ass as we walked into our English lesson. This was no more serious than those looks we had thrown across the classroom.

At some point I should have stopped walking, but I didn’t. He was goading me on, standing still, his cigarette now snubbed under his foot, his raised eyebrow daring me to come further.

Within our game there was this line on the floor, invisible but there all the time. We both knew to avoid it. Beyond it was a vague and terrifying place—gay.

So long as we never crossed that line we could stop at any moment, ignoring the obvious, and pretend to ourselves that our stupid game meant nothing. So long as we stayed just behind this invisible line there was no responsibility, no consequences to our actions—our stupid game stayed a stupid game. The winks and the secret smiles and the footsie and the ass-touching—everything we did—we could safely call a joke. There were no reprisals.

Outside the music department the line was drawn, about a foot away from Chris’ shoes. So long as when I stopped my feet didn’t cross that line, we’d be fine. Chris knew it too; he watched me come closer, his conceited smile beckoning me towards it.

As I grew nearer his eyes grew nervous.

I knew I should stop. If I didn’t there was a good chance the games would stop, and tomorrow Chris would ignore me instead of licking his lips at me from across the room. We were barely even friends but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less than for us to stop.

But I didn’t stop until I could feel the heat of his body and his breath teasing my face. He was still smiling, as terrified as he was. He was still smiling when he pulled his hands out of his pockets and wrapped them slowly around my waist.

They burned through my clothes.

I leaned into him, cautiously, finding that everything else had fallen away until all I could see was lips. I could feel his heartbeat against mine, a loud and brash thud. My body shook with it.

His mouth danced over mine, not quite landing.

His breath was on my cheek, tickling my skin. I could almost taste his cigarette. I was sporting a painful erection, so hard I thought I might burst, but it was still a dare.

And then something brushed my bottom lip, and it was no longer a dare.

Someone cleared their throat.

‘Knock it off, gentlemen,’ said an unamused voice. We jumped and pulled away, the line firmly and safely back in its place between us. It was a useless marker now, we knew, but neither of us would admit to it. Mr Williams, my old chemistry teacher, shook his head at us and walked off.

I was slightly concerned about getting caught by a teacher but in the end, let’s face it, we went to a single sex school. I can’t imagine it was that uncommon an occurrence.

The point is this: that perhaps when I said that nothing ever happened between Chris and I, I may not have been entirely truthful.

***

I’m a very light sleeper, and I hate sharing a bed. I’m a wriggler.

And, since I couldn’t toss and turn that night without rolling onto Chris, I didn’t get much sleep. I lay on my back, as still as I could, watching the moonlight and shadows play on the ceiling. I came to hate Chris’ prone, sleeping form beside me, and I came to hate the unconscious lump on the floor that was Tom. I didn’t sleep much that night and it wasn’t at all surprising that the next morning found me in a terrible mood. I had, after all, watched it creep in through the window, achingly slowly, taunting me; it wasn’t much of a surprise that I came to hate it too.

Tom looked shocking. He was pale and shaky and puffy and saggy at once. All through breakfast he said nothing except how he believed, strongly, that he had been not so much drunk last night as drugged—he went on and on about Rohypnol and its symptoms and side effects, and compiled a long list of possible subjects who could, at some point, have been responsible for slipping it into his drink.

It was my fault, he said, because I had encouraged him to take off his top.

I told him I would personally write a letter of thanks to the person that date-raped him, because being unconscious ensured he stopped talking for the night. My only regret was that I didn’t have any at the kitchen table with me.

After that he apologised for being stupid.

Chris dropped us off at Tom’s house to collect our uniform before driving to his school, a wide, sarcastic smile on his face; and, somehow convinced that I was still angry at him, and Tom kept apologising to me over and over in the car.

‘Will you just look at me already? I’m sorry.’

It was the morning: it was a bad morning. I’d known it as soon as I’d spotted the pinkish glow beyond the window panes. I couldn’t possibly explain that to Tom though, and I wasn’t particularly interested in trying.

‘Stop apologising.’

‘But you’re pissed off at me. Generally, when you’re pissed off at me, I say sorry. Then, you cheer up considerably.’

‘I’m not pissed off at you.’

He snorted. ‘Could’ve fooled me.’

‘You’re already a fool.’

He frowned, and I could feel his frown against the side of my cheek like a physical burn; it itched, and I longed to scratch it.

So I did. I told him to fuck off and made my own way into the locker rooms.

I was only angry because I enjoyed it—I had no real reason to be. Tiredness looks good on me. My skin gets paler, the circles under my eyes more pronounced, the angles of my cheekbones sharper, my lips redder because I tend to bite them absently when I can’t concentrate. It makes me look a little like a character from a Tim Burton film but no less attractive; more than anything, I look vulnerable when I’m tired. Human beings tend to find vulnerable an attractive quality. You should see the fuss Mrs Harding made of me when I looked tired: she would come almost moments away from bursting, spraying motherly love all over me and anyone else in the room at the time.

I’m not good with love, and I’m not good with affection. Something about needing something beyond you, something that isn’t yourself… It feels weak.

It shows a lack of self-control.

Even so, the way I had ended things with Tom weighed on me, pressing down against my temples. I knew I had to say something the moment I saw him, arms folded, loyally sat at our desk in maths. I slapped my books down beside him and his green eyes surveyed me impassively.

God, I hated apologising.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘Sorry for what?’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Well?’

‘Sorry for snapping at you. I know you were only trying to apologise…’

He waited patiently.

‘And… Even if you were being a retard at breakfast it didn’t give me the right to tell you to fuck off. So: I’m sorry.’

He snorted. ‘That’s your idea of what an apology looks like?’

But he pulled my chair out for me anyway. We sat in silence for a moment, watching the other kids file into the classroom; I observed as our teacher adjusted his tie in front of me and fixed his glasses so they sat straighter upon his nose. His gaze flickered to mine and he quickly looked away as if he hoped that somehow, by not looking directly at me, I would be unable to see him.

It doesn’t work. No matter how I refused to look at Tom I could feel him studying me all the same. When I could hold a straight face no longer I started to laugh—he gave me a cheeky grin and I knew we were fine.

He wasn’t like me: he didn’t hold grudges for long. I don’t think he really knew how to.

He was a little quiet though. I had assumed it was his lingering hangover until he turned to me suddenly, a thoughtful expression on his face.

‘Chris asked you about your love life, yesterday.’

Shit. ‘Did he?’

‘In the car. You don’t remember?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t remember much about last night.’

That was a lie: I’d been completely and utterly trashed many times, but I’d never blacked out from alcohol. I could remember every stupid thing I’ve ever said drunk, and every stupid thing I’ve ever done, and I couldn’t brag to other people about how dude, it must have been an awesome night ‘cause I can’t remember a thing…

Unless I lied, of course.

Tom shrugged carefully. ‘Whatever. It’s just a weird thing to say, I guess.’

It was time for a change in direction.

‘I’m surprised that you remember anything. You know,’ I rolled my eyes. ‘After you were dated-raped and all.’

He blushed and quickly changed the subject. I knew he would.

He did that occasionally. Most of the time I passed his ‘straightness test’ on the grace of my having girlfriends, but occasionally he’d overhear a conversation about some guy I may have kissed at some point, somewhere, and he’d stop and look at me and frown. If I told him I liked guys I really didn’t think he’d care at all; I think what caused that frown on his face was worry, and the idea that maybe I was lying to him.

That, maybe, I was lying to myself.

But I wasn’t, though. I knew what I was, and I knew what I liked. It’s just, I didn’t want my life to change. I was having fun.

‘Hey, guess what?’ I said, a wicked little grin on my face.

Tom saw it and tensed.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t get with Anna last night.’

He groaned. ‘Oh, god. I’m such a loser.’

I pinched his cheek. ‘You sure are.’

‘I’m going for a run at lunch to make up for it. Wanna come with?’

And, just like that, it was my turn to groan. I went with him, tagging slightly behind so I could at once glare at his back and admire his fine ass in his skimpy shorts; every now and then he’d turn and run backwards, goading me on with a wide smile. ‘Come on Laurence,’ he’d say, stressing the Laurence to make me angrier. ‘You’re getting fat back there.’

And I’d chase him and tackle him to the ground. By the time the lunch hour was finished we were covered in mud.

I often wondered at how different he was when it was just the two of us. He had such an unrestrained smile, a wide, guileless thing taking up most of his face. If it wasn’t so disarmingly innocent I would probably have considered it a goofy, ugly look but there was something almost childlike about it and it was completely spontaneous—the pure, unfiltered expression of his own joy, uncensored by doubts or inhibitions. When it was just the two of us he was so much more confident and assertive. He was funny. He spoke without that slight hesitation and that whisper of awkwardness, as if he fully expected whatever came out of his mouth to be guffawed at and derided. He grew tongue-tied in large groups, and his voice left him altogether if girls were around.

I knew that, if I were to have just met him then, I would have laughed at him. If it were anyone else I’d have found it annoying. When Jamie grew nervous in the changing rooms, all I wanted to do was taunt him and wind him up further—but with Tom it was different. For some reason with Tom I just wanted to make it better. I was so glad, and strangely humbled, that it was me he had chosen to become so comfortable with.

For much of the run I deeply regretted agreeing to it. I couldn’t stop myself shivering. It was only September but winter was coming: you could feel it in the air. ‘If you’re cold,’ he said with a grin and a wink, ‘we could play a game?’

I hated it how he had the breath to even ask me.

‘How will a game help me stop shivering?’

‘It won’t. But it’ll take your mind off of how pathetic you are.’

I snorted. ‘My mind wasn’t on that.’

‘No?’

‘Nope. I was just thinking: your balls are small already, right?’

He couldn’t sigh whilst running but I could almost hear it in his expression. He waited patiently for the punchline.

I grinned.

‘Well, in the cold they must be tiny. Teeny-weeny small. I bet you’d need a microscope to look at them, and those little eyebrow tweezers just to pick them up. All shrivelled like raisins—only raisins are bigger.’

He tried to look unamused but a smile tugged insistently at his lips. ‘Why are you thinking about my balls at all?’

And he was so pleased with himself that I hadn’t the heart to make up a comeback. He had a point, after all. I jumped on his back instead and insisted he carry me for a few hundred metres; which he did, after several highly unoriginal fat jokes.

Afterwards we showered together. I didn’t look—I never looked. I think he thought I was a prude. It was the only time we were silent and I hated how, even without ever bringing it up, it still managed to get in the way.

‘Chris wants to do something after school.’

I knew that. I’d gotten his text. My back still turned, I nodded. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head.

‘So we thought maybe Newsham Park? Just to hang out.’

‘Sounds good.’

I had double art for fifth and sixth period. Jamie was nervous throughout the lesson, glancing at me every few moments, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. I observed it with amusement, knowing that I need only to leave for the dark room and that, as soon as I did, he would follow behind me pathetically, his mouth opening and closing with angst as he gathered the courage to force words through it. I waited by my desk longer than necessary just to watch him squirm.

‘Hey,’ he said as I turned on the red lights.

‘Hey.’

And then I sighed, because I could have had this conversation entirely without his verbal input simply by reading the expressions on his face.

‘I haven’t told anyone, don’t worry.’

‘Thanks.’

He didn’t leave as I’d hoped. He just stayed there, waiting for me, and I came to realise then that I couldn’t actually remember why I’d gone into the dark room in the first place. It had something to do with photography, obviously… But other than that I was completely drawing a blank. So, in order to avoid looking like a fool, I was forced to pretend I cared.

‘Is there something you wanted?’

He shook his head. He turned to leave, and then:

‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

Ah. ‘He’s not?’

‘No.’

I shrugged. ‘Okay.’

‘I mean, we’ve gone out a few times. But I’m not really that interested.’

‘Right.’ What was I now, the straight best friend? Did he want my opinion?

‘What did you think of him?’

Guess so.

‘I didn’t really see him all that well. His back was pretty impressive, though. Have you got a thing for backs?’

Jamie left not long after that.

***

I love England. There are many reasons why it is deserving of such love but easily the best of them is that, after the fall of the aristocracy, the English public suddenly found themselves inundated with countless vast swathes of beautifully manicured lawns and architecturally exceptional houses, far more than they could easily fill and more than they knew what to do with. They made many of them into public parks.

Newsham Park was one of those. On grey days the land recedes into obscurity, growing paler and paler, the trees and the woods nothing more than vague and ghostly foaming crests on hills like dull waves; but the afternoon that I went with Tom and Chris it was sunny and bright and we could see for miles. We took off our coats and sat on them and just chatted.

The first thing on the agenda was yesterday’s party. Chris had heard all about Tom’s interest in Anna and was eager to find out how it went.

It was the last thing I wished to think of. In the bright light of day, Anna suddenly seemed unsettling.

‘Oh my god, I was drunk,’ said Tom, shaking his head sadly. ‘I don’t even know how I got to be like that.’

I gave him a warning look.

He blushed. ‘I’m not saying I was date-raped; I’m just saying, I don’t remember getting there,’ he said. ‘But I was so drunk. I remember talking to Harry Stanley about Europe—and then much later I was talking to this girl called Haley about climate change—but apart from that, not much. I lost my top.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Chris. ‘But what about Anna? How did it go? You still think she’s hot?’

‘Yeah, she’s hot.’ Tom frowned. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t think she likes me.’

I tried to look away but it was too late. I tried to look busy but he turned, subtly, and gave me a little look as if to say, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s okay.

As if to say, I value you that much.

I felt like I was stumbling—I felt like I had tripped. I was dizzy, and I could feel the heat rush to my face. Why would he do that? Why would he do that for me? I was hypersensitive to everything about Tom, from his green eyes to his worried little glances—but there was no need to read into the meaning of that look. It was perfectly clear.

I just couldn’t imagine what I had done to deserve such a thing.

‘Why didn’t you say today?’ I asked. ‘I was with you all day, and you didn’t say anything.’

He shrugged. Looking down at his knees he said, ‘It was fun. We were having fun. I didn’t want to ruin it.’

He didn’t want to ruin it? I felt like I might throw up. I wanted to reach out and hug him. I wanted to slap him, but I wanted to kiss him even more.

I wanted to kiss him and apologise into his lips, over and over.

‘I’m not interested in Anna,’ I croaked. ‘She’s yours, Tom. Go for it.’

He didn’t say anything. Chris watched the whole thing in silence.

Tom left not long after that, complaining about the homework he had to do. If I was a better friend I’d have gone with him and we’d have talked—but I wasn’t. I didn’t deal with emotions well. So I stayed in the park with Chris, staring up at the clouds as they drifted over the dome of the sky.

It was very peaceful. Gazing vertically like that you couldn’t see the house anymore, only sky for miles on end and, right at the edges of my peripheral vision, the rolling green of the park. There were no noises here but for the soft sway of the wind and it was so easy, for a moment, to imagine myself the only person in the world, the original, biblical Adam, gazing in wonder at a world created solely for me. It was beautiful. It filled me with a fierce sense of joy and a strange, lingering sadness at once. It was easy to forget about Anna, and Tom, and even Chris.

Until he leaned over, his face hovering above me, grinning like Alice’s Cheshire Cat.

‘What’re you doing?’

I frowned. ‘I’m relaxing. I’m looking up at the sky and pretending you don’t exist.’

‘Cool. Mind if I join?’

He was going to lie down next to me whether I invited him or not. I shrugged.

‘So… That was awkward.’

‘What was?’

‘You know what. You. And Tom. And Anna.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do. Did you kiss her?’

‘No.’ I paused. ‘Nearly. He may have thought I did, though.’

I could feel him grinning up at the sky beside me; I could feel his sly, conceited smile, even though I couldn’t see it. I guessed what was coming next even before he’d thought to say it.

‘You hate me, don’t you?’

I love the feeling of laughing horizontally: everything jiggles strangely. ‘Something like that.’

He rolled over to look at me. ‘How come?’

‘How come what?’

‘I’ve got lots of ‘how comes’, actually. How come you hate me? How come you aren’t even bothering to hide the fact that you hate me—because that’s what normal people would do. How come you even told Tom you hate me?’

I sighed. ‘Tom can’t keep a secret.’

Chris grinned. ‘It isn’t really a secret, though, is it?’

‘There is no secret. I don’t hate you, I just don’t like you. And besides—I know that you really like it.’

‘I like that you hate me?’

‘Yes. It’s a challenge for you, isn’t it? Trying to force me to like you.’

He laughed. ‘I guess it is.’ He paused for a long while, looking thoughtful. ‘Do you hate me because I kissed you?’

‘You didn’t kiss me.’

‘Yes, I did. My lips definitely touched yours.’

‘It was the wind that pushed you towards me.’

‘I was against the wall.’

‘Well, then the wind moved me towards you. You never actually moved in. You did bugger all. You can’t claim to have kissed me when I was the one doing all the work.’

‘I thought the wind moved you.’

He waited for my reply, and when he didn’t get one he shrugged. ‘Well, in that case, do you hate me because you kissed me?’

‘Nah, that’s not why I hate you. I don’t hate you, anyway.’

He sat up and looked at me, his dimpled smile widening. Slowly and deliberately, he placed his hand on my knee. It stayed there, taunting me, and tingled.

‘Would you hate me if I kissed you again?’

I swallowed. ‘You didn’t kiss me at all.’

When the hand disappeared I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed. He laughed. ‘Maybe another time.’ The sunlight caught his auburn hair and set the stray strands alight. His eyelashes were auburn, too—it was to be expected, and I’d always known that they were, but I’d never really noticed them before. Auburn eyelashes framing lilac-blue eyes, and not a freckle in sight. And those sly lips, thin and curling… He made a very attractive ginger.

‘I don’t think that you hate me at all,’ he said after a minute. ‘I think that you actually like me. Maybe, you even like me. I think this hating thing you do is a sham.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yup. I reckon it’s a persona. I reckon you’re doing it so that I’ll be intrigued.’

He was wrong. Strangely enough, my dislike towards him was the only genuine thing about the personality I’d given myself around him. I was impressed, though, that he’d guessed about my personas.

‘And are you intrigued?’

He shrugged.

‘Fine. Are you gay?’

‘Are you gay?’

I laughed. ‘This is fun.’

My phone rang; it wasn’t Tom but Victoria. I hoped that, upon answering, she’d inform me of some terrible accident, a real tragedy, killing both of our parents and the entirety of our extended family, and she was calling to let me know that I was now both her legal guardian and sole breadwinner, and I had inherited grandpa’s considerable fortune.

Of course, that’s silly: I wasn’t eighteen yet. I couldn’t inherit grandpa’s fortune.

‘Is this a bad time?’ she asked, even though she didn’t care.

‘No, it’s fine. What’s going on?’

‘Mum wants you home, grandpa said he’s coming over.’

She put the phone down.

I stood up and brushed myself off. Chris shrugged noncommittally. ‘See you then,’ he said, holding out his hand solemnly for me to shake. I ignored it and he smirked. We walked back to the car-park.

…And something made me stop. I couldn’t really say for sure what it was but as I reached my car I looked back suddenly, watching Chris climb into his. It had been a good day, all things considered; it had been a good day parading as the opposite. And I didn’t want it to end.

I called him. I watched him pick up, confused.

‘Erm, hello?’

I felt it rising up through my chest, a lightness, like a bright bubble of laughter. It made me smile even though I knew it was a terrible idea.

‘Do you want to come over to mine?’

Of course, he didn’t even need to think about it. It made me remember that, for other kids, families weren’t a dirty little secret you hid at all costs. ‘Sure,’ he said, craning his head out of the still open car door and grinning at me. ‘I’ll follow you back.’

It was a terrible idea.

***

We drew up outside the house and I was nervous. I felt like I was a virgin again, offering up something raw and precious and tender. My fingers twitched on the bonnet of the car and my smile had disappeared.

We stood outside the house, staring up at it. It was a nice house. There was nothing, from the outside, to suggest it was a miserable place to live. It occurred to me that Chris probably didn’t even know I hated my family yet.

How odd that felt—how oddly refreshing. Perhaps I could walk straight in, greet my family warmly, and pretend everything was fine.

Maybe it would even feel good.

‘Are we going in?’ he said, eyeing me sardonically.

I nodded. We made our way to the front door and opened it. Following my lead, Chris took off his shoes at the entrance. ‘So,’ he said, smirking. He looked about in an amused manner. ‘What now?’

I honestly didn’t know. I had done this so few times that I couldn’t even hazard a guess at the protocol. I had no script to play to here and I found myself ad-libbing. I was blushing with the embarrassment of my own inadequacy, knowing that, as each moment passed, he’d think me stranger and stranger. What were you meant to do in this sort of situation? What was the social norm?

‘Do you want the tour?’ I said, too quietly.

Inwardly I grimaced.

‘Sure.’

‘Elijah?’

My mother’s voice, sounding irritable, issued from the kitchen. Accompanying it came that familiar bitterness on my tongue. A chair scraped, footfalls landed, and then she was stood in the doorway.

‘Elijah, your grandfather doesn’t feel well. He isn’t coming—’

She frowned. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise you had company.’

‘This is Chris.’

Chris stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Laurence.’

I watched their interaction, fascinated: I watched as she took it, awkwardly, her gaze flickering away from him to me, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. She didn’t know where to put herself. People who met my mother for the first time always took her to be shy and meek because she hadn’t a clue how to communicate with strangers. She hated moments like these.

And I’d pay for it later.

‘I’ll be upstairs,’ she said suddenly.

Mum disappeared and we went into the kitchen. ‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Sure. You got coke?’

No. No, we didn’t have coke. Coke was made almost exclusively of sugar, and sugar was not allowed into the house.

‘We have orange juice, or carrot, or beetroot. But unless you’re in a particularly masochistic mood you’ll want orange, I reckon.’

‘Okay, then.’

He wandered about the kitchen, taking in the little things that he would use, later, to identify it as The Laurence Family Kitchen. He gazed out of the window into the garden, and then turned back. ‘It’s tidy in here,’ he said mildly.

It was strange to think that, for years, whilst he and the rest of our friends had been out being teenagers, I had been here the whole time. I hadn’t been allowed to socialise with the other kids in case I became a delinquent. I stayed at home and simmered softly until I passed my driving test, when I finally boiled over.

It was strange to think that those two worlds had finally collided.

I nodded. ‘Victoria’s home.’

He shot me a quizzical look and, for a moment, I couldn’t understand why. How was he to know that Victoria was a compulsive cleaner and that, without her there, the house would be in a state of perpetual undress? He didn’t know that my mother spent too much time feeding her irrational obsessions to ever lift a finger.

There were four small ramekins on the counter. They were filled with pills, about twenty in each; I spotted them and felt my blood pressure soar. I quickly moved to hide them but too late—Chris picked one up, smiling, and turned to me; he picked out a single tablet, the ceiling lights glinting through its translucent capsule coating. He held it up to his eye and peered through it.

‘Who’s dying?’ he asked.

I felt the blood rush to my face. I reached forward and snatched it out of his fingers, pulled the ramekin from his grasp and placed it back with the others on the side. ‘No one’s dying,’ I snapped, too angrily; he flinched. ‘It’s Evening Primrose Oil.’

A pause, in which I felt my head burning. He turned to one of many little green tablets and calmly picked one up. ‘And this one?’

‘Spirulina,’ I muttered. ‘It’s an antioxidant.’

He put it back. He looked puzzled now, but that would quickly shift again. He picked up a red, chalky one. ‘And this one?’

‘Beta carotene.’

‘And that?’

‘Why do you care?’

Frowning now, he asked, ‘Is it one ramekin for each of you?’

‘Yes. Every day.’

A pause.

‘Do they work?’

Of course not.

‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’

He regarded me, that small frown on his forehead. I could feel him thinking.

I could feel him reaching conclusions.

This was a mistake. How could I not have seen it coming? How could I not have considered the likelihood of something like this happening? Because it was bound to happen, from the tablets on the counter to the air purifiers in all the rooms and the little crystals placed on top of every conceivable electrical appliance in the house. The television, the computer, the microwave before it was thrown away because microwaves could give you cancer… Evidence, in each and every room. How had I ever believed this to be a good idea?

I was furious, and so ashamed.

I took him wordlessly into the living room, showing him briefly around. He stole an alarmed glance at the air purifier as it hummed in the corner and I cringed. It was the end of the tour, I decided—next was my bedroom, where we would stay until we left. I watched as he wandered the room in a broad circle, studying the photographs on the cabinets and the walls.

One was of me, aged two, against a background of trees, dressed in a mustard yellow polo-shirt, looking downwards through soft eyelashes. A face like an upside-down teardrop, pale and painfully innocent, all eyes and tender cheekbones and full little pink lips. My hair was lighter then, almost blond; the sunlight spun the flyaway baby strands of it into a shining halo. Whenever I looked at I ached with a vague, muffled sadness, but Chris was smiling widely.

I wasn’t surprised. I was the most adorable child I’ve ever seen.

‘You little charmer,’ he said with a wicked grin.

I blushed.

There weren’t many more photographs of me. There was Victoria, in all stages of childhood and adolescence. There were a few of our parents together. Chris glanced at each of them perfunctorily before stopping at a smaller one in a simple wooden frame, quietly sat apart from the others on the window ledge. He turned to me, gave the woman in the picture a once-over and said bluntly—

‘Fit.’

It was a black and white photograph of a young couple. They are absurdly handsome. They’re not looking at the camera: they stare off slightly to the left with happy expressions. Despite that he’s hardly tough to look at, she outshines him utterly—she’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Every now and then I would look at it, and I would decide that it really needed to be in my room; and I’d move it to my room, placing it on my desk. But it never stayed there for long.

Strangely, despite that it was my grandmother Chris had just so crudely admired, I felt better once he had said it.

She had grey eyes, where mine are plain old brown. They used to remind me of the rain, and I love the rain. Cloudy, wet, windy and stormy days are my favourite.

‘That’s my grandmother,’ I said, raising my eyebrows at him.

Chris blushed.

I waited just long enough to make him squirm before shaking my head. I could feel his eyes on my back as we climbed the stairs—I found myself, for the briefest of moments, playing a stupid game, trying to place as many steps between myself and his hungry gaze as possible. One, two, three—now two again, now three, now four. Now three. I could feel myself panicking as I climbed, my knuckles white and brittle on the banister. Could you have steps in a hedge-maze? They would be stone, smoothly rounded with age like pebbles in a river, and dusted with fine white snow.

We collapsed on my bed. He was quiet and shocked still by the tablets; it took a moment for him to stop and consider his surroundings.

And then it happened. I watched him inhale deeply, analysing, constructing his mental picture—this is Elijah’s bed, this is Elijah’s scent. This is Elijah. He lay for a moment next to me, staring at the ceiling, focused on the feel of my quilts on his skin. He noticed me watching and blushed.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Fuck off, I thought. He was smiling—I wanted to tear it off his face, leaving a gaping bloody hole. I’d push the corpse, still mildly surprised, out of the window. He was learning more about me by the moment—small things, barely noticeable, but if he was clever enough he could use them to flesh out a map for himself. It wouldn’t be difficult to begin drawing conclusions. The urge to push him away was so strong; the urge to scream at him, turn myself into something terrifying, scare him out of my bedroom and out of my house—I’d wipe that smile away, burn off that sly, knowing smirk. I’d make him cry—and he deserved it. Because, really, what did he know about me? He looked so satisfied because he thought he knew me, just from my house and my bedroom—he thought that what he had learned in those five minutes was progress, was him crossing a line.

But it wasn’t. He could though, if he was clever enough—it was all around us, laid out for him to read.

And he was watching me, his gaze on mine, lingering, establishing a connection. Even though I knew that I hated him—more now than ever before—I knew that it wasn’t his fault. I knew I was being irrational. Even if I could throw him out of the window I wouldn’t, I knew—the ramifications of it would be undesirable.

But I had to level the playing field.

So I came towards him, not stopping until my closeness began to make him blush. I sighed into him, barely perceptible, my dark eyes locked onto his pale ones. I felt that familiar flushing thrill at the control it gave me; that delicious, welcome warmth at the way my proximity could cause him to squirm. I waited until I knew he could take it no longer, awash like that in the feel of me and shivering, and then—

‘Why did you come back?’ I whispered.

It didn’t work.

He focused on me and grinned; a wide, mocking thing. ‘Come back where?’

He wasn’t going to tell me. I’d find out eventually, because I wanted to know—but not today. I shook my head and we changed the subject.

‘So,’ he said, his lips ironically curled. ‘What do you want to do?’

What did I want to do? I knew what he wanted to do, but that was impossible here. I turned away, glancing about the room at my familiar things, the place so intimate that it was almost an extension of myself. There was another photograph propped against the wall on the desk—another picture of me, aged two, swamped in a tiny denim jacket and smiling happily. Perfectly. Beside me in the picture was my mother, smiling just as widely. My books on the bookshelves, mostly fantasies that I had stopped believing I could escape to and hadn’t picked up in years; a small tower of books by my bed—older now, my new favourites: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, Wuthering Heights, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My posters of Paris; of the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix; of The Moomins; of a black and white forest, tree trunks pale and ghostly, by Ansel Adams. My bedroom was too much like me, as Tom’s bedroom was Tom—as Chris’ bedroom was like Chris.

I hated my bedroom. There could be no hiding behind carefully maintained facades while I was inside it. It was both immeasurably reassuring and, conversely, like the rest of the house it made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait to get out.

‘I want to leave,’ I said. ‘I want to go somewhere else.’

Chris nodded.