I nod. “And generous.” I sigh. “I hoped I’d never have to tell you this because honestly I don’t come out of it well and I … I rather like the way you view me as sassy.”
“You’re a lot more than that,” he says fiercely. “And nothing you tell me will change the opinion I have of you now as one of my best friends.Nothing.” He pauses. “Unless you did something really heinous like murder Silas’s mother.”
“I don’t think that would be heinous so much as totally justifiable,” I say wryly. “But no, she lives and breathes on a golf course with her husband Martin somewhere.”
He shudders. “Rather her husband than us, and let’s hope the golf course is very far away.”
I gesture rather awkwardly. “Let’s walk and talk.” It will be easier to talk if I don’t have to look at him.
He falls into step next to me as we walk the sands, the wind tearing at our clothes but the rocks around us neutering the noise so we can talk.
“I’ve told you before that I had a stutter when I was little?” I say, and he nods. I shake my head. “It was horrible. I fell and hit my head when I was five. Before that, I was apparently very loud, but afterward …” I shudder. “It was horrible. I would open my mouth and I’d know exactly what I wanted to say, but it was like something was strangling me. You hear people saying the words are stuck in their throat, but it was literally what happened to me. They’d almost choke me and meanwhile, while I stuttered and stammered, the person opposite me would be looking at me like I was a fucking freak. After a bit, I learned to be self-conscious. I learned to hide myself in full view, to shrink into the room so people wouldn’t have to look at me like that.”
“Did you have a speech therapist?”
I nod. “So many. Some crap, but in the end, I got a good one. I learned to talk more softly than I had been because it makes it easier to get my words out. But it also made me even more invisible somehow. However, the worst of it slowly disappeared and when I was eighteen, I went to art college. I felt so much better in myself at that point, but my parents still didn’t want meto go. They were a bit overprotective and they worried about my mental state, but I was determined.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
I smile. “Of course. And it was wonderful. I made good friends and I enjoyed the classes. Although I loved painting, I wasn’t that good, but I found that I really loved restoration and I was good at that. Enough to get an apprenticeship at a really prestigious museum and gallery in London. My confidence was high … and then I met Thomas.”
“I somehow feel that this merits theJawstheme tune.”
I sigh and laugh. “All four films’ worth, including the really shitty last two.” I shrug. “It’s a fairly common story. He was an artist. Extremely talented and temperamental and a bit of a darling of the art world. Very up and coming. He was gorgeous, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why he wanted me.”
“Have you looked at yourself, Milo?”
I shake my head. “Anyway, he totally swept me off my feet. I was in love for the first time in my life and it was incredibly intense. He moved me in with him after a few weeks and we were together for a couple of years. He wouldn’t let me get out of bed for the first month.” I pause at that thought and shudder slightly before going on. “He was very popular. He was invited everywhere and I went with him, and it was like he’d sprinkled magic dust on me because I became popular too. I thought life couldn’t get any better.”
“What happened?”
I sigh. “He was incredibly intense. He wanted my attention all the time. Sulked like a child if he didn’t get it. He had this way of monopolizing you and making you feel like it was because you were incredibly important to him. Gradually I lost contact with my friends and I lost track of my apprenticeship too. I’d try to get up for work, but we’d be hungover and he’d fuck me and before I knew it, it was four in the afternoon and I had anotherirate phone call from work which I’d forget about by going to another party. I got the boot eventually, and who can blame them. He just laughed, opened a bottle of champagne and said we’d celebrate because now I was all his.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh no, indeed. From that moment he changed. He’d switch moods so quickly. He’d be so possessive. Couldn’t bear anyone to talk to me. Couldn’t bear my attention to be away from him. Then the next minute he’d belittle me. Tell me how ugly I was, how stupid. How I was worthless and no one would ever want me.” I shake my head. “My stutter came back for the first time and nothing I tried that had worked before, worked again. He’d mock me all the time in front of his friends and they’d join in. If I ate, he’d tell me how fat I was. I lost a stone because my throat would close up whenever I tried to eat.” I shoot him a look. “It’s utterly pathetic. Very far from strong and sassy.”
“Don’t say that,” he says fiercely. “You are strong. If you got through that then you’re the strongest person I know.”
I huff. “Not that strong. A real man would have told him to fuck off. Not taken it and stuttered while I was doing it.”
He comes to a stop and drags me round to face him and I realise that he’s very angry. “Areal man? Can you hear that? What is a real man, Milo? I’ll tell you what a real man is. He’s someone kind and generous and loving. Someone who has had his spirit crushed yet gets back up and carries on making ugly things beautiful.” I swallow hard and he hugs me. “Tell me something awful happened to him?”
“You could say that,” I say wryly. “Hurricane Niall came calling.”
“Oh my God, tell me,” he breathes, and I grin. It’s the first time I’ve ever smiled about this, but it lasts all the way through my telling of Niall’s rescue.
“It was like when you open your windows in a stuffy room and the wind blows in and cleans everything,” I muse. “He was like that. A fresh, clean breeze. He brought me back here, moved me into the rooms he was in and basically nursed me back. He never made me do anything, but somehow I did exactly what he wanted. You know Niall.” Oz smiles. “He listened,” I say softly. “Even though it must have been fucking torturous because everything I said took an hour. He listened and never displayed an ounce of impatience, and he made me get the poison out. Then one day he decided things had to change.”
I think back to the memory and smile, but it’s bittersweet because it underscores how pathetic I was.
I come awake when the curtains in my bedroom are swished back by an energetic hand. I squint through the dazzling light to see who is standing in my bedroom and then groan. It’s Niall. He looks full of life and very awake, dressed in jeans and a thick, black jumper. With his face flushed from the wind outside, it’s obvious that he’s been at work already. I peek at the clock and wince. Probably for a while now because it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty, and let down your lovely locks,” he says, his rich deep voice full of amusement.
“You’re mixing up your f-f-fairy tales,” I say slowly.
“I don’t think stories, where some silly bint lets a total stranger use her preternaturally long hair in order to gain access to her locked home, are necessarily big on realisation,” he offers.
