‘Um…?’ Rob started.
‘Yes?’
‘Are…? Sorry, but I feel I need to ask this, OK? So don’t, you know…’
‘Go on, Rob,’ I said. ‘Anything.’
‘So…’ He cleared his throat and scratched his chin. ‘Do you think you’re going to leave me now?’
‘Leave you?’ I repeated in shock. Nothing could have been further from my mind.
‘Yeah, now you know what a freak I am.’
I actually laughed a little at that. ‘You’re not a freak, Rob,’ I said. ‘God. I don’t think thatat all.’ I patted the seat beside me and said, ‘Come here.’
‘In a bit,’ Rob said. ‘So you’re not? Going to leave me?’
‘No!’ I told him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘It must have changed how you feel about me though. Surely it must, a bit.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Youwerepretty young when I met you,’ Rob said.
I frowned. It took me a moment to work out what he was implying.
‘God, Rob,’ I finally said. ‘You can’t think… You don’t… Youcan’t! That’s not the same thing at all!’
‘No?’ Rob asked.
‘No! Jesus! To start with I was legal, I wasn’t a child. And easily old enough to decide what I wanted. And secondly, you weren’t my first. Not by a long, long stretch. And thirdly, you were in your twenties.’
‘I was twenty-five.’
‘Yes, twenty-five. You weren’t forty or fifty or whatever. Plus, I made it happen, not you. You didn’tgroomme, for God’s sake. So no! God, no! Don’t ever say anything like that again. That’s just…’
‘Sorry,’ Rob said.
‘And stop apologising.’
‘But it doesn’t change how you feel, then?’ he asked, after a moment of silence. ‘Not at all? Be honest.’
‘Actually, yes, OK. I suppose that if I’m honest, it does.’
‘You see,’ Rob said.
‘I feel like… like… I don’t know,’ I said, struggling to put words to so many feelings. ‘Like I know you…properly… maybe. For the first time.’
Rob frowned at me and then raised an eyebrow comically.
‘It’s as if… sorry, I’m not that good at this… but it’s like, maybe there was this half of you that I didn’t know. Or that I didn’t understand at any rate. I mean, Iknewyou. But without context, half of you didn’t make sense… Actually, I’m not sureI’mmaking any sense.’
‘No, you are,’ Rob said. ‘You really are. I used to feel the same way about myself. That there was half of me I didn’t understand.’
‘But now I do, that’s the thing. Now the whole of you makes sense. It’s like… having a bigger screen or something – I can see the whole picture. And all that gentleness, all that softness you have… it seems… well… miraculous, to me, really.Courageous. I mean, you could so easily have become hardened and cold and awful. But you didn’t, did you? You stayed sensitive and open and gentle. And I love you for that, Rob. God, I love you so much for that. For what you did with all of this… this hurt.’
My eyes were watering so much that I couldn’t see, and when I wiped them with my sleeve I saw that Rob had his head in his hands. So I stood and once again crossed the room to join him by sitting on the arm of his chair.
