“Oh God,” I say. “What’s he said?”
“Nothing, it’s cool. But look, Julia has this therapy meeting and I promised I’d go.” He glances at his watch. “Will you tell Mike I’m sorry I had to bail?”
“Of course.”
And with that he’s gone.
I look over to where my parents stand with Chris. I just know Dad has said something to upset El, and I’d like nothing more right now than to have it out with him. But I remind myself again that this is Mike’s day, and so I plaster on a smile and rejoin the birthday boy.
My gaze returns to the cartoon. To my father throwing money at you while you weep and while Julia screams at him to leave. To the drawing of you holding your heart in your hands and to the price tag valuing your love for me at a hundred measly pounds.
“What did you do?” I ask them again.
Dad starts forward, then stops dead when I hold up your drawing. It takes a moment for the images to sink in.
“Dylan,” he begins, his eyes wide. “Dylan, we were going to talk to you about this tonight. You have to understand—”
I hold up my forefinger. Suddenly I don’t want to hear any more. “You shut the hell up.”
“Don’t talk to Dad like that!” shouts Chris from the kitchen doorway.
“All of you,” I shout back, “shut the hell up until I’m done!”
I take out my phone and watch them wait in silence while the call connects. When Julia picks up, I find I can’t look at them any more. I swing around, my free hand grasping my wrist because my phone hand’s shaking so badly. Maybe it’s a mistake on your part, El. Maybe I’m misinterpreting your cartoon. Because my family can’t be this horrifically soulless, can they?
“Hello, sweet boy.” Julia’s voice breaks into my thoughts. She sounds tired and raspy, but there’s not that telltale drowsiness and I don’t think she’s been using again. “How lovely to hear from you. I was worried, you know, after the funeral.”
“I’m sorry. About what happened,” I tell her. “I’m fine now.”
“Are you, Dylan?”
I’m glad my back’s turned to them. “No. No, not really.”
“No,” she echoes sadly.
“How areyou, Julia?”
“Oh, you know. It’s funny, really, because I didn’t know our boy at all until he turned up at my door back in…when was it?”
“November. I mean, I met him in November. He came to you at the end of October, I think. Around Halloween.”
“Poor kid. He looked a bit like a Halloween ghoul when I first saw him. ‘I’m your nephew Ellis,’ he said, ‘and unless you’re as shitty as the rest of our family, I’m hoping you’ll let me stay.’ He was dirty and stinking and his poor tooth was missing, but I don’t know, those words just made me chuckle. It always amazed me how he could do that; make you smile when you ought to be on the floor crying your bloody heart out. I miss that about him most.”
“Me too.” Just then Mum drifts into my field of vision and I thrust out my arm and she drifts away again. I won’t let them invade this moment with the only other person who loved you as much as I did. “Julia, I need to ask—”
“He’s here!” she says suddenly.
And I almost lose it. There’s a brightness to her voice that I remember from all the other times I’d call and she’d open with “He’s here!” – so excited to tell you that your boyfriend was on the line. I feel the tiles shift under my feet. I imagine that you’re there, El, snuggled up in bed at 123 or sitting at your drawing board, your fingers dancing. That none of it was real. Not the Dipshits Ball nor the accident nor the lake nor the funeral – not a single awful second of it actually happened. It was just me retreating from you again. My coward brain conjuring this nightmare in which I was rescued and you were left to drown. A smile flutters at the corner of my lips. Of course it wasn’t real. Nothing this terrible could happen to someone who loves another person the way I love you. The universe would have to be completely purposeless or else designed by some psychotic comic-book villain.
“They sent the urn round this morning,” she goes on. “So he’s here, Dylan, if you’d like to come and take him home with you.”
I think for a minute my legs will give way but I manage to stay upright.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah… Yeah, I… Julia, I couldn’t take him away from you.”
“Dylan,” she says slowly, “he wasalwaysmore yours than he was mine. You belonged with him and he belonged with you. But it’s your decision.”
