‘Not to you. Youalwayskeep that stuff separate. And something tells me you still are.’ She had followed me, her nearness a shimmer behind me. ‘So, if I’m right, then what I just saw is theonlyway you touch her. Correct?’
My eyes fell on the back of my hand. On the streaks of red lipstick, reminding me of red-smeared blood. I wiped them roughly, until the skin was on fire. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’ I wanted so badly to believe it.
‘Of course not.’ Her voice softened. ‘We all have needs, we’re people too. It’s just… how long has it been since you allowed that kind of contact?’
A long time. A very long time. So long that I could barely remember their names, let alone their faces. I could count on one hand the women I’d slept with in the last few years. On one finger, those I’d slept with more than once. It wasn’t that I’d never wanted to, but the self-loathing afterwards had always outweighed the satisfaction. Lately, there had been another reason, too, why being with a woman felt impossible. I’d thought it wasn’t worth it. That I could rise above it, the same way I’d risen above my strongest urges. Only, with Mabel, it hadn’t felt like an urge. That was the thing: getting closer to her didn’t feel like a choice, it felt inevitable. What had just happened wasn’t a carefully considered decision, it was a surrendering to emotions that had been building up for weeks.
‘What do you want, Norah?’ We didn’t have much time before Ashton lost patience, and I didn’t want to have this conversation anyway. I didn’t want to hear what Norah thought, because I already knew the gist of it. I wasn’t just thinking it, I felt it too: it’s always the happiest moments that leave the bitterest aftertaste of guilt and regret.
I felt constantly guilty, but especially now. So why couldn’t I bring myself to regret the kiss? Why couldn’t I regret anything when it came to Mabel? How could I know it was wrong, yet still not want to stop? And how could I not even hate myself for it? Maybe because, for the first time in an age, I felt like she saw someone in me who deserved more than that? Whowasmore than that? Who might be exactly the person I so badly wanted to be?
‘I’m just trying to understand you.’ Norah laid a hand on my back until I turned to face her. There was worry in her eyes, and maybe even grief. ‘What are you doing?’
I have no idea, I thought, but couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t even look at Norah. Her expression of confusion, anxiety and horror was too much. Too much of what I’d been trying to block out for weeks. Because she was right, of course. Mabel wasn’t the moth. Mabel was the light, the light I couldn’t resist, and which would burn me, in the end. And yet she was the one who would ultimately lose her wings, who would loseeverything, if I allowed that kind of closeness.
‘Oh, Cliff,’ Norah sighed, in the sad way she always said that name. She only did it when the others weren’t around. My favourite defiance of the rules, and one that always made me close my eyes, just briefly, and remember. What I’d once been, what I’d so dearly like to be, what I could never be again.
‘If it’s her face you like, maybe we can find a solution. You know they make exceptions sometimes.’
I raised my eyes, confused. ‘Her face?’
‘She’s pretty,’ she said matter-of-factly. We both knew how ephemeral that was. ‘She has thoughtful eyes. I know you like that.’
I gave a hoarse laugh. ‘I don’t care about her face, Norah.’ Iturned away abruptly, steadying myself on the windowsill. Outside, the college was sinking into a deep blue, my reflection glimmering as palely as the thin blanket of snow on the asphalt.
Norah was silent for a moment, then she took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s inconvenient.’
‘I know.’ Inconvenient, impossible, unforgiveable.
I turned back to her. Arms crossed, I leant against the window frame and glanced down the corridor. Everything felt alien. This place, these people. They were my only family, my whole life. Yet I couldn’t deny it any longer: I was rediscovering a long-lost part of myself, and I sensed that it would mean losing something else, something essential, and final.
‘Don’t tell Ashton. Please.’
‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled feebly. ‘But you know him. He’ll sniff it out. And even if he doesn’t… there’s no way this ends well. You know that, right?’
‘Of course I do. No chance of that for any of us, is there?’
For us, there was no way out. None. No escape, no end. It all went simply on and on, just as it had begun, long ago. With the people who had begun it. With us. Any other contact was fleeting and insignificant: that was a fact we had to accept. And yet here I was, thinking about a woman who was already slipping away from me with every breath. And I’d never even let myself hold on to her as tightly as I wished I could.
‘Life breaks everybody. But it breaks us a little harder. Just got to make the best of it.’ Norah’s voice cracked with the sound of tears through her smile. ‘You remember how she always used to say that?’
I had to smile myself. ‘As if any of us could ever forget.’ Although the words always set off a dull pressure in my chest, I loved to hear them. As long as it hurt to remember, the emotion was still real. And we owed her that much. We’d promised her.A real life. I thought about it often, but lately I’d been wondering more and more if perhaps we’d had a different understanding of what that meant. Because the most real moments I’d had in a long time had been with Mabel, even though she could never be part of my life–ourlife.
Norah nodded thoughtfully. She reached for the watch on my wrist, with its unmoving hands. ‘You know, sometimes I think Ashton’s whole personality is shaped by how much he misses her.’
‘We all miss her. Just in different ways. Some of us more problematically than others.’ I thought of the gold chain in Ashton’s wallet, threaded with two rings, which I only knew existed because it had once fallen out while he was paying for something. I hadn’t mentioned it, and forbade myself to tell Norah. If he’d kept them all this time, it had to mean that, somehow, he was still the same. I clung to that, whenever I felt like I no longer recognised him. Grief had many faces. The one Ashton wore was among its ugliest. But that didn’t mean the emotion behind it wasn’t beautiful. Love wasn’t always easy. If anyone knew that, it was us. All of us.
I shook my head, thinking of the fourth person included in thatus. ‘Speaking of, have you heard anything from Nox lately?’
Norah’s lips pursed into a thin line, as they always did when she heard that name. Sometimes it felt convulsive, like she was having to tamp down her spontaneous reaction. ‘Not since Canterbury.’
‘I assumed he’d jump at the chance to tag along with Henry.’
‘I didn’t.’ She fiddled with the neckline of her dress. It was violet, the same shade as her eyes. Nox’s favourite colour. Although I couldn’t remember now which of those two things had come first. In any case, it told me that part of Norah had been expecting him to show up, too. ‘If he has his way, I doubt we’ll be seeing each other anytime soon.’
‘You were the one who split up with him, Norah.’
‘Splitting up with someone who’s already checked out isn’t really ending things. It’s accepting that it’s already ended.’ She shrugged, as if to shake off the weight of the memory. For years I had seen it grow heavier day by day. Her eyes drifted past me, and I watched them meet those of her reflection in the windowpane. The shadows smudged the violet of her eyes into a pale grey. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘When we lost her–she took so much with her.’
