I shift my weight, studying Nick sideways as he stares sightlessly down at his bottle. His set face looks really tired, above his sheepskin collar, and I feel a punch of guilt thinking of him out walking theentire damn estatethis morning, before the sun was even up.
It was just a few hours, I told him.
Not to me it wasn’t, he said.
But I didn’t listen to him properly. Didn’t appreciate how frantic he must have been.
Not like I do now.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, way too late. ‘I should have left you a note.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Ok, then,’ he agrees, and for the first time today throws me a smile that is tight and heavy, and, like his laugh earlier, not really a smile at all. ‘But it’s done.’
‘I genuinely didn’t plan to fall asleep.’
‘No, I get that.’
‘And I would have told you about Iris’s room.’
He gives me a disbelieving look. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look,’ he says, ‘you can tell me what you like. It’s your business. I just wish you’d … I don’t know … ’ he searches for the word ‘ …felt… like talking to me about it. It’s obviously meant something to you. But you sat all through dinner, and never mentioned it. You told me you’d been with Emma … ’
‘I had been with Emma.’
‘Claude,’ he says, frowning, ‘come on.’
‘I’m just saying, I wasn’t lying about that. And I couldn’t talk about Iris’s room. There were too many other people there. I didn’t want them all going up. Plus, Felix was being such an arse.’
‘Yeah.’ He fills his cheeks with a breath, then lets it go. ‘Has he apologised?’
‘No.’
‘He said he was going to.’
‘Well, he hasn’t. He told me everything was my fault.’
He called by my trailer earlier, too, to do that, arriving barely a minute after Nick had stormed off.
‘Those photos didn’t just happen to you,’ he said, without preamble, letting me know he’d come with them ready to go. ‘And it was you who shut me out first.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ I said.
‘No, it’s not. All I wanted when we got to Sicily was to try and make things better for you. Then the photos broke, and you couldn’t even look at me.’
‘Icouldlookat you … ’
‘You couldn’t. You were … appalled … ’
‘Well, Felix, it was all fairly appalling … ’
‘Yes,Claude,agreed. But it hurt me as well, ok? It really hurt, that I’d become part of the problem for you. And that you turned so cold, so fast.’
