“Well, not all the time.” He describes his colleagues: some he’s worked with for years and is very close to, others are mere acquaintances, others get seriously under his skin.
“I can’t imagine you getting wound up about anything. You’ve got to be one of the most patient people I’ve ever met.”
A particular memory stands out for me—Max receiving a call, in our second year, to say his mum was seriously ill. I went with him to Norwich station, where we learned from another passenger that all trains were canceled due to leaves on the line. No staff were seemingly anywhere to help, and meanwhile the minutes ticked by, and with them the surreally terrifying possibility that Max’s mum might die before he reached her. Eventually, he found a member of staff and, given the disdain with which she spoke to him—a scruffy student whose wild-eyed worry she’d clearly interpreted as drug-induced—Max was calm, polite, and immeasurably courteous, when he had every excuse not to be. I never forgot that.
I ask Max now how Brooke is. He always called her that—neverMum. When I first got to know him, I thought it was pretty cool. It’s only all these years later that I realize it’s actually quite sad.
“Nothing much ever changes in the world of Brooke Gardner,” Max says. His voice carries zero affection, as though he’s narrating a slightly unkind documentary about her life.
Max never knew his father. Brooke had always been a drinker and used to claim, in her crueler moments, that she had no memory at all of having even slept with him. She worked a variety of jobs, often several at a time, and when she wasn’t doing those, she was “unwinding with her friends,” as she liked to put it. She left Max alone at an age when it was illegal and shocking to do so, until someone pointed this out to her: after that, she would land him on various neighbors, friends of friends. He told me once he thought that was when he first learned to make conversation with anyone, even people who were very different to him.
“Is that why you want to be a lawyer?” I asked him, the night he first confided all this to me, a couple of weeks after we’d met. I guessed his childhood must have led him to develop strong feelings about justice, about right and wrong. We weren’t together then, but I already knew there was no one else I preferred spending time with.
He nodded. “Partly. A social worker told me once that kids like me go one of two ways: either well off the rails, or sticking to the straight and narrow like glue. Guess I’m the latter.”
“Have you... lost patience with her?” I ask Max now, because back then, he would still visit, call, text, and e-mail Brooke, make an effort.
I see a tiny muscle flicker in his jaw, but as he starts to speak, the sushi arrives.
“So,” I prompt, once we’re sitting at the table in Max’s kitchen-diner, the sushi boxes open between us. Max has flicked on a chill-out playlist, dimmed the lights.
He picks up a piece of yellowtail nigiri expertly with his chopsticks, takes a bite, and continues the story. “Well, I made the mistake of taking a girlfriend back to Cambridge for the weekend. I thought I’d introduce her to Brooke, who swore she’d be sober and pleasant and make an effort.”
“Who was your girlfriend?” I ask, hoping my voice sounds light and mildly curious, as opposed to frenziedly desperate for details.
“Allegra. We met at work. This was about... seven years ago.”
I nod, mentally chastising myself for wanting to whip out my phone and yell,Hey Siri, show me Allegra!
“Brooke had been trying to get sober at the time, and she’d dumped her leech of a boyfriend, so I was hopeful. We arranged to meet at this restaurant—nothing fancy, just a chain place, thank God—and when Brooke got there her eyes were glazed and rolling. Like, she wasoutof it. I could tell the second she walked through the door.” He shakes his head. “I just felt this... uncontrollable anger inside me. But I managed to keep a lid on it, we sat down, and then... literally the first thing that came out of her mouth was to ask me for money. She hadn’t even looked at Allegra, or said hello.”
I frown, set down my crab roll. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, and I just... lost it. Started yelling at her. Allegra literally had to drag me out of there. And afterward I thought, God, if I’d started throwing stuff and something had... I don’t know, bounced off a surface and hit someone... I could have been arrested and charged with God knows what and my whole career might have been over. All that work...” He shakes his head. “Just one stupid move could have changed my entire life that day.”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath as he’s been talking. “Do you still see her?”
“Brooke? Or...?”
I hesitate. “You still see Allegra?”
His gaze finds mine, steady and sincere. “She’s at a different firm now. But we occasionally bump into each other at events and networking stuff.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“She was cheating on me. With a barrister we used to use all the time.” His laugh is brittle. “Don’t use him anymore. Which is a shame, actually. He’s really good.”
I wipe my mouth with a paper towel. My lips are sticky, sweet-tasting from the sushi. “Are they still together?”
“Yep. Married, expecting a baby.”
I don’t know why I feel so sad for him when he says this. Because if they hadn’t split up, Max and I wouldn’t be here now. Or maybe we would. Who knows? I think vaguely back to something my religious studies teacher said at school, about God knowing your destination but you deciding how to get there. If Max and I are fated to be together, then Allegra and the barrister and everything else were just distractions en route to the main event. Weren’t they?
I lift my hand to the back of his neck, run my fingers along his hairline, a small gesture to let him know I feel for him.
“Anyway,” he says, tipping back his head like a cat enjoying a scratch, “I don’t see much of Brooke anymore. She’s got a new man, other stuff going on. I think she always saw motherhood as a kind of obligation. Something that got in the way of what she really wanted to do. And when I stopped making the effort, I think she felt... relieved of her duties. If that makes sense.”
I don’t want to say it does, because it shouldn’t. Nothing like that should ever make sense.
