But none of it really helps. My focus constantly feels off.
I know it’s partly the fear, clouding my clarity of thought. A squatter in my amygdala, roadblocking my brain.
Carefully, I pull a book from the shelf I’m next to, flip to the title page.
‘Jesus. This is a first-editionSwallows and Amazons. It’s got to be worth thousands.’
Giles shrugs. ‘Take it. They’ll never know. Bet they don’t appreciate it like you would.’
‘Um, I know you’re the product of two ardent socialists but isn’t that stealing?’
‘Redistribution of wealth.’ He winks, holds up a port bottle. ‘Hair of the dog?’
Thieving booze I can get on board with. I’m pretty sure consumables don’t count. They go off, after all, and this library looks as though it hasn’t been sat in for the best part of a century.
I nod and slide the book back, though it hurts my heart to do so.
We each take a sofa on either side of a walnut coffee table. The room has that distinctive country-house smell: antiques and dust-choked drapery, beeswax and woodsmoke. I can’t quite decide if it’s pleasant or not.
Giles hands me a glass. By our knees, the fire spits and crackles.
I raise my glass to his, take a swig, then another. The port is velvet-smooth, but it doesn’t seem to soften the stiffness in my stomach. Why can’t I relax? Another swig. ‘What percentage is this?’
Giles picks up the cards, starts to deal. ‘You know, Jeanne Calment smoked and drank her whole life, and she lived to be well over a hundred.’
Is this his backhanded way of suggesting we break into the humidor? ‘Who’s Jeanne Calment?’
‘The world’s oldest verified human.’
‘What’s a verified human?’
‘My point is, the people you expect to die early are often the ones who live the longest. Death defies logic, mate. It always has.’ He looks up, meets my eye. ‘You really believe you’re not going to make it past thirty, don’t you?’
I could ask if it’s that obvious. But I already know it is. It has been for years. Almost as long as he’s known me.
I’ve always thought of myself as rational, but this... I just can’t seem to shake it. The foreboding that lives in the back of my mind. A crouched animal, permanently primed to pounce.
Giles keeps dealing. ‘It doesn’t sound like Rachel thinks you’re on the way out.’
She says not. And, most of the time, I believe her. Because Rachel is a relentless pragmatist. But sometimes, she gets this look in her eye. A fleeting flash of doubt. A crack of lightning so fast, you question if you saw it at all.
But I guess that’s fear for you. It tends to be contagious.
I sip my port, trying to hold on to the image of my wife last night. Our champagne kiss in the wine cellar. The way her brown eyes hooked to mine. How she whispered on caught breaths how much she loved me.
‘Maybe you need something big to focus on,’ Giles continues. ‘Like having kids. They’re the best thing we ever did, mate. Truly. Your world transforms.’
Giles and his wife Lola have one-year-old twins, to whom Rachel and I are godparents. My favourite thing is to scoop them up, one in each arm, and talk to them very earnestly about Tolstoy, at which they always get the giggles. And it makes Rachel laugh, too.
Inside me, a splinter of envy lodges. A split-second shard of pain.
Sombrely, the grandfather clock in the corner of the room begins to chime.
‘Can I beat you at cards now, please?’ Giles says.
I pick up my hand and try to smile.
4.
