“I s’pose it was, in a way. The world as you knew it, at any rate.”
“Yeah.”
I’d run out of steam, and as luck would have it, the train pulled into Paddington at that moment, a mere four and a half hours after we’d left Truro. I stood and squeezed past Kim’s legs, trying not to gawp as he unfolded his long frame, arching his swan-like neck to stretch out the kinks.
“How far is it to Hoxton from here?” he asked. “I’ve never been.”
I navigated the jostling crowds until we were safely off the train. “It’s forty-five minutes on the tube—here to Oxford Circus, then Kings Cross to Old Street. You don’t know London at all?”
“Only Brixton and Camden, where Brix lived, and even then I didn’t visit that often.”
“You’re not missing a lot.”
“No? Then why did it take you your whole life to leave?”
I didn’t have an answer to that. Instead, I led Kim underground and onto the first of three trains that would eventually take us to Hoxton. Tube journeys were usually quiet by nature—it was the London way—and neither of us spoke much. The silence was almost as comforting as Kim’s warm presence beside me, and before I knew it, we were in Hoxton and outside the tidy garden flat I had once called home.
Kim peered through the gate. “This is nice.”
“It was,” I said sourly. “I kinda trashed the place before I left.”
“Understandable. Did it fuck the sale up?”
“No idea. I left the estate agents to deal with it. I haven’t been back since the beginning of summer.”
“Got keys?”
The Eiffel Tower key ring in my pocket suddenly felt like a brick. I retrieved it and dangled it on two fingers like it had been to Chernobyl and back. They were Rich’s keys, you see. I’d lost mine on a drunken night out in Farringdon and had borrowed his the week before I’d caught him basking in familial bliss with someone else. I’d hidden them in a plant pot when I’d moved into my Porthkennack apartment, buried them, like their absence would take everything else with it, because life worked like that, right? Out of sight, out of mind?
“Come on, mate.” Kim snagged the keys and reached across me to open the garden gate. “You don’t want to be here, I get that, so let’s get inside, get shit done, and piss off home.”
I drifted after him to the front door. “You’re starting to sound like my handler.”
“Do you need handling?”
I cringed as Kim unlocked the flat’s front door, picturing the mess I’d left it in. “Maybe.”
But my apprehension proved unwarranted. The estate agents had done their job—no doubt adding a hefty whack to their fees—and had gutted the place of any sign of my drunken tantrums. All that remained was a pile of broken furniture in the back bedroom, and a box of photographs some kind soul had been thoughtful enough to save.
I ignored the photos and glared at the smashed bookcase. “I don’t give a fuck about most of it, but I loved this bookcase. It was the first piece of grown-up furniture I ever bought.”
Kim regarded the pile of splintered wood. “That’s some serious rage, man. Did you do that to everything you owned?”
“Pretty much. I was blackout drunk at the time, and you probably know how that ends.”
“It ended with me drinking myself into a coma, and this right here”—Kim gestured at the bookcase—“was about all that was left of me.”
I swallowed thickly. Kim was so calm and poised that it was hard to imagine him as anything but. “I have so much respect for you.”
“Why? I haven’t done nowt special. I’m surviving.” Kim moved past me to the window and gazed out at the bustling streets of Hoxton. “It’s so busy here. Porthkennack gets a bit mental in the summer, but it never seems this . . . frantic. I feel stressed just watching these people.”
I joined him at the window and had to agree. I’d never noticed how oppressive London was until I’d left for good. As a kid, my time in Porthkennack had been like crossing over into Narnia or some shit, and going home at summer’s end had been a return to normality. There’d even been times when I’d felt comforted by the throngs of moody commuters and faceless natives, like the hum of frenetic energy had been in my blood, my DNA. But I didn’t miss it now. Porthkennack had yet to truly feel like home, but as I stared out over the city, Kim a silent beacon of who-the-fuck-knew-what beside me, I knew without a doubt that I’d never return to London.
With a sigh, I turned away, eying the box of photographs I really couldn’t afford to ignore. God knew what was in it. The possibilities ranged from nudes of Rich to the lifestyle shots of a bowl of tomatoes I’d once done for a food magazine, and with any luck, the vintage images of the barn back in Porthkennack, taken by the old owners sometime in the fifties.
I left Kim at the window and braved the box. As luck would have it, Rich’s nudes were the first thing I put my hands on. With a grimace, I tossed them over my shoulder without looking at them, subconsciously, perhaps, knowing that Kim would retrieve them, though why I wanted him to see my douchebag ex in all his naked glory, I had no idea. An arsehole, Rich might’ve been, but he had a hell of a body—thickset and strong, sculpted muscles in all the right places. I’d never been so attracted to someone until I met Kim.
Kim.Huh.Despite my preoccupation with my self-pity party, I couldn’t deny that Kim entranced me far more than Rich ever had, physically or otherwise. Hindsight was a wonderful thing.
