I don’t expect him to laugh. But he does, and it’s so utterly humourless my toes curl, as though they can draw up into my body and avoid the bitterness lacing Ludo’s rough bark of laughter.
“Aidan, it wouldn’t bother me if you lived in a cave if it made you happy, but this?” He gestures around again. “This isn’t home; it’s a prison cell.Lookat it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I do look at it, every fucking day. What’s so bad about it?”
“There’s nothing here.”
“What did you expect? Plush couches and plasma TVs in every room? Alltwo of them. It’s a bedsit, for Christ sakes.”
“It’s not—” Ludo starts, then he cuts himself off and turns to face me, guilt and regret marring his lovely face. “I’m not explaining myself properly. When I said there’s nothing here, I mean there’s nothing here that makes me think of you. Anyone could live here, and I don’t like that. It reminds me of your hospital bed.”
A glimpse of what he’s trying to say creeps into my mind. I tighten my grip on his wrist and tug him forward. “Come with me.”
He follows me into my living room—albeit, just my sofa bed and a small cabinet with a TV plonked on top of it. But in the cabinet is something that makes me think of my hospital bed too. I kneel on my good leg and retrieve the stack of magazines from where I stashed them earlier. There are so many of them that I can’t get up without handing them to Ludo. “Here. I kept them all.”
The first stirrings of a smile light up the shadows in Ludo’s expression. He balances the magazines on one hand and helps me to my feet with the other. “I wasn’t sure if you ever got them. I was a bit manic when all that happened, and I was worried I’d either imagined buying them or the nurses took them away before you woke up.”
“I didn’t know you were manic.”
“Neither did I.” He sits on the arm of the couch and leafs through the magazines. He comes to a cooking publication and holds it up. “But if I’d been thinking rationally, this might’ve clued me in. I take it you’ve never made the four-tier lemon cake on the front?”
I wince. Ludo smiles softly again, and the madman in me decides I’ll make the fucking cake if it makes him happy. “I’ve never made the cake,” I admit. “I’m not much of a cook if you don’t fancy something on toast.”
Ludo lowers the magazine and sets the rest of the stack aside, grin fading as though it was never there. “Bet you haven’t got any bread.”
“How did you know?”
“Because that’s it.” He springs like a cat to his feet and jabs a finger in my face. “That’swhat I’m talking about. You don’t have anything here because you don’t care enough about yourself to bother. I reckon your cupboards are bare, right? And there’s sod all in your fridge?”
I can’t deny. So I don’t bother. I shrug and spread my hands. “I buy food when I need it.”
“Do you have a duvet cover?”
“What?”
“A cover. On your duvet.”
“I don’t have a duvet.”
“Sleeping bag?”
“Yup.”
Ludo shakes his head so hard I half expect it to fly off. “I don’t like that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
His answer makes as much sense as this entire conversation, and it’s not how I imagined his visit would go. But much of what I imagine about Ludo has little bearing on reality, so what the fuck can I do?
Ludo sighs and closes his eyes, and somehow I know he wishes he was closer to the wall so he could bang his head against it.
I reach for him again, grasping both his wrists this time and tugging him upright and closer to me. “Look, I’m sorry my place makes you uncomfortable. Before the accident I literally just slept here, so it didn’t matter, and since... fuck, I don’t know. I guess you’re right, and I haven’t cared enough to do anything about it.”
“Do you think that will change?”
It’s my turn to shrug. “I don’t know.”
