I purse my lips and crouch to examine his precious plants. He has a basil bush that’s three times the size of the one I bought in the supermarket and about ten shades greener. I smell the perfumed leaves. “This is gorgeous.”
“Have it,” he says. “I don’t do nothing with it.”
“Not yet. I can teach you how... if you like?”
Aidan’s eyes brighten enough for my heart to do a little jump. “Would you do that?”
“Of course. I like to cook, when I’m well, at least. It feels like healing, if that makes sense? Like... if I put good things in my body, it can only be good for my mind.”
“It makes sense,” Aidan says. “But I’ve always been fonder of the opposite. Abusing my body keeps my mind quiet.”
“I get that.”
The raised flesh on my arms burn. I rub them, and Aiden’s gaze darkens with guilt.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“Why?”
“Because I’m an insensitive twat?”
“Who says you should be sensitive?”
“Everyone I’ve ever met.”
“Well, they’re wrong.” I stand and wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. “I don’t need you to pretend my issues don’t exist. It makes it too easy for me to do the same.”
“It doesn’t make it better when you can forget about it a while?”
His expression is as open as I’ve ever seen it. I claim the space next to him on the bench and draw a circle on the back of his hand. “You’d think, but no. All that does is make me crash harder when reality bites. I have to accept what bipolar means for me, even the shit bits.”
“There’s good bits?”
I laugh. Can’t help it. “Sometimes. Did I ever tell you my favourite colour is yellow?”
He gets it straight away. Of course he does, and I wonder how many times I’ve told him that before. If I wittered on about it at his bedside when I was manic in the hospital.
Aidan reaches behind him and plucks a tiny yellow flower from a nearby pot, then reaches for another, blue this time. He presses both into my hand but doesn’t speak, and I’m learning that to hear him the loudest, he doesn’t have to.
* * *
Aidan doesn’t have a blender, so we pulverise the soup with a handheld drill he’s never used. The vegetables are super soft because we forgot about them simmering on the stove, and they disintegrate perfectly. Maybe it was meant to happen.
I take the pan off the stove while Aidan removes the drill bit and rinses it under the tap. “Is the drill broken now?”
“Wouldn’t matter if it was. It’s been in a box for two years.”
“Is that how long you’ve lived here?”
“No. I’ve been here three years.”
I’m horrified that he’s been going to bed with a sleeping bag for three years, but I bite my tongue. I’ve given him enough earache about his home to last a lifetime. Besides, my house is chaos. Who the hell am I to judge him for keeping things simple?
Simple. Right. It’s a word I often apply to Aidan, and it’s a misnomer really, because he’s dark and complex, and nothing about him is plain to see. Like now, when he takes the pan from me and peers at the contents—I can’t tell if he didn’t want me to carry something heavy or if he’s curious about what we’ve made.
Maybe it’s both.
Regardless, he doesn’t have a ladle either, so he pours our dinner into cereal bowls and hands me a teaspoon to eat with. “Sorry, I don’t eat much soup.”
