I caught her at the last possible second. “Get a bowl. You can have three.”
“I already ate one.”
“I know, little bug.”
Ivy disappeared again, leaving me with the weight of Folk’s recent life story. Illness. Addiction. Survival. And now I knew why he was River’s sponsor. “What was your poison? You said opiates, but I can’t see you jacking up brown.”
“I’d have got there eventually if Rocco hadn’t saved me.” Folk cupped his hands around his empty glass. “I had my radiation treatment in America. After, I got this horrible joint pain, like I had the bends from a messed-up dive. I lived with it for a while, but it got so bad I couldn’t hack it. So they gave me something for it that turned me into a monster.”
I didn’t know what story I’d been expecting, but the punchline was unacceptable. “The disease was the monstrous thing. Not you.”
Folk smiled. “I know that. And I knew it at the time. But it was a harsh reality I’d never imagined for myself. Until that point, I’d never smoked, never really drank. Then I found myself climbing the walls for the hit of a tiny little pill.”
“How long have you been sober?”
“Nine-hundred days.”
“That’s precise.”
“Rocco put an app on my phone. I don’t use it anymore, but I leave it there because the relentless beeping makes me think of him.”
Like magic, his phone vibrated on the table beside him. It was a text, though. Followed by two more.
Folk ignored them. “Sorry I just unloaded on you. I don’t talk about it much, so when I do, it kinda falls out of me.”
“Don’t apologise for talking. I’m the one that pulled on that thread. And for what it’s worth, I’m really fucking sorry all that happened to you.”
He grinned. “Don’t be. Maybe it’ll make me a better man, eventually.”
“I like the man you are.”
Folk’s smile morphed into something that would’ve made me weak at the knees if I hadn’t been sitting down already. As it was, he stole my breath with that simple twitch of his lips, and I had to avert my gaze, just for a moment.
When I looked back, he was still smiling, but it was distant, and I realised I’d abandoned him to whatever place revisiting his past had taken him.
I knew that feeling too well to leave him there. I nudged him with my knee. “Did the pain ever go away? In your joints?”
He didn’t seem like a man who lived with daily chronic pain, but neither had Rubi in the dark months after he’d been twatted by a pipe. It was a shameful fact that I hadn’t noticed how hard life had become for him until it got better.
“It’s all right these days.” Folk broke into my thoughts with his quiet voice. “As long as I eat right and stay hydrated, most things are.”
“Do you—”
“Daddy.” Ivy ran out of patience and tossed a half-eaten Jaffa Cake at me. “Hurryup.”
I caught the Jaffa Cake, mashing it in my hand. “Hey. Don’t do that.”
“It was for Folk.”
“It was for my head. Go and wash your hands.”
It was as stern as I ever got with her. And it had no effect on her demeanour whatsoever.
I waited for her to wash her hands and leave again before I jabbed a finger in her general direction. “Now, that’s a monster.”
Folk laughed. “Nah. She just wants your attention. I should get out of your hair and let her have it.”
“You don’t want to stay and watchThe Little Mermaid?”
