Ben gave him an incredulous look. “Is this about us not having sex? Jesus fucking Christ, it is! Three nights without sex and you’ve gone totally psychotic.”
“That is exactly where your mind would go. Because you have never seen anything else between us but sex. I did not say sex, and I did not mean sex. You are such achildsometimes. You do nothing but take emotionally and you do not give back. Everything is fall—Stop the car.”
“What? We’re doing ninety.”
“At the next services. Pull over.”
Ben did as he was asked. Nikolas got out of the car and slammed the door as he headed toward the coffee stand. Ben watched him walk away. The dog stuck his head between the seats, and Ben patted him absently, then he clipped on the lead and took him out, keeping a wary eye on Nikolas, who was now leaning casually against the wall, drinking coffee, face tipped to the sun. When the dog was done, Ben climbed back in and waited for Nikolas. Nikolas returned, his earlier, totally uncharacteristic outburst seemingly forgotten. Ben sat staring out of the windscreen. Nikolas frowned. “Come on. We have a long way to go.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah. I think we do.I do.” He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them to see Nikolas’s eyes, dark and unreadable, watching him intently before the gaze was flicked away. Ben turned to look out of his side window, wishing he wasn’t trapped in the car for this conversation. “I do act like a child. I don’t know why. I just let you do everything—make all the decisions. I’m not like that with other people, so why am I like it with you? I just take and take from you, and then as soon as I get crossed in the slightest, I treat you like shit. On your birthday, too. I didn’t even know it was your birthday…”
Nikolas sighed and put his hand on Ben’s thigh. “Don’t. I lied to you, Benjamin.”
Ben turned, his eyes wide. “Don’t say it.Please, whatever you do,don’t say it. Let’s just stay as we are now, please, Nik.”
“Don’t say what?”
“I don’t know! Whatever you were going to say—that you don’t love me. That you’re going back to your wife. That you’ve found someone else to do my job. I don’t know!”
“Dear God, you are foolish sometimes. I was referring to something else entirely.” It was Nikolas’s turn to stare out of his window. “Look, this is neither the time nor the place to have this conversation. I—Do you trust me?”
“You keep asking me that! Yes! You know I do.”
“Then trust me now and just drive, and perhaps when we get where we are going, things will sort themselves out more easily than we can see at present.”
Ben put his hand over Nikolas’s. “Tell me you love me first.”
Nikolas eased his own hand away. “That is not—”
“I don’t fucking care about whether that’s what you do or don’t do. I need to hear it.”
Nik turned to him. “I would have thought all this would say it for me. Would I bother with all this for anyone else?”
“Why can’t you just say it?”
A fleeting expression passed over Nikolas’s face. Ben thought he wasn’t going to reply, but he said with so much stress in his voice that his accent almost totally mangled the words, “Everyone I have said that to has left me. Do not make me lose you, too.”
Ben took Nikolas’s face in a painful hold. “I willneverleave you.”
Nikolas eased his hands off with a sad expression. “Sometimes we have no choice in this world. We are left alone by those who would so very much prefer to stay with us.”
Ben leant his forehead to Nikolas’s. “All right. I’m sorry.” He straightened in his seat then started the car and pulled back out onto the motorway. Nikolas’s hand returned to Ben’s thigh, his thumb occasionally stroking the outside seam of his jeans, and Ben was content to let that uncharacteristic gesture be all the declaration of love he needed.
§§§
They arrived at the edge of the Saddleworth moors, Nikolas now driving, by early evening. For the last few miles, Ben had had a fairly good idea of where they were going. When they drovepasthis childhood village, however, he frowned but kept quiet. He’d said he trusted Nikolas, and he meant it. Nikolas drove on to a town on the northern slopes of the moors and navigated using the satnav to a small churchyard. He climbed out, let the dog out, and began to walk through the graveyard, consulting a piece of paper. He finally stopped alongside a small marker. Ben came up to join him. The stone merely read,Now in heaven, and a date: 1992.
Nik pursed his lips and began calmly, “My lie was one of omission. I have been aware of certain facts about your history for some time that I have not shared with you. I believe this is your mother’s grave. This unknown woman died the same year your mother went missing. I do not believe that your mother intended to leave you, as you were always told. She took her things that day and was waiting for you to return home to take you, too.”
“I—”
“Please. Just listen. Your father was very late coming home that night. You may not remember this, because you were so young. I believe he discovered what your mother intended and either by mistake or intent he killed her. Her body was never found, but I later discovered this unknown woman was found on the moors, and was buried here. Much of what you remember after that day—the running away and looking for her—was possibly more a result of your father’s guilt—his drinking and consequent treatment of you—than any real belief you had that she was still alive. Ben, it is possible that you feared what he had done. It is possible that is why you stopped talking. No one would listen to you.”
“But…” Ben’s head was spinning with questions. “Why was she leaving? Why would he kill her for that?”
Nik sighed and pushed his hands deep into his overcoat pockets. “The man you remember was not your father. You were not fond of him, so I hope this does not come as too much of a shock. Your mother came here with you when you were four. I do not know where she came from or what she was running away from; that remains something I am trying to discover for you. I do not know what attracted her to him. Possibly she was desperate for a home and security for you and took what she could find. Certainly they were very different. You joke about your name; you remember some of the things she wanted for you. She was not at home on a council estate—that seems very clear.”
For one brief moment, Ben felt as if he were falling into a vast ocean of confusion and pain but then, just before that tip, he was filled with a sense of clarity and truth. It was as if something inside hisheadhad always known these things, but it had waited to be given a voice for him to know them in hisheart. Nikolas’s mangled English was that voice. He’d never felt a connection with his father. He’d never thought of his home as…home. All his life before the army he’d been searching. He’d thought he’d been searching for his mother. Perhaps he’d just been searching for a truth, which was now being told to him by this man—the man who had become hisnewcertainty. He swivelled his eyes to Nikolas’s face. Truth? Lies? Knowledge?Power. It made him faintly sick to ask, but he had to. “How do you know this? Why are you doing this? Why now? What has this to do with us? Oh, God, is there an us?”
