Dair’s hand doesn’t just brush mine. It holds tight, and I find the breath to wheeze out, “The kids who could barely read or write until you taught them.”
Dair squeezes my hand, and I keep going.
“Because since my skull got fractured, I can’t do either.”
11
My planfor this morning hadn’t included tanking Dair’s opinion of me. Or for him to learn why shifting furniture for a living will always be my limit. If he wants to know more, I got nothing left to tell him.
Adey must have seen and heard kids slam to a verbal stop, like I do outside a city landmark most people have no problem identifying. Anyone else would read the massive golden signage spelling Victoria & Albert in shining letters, and I’d make those shapes my focus if I could look up at them.
I can’t, not even to answer Adey’s questions.
“This is something you don’t usually share?”
My silence must tell him plenty.
“Okay, right. Let’s find somewhere quieter.” He turns to Blake. “Where?”
“Inside.”
Blake takes over, and I know there’s movement, that he hustles away a herd of other Exes. I only see their feet move, because you better believe I keep my head down.
Keep it down?
I can’t lift it. There’s no way I can make myself watch people who run companies and who rule courtrooms react to my confession. Some of these men save lives for their living. Others have fought for King and Country. Somehow, this feels like the fight of my fucking life, and a man who once described himself as a dim bulb is bright enough to see it.
Dair doesn’t let go of my hand.
Slim fingers curl around my thick ones, and air floods lungs that shame just withered.
Another hand finds the small of my back, and Adey makes a promise over the roar of blood in my ears louder than the passing traffic. “That’s the worst bit done, mate. You’ll never have to say that for a first time to any of us ever again. From now on, it will get easier, not harder.”
I’m not sure I can believe that, or that I should let him steer me inside the museum. My first instinct is to head home. To hole up. And to tell Kev to go ahead and cover theStacey & Sonon his van withKevin & Cousin, even if I’ll never be able to read it.
I’ll promise him I’ll stay in my sofa-shifting and flatpack-furniture lane forever if he’ll make the whole world stop staring like he did when I was so much younger.
One hard stare from him would make anyone laughing at my struggle shut the fuck up. Stacey could do the same at school parents’ evenings, where she reminded stand-in teachers to read up on my support needs.
Dair’s fingers squeeze mine tighter, and I lurch into movement, following the fleet of Exes I invited into a museum where I do the one thing I never needed exam certificates to be good for.
I climb flights of stairs, trudging.
These flights are swanky marble instead of piss-stained concrete, and they end at England’s finest collection of bonechina, a destination I picked to help someone who now helps me by not letting me go.
Adey finds a quiet corner to pick up from where he left off. “That skull fracture you mentioned. It was recent?”
I focus on a display of fancy tea sets and shake my head.
“When you were a child, then?”
I nod, gaze still fixed anywhere but on him. Or on Dair. But that’s who guesses correctly.
“It happened when you were nine?”
“Yeah,” I choke out. “I was lucky.”
Dair knows which of my family members wasn’t. Or at least, I bet he can guess after our run-in with someone whose sister got help to escape domestic violence.
