‘It didn’t just happen,’ Ben replies, looking anywhere but at me. ‘It took a long time for it to happen,’ he says sadly. ‘It was a very slow start.’
All I’ve got in the flat is a bottle of sparkling water, which is absolutely not hitting the spot at a moment like this. Ben’s nursing his, but Toby is sipping delicately, politely, and trying not to make a face.
‘Are you angry?’ Ben asks, and finally he looks in my direction.
‘Angry? What? No! Why do you think I’d be angry?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben says. ‘You look angry.’
‘She looksshocked,’ Toby points out. ‘And probably rightly so.’
‘Well, obviously,’ I reply. ‘Tell me what to do – what to say. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’
‘You could never say the wrong thing,’ Ben mutters. ‘But I appreciate you tiptoeing on eggshells for me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. For the longest time I wanted to tellyouin particular, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. No one knows.’
‘No one?’
Ben shakes his head.
‘Not even Ollie?’
‘No. My parents … Liv – no one.Iwanted to know what was going on with me first. I’ve never … been in a relationship before. Like this, you know?’
‘I’ve known you a long time, Ben, so I’m going to risk causing offence here when I ask: how long have you been gay?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben answers helplessly. ‘I just don’t know. All I know is that Toby and I struck up a friendship after your house-warming party a few years ago, and slowly …’ Toby gives him a loving smile and Ben continues, ‘slowly, over the past eighteen months – I didn’t realise what I was feeling, what was happening to me, I don’t think. Toby spotted it. He knew.’
I think back to my house-warming party a few years ago: Toby mentioning that he thought Ben was gay, and being so confused when I flat-out told him he wasn’t. Was he? Has Ben always been?
Ben continues, ‘At first we just met up for coffee or a run. Toby was a good ear when I was feeling down. And I didn’tknow why I was down. Why I couldn’t hold down a job. Why I couldn’t keep a woman. Why I was so depressed all the time and couldn’t stop drinking. It’s a jumble, but he’s taken everything slowly and he let me discover things about myself I didn’t know. I started to look forward to seeing Toby in the same kind of way I used to look forward to seeing you. We started to make sense together, and I couldn’t work out why I was so incredibly happy with him, especially because I didn’t dare think I was anything other than straight. But … that feeling of knowing I wasn’t a straight man kept niggling away at me.’
Toby rests his hand lovingly on Ben’s leg.
Ben gives Toby an affectionate look. ‘And the more I started to recognise that I might not be straight, the less I drank. The more I hung out with Toby, the better I felt about myself. As if it all made sense, suddenly. The puzzle-pieces of my life fit together neatly now, whereas before I was trying to stick it all together with hopes of a life I didn’t really want.’
Ben’s been so lost for so long. There’s a certain part of this that makes sense. And so much of it that’s going to take me a long time to get my head around.
‘Then I’m happy for you.’
‘Really?’
‘Honestly. I understand why you didn’t tell me.’
‘And I wanted to,’ Ben says, leaning forward. ‘I wanted to tell you. I’m pleased it’s you who saw us. Not Liv. Not Ollie. You’re special to me, Aurora. You know that, don’t you? You always will be.’
I move towards him, kneel in front of him and wraphim in a hug. He shuffles forward and then wraps his arms around me, and that sense of familiarity – of holding Ben and having been in love with him so long ago – comes back, although there’s nothing but friendship here now. It’s such a different kind of love.
‘Ollie said you’d been out so much lately. I don’t know how he doesn’t suspect.’
‘How would anyone suspectthis?’ Ben says. ‘I’ve covered my tracks very well. Until today.’
I pull back and turn to Toby. ‘Butyou,’ I accuse. ‘You’re so indiscreet. And you and Ben were together when we were on that job in Antigua. And you didn’t say.’
‘I wasn’t allowed to. Ben was very clear. It was so new. I’d only just got him to feel he could trust me with his heart. I love him, and I knew I loved him back then, even so shortly into it. I wasn’t going to mess it up and let slip so that you and I could have a natter.’ Then he adds darkly, ‘Or compare experiences.’
‘Toby!’ both Ben and I say.
‘If I remember rightly, compare-and-contrast is Ben’s least favourite game when it comes to relationships,’ I point out.
