“Very true. And I mean, my darling wife was a staunch defender of everyone’s right to love whomever they wanted to love. She… Sorry. I shouldn’t talk about my wife.”
“You should. Because she is still important to you?”
“She is. Her name was Mary.”
“Mary. And how did you meet Mary?”
I had no idea where the questions were coming from, but now I was lying down on the bed next to him, still fiddling with my empty cup, listening to stories from his university days and laughing at his…plain naivety with all of this.
“Met at university, first day. Lived in the same dorm block and it was just like… Boring really, but we fell in love and that was that.”
He kept talking, and it was not boring at all, far from it.
“I like that you don’t care,” came out of my mouth in the middle of some rant about the pitfalls of fame. Because apparently he’d been…some kind of celebrity. And he was honestly so far away from what I assumed a celebrity would be. He was… “You’re like the most normal person I’ve ever met.”
“Careful, you’ll end up a meme on the interweb too.” He grinned.
“Nah, no more space on that internet, you’ve already taken them all. I mean,I want to meet someone, but they have to accept that I’m still a married man.”
“Yeah. Probably not the greatest catchphrase,” he admitted, then sat himself upright. “Look. Do we get food around here?”
“I think so, but we still have to set up our safe words before we go outside again. I need to know I have an out.”
“Safe words?”
“Safe words, Peter. I say a word, and you drag me off and rescue me from whatever situation I’ve got myself into.”
He laughed, and the relief that he did? I was still treading on thin ice here, trying to figure out how to navigate this new…weird…friendship. Not to say too little. Definitely not say too much. Not be too much…me.
Peter. He was…just plain, really. Grey. But his eyes were twinkly and he looked…wrung out. In a way I recognised, and that in itself? I could do this. I could ask for what I needed, and I already felt calmer when he was around. Like we were in this total mess together somehow.
Crazy stuff in my frazzled head, but it was the vibe I was going with. Clinging to. Desperately at this point.
“Absolutely. And what word is this?”
“My stomach is grumbling.”
“So is mine.”
“No, you plonker. That’s what I’ll say. My stomach is grumbling. Then you drag me off to find food. Or hide.”
“We’re allowed to go for walks. Diane told me, for exercise.”
“We’re not prisoners, you know.”
“Feels like it. So I can ask for food too, and you’ll rescue me?”
“Absolutely. And another thing, I think we need to start reading this call sheet. The catering van outside serves food until seven. After that, we needto order in whatever we fancy and pay for it ourselves. And looking in the fridges outside?”
“Oat milk.”
“Yes. And some fancy yoghurt product that is sponsoring us.”
“We might need to go shopping. Is that a minifridge under the sink? And is there a shop of some sort here? It all looked like an industrial estate when I came in earlier. Not much around.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty dire, but according to this…” I had to rustle through the wad of paperwork again. “There’s a local curry house that delivers, and there’s a corner shop two blocks up. I looked on maps before they took my phone off me, but it’s only open ten to seven. I suppose we need to go get food, and try to go for supplies.”
“Together?”
