We’re still on the bed, him on his back, me propped on one elbow with my fingers still in his hair. The gold light dies. The afternoon has ended, and something is arriving to collect.
We’ve been here for two hours. The slow thing, the one where he held my face the whole time, and I let him.
We made love, and then we lay here. The afternoon went on without us.
‘We could go to the cinema Saturday,’ I say flatly. Ordinary. That’s the point. ‘That place in Glossop with the sofas.’
‘The one where you spilled popcorn in my lap and pretended it was an accident?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘You aimed.’
I grin. He sees it. He smiles, that surprised smile I’ve learned means I caught him off guard.
He finds my hip, thumb tracing the bone. A future counted in dreams. Both of us are pretending they’re allowed.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand. He ignores it. Three months ago, he’d have checked. Now the phone buzzes, and he stays.
‘I was thinking,’ he says, his thumb still on my hip. ‘Easter break. There’s a cottage in the Lakes. Belonged to a colleague’s family. She lets people use it off-season.’
Easter. Three weeks away, a cottage. The Lakes. It’s so normal, what he’s saying. Two people are planning a holiday, but they can’t be seen together.
I don’t say any of that. I say: ‘Yeah. That sounds proper good.’
Theproperslips out. He notices. Doesn’t comment. He presses his thumb into my hip bone, once.
I press my face into his neck. Close my eyes. The heartbeat under his skin. The flat, the gold light. The.
This. Just this.
So, the knock comes at four thirty-five.
The green digits on Laurence’s alarm clock burn into my retina in the same second the sound hits the door.
Three hits. Fast, hard, knuckles that aren’t asking.
My stomach, ice. Instant.
Laurence sits up, I sit up, we look at each other across the sheets—every secret, every risk, every corridor and cupboard and night I shouldn’t have been here. He goes white all at once.
‘Are you expecting anyone?’
He shakes his head. He’s looked at the bedroom door, then the hallway, then back to me. Computing.
Three more. Harder. The door shudders in its frame.
‘Open up, Haldrey.’ Ronan’s voice. Cold. Flat. ‘I know my brother is in there.’
I’m off the bed. Jeans—where are my jeans? Floor. I grab them. Hands shaking so badly that the zip takes three attempts—shirt, inside out. Don’t care. Laurence is watching me from the bed, still shirtless, still pale, and the stillness in him is the kind that comes after deciding.
‘Don’t open it.’ My voice. Breathless, pathetic. ‘Laurence, don’t. Please.’
‘Ewan.’
One word. The same Lancashire as last night. The same steadiness.
‘We have to face him.’ He stands. Pulls a shirt from the chair. Buttons it with hands that are steady because he’s making them steady. ‘Sooner or later this had to happen.’
