‘Green.’ It comes out cracked.
He gets up. Comes back with water in one hand and a soft jumper from the chair in the other. The jumper goes round my shoulders. The water goes into my hand.
‘Drink.’
I drink. He sits next to me. Doesn’t touch unless I move. After a minute, I lean into his side. He puts his arm around me, careful, the way you put an arm around a thing you are not sure of yet.
‘Thank you,’ he says. Into my hair. Very quiet.
For what, I don’t ask. I don’t think he could say anyway.
The clock on his bedside reads 22:43.
On the kitchen table, my phone has been ringing for hours, and neither of us has heard it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Three missed calls, all from Ronan.
21:16, 22:04. 22:38. Arranged on my lock screen like a countdown. I stare at them with my hair still damp from his shower, the fingermarks still warm on my hips, forty minutes gone.
I should have noticed.
23:51. I call back.
He picks up before the first ring finishes. Not a good sign.
‘Where were you?’ No hello. No preamble. Ron doesn’t do warm-ups.
‘Library.’ It assembles itself and exits. Impressive or clinical, one of the two.
Silence.
‘Third time this week I can’t reach you in the evening.’
‘I turn my phone off when I’m studying. You know this.’
‘Since when?’
Fair point. I’ve never turned my phone off in my life. The phone is an organ—it functions, or I’m dead.
‘Since the workload picked up.’
More silence. He was breathing through the line. A door closes somewhere behind him, his flat, maybe, or the stairwell of whatever building site he’s finishing late on.
‘Mum says you sound different.’
My hand tightens on the phone. ‘Different how?’
‘Distracted. On the phone. Like you’re somewhere else when she’s talking to you.’ A pause. Too long. ‘She worries. You know she does.’
‘I’m fine. Tell her I’m fine.’
‘I’m not your messenger service, Ewe. Ring her yourself.’
He’s right about that. I haven’t called Mum in nine days. The weekly call has become biweekly, and has become whenever I remember, which is rarely, because the hours between lectures and Laurence’s flat don’t leave much room for pretending.
‘Are you at the guy’s your seeing?’
