Page 84 of Not in a Million Years

‘Get what?’ I scrambled to my feet.

‘All of it. Why you weren’t surprised about Ash. Why you always acted like you owned him. Why he—’ He stopped.

‘You were saying?’ My voice came out steady, but I didn’t feel steady – not one bit. I felt ashamed – frightened, almost, as if I’d been caught out in a crime and now I was going to have to pay the price.

But there’d been no crime. Andy and I were consenting adults. If Daniel felt somehow excluded, or deceived, or even lied to, surely that was between him and Andy, and nothing to do with me? No one had been cheated on here; no one had been hurt.

Except me. And I would deal with that on my own, just like I always did.

Silently, Daniel pulled my bed back into position, covering the jumble of my belongings. He picked up the chair and carried it back to the living room, and I followed in his wake, my heart pounding. He didn’t sit down; he walked out onto the balcony and stood leaning against the railing, looking down at the river as I so often did.

There was no sound from next door – if the drilling had woken the hen party guests, they weren’t ready to kick off the day’s festivities just yet.

‘Daniel? What’s wrong? Why are you being so off? I get that it’s a shock, I get that it’s weird you didn’t know. But it was a private thing between Andy and me. It wasn’t anyone else’s business.’

‘Did you not listen to him when he preached the gospel according to Narcotics Anonymous to us? Did it all go straight over your head because you didn’t want to hear what he was saying?’ Daniel demanded.

‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

‘“We’re only as sick as our secrets.” Does that mean anything to you? Anything at all?’

‘What, you’re saying I should have outed him to everyone? Because I don’t think—’

‘How long did this go on for?’

I considered saying again that it was none of anyone else’s business; that it was private; that if Andy had wanted Daniel to know, he’d had ample opportunity to tell him. But then he turned and looked at me. His cold grey gaze made me feel like a prisoner in an interrogation chamber, or a supplicant in a confessional.

I heard myself telling the truth – the truth I’d never told anyone before. ‘Five years. Something like that.’ More like six. Seven even. Longer than I wanted to admit to anyone, certainly not to Daniel – and certainly not now.

‘Right. So the whole time Andy’s habit was escalating and escalating, you helped him keep that secret? You let him hide that massive thing about himself, while he got deeper and deeper into it. No wonder he was so fucked up. No wonder he still is.’

‘Hold on. You’re not seriously saying Andy using was my fault? My fault, because we had sex a few times a month?’

Shit. I hadn’t meant to reveal any more detail than I had to, and now here I was doing just that.

Abruptly, I switched from defence mode into attack. ‘You’re the one who enabled him, anyway, not me. When I’d paid for him to go to rehab, you sat right in the front room of my flat while he did lines on my coffee table, and you didn’t stop him. And you say his addiction is my fault?’

‘What the hell did you want me to do?’ Daniel demanded. ‘Grab the stuff out of his hands and flush it down the toilet? You know he’d just have bought more.’

‘Maybe you could have tried not letting him buy it in the first bloody place. I did my best. He never used when he was alone with me. I was helping his recovery. As far as I could tell, you were helping him to use.’

‘So you said at the time.’

He was right – I had said it at the time. That and a whole lot more, before finally throwing him out of my flat.

It was only now that I was beginning to suspect my anger had been misdirected. My feelings for Andy – which I’d never admitted to anyone, certainly not to him – had been so powerful I’d been willing to blame anyone and anything for his problems, except Andy himself.

‘Maybe you should have listened to me at the time,’ I said, suddenly weary.

‘Maybe you should have used your brain and admitted what was right in front of your nose,’ Daniel snapped. ‘You were enabling him, just as much as I was. Giving him a place to stay, cooking for him, dancing to his tune like he was one of those fucking Tamagotchi things. All because you wanted him to love you.’

‘He did love me. He does love me. Just not in that way any more.’ But my voice didn’t come out as certain as I meant it to.

‘Addicts don’t love anyone, Kate. At least, not as much as they love their drug. He used you. You just don’t want to see it. I’m leaving now. Hope the thing with the speaker works.’

He pushed past me, gathered up his things and left. But even after he’d gone, his words seemed to hang in the air of my apartment, almost visible, like the motes of dust in his workshop.

Only, when the sun went down, I’d still be able to see the truth of what he’d said.

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