Page 138 of For Real

“Far better to live a whole and self-determined life than lose yourself in the illusionary transcendences of romantic love.”

“Yeah.” Why the fuck can’t she just…like, hug me or something? But it’s not what she does. Granddad does…did that stuff. Mum’s the one who yells at teachers about Key Stage 4 being intellectually moribund. She’s the one who bursts into PTA meetings when she decides the school is unconsciously reinforcing homophobic paradigms. Kind of embarrassing really, except embarrassment just sort of doesn’t happen to her. My mum in action is like nothing any normal person could prepare for: imagine the Toni Collette role in a Britflick, played by Eva Green. That’s my mum.

“In other words,” she was saying, “fuck him. Are you cooking tonight or shall we order in?”

I give her a blank look. “Maybe get a takeaway?”

“How long were you together?” I’ve almost forgotten Marius is there until he speaks.

I don’t want to be having this conversation with a stranger who may or may not have fucked my mum…but that’s all I’ve got right now.

“Um, depends how you count it.” Three months since he first threw me out of his house. Three days since he gave me his door key.

“He’s been mooning about since before Christmas.”

Great, now Mum notices stuff? “Yeah, well. Won’t be doing that anymore, will I?”

“I don’t know.” She gestures as if to encompass my general mien. “What do you call this?”

“How about”—my voice goes all shrill and adolescent—“having a broken heart?”

There’s this silence. Which I eventually break by sniffing.

And finally Marius says, “I’m sorry. I take it he was your first boyfriend?”

I nod.

He sits up and he’s looking at me, so I kind of have to look at him back. He’s got this overt, effortless sexuality to him—or maybe that’s just his very pointy shoes—that makes it hard to imagine him with the quiet librarian. But then I remember that guy had an intensity to him as well, just inward-turned, rather than extrovert. They’d have made a scarily hot couple. Smouldery types smouldering at each other.3

So I tell him out of nowhere: “I think I met your ex in Oxford.”

“Edwin?” His eyes—which are sort of honeyed, like whisky in candlelight—go wide behind those long, dark lashes. “How did you… I mean… How was he?”

I shrug. “Seemed okay. We didn’t talk much.”

To my surprise, that makes him laugh, though not in a happy way. “No, I don’t suppose you did.” His mouth curls into a crooked half smile, the shadow of a dimple flickering in his cheek. “You should be careful of first love, Toby. It’s very powerful and very dangerous.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

I just can’t be doing with people right now. I retreat to my room, but then I realise I’m going to have to hear them all night, talking and laughing and being passionate about art and shit. And God help me if they get creative. When Mum’s on an inspiration kick, you may as well cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

I sit on my bed and take out my phone, which is old and crappy and ran out of battery midway through Sunday. I think about plugging it in, but why bother? He’s not going to call me. Why the fuck would he? Laurie doesn’t do that. I’m the one who frets and begs and demands and waits and pushes and needs and loves.

He’s just…there.

Through the partition that’s supposed to be my bedroom wall, I hear a cork pop. Voices. Footsteps. The clink of glasses.

Fuck. I don’t want to be here. But I don’t have anywhere else to be. Nothing in this whole fucking city belongs to me.

So I go to the last place I remember feeling okay. The last place I knew I was loved. The last place that felt like home.

I get the last Tube to St. Anthony’s.

* * *

I wanted to cry, and it was ridiculous. Probably in a day, or a couple of days, I’d hear a knock on the door, and Toby would be there, a little bit hurt, a little angry, and ready to talk.

But that didn’t feel like an answer. It felt like no solution at all.

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