Page 98 of For Real

“Anyway, a bunch of them came forward afterwards, because it was all scandalous and cool, and about five of them stuck around on a sort of irregular rotation.”

“And you didn’t think to get a DNA test?” I don’t like the careful way Laurie says it.

“Why? I didn’t care about whose spunk it was, I just wanted someone to stand up and say, ‘Me.’ When I was like nine or something, I was so sick of it I called everyone together, and I was like, ‘No more part-time dads. Choose.’” I need something to do with my hands, so I take a big gulp of wine I don’t want. And then I grin as I deliver the punch line. “So none of them stayed.”

Afterwards I went to Granddad. Cried my eyes out. Looking back, I don’t know why I was upset. I had him.

“What about your mother?” asks Laurie.

“She didn’t care either way. They were all sort of friends by then, but she was basically done with them.” Everyone is looking at me, all curious and eager. So I sigh and give them what they want. “She doesn’t believe you should have sex more than once with the same person. Because…it’d be like photocopying a piece of art.”

Laurie actually rolls his eyes. “Your mother doesn’t believe in photocopiers?”

“She doesn’t believe in the mechanics of mass production.” I take a breath and recite in a monotone, “‘Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’”9

So that’s how I start a riot, everybody talking at once about art and the meaning of art and the nature of authenticity and all the usual shit.

Laurie isn’t saying anything. I try to catch his eye, and when I do, he mouths, Who are you? at me.

I mouth back, Yours.

And we hold hands under the table until the apple-and-quince crumble tart arrives. The Calvados foam looks okay and tastes amazing. I want to lick it from Laurie’s fingers.

God. Laurie and food. My two favourite things.

“And what about you, Toby?” comes Sherry’s voice into my private gastric-lust haze.

“Huh?” Oh God, they better not be asking me about art, because I don’t give a fuck.

“Are you an artist too?”

“Uh, no.” I deploy my best duh voice. “It’s not genetic.”

He smiles so nicely I feel a bit of a dick for snapping. “I just thought you might’ve had an interest.”

“No, I work in a caff.”

“How terribly bohemian of you,” drawls Jasper.

God. You just can’t fucking win sometimes. “Yeah. Apparently the Kray twins used to throw people through the front windows way back when.”

“Let me guess, by day you study the human condition, and by night you write your novel?”

“At night I see my granddad and wait for the weekend to roll round so I can be with Laurie.” And now everyone looks disappointed. Well, everyone except Laurie. I sigh. “I used to want to be a poet, okay?”

“What changed your mind?”

I’m kind of losing track of who’s looking and who’s talking.

I shrug. “I like poetry too much.”

Jasper pushes away most of his crumble tart—a serious waste, if you ask me—and pulls his wineglass closer. He rests an elbow on the table, which you’re not supposed to do, and cups his chin in his hand as he looks at me with his pretty eyes and this faint, unreadable smile. “I’ve decided I adore you, Tobermory. Which poets do you favour?”10

He makes it easy to forget there’s a whole world beyond him. “All sorts, really.”

“Don’t play hard to get. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Oh, all right. I like…the metaphysical poets, especially Donne and Marvell. And the Earl of Rochester. And François Villon. And Byron. And Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

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