Page 24 of The Trouble With Love

‘I love Nick. However he is, however hard it might be, he’s my brother. And I’ve never really known him any other way.’ I took another step closer to the bed, noticing the way the pillows were bunched and distorted and the covers twisted; last night had obviously been a very restless one. ‘And I’ve also learned to keep things to myself, if that’s what’s worrying you. Our parents are very . . . They don’t . . . they don’t really understand. They think that Nicholas . . . that he’s only got to take his medicine and not let things get on top of him and he’ll be fine, so he can’t tell them some of the things that he . . . So, if you need to talk to someone, I know about keeping things to myself, Kai.’

A short laugh. ‘Thing is, you see, I don’t think I know how to talk to someone. I . . . I don’t share, Holly. I don’t let people in. Since Merion and I split it’s just been me, no one else to worry about and I like it like that. Oh, there’ve been women, but my relationships have all been short and intense. But mainly short. And now — now something has hit that’s so bad, so hard and I could do with someone, and there’s no one, you know? Shit.’ He lowered his head and cupped his hands around the back of his neck. I could see the quick rise and fall of his chest under his shirt as though he was struggling for control of himself, but his voice was steady when he carried on speaking. ‘What have I been doing so wrong all these years?’

I came further into the room now, and perched my bottom along the edge of the stumpy dressing table. A sudden, short pain dug under my ribs as I remembered some of the rambling, confused conversations with Nicky, some of the thoughts and doubts that he’d shared with me, that I couldn’t share with anyone. A pain and responsibility that I had to carry. Had to. Because he was my brother. I knew how it felt to need to talk . . . ‘I don’t know, Kai. I don’t think there’s anything so wrong in not wanting attachments. Keep your life clear and uncluttered and take your fun where you find it, that’s my motto.’

‘But what about when you wake up one day and it’s not fun any more? What then? What about when you think “shit, I need to talk about this” and there’s no one there to listen?’

‘I’m listening.’

He rubbed both hands over his face, tiredly. ‘I know. And maybe it’s that, maybe because you had Nick and I had no one that makes us the same, gives you some kind of . . . I am going to regret this, I know, but I’m so . . . it’s all got confusing and I can’t make sense of what I think, what I feel.’ He glanced up and I noticed for the first time how shaded and tired his eyes looked, how pulled-down his whole face seemed, as though fifty thoughts fought for his attention at the same time.

I stopped perching on the edge of the table and sat back properly. ‘I’m here,’ I said quietly. ‘If you need an ear, I’m here, Kai.’

‘Yeah.’ An outbreath, long and hard and carrying a decision. ‘This goes no further, right? And definitely not to Cerys. Well, definitely not to anyone but especially not her. No, no one is best, let’s say no one.’

‘All right,’ I said, trying not to sound impatient.

‘Okay.’ And Kai stood up. ‘What? I’m only six foot four, it’s not like I’m a freak or something.’

‘Sorry. It’s . . . you look different today. More . . .’ I’d been going to say ‘attractive’ but I didn’t want him to start thinking I really went for the unwashed, unbrushed, unshaven thing. It was rather that he seemed more approachable, more real somehow. ‘. . . tall,’ I finished feebly.

‘Here. Read this.’ He fetched a letter from the dressing table and thrust it into my hands. Then, as if he were afraid to look at my face while I read, he took himself back to the window and stared out again.

The letter was from a private investigation agency. It asked Kai to confirm to their address that he had been born ‘on or around 15 September 1976’ and handed in to a hospital in Caernarfon.

‘Handed in? What, like a parcel?’

‘I was found in a bus shelter, I was about four hours old and wrapped in a copy of the Daily Mail.’ He tapped the window glass with his fingertips again. ‘You don’t grow up with a warm feeling of being loved with that sort of background.’

I was about to say ‘I can imagine’, but then realised that I truly couldn’t. ‘And you think this letter . . . ?’

‘I suspect it’s my mother, trying to find me.’ He turned around again and started up the pacing. ‘I was adopted, lovely couple, farmers on the coast. Couldn’t have kids of their own so they gave me everything, all the love they’d had bundled up all those years . . . and then, when I was ten, they died. And then the fun started.’

‘Fun?’ I watched him rub his face again. There was so much not being said, it almost outweighed the words.

‘I was fostered. And with these—’ he waved a hand to indicate his eyes, ‘a lot of people thought I was the son of the Devil. Oh, don’t laugh . . .’

‘For fuck’s sake, Kai, laughing is the last thing on my mind.’

‘No. I suppose not. It sounds so . . . so parochial, so stupid and rural. But at that time, up North, it was all very Chapel, very religious. They really believed in the Bible and all God’s works and so the Devil was the downside. I had a lot of foster carers try to beat Satan out of me. Oh, not all of them, some of them were fine, but it was hard, you know? I’d lost the only parents I knew and . . .’

I nodded so as not to break his flow.

‘So. Merion and I ended up in the same foster home. Both fifteen, both desperate for something to hold on to. For a while we held on to each other, then to Cerys, but it wasn’t enough, not for either of us. She’s okay now, she’s got Mike, she managed it, the transition to a proper life, trust, hope. Me, I still can’t do it. You were right, you know?’

I had to clear my throat. ‘About?’

‘All that stuff you said about me deciding to be a journalist. Went to University when Merion and I split up, got my degree in journalism, ran off to be a hotshot story-digger. Exposing the bad stuff, the warped people, the twisted logic. Oh, I’ve done my share of the celebrity stuff but what I’m best at? It’s showing the world up as pure hypocrisy.’ He scribbled a finger against the bedside table as though composing another exposé in the dust. ‘For every selfless act there’s a dozen evil ones, for every dolphin saved there’s ten kids shot on the streets. You see enough of that, Holly, you realise that there’s no place for love and romance and all that crap, you learn to be hard, to take what you can and not to expect any kind of a future.’

‘But what you do, it helps to make the world a better place. You don’t just see it, you make others see it too. And you’re very good at it.’

An eyebrow raised. ‘I see. You followed my work to expose the child slave trade in Chad, did you? Or was it my undercover work that led to the jailing of a Serbian drug overlord and the freeing of the underage girls he’d been prostituting?’

‘I googled you.’

‘Right, yeah. I can see how that would be easier.’

‘Sorry. But life ran the way you wanted it though. You were . . .’ I cleared my throat. I was trying to track his emotions, to understand how he felt, and I was becoming aware that, somewhere in the middle of me, was a big black hole into which the understanding fell. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you? And now you’re freaking because the woman who dumped you in a bus shelter might want to get in touch? Isn’t that overreacting a bit? You can always say no.’

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