Page 76 of Pictures of Him

There was the rampaging through town, stalking her, then when that got me nowhere, stalking her flatmate Liv, the next best thing.

‘She’s gone home,’ Liv told me. ‘She doesn’t want to be in a relationship; I’m sorry, but she’s asked that you leave her alone.’

Did Liv know the truth? I wonder now. Has she always known? This little bullet of hate that lodges within my chest could zap anyone who knew and didn’t tell me.

It wasn’t just the fact of Catherine leaving that tore me apart. I know that it was also a delayed reaction to my father’s death, to my visceral terror of abandonment, of aloneness. My response was to try to obliterate myself, first with alcohol, then with pills. But that was all a long time ago, and it’s laughable, really, that Rachel and I are sitting here discussing my drinking rather than hers.

‘I’ll make a deal with you, Rach. How about you and I quit together? How about you give the coke a rest for a while too?’

As expected, her eyes fill with tears and she shoots her head away from me.

‘Don’t turn this one on me, Lucian.’

Today is not the day for either of us to address our demons, and after lunch we join the rest of the guests on the cedar lawn, with our own personal bottle of wine to finish. Celia comes up to say her goodbyes, and I can tell instantly that something is wrong. It will be Jack, of course, ignoring her, or flirting with Alexa, or perhaps just the same crushing disregard I witnessed at their house.

‘Celia, are you all right? I hope you don’t mind me asking, it’s just the other day …’

‘No, not really,’ she says, voice unsteady. ‘But I can’t talk about it.’

Tears are imminent, this much I know, and I motion to her to sit down next to us.

‘Sit with us for a few minutes. Please.’

She shakes her head quickly and starts to walk away.

‘You’ve always been very kind to me, Lucian,’ she says.

Celia can have been gone no more than a minute or two when Jack and Charlotte Lomax come around the corner and sit down next to us. Now that I know the real Jack, the one he’s been so careful to hide, the one who fucks other people’s girlfriends and cheats on his wife, I find myself wondering if these two have been having an affair. Why stop at Alexa? Or Catherine?

‘Pass the wine, mate,’ Jack says, and I refill their glasses with the remains of our bottle.

‘Plenty more where that came from,’ says Rachel, stumbling to her feet. The three of us watch her tacking acrossthe lawn, a little too much to the left, a little too much to the right.

‘What a dreadful day,’ Charlotte says. ‘Poor Harry.’

‘How’s he doing now?’ Jack asks.

I tell them that Ania and Filip are stationed like surrogate parents outside his bedroom door. He’s not eating, he’s not sleeping, it’s a struggle to make him drink water. There’s a sharp little moment of silence where neither of them seems to be able to find anything to say. I could help them, but I don’t. I find that I’m enjoying the mild discomfort of my oldest friend, watching him absorb the heat of my reticence. Does he see it, this gradual, careful retraction of mine? A leisurely snipping away of the ties that once bound us together.

I’m not sure who I am any more; I just know that I have changed.

Now

Something new is happening. They say the therapy is starting to work and I think they may be right. For though I am not talking, I am listening. Listening with a fierce greed for any information on you. And if I wait long enough, I find that it comes, I find that someone always mentions your name. I am crying, too, and that’s progress, apparently. The first time it happened, Liv pointed it out to Alison and neither of them could keep the buoyancy from their voices.

‘Oh dear, beauty,’ Alison said, crouching down beside my chair and taking hold of my hand. ‘Are you feeling sad today? It’s good to cry. You let it out now, my darling.’

Today Liv and Sam are here together and they are having – argument is too strong; let’s call it a disagreement about Greg’s slow-burn technique. He is addressing each of the obstacles in my past that he believes contributed to my eventual mutism, ticking them off one by one – bereavement, shame, isolation … Oh yes, it’s always a fun-packed therapy session.

Liv wants to know if Greg has discovered how much I remember about the night I was admitted here, the eventsthat preceded it. They are trying to be subtle, lowered voices, stationed a few metres away from me, but of course they do not know that I now strain to catch every word.

‘Does she know what happened? Do you think she’s remembered?’ Liv asks, and Sam shakes his head.

‘Greg thinks she wiped it out, you know that. He’s decided not to ask her about it any more. Thinks it’s obstructive. He thinks she shuts down every time he brings it up.’

‘That’s not fair on Catherine. One of us should tell her. How can she ever recover if she doesn’t know the truth?’

‘But she is recovering, Liv. You’ve said so yourself. She’s expressing emotion now. The other day she smiled at Joe. It meant so much to him. To all of us.’

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