Page 90 of The Good Boy

“Genie, I love you,” Rory said.

“I love you too, boy,” I replied. “And I always will.”

And then I’d let him sleep in bed with me. It had seemed fair.After all, I had ruined his life, when all he had ever done was to make mine better. Even now, when he is hogging most of the bed and snoring.

“Hey, Rory?” I nudge him, but he just hugs Diego the squeaky pigeon even closer until it lets out a high-pitched whistle.

“Are you feeling very bad?” I ask him.

“I feel terrible,” Rory says, peering at me from beneath his hood. “Everything hurts, but not like when-you-go-to-the-vet’s hurts. It hurts because I feel everything, and think about everything, and I know too much and not enough and I feel sort of helpless, Genie. Not good helpless, like before when you had to take the lid off the peanut butter for me. Bad helpless, like nothing I do matters.”

“Oh, Rory,” I say. “I think you are almost entirely human now.”

“I don’t want to be human, Genie,” he says, reaching for me. “I want it to stop, please. If we can’t change me back, if nothing works to make this go away, will you take me to the vet’s, please, and ask them to send me across the bridge?”

“Rory, no!” Rubbing my hands over my face, I sit up in bed. It’s now-or-never time.

“It hasn’t come to that yet, Rory,” I reassure him. “For starters you feel better in that onesie, right? I reckon that’s because there is still a lot of you that is dog.” Or it’s a symptom of the onset of depression, but I decide to gloss over that possibility. I reach for my dressing gown, tying the knot around my waist with a decisive yank.

“I’ll go and talk to Miles right now,” I say. “I will tell him the contents of my heart, like Nanna Maria said I should, okay? I will say to him, ‘Miles,’ I will say, ‘I am so in love with you. I don’t know if you feel the same way—but I need to tell you. I need youto know, even though it terrifies me to death. I need you to know that you are loved by me.’”

“Are you going to say exactly those words, just like that?” Rory asks.

“Yeah, maybe, more or less. Why? Is that okay?”

“Yes, and I know you hate saying your inside feelings out loud, Genie,” Rory says. “I get that now more than ever. So... thank you. I know you are doing this for me.”

“I am doing it for you, because everything that’s happened to you is my fault,” I say, patting his hood head. “But I’m doing it for me too, Rory. A girl can’t spend her whole life in stasis. Sometimes you’ve got to stick your head above the parapet and get it blown to smithereens like a watermelon.”

“You have disturbed me with that image,” Rory says, squeezing Diego so hard that he wheezes another squeak. “Want me to come?” Rory’s voice is tremulous.

“No, you stay here with Diego. I’ll be back soon. If at any point you feel like you are sprouting a tail or something, bark, okay?”

“K,” Rory says. “Love you, Genie.”

“Love you, Rory.”

“Who’s a good boy?”

“You are, feller.”

He manages a faint smile for me as I close the bedroom door.

It occurs to me as I put on my slippers that I should probably make a bit more of an effort with my physical appearance, considering I’m about to give Miles an unsolicited declaration of love. Except I know that when it comes to Miles it doesn’t matter how I look. The way he feels about me won’t have anything to do with what I’m wearing or if I’m having a good-hair day. None of thatstuff matters to him. So I shove my hair in a scrunchie and wave at the binman as I knock on Miles’s front door.

“Early for you,” Miles observes as he opens it, his arms full of Matilda, whom he is cradling like a baby, her silly, soppy paws flopping like a bunny rabbit’s. I can’t help but chuckle at the sight.

“What’s so funny?” he asks as I follow him into the kitchen, now with Matilda hitched up on his shoulder peering at me curiously.

“Just how adorable the murder cat can be when she wants to be,” I say, unable to resist stroking the silky soft patch over her pink nose with the tip of my finger. “She looks as sweet as a kitten!”

“She is as sweet as a kitten,” Miles says, nuzzling his cheek against her cloud of silvery fur. “It’s just that she doesn’t make a big show of it like a dog does. She knows I’m anxious at the moment, so she’s trying to comfort me by being around me more. And she is also trying to get me to give her a second breakfast.”

“Who doesn’t want a second breakfast,” I say, taking a seat at the same table where Claudia asked him on a date a couple of days ago. Matilda hops out of Miles’s arms onto the counter, where she paces and purrs as he opens a pouch of gourmet cat food and empties it into a little china dish for her.

“I know you are not a cat person,” Miles smiles, stroking Matilda’s head as she eats, “but she means the world to me. I don’t know what I’d do without her. After Nan died I went to uni, got a degree, and did a postgrad—all the things that Mum wanted me to do—but for all of that time, the whole of it, I didn’t have anyone.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes on Matilda. “Except for her. I mean, it wasn’t like I was bullied or victimized. I knew people. I was in three societies. But I was still alone. Just because I’m me. I know it sounds pathetic, a grown man talking about missing his mum...”

“No, it doesn’t,” I say. “Not at all.”

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