Page 91 of Glitterland
“I’m not a total numpty. I could see what was going on. I only came over cos they was being a bunch of bellends, and you looked like you was in a right state.”
“Yes, but I still shouldn’t have said what I said. I hate myself for it.”
“Forget it.” His voice had been brittle with assumed lightness, but now it turned sharp. “If you wanna feel bad, feel bad cos you dumped me in Cambridge wifout even saying ‘fank you, ’ave a nice life.’” Darian scuffed his toe into the carpet. “I waited all night,” he whispered, “but you nevva came.”
My breath caught. I felt, suddenly, a little sick. “W-what?”
“It don’t matter.”
“Oh God.” Of course he’d waited. Darian was the kindest person I’d ever met. Even after everything that had happened, he would still have given me the benefit of the doubt, which is more than I’d ever done for him. How had I convinced myself I was doing the right thing, running from him all across Cambridge, as though he were some monster of my own devising? I’d had my reasons, but it was like looking over my shoulder at depression: an irrational stranger’s choices, driven only by the most incomprehensible shadows of the self. I reached for what seemed the simplest explanation. “I should have come after you, but I was too ashamed.”
Darian only shrugged. “So I knew I’d ’ad it right the first time rand, and that everyfing you’d said was true.”
I stared at him in dismay. It was too easy to imagine him waiting for me, a slender figure on the banks of the Cam, his shoes glinting like bits of star. And then what? A train back to Brentwood in the early hours of the morning, the words he hadn’t at first believed seeping into his heart like poison, tainting all the memories I’d clutched like precious things through these long, empty months? I’d ruined everything.
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—and burst into tears. It was messy and mortifying, and I’d had no idea I was still capable of it. Pressing both hands to my mouth in a futile effort to stifle my sobs, I spun away from him. But the more I tried to compose myself, the less I succeeded, and the worse it all became. “Oh God. Oh God. I’m so sorry.” It came out a damp and hopeless garble.
My life had been little more than a parade of indignities. Mania. Institutionalisation. Drugs. ECT. Depressions so deep they had flayed my humanity to shreds and patches. The times I’d wanted to die. The times I’d tried. The doctor who sewed up my arms without anaesthetic to impress upon me the stupidity of what I had tried to do.
Yet they all paled to this: weeping my wretched heart out in front of a man who no longer wanted me.
Then Darian came up behind me and wrapped his arms tightly around my shaking body. It was familiar and perfect and unbearable, because I knew he would never do it again. For my sanity’s sake, I should have pulled away, but I didn’t. I leaned back against him, like a masochist onto a blade. I took a deep, shuddering breath. “You don’t have to.”
“Babes, I ain’t gonna stand there like a lemon and watch you cry.”
“I think”—my voice wavered—“I’m done now.”
I wasn’t done, not by a long shot. But Darian held me through it. And told me everything wasahwight, even though nothing was.
Finally, we were just holding each other, and I had no idea what it meant, or what was going to happen next.
Very gently, Darian drew away. I clutched for him but he shook his head. “I gotta.” We faced each other again, across a distance that suddenly felt more like miles. Darian’s eyes had that haunted look I’d seen earlier. “Listen, I know you feel proper bad abaht what ’appened. But you don’t ’ave to cos it’s…like ’appened. And it was nice you coming rand to say sorry, even though it took you like foreva, cos you didn’t ’ave to do that eeva.” He took a deep breath. “But I fink maybe you should go now.”
Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh no.
I’d known he wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I’dknown. And, yet, somehow I’d come here anyway, led astray by a treacherous will-o’-the-wisp that had felt like hope. My heart did something private and melodramatic that I thought might be breaking. “But I haven’t explained,” I pleaded, as though I had any right to keep talking to him when he’d already told me he wanted me gone. “Or told you how much…how much you mean to me.”
Darian had gone back to refusing to look at me. “Mate, I don’t fink I care. You don’t know what it’s like for me, ’aving you ’ere, knowing exactly what you fink of me.”
The words tumbled out, immediate and desperate. “You’ve got it wrong. I don’t think like that. Please let me—”
“Ash”—God, my name sounded so strange on his lips. I would have spun my soul into gold to hear him call me “babes” again—“I don’t want you ’ere. Don’t you get it? You’re doing my ’ead in cos I know you fink I’m an idiot, and I fink you might be right cos I still care abaht you even after what you done.”
I still care about youwas all I needed to get me across the room as though my feet had sprouted wings, but Darian shied back like a startled colt, and I pulled up short. Touching him was something else I could no longer take for granted. I tried to explain instead, terrified it would not be enough. “I know I’ve treated you badly, and I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but I’m here because I still care as well.”
“Stillcare?” He blinked. “Mate, if you cared the first time arand, you gotta funny way of showing it, janarwhatamean?”
“I know. But…but if you’ll let me, I’d like to show you now.”
He gasped. “This is my nan’s ’ouse.”
“God, no, not like that. I meant, you know, with words.”
“Oh right. Sorry. It’s just the one fing I knew you was really proper into.”
I winced. “I was into all of it. Yes, I loved fuc—” He gave me a stern look. “—having sex with you. But you cooked for me. And you talked to me. And you held me. And you made me feel everything was going to be all right, somehow, even when I was most afraid it wasn’t.”
His head drooped. “I dunno. Maybe. I dunno. Fing is, I don’t fink you ever liked me the way I liked you.” I opened my mouth to speak but he held up his hand, and I fell silent. “I should’ve known right from the start somefing was off, what wif someone like you liking someone like me.” He chewed his lip. “Cos I know I’m like…ah, what’s the word? Like what olives are like. Acquired taste. Cos I’m sort of a bit orange, and I fink I’m sometimes probably a bit shallow, and I spend like literally all of my money on clovves. But wif you, it was like, if this clever, sexy bloke can see summin in me worth ’aving, then maybe I’m ahwight.”
