Page 47 of Still Me
Nathan was watching American football, holding a beer. He was wearing a pair of surfer shorts and a T-shirt. He looked up at me expectantly, and with the faintest of delays, in the way people do when they’re letting you know that they’re really locked into something else.
“Can I eat my dinner in here with you?”
He tore his gaze away from the screen again. “Bad day?”
I nodded.
“Need a hug?”
I shook my head. “Just a virtual one. If you’re nice to me I’ll probably cry.”
“Ah. Your man gone home, has he?”
“It was a disaster, Nathan. He was sick for pretty much the whole thing and then Agnes wouldn’t let me have the time off she promised me today so I barely got to see him and when I did it kept getting... awkward between us.”
Nathan turned down the television with a sigh, and patted the side of the bed. I climbed up, and placed my takeout bag on my lap where, later, I would discover soy sauce had leaked through onto my work trousers. I rested my head on his shoulder.
“Long-distance relationships are tough,” Nathan pronounced, as if he was the first person to have considered such a thing. Then he added, “Like, really tough.”
“Right.”
“It’s not just the sex, and the inevitable jealousy—”
“We’re not jealous people.”
“But he’s not going to be the first person you tell stuff to. The day-to-day bits and pieces. And that stuff is important.”
He proffered his beer and I took a swig, handing it back to him. “We did know it was going to be hard. I mean we talked about all this before I left. But you know what’s really bugging me?”
He dragged his gaze back from the screen. “Go on.”
“Agnes knew how much I wanted to spend time with Sam. We’d talked about it. She was the one saying we had to be together, that we shouldn’t be apart, blah-blah-blah. And then she made me stay with her till the absolute last minute.”
“That’s the job, Lou. They come first.”
“But she knew how important it was to me.”
“Maybe.”
“She’s meant to be my friend.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Lou. The Traynors were not normal employers. Will was not a normal employer. Neither are the Gopniks. These people may act nice, but ultimately you have to remember this is a power relationship. It’s a business transaction.” He took a swig of his beer. “You know what happened to the Gopniks’ last social secretary?Agnes told Old Man Gopnik that she was talking about her behind her back, spreading secrets. So they sacked her. After twenty-two years. They sacked her.”
“And was she?”
“Was she what?”
“Spreading secrets?”
“I don’t know. Not the point, though, is it?”
I didn’t want to contradict him but to explain why Agnes and I were different would have meant betraying her. So I said nothing.
Nathan seemed about to say something, then changed his mind.
“What?”
“Look... nobody can have everything.”
