Page 32 of The Missing Page
“Which is doubtful, because if she had, the police would have wanted to speak with you.”
So, Camilla either lied to the police or lied by omission in order to make them think that Rose had a swimming accident. Or, what was equally likely to Leo’s thinking, she and Marchand, and maybe Rupert too, had decided to tell the police a simplified version of the truth. People were forever feeding white lies and half-truths to the police, and Leo could hardly blame them; this was the first relatable thing Leo had heard of Camilla and Marchand doing.
James raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t even think of that. Anyway, Camilla and probably Anthony must have known all along that Rose didn’t die while out on a swim.”
Leo thought about how to phrase this as gently as possible. He brushed a strand of hair off James’s forehead. “Unless Rose planned to end her life and didn’t want you around to witness it, darling.” He didn’t know where thatdarlingcame from. He had never said that word before and felt like a pillock saying it now, but he needed James to know that he was cared for in a way that his younger self hadn’t been, even if it was by someone like Leo.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Let’s get out of here. We don’t need to stay.” Leo looked at him in a measured, concerned way, as if he expected James to go to pieces any moment now.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are.” Leo stroked his hands down James’s arms, soothing and gentle, but James didn’t want to be soothed. Or rather, he didn’t want toneedto be soothed. “But you’re not happy here, and why should you be? These people—”
James stepped back, out of Leo’s reach, and sat on the edge of the bed. “They’re my family.”
Leo looked a bit stunned by this. “No law saying you need to spend time with them, though.”
“I know, I know.” He scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “It’s not that I feel like I owe them my time.”
“You don’t owe them the time of day, James.”
James weighed his words, because they both knew that Leo didn’t have any family at all, not even one that had abandoned him. “It’s just that I don’t have any other family.”
“You want to get to know them.”
“No, not that either. There’s this empty space where my family ought to be, like when you’ve taken a book off a shelf and not put it back. And I’ve gone around for years with this missing book and—I suppose I want to know what’s in the book.” He lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t expect it to be anything good, or even anything especially interesting. I just want to know.”
“It’s your history,” Leo murmured.
“Well, if you want to put it like that.”
“That’s what Lilah said when I ran into her at the library. She said the only reason she was interested in this business was that it was her history.”
“She’s not close with any of them,” James said. It was something he had noticed but not thought much of. She avoided so much as talking to her father, who seemed to return the favor. With Camilla she kept up a sort of cheerful cordiality. She seemed to make more of an effort with Martha, but the older woman didn’t seem to know what to say to her. He was struck by the idea that Lilah might have been as lonely inside this family as James was after being cast out from it.
“She ran away,” Leo said thoughtfully. “From school.”
“Yes, so she said.” James felt the mattress dip and knew Leo had sat a few feet away. He was giving James a little space, and just that knowledge made him reach his hand out. Leo immediately took it.
“Her mother let her go through with it. She left school and took up acting—adult roles, mind you. Do you think she lied about her age? Do you think she really was born that summer?”
James couldn’t see what Lilah’s acting had to do with the matter at hand, but he could tell that Leo’s mind was working, so he stared at the ceiling for a bit, following a water stain along the plaster until it faded away. Leo kept hold of his hand, stroking the inside of James’s wrist with the pad of his thumb. When James turned his head, he saw that Leo was otherwise perfectly still, deep in thought. Sometimes James forgot how handsome Leo was, probably because Leo was so many things other than handsome. But it was always such a pleasure to look at him, his glossy dark hair falling over his forehead, the beginnings of a beard darkening his jaw.
All day he had been wearing a pair of trousers and a jumper that belonged to James, and James wondered if Leo knew that James always got a bit of a thrill seeing him in clothing he had borrowed—or outright stolen—from James. They were near enough in size that they could swap clothes without anything fitting badly, although the swapping tended to go in one direction, as Leo seemed to own next to nothing. When he had first arrived in Wychcomb St. Mary, it was with a single valise, and James later learned that Leo was in the habit of acquiring new clothes for each job and discarding them afterwards. That valise had contained almost all Leo’s worldly goods. When James questioned this, Leo had mumbled something about it being safer that way, and he hadn’t even bothered making it sound like a convincing lie.
That would be all well and good if Leo enjoyed living like that, but he plainly didn’t. James had caught him staring at the way his own few garments hung in the wardrobe beside James’s, and the expression on his face had been one of an almost shy satisfaction. He always took the same cup for his tea and returned it to the same hook in the kitchen after washing it with a care that sometimes made James’s heart ache. When James’s elderly neighbors plied Leo with biscuits and regaled him with village gossip, Leo loved it. This was a man who wanted a home, and James didn’t think it took a particularly gifted psychoanalyst to figure out that Leo was punishing himself by refusing to let himself have one.
It didn’t follow that Leo wanted his home to be with James, even though all signs pointed in that direction. He kept leaving—but he kept coming back. For all the lies he told and all his ease with artifice, he had never pretended not to care for James, not even once.
But James didn’t know how to make Leo believe that the house in Wychcomb St. Mary could be his home, could betheirhome, could be the place they kept coming back to, together. He wanted Leo to know that he could have more than half a bed, half a wardrobe, his own special teacup. He wanted Leo to believe that they could have a life, a future, and that they could do it with one another.
He didn’t know how to do that, though. He didn’t even know if it was possible. Perhaps they could just keep going on the way they were and eventually it would feel settled. James would keep on going like this for as long as Leo kept coming back.
And in the meantime, he’d do what it took to show Leo that he was wanted, that he was special, that he deserved the good things that he meted out to himself in tiny increments.
“How long do you think we have until they expect us at dinner?” James asked Leo, who was in nothing but his trousers and undershirt as he rifled through James’s valise, evidently in search of clothing more suitable for dinner.
