It wasn’t till after dinner that it all went wrong, and I had no idea what had happened or how to make stop, put it back again. I was washing dishes. He was sitting at the table, drinking up the last of the water from the jug I’d put there. No wine tonight. Family tea. And he was watching me.
“What?” I said.
He smiled, but a miserable smile like you’d never believe. “Nothing,” he said. And we were silent again. He was tracing a pattern in the water Dillon had spilled on the plastic tablecloth, pulling lines of it out from the puddle like spider’s legs. It was another five minutes before he cleared his throat and spoke. “So you went for a walk, eh?” he said. The wet clothes were hanging on the pulley, still dripping every now and then. “Meet anyone?”
The obvious thing was to tell him about Kazek. He’d had a flakey when I’d mentioned the guy last time, but that was because he thought Kazek was Becky’s boyfriend. And it was the day she died. Now I knew he was Ros’s creepy friend and it was two days later.
“Not a soul,” I said. I’d keep Ruby and Dillon away from that house with the awning, and I’d steer pretty clear too. “Apart from the woman in the shop. Oh, by the way-”
“I didn’t get any joy about the post-mortem,” he said, interrupting me.
I caught my lip. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked him. That must be why he’d been sitting there silent, waiting for me to remember. “They did the basic examination. But I didn’t find anything out. Nobody came to speak to me at all.”
“Isn’t it detectives they come and talk to?” I said.
Gus laughed and rubbed his face. Just like that, we were friends again.
“God, yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Bloody CSI strikes again. Me sitting there for hours!” He stood up and whirled a gob of kitchen roll off the holder, wiped the table, went to the bin, and then froze there with the lid pushed open.
“Gus?” I said. He said nothing and didn’t move. It was like that bit in science fiction when the world stops and you can skip about without anyone seeing you. “Gus?”
He cleared his throat. “Did you empty this?” he said.
“Ahhh, yeah?” I said. “I emptied all of them. Dillon did the nappy from hell and it went from there.”
He walked to the back window and looked out. If anyone had asked, I’d have said he was staring at the wheeliebin, but that was crazy.
“Gus?” I said, a third time. “Did I do something wrong?”
He spun round so fast I that I had stepped back before I could help it. “Did I say you did?” he said.
I took another step back.
He sat back down at the table and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Then he started rocking, side to side, like he had one time before. “It can’t. God, it can’t. It can’t be happening again.”
“Hey,” I said, flinging the dishcloth into the sink. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”
Slowly he let his arms go, straightened up, and looked at me. “You’re not angry,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Oh, I’m fuming,” I said. “I’ll turn green and burst out of my clothes any minute as soon as you tell me what I’m supposed to be angry about.”
He held out both his hands and took hold of mine. “That I didn’t do it before you had to,” he said. “That I left it for you. Took you for granted. Treated you like a skivvy. Expected you to run about after me, wait on me hand and foot, while I treated the place like a hotel.”
I nodded, understanding like. But the truth was it didn’t make sense, not really. He’d lain in his bed while I brought him coffee and gave the kids their breakfast. And he’d lain in the bath while I cleared the lunch and took them out too. So why would shifting a couple of nappies freak him out this way?
“Sometimes,” I began.
“What?”
But I thought the better of it. You’re like two different people, was what I was going to say.
He was quiet after that, moving through to the living room, lighting the fire, putting the telly on. He didn’t watch it, though. I could tell from the way the screen was reflected off the whites of his eyes that he wasn’t really looking there. I sat down in the other chair, watched the end of some cooking programme and the start of some dieting one, feeling like I hadn’t felt since I was fifteen and Steve Preston took me to see Pleasantville and grabbed my hand twenty minutes in. We were paralysed then, the pair of us, our hands warming and sliding so we had to grip even harder on to the other’s fingers to keep a hold. Neither one of us knew how to stop it, like someone who’s learned how to take off in a plane but had no lessons on landing. And I couldn’t help thinking about the pocket of space in between our palms filling up with sweat like a chicken kiev and what would happen when we burst it open.
It was over an hour before Gus spoke again, and I had to ask him to repeat it. I had been back with Steve Preston’s sister Sandra, who was my friend, who I’d told all about that very first therapist (what was her name?). And Sandra Preston had told everyone in our class, and the guidance teacher called my mum up and I got hell for it.
Literally. Got hell described, had the best verses of the Bible read out where they talked about it, had it explained why I was going there and why that was what I deserved.
“That’s not hell, Mum,” I’d said after a really mad bit. “That’s the earth after Armageddon. Get it right, eh?”
“Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning and famine,” said my mother. “And she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.”
“There you go again,” I’d said. “That’s Armageddon too.”
“I was asking about the bathroom bin,” said Gus.
I turned and stared at him.
“Sorry,” I said. “Miles away.” I smiled. “Nice to be back, though. What about it?”
“I don’t suppose you happened to notice what was in it?” he said. “When you put it in the bin bag?”
“I just tipped it right into the wheelie,” I said. “No bag.” He was quiet long enough for me to half turn back to the telly. Some poor cow was weeping in a front of a wrap-around mirror in her underwear, her belly jiggling up and down.
“I was going to save the stick,” he said. “If it was in there. The test stick, you know.” He was staring at the telly too now.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Only… that’s all there is of that wee baby now,” said Gus. “That’s all there ever will be. No photos, no footprint, nothing. Just one blue line.”
“God, I’m sorry,” I said.
“We could tip it out and look through.”
“I suppose so.”
At last, he turned and looked at me. Beamed at me. “Thanks,” he said.
“Thanks?” I said. “You want me to do it?”
“I’m not bothered,” said Gus. “You do it if you’d rather.” He turned back to the telly again and it felt weird looking at the side of his head, so I did too. The poor cow had her clothes back on now, really bad ones, and they were starting on how dry her hair was and what crap teeth she had.
“Will I get you a torch?” said Gus. I looked up at the centre light of the living room, one of those cloudy glass bowls that hangs down on three chains that flies always die in. I seriously thought he was asking me if I needed some extra light for watching the telly by. Then I twigged.
“You want me to get it tonight?”
“Of course not,” said Gus. “I thought you meant tonight.”
I turned and looked out of the window-the curtains weren’t drawn-at the perfect square of black out there. “Thought I meant tonight when?” I asked him. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Okay,” he said, and his voice was that kind of extra patient that’s covering up being dead annoyed.