Trowchester Blues 01 - Trowchester Blues (31 page)

She scuffed the floor with the toe of her new shoe and looked torn. He knew he didn’t deserve her trust, shouldn’t push for it, but he hoped for it nevertheless.

“I suppose I am your niece, after all,” she said at length, making him smile. “It would look a bit odd if I didn’t.”

“That’s wonderful!” He didn’t move forwards, didn’t try to hug her, just smiled and watched her walk away. Moments later, he heard the distant flurry of yipping that said little Tyson was overjoyed to have his owner home. Then he spent three hours afterwards, worrying what Jenny and Finn would think. Would Jenny think it was illegal? Immoral? Would Finn think it was too much trouble? Would he be jealous? Would he be angry Michael hadn’t told him before?

He returned to the house to dress for the book club party. The prospect of Jenny’s arrival had driven Michael to finish his slash-and-burn reclamation of the house. The walls were now stripped and repainted, all the furniture thrown out and the skip had been taken away.

Nowhere was taboo to him anymore. He had wiped the memories clean with hard work and several coats of cheap white paint, but the place still had a chilly air, and a stark, unfurnished emptiness he found repellent. He had moved the boxes of his own belongings into his parents’ bedroom and done what he could with inflatable mattresses in the spare room and his own, but in comparison with Jenny’s cheerful little flat, it was still a mausoleum.

Time to worry about that tomorrow. He shaved and struggled into his best suit, the charcoal-grey one that made him look taller, added a silver-blue tie and silver cufflinks, grabbed a bottle of good wine in a bag with a bow on it, and set off for Finn’s.

The bookshop windows glowed and glittered as he walked down the main shopping street. Even in a procession of shop windows full of Christmas kitsch, the bookshop stood out, real oil lamps in the window, swags of real greenery—ivy, fir, and holly—tied with red ribbon, scenting the air like Narnia. A live tree in a large paper-covered planter was bedecked with ceramic pomanders filled with dried fragrant flowers. But Finn had decided against taking the organic thing too far, because everything had been lightly brushed with sparkles, and even the floors were pricked with light.

Finn’s eyes widened at the sight of the suit. He ignored the proffered wine to step in and stroke both hands down Michael’s lapels, tuck his fingers into Michael’s waistcoat pockets, and lean up to kiss him, marking his territory to the sound of wolf whistles from the main room.

“I’m buying you clothes for Christmas. Good clothes. Look at you!”

“Fuck.” Michael peeped into the main room and found at least twenty men staring back. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“I don’t intend to.” Finn lifted a glass of champagne from a tray by the door and pushed it into Michael’s hand, proudly walking beside him into the crowd. “I’d never get you back.”

“Well, I must admit, I thought you were fictional.” A spiky-haired fellow in tweeds held out a hand to Michael, as if to check he wasn’t a particularly sophisticated hologram. Michael shook the offered hand, a firm grip, grazed knuckles, and more unusually a grazed palm.

“Michael, this is James, our archaeologist.”

Ah, that explained it.

“I have been living in a parallel dimension.” Michael tried not to be too boring in front of Finn’s friends, but it was hard, since he was in essence a boring sort of person. “But I’m getting in phase now.”

James stuck his hand in the air and beckoned across the room to a round-faced Indian man Michael thought he recognised from somewhere. “Idris, come here. I owe you a tenner.”

Idris pushed his way through the interested crowd and shook Michael’s hand too before casting an inquisitive look on Finn. “Am I to gather that things have finally become sufficiently uncomplicated that you’re officially together now?”

Michael took a breath. Finn grinned and squeezed his arm tight. “That’s right. If I had a Facebook, I’d be ‘in a relationship’ right now.”

“Well this calls for a drink!” Idris topped up Michael’s glass with something from a hip flask, did the same with everyone else, and called, “Cheers!”

After that, things went swimmingly. Michael was adroitly separated from Finn fairly early on, but only to be quizzed on his family, his business prospects, and his intentions, all of which he found easy to answer honestly.

After the fourth friendly warning of ghastly happenings should he ever hurt Finn, he formulated a backup plan of moving to New Zealand if things went wrong. “But you couldn’t do anything worse to me than having it not work out with Finn,” he said a couple of times, each more embarrassingly earnest as the evening went on. “He means a lot to me.”

By the end of the evening, he had progressed to handing his phone around so that the boaties in the group could admire his handiwork. He had two expressions of interest in possibly buying a boat next year, and Nick Scott, event organiser for the Trowchester Festival, had shaken his hand on a gentleman’s agreement to buy a boat as a floating chill-out zone that would be used for promotional purposes for the rest of the year. His head spun on the details, but his pocket was full of business cards, so he figured he would email them all back and weed out the nice things to say at a party from the honest offers later.

By the time the final partygoer had been ushered out of the door, it was 2 a.m. Michael was ready to curl up on the floor and sleep there with the imprint of coconut matting all over his face. The sudden silence was a balm. He breathed out as the door shut, and leaned his forehead against it, closing his eyes.

“Not the world’s greatest extrovert, I see.” Finn drew Michael’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him upstairs. “But how about that, we’re official now.”

“I like it.”

“You did very well not to punch anyone, I thought. I’d warned them all you were desperately scary when roused, but I don’t think they believed me, and you didn’t do anything to confirm it, handing round pictures of your woodwork skills all night. You realise they’re going to start asking you round to put up cabinets? I know Idris has a warehouse full of kitchen units he’s been meaning to install for years.”

He let Finn’s voice wash over him like a warm bath, but it was true, a long evening of raised voices and the crush of bodies, and he had not once felt the need to fight his way out of it. The rage that continually flowed as a base note in his character seemed to have settled back inside its channel now, ready to be called on at need, but not in danger of overwhelming him, of causing him to become someone he would despise.

Hard to pinpoint exactly when that had happened, but Finn . . . it had mostly been Finn’s doing, one way or another.

“Oh, they have destroyed you,” Finn crooned, pushing him into the bedroom and stripping him efficiently of his clothes. He had the idea that some kind of response would be polite, but couldn’t think of one, rather enjoying being fussed over like this. “Well, no more parties then. We’ll have Christmas on our own. You’ll come to me? We can sleep in late, eat what we like, unwrap each other by the fire. That kind of thing.”

Michael smiled up at him from the bed. He was slightly fuzzy round the edges and the world was swaying around him like an underwater weed. “I was making you a boat for a present. But I think I’ve sold it to someone else.”

“Just as well.” Finn slid in to his side of the bed, threw an arm across Michael’s chest and a leg across both of his knees, grounding him. “What I need is cabinets and bookshelves. Cabinets of delight. Someone said to me recently that I should have a section for modern books. And I should, I’m sure. If I only had the space to put them in.”

“Mmm.” He closed his eyes, relaxing into happiness. This was his life now, was it? Part boatbuilder, part handyman, with an official boyfriend to curl up next to at night and wake beside in the morning? How had that happened in so short a time? How had he healed so much and come so far?

“So what do you say? Christmas at mine?”

Michael remembered Sarah with a little twist of disquiet. After all Finn had gone through to be on the level with him, what would he think of the niece who wasn’t a niece? How pissed off would he be to have his Christmas idyll ruined by unwarned-for fake relatives?

There probably wasn’t a better time to find out. “Can I bring someone?”

Finn pushed himself up on one elbow and looked down on him in surprise. “I thought you were one of these lone wolf types. Didn’t have people. You’ve had surprise friends up your sleeve all this time?”

“You know what?” Michael reached up to cup Finn’s cheek with his fingers, drew him down like the moon for a kiss. “You’re funny. I love that.”

“And you’re drunk. That’s not so wonderful.” Finn tucked himself back around Michael, his body pressing heavy and relaxed against Michael’s side. “But of course. You just met my people, of course I’ll meet yours.”

Finn watched from the display window for almost half an hour before they came. Dark shapes, swathed against the bitter wind and the flurry of tiny white snowflakes, too small to be picturesque. The largest was Michael in his black duffle coat, with a black beanie on his head and his throat swallowed by a massive knitted woollen scarf in festive shades of red and green. Just the way he walked made Finn feel happy—the figure he cut against the icing sugar dusting of snow on the ground, with his shoulders straight and his head high, as though the weight had been lifted off his back.

His partner from London was only an inch or so shorter, but half the width, even shivering in a mock-greatcoat with swirling skirts. He had an impression of an Earth Mother, the coat being hunter green, embroidered all over with ochre roses. Finn approved of the way she had matched the coat with an ochre and madder scarf and hat set, but he approved more of the bright-blue flowery wellies that gave the whole ensemble that little touch of
I don’t give a fuck
.

They had a girl with them, a sticklike creature with a bold, beautiful face tanned by the sun of Africa. Michael’s unofficial ward. He’d told the story tentatively as though he feared Finn would disown him over it, but God, the child was thin and young, and what decent person wouldn’t have done something for her if they could?

Her eyes met his through the window and widened as he rose from the window seat to let them in. A piercing gust of icy air came with them. They filled the hall as Michael shut the door behind them, and the woman gave Finn such a professional look it was like being patted down for contraband at the airport.

“Jenny, isn’t it?” He held out a hand, guessed she wouldn’t take kindly to a kiss on the knuckles and shook her hand firmly instead. “Let me take your coat.”

The child had pressed herself into the corner of the hall not occupied by a statue, but her eyes were still on him, bright and curious and unafraid.

“Sarah?” he asked. “Do you want to take your coat off too?”

“Do you live here?”

“I do.”

“Do you have, like, a back garden?”

Her coat was one of those ghastly skiing things, quilted and stuffed with microfibres for warmth. She looked like a larva in it. But something about the way she stood was ringing bells of recognition in the back of his mind.

“I do.”

Something to be said for police officers. Both Michael and Jenny had moved to an unthreatening distance away and were watching quite silently, as though they knew something important was afoot.

Sarah broke into a disbelieving smile. “And it’s got a metal table in it, and some of them mobile things?”

“Yes.” He suspected it now, but he didn’t want to put a name to it in case he was wrong.

“And you used to put dinner out on the table most nights, when you was eating yours.” Her smile wavered and crumpled. Her eyes filled with tears all of a sudden. “And I used to eat it and I’d look up, and I’d see you sometimes in the window. And it would be . . . It would be like I wasn’t alone.”

She raised her hands to her face, made a sound like a laugh until it escalated into racking sobs. Finn’s own eyes watered in response.

“You’re my ghost?” He didn’t stop to think, just stepped forwards and threw his arms around her. She stiffened briefly and then turned into him, burying her head in his shoulder, as she wept. “You’re my ghost! I’ve been so worried. When you stopped coming, I thought something bad had happened to you. I didn’t know—” He glanced up over his shoulder at Michael who was stunned and suspiciously glossy-eyed behind him.

“I can’t believe it.” Finn had a good cry himself, for joy mostly. His eyes were closed when Michael slipped his arms around them both and briefly held them up. Then there was embarrassment and overly bright, overly cheerful voices as he passed Sarah his handkerchief, and Jenny picked the spilled coats off the floor, and insisted on a hug of her own.

“Well,” Jenny said, as they went upstairs and proved how small the kitchen table was by bumping elbows as they tried to sit around it. “I was going to be a responsible adult and argue that unofficially adopting a street child is a course of action fraught with um . . . potential grey areas. But now, well, I’m not going to argue with a Christmas miracle. I’m sure—”