Page 51 of Bare
Bed. Flat quiet. Lock checked.
On the living room wall, Rory’s painting. Two figures, gold and warm. The space between them.
You're pointing at something, Diane had said. I'd like to know what.
He was.
She would.
She always did.
Rory arrived seven minutes early and apologised for it.
Neil opened the door in a jumper he changed out of, then back into, then flattened the front of with both hands in the thirty seconds between the buzzer and the landing. Rory stoodon the mat holding a bottle of red in one hand and his helmet in the other and a carrier bag looped over his wrist with something bread-shaped inside it.
‘Bus was quicker than I thought,’ Rory said. ‘I can stand on the stairs for seven minutes if you want.’
‘Come in.’
He came in.
The flat was smaller than Rory’s and better lit and, the moment another person was inside it, very obviously a flat lived in alone, on purpose. The coats on the hook by the door were his. The shoes under the bench were his. The small green parka that usually hung below the adult coats had gone to Tooting with Freddie on the twenty-third.
‘Kitchen’s through,’ Neil said.
Rory toed off his boots. Under them: mismatched grey socks. One plain, one ribbed. He looked down at his own feet and then up at Neil with an expression that was not quite a smile.
‘I did try,’ he said.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Your face said something.’
‘My face is just my face.’
‘Your face is a whole committee.’
Neil took the bottle. The label was better than the one he would have bought for himself on a Sunday. He put it on the counter and got two glasses down from the cupboard, and the cupboard was, of course, arranged by size, and Rory registered this with a small silent noise that was not a laugh and was not not a laugh.
‘Go on,’ Neil said.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Your face said something.’
‘My face is telling me the glasses live by height.’
‘They live by height because it works.’
‘And the spice rack?’ Rory said, because he had already turned and seen it.
‘Alphabetical.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘It’s not a performance. It’s just easier.’
‘I know, love. That’s what’s killing me.’
