Page 76 of 56 Days
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I suppose I was embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s weird.”
“It’s a medical condition.”
He sighs. “Still.”
“Is there anything else I should know that you’re too embarrassed to tell me?”
He considers the question.
And then he says, “Well... I don’t want to get sick.”
She waits for him to say more and when nothing comes, laughs and says, “Oliver, none of uswantsto get sick.”
“I mean, Ireallydon’t want to. I hate hospitals. Rich had some health issues when he was younger”—a lie—“and I don’t know, something about the smell... I wouldn’t even want to go into one to take a test. So I will do anything at all to avoid them—including wiping down bottles of milk withanti-bacwipes and obeying arbitrary distance rules. It’s not because I’m paranoid or a germaphobe, I justreallydon’t want to have to go into hospital. So... I don’t want to be a complete dickhead, but what I’ve been too embarrassed to say is that, well, you live with me, so whatever you get I’ll get too, so I need you to be just as careful.”
“I was being careful,” she says reassuringly. “I am. What with the asthma...”
He’d totally forgotten he’s supposed to have asthma.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Yes, that too. I’ve mostly grown out of it, but thisisa respiratory thing, so...”
“Actually,” Ciara says, “I was thinking: maybe we should be wearing masks when we come and go from here. Inside the complex, I mean. Until we’re outside. That was my dastardly plan to avoid that guy from your firm seeing me, but it would also qualify as being more cautious, right?”
How absolutely perfect.
Even more so because she came up with it herself.
“Great idea,” he says.
“And speaking of wanting to avoid imminent death...” She inhales. “Oliver, last night, there could’ve really been a fire.”
“But—”
“There could’ve really been a fire. I don’t care if it had gone off every night for the last fifty, you had no way of knowing for sure that there wasn’t one. If you want to stay inside and risk your life, I won’t stop you, butyoutried to stopmefrom leaving.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“No shit.”
“I just thought if we went out there, he’d definitely be out there—the senior partner—and... Well, I’ve just started there. And I was lucky to get the job in the first place. The director is my brother’s best friend’s dad. I don’t want to let anyone down when they basically gave me the job as a favor.”
He wishes he’d used different words to make that point, but Ciara appears to take them at face value instead of wondering why he might have needed that favor in the first place.
“What does this guy look like?” she asks. “The senior partner?”
Oliver mentally flips through the older guys in the office, picks one at random, and then does his best to describe him physically.
“I didn’t see anyone out there like that...”
“Maybe he was in the courtyard?”
“Maybe.”
