Chapter 41

CHAPTER 41

One thing becomes clear as Zach slowly gets better and starts moving around the flat a little more: the injury has shocked him. He is much more upset than he's letting on.

He is scared.

And he does not want to go back into the attic.

In other circumstances she would fake a water leak, or an injury, lying at the top of the ladder and crying pitifully for help. But this husband is so friendly with Toby and Maryam: he'd call them, and they'd rush upstairs, eager to help their friend. She was their friend first! They should be helping her! Zach is also somehow friends with a maybe-a-cult family across the road and the guy three doors up who is constantly hiring skips, so even waiting for Maryam and Toby to move wouldn't help.

She has no choice but to give him time. She certainly can't pull an Amos again, firstly on principle but secondly because of all the codeine.

Bohai comes round, in London for a couple of weeks, on holiday with his not-yet-a-wife-because-technically-he's-still-married-to-someone-else. Her name is Laurel, which seems like a particular and specific blow.

"Lauren," Laurel says when they meet. "I feel like you're already my friend, baristas are always writing your name on my coffee cups." Lauren isn't quite sure if the joke is charming or obnoxious. Perhaps the ambiguity is what makes her a good match for Bohai.

"So how do you two know each other?" Zach asks, as the four of them sit in the garden under a grey sky. He has just started going outside, still always in his brace, careful and slow on the stairs, standing in the garden or walking to the end of the street and back.

"I was in London for a while," Bohai says. "I met Lauren through my partner at the time."

Laurel is very polished. She doesn't look at her phone the whole afternoon. Her hair is perfectly in place. She speaks in full, careful sentences, no um s or ah s or nah yeah s. She gets on well with Zach.

"Your husband seems great," Bohai says as they go up together to the kitchen to replenish the plate of biscuits and fetch more tea. "I mean, he's a bit boring, but that's your type, right?"

"Yours seems pretty good," she says, though she's not quite convinced.

"Yeah, she really is. Gonna have such a big wedding. You're coming, right? You'll do a reading? Won't be for a while, have to sort the divorce first, maybe summer at the end of next year. You'll hate it in Sydney, really huge bats."

"Look," Lauren says, tipping the biscuits off the plate and starting to arrange them again. "I like her, but is she that much better than the other six hundred partners? So much better that it's worth going through a divorce and setting up a whole life from scratch?"

He shrugs. "I dunno. I mean, maybe? One of 'em has to be the best, why not her?" He's looking in different cupboards. "So weird seeing this with a new husband, I never get to go back to my old houses."

"Come on," she says. "There has to be a reason." They spent so long on their Post-it notes. How can he just settle down on a whim with someone he isn't even married to?

He stops and looks like he's really trying to answer. "Okay," he says. "It's…you know. You notice something about them, and it makes you feel happy, it makes you feel lucky . "

"Like what? What specific sort of something?"

"With Laurel? Uh. Right, top three. Three: really unapologetically bad taste in music. Just terrible. No idea why that does it for me but there you go. Jack had it too, I came home once and he was listening to a YouTube playlist of advertising jingles from the seventies. Maybe it's something about, you know, liking what you like? Genuinely no idea."

"Bad taste in music. Got it."

"Okay," he says. "Two: so, she does fencing, and I don't know if you've ever seen someone who's good at fencing and then they take the helmet off and they're kind of out of breath and their hair's all tousled? It's, uh, honestly, it feels inappropriate that people are allowed to do it in public."

He didn't even have hobbies on his Post-its.

"And one: she can tell when I'm having a bad idea. Which yeah, obviously, you don't need to say it, is almost always."

"You know what," Lauren says, "I bet you wouldn't be so keen if you'd just stepped out of a pantry into her life. It's all the logistics that make it work for you."

"Yeah, maybe. Whatever it takes, though, right?"

She shakes her head, tries to reset the conversation. "Sorry, I'm being a dick, aren't I?"

"I dunno. Little bit?"

In for a penny. Lauren hasn't been able to shake the thought that maybe Bohai wasn't on holiday when she called him about Amos, that maybe he just didn't want to leave the world he was in, to leave Laurel. "Were you really three hours from home?" she asks. "When I called you that time. It's fine if you weren't."

"Oh," he says. "When you were trying to get that guy up into the attic? Yeah, I was. We were at the beach. But I mean, fair question, I guess." He looks out the window into the garden, Laurel and Zach still chatting. "No point pretending I wasn't relieved to have the excuse. It was early days, I guess, but I liked her a lot."

They stand there for a moment, silent. Then: "I'm glad you've found someone," she says. "We should get back out, anyway. Might open some wine?"

"Uh," he says. "No. I mean it's a bit early to tell anyone but fuck it. So, I promised I wouldn't drink while she's not, and—"

"What," she says. "What. Really?"

He's beaming, embarrassed and proud at once. "I know, I mean, it wasn't on purpose but we figured, ah, go on, why not."

"Bohai! But that means you won't get sick of her and jump in a wardrobe and come round for a coffee!" She still hadn't quite believed that he would stay put.

"It's okay," he says, "she's super rich, her and her ex invented some kind of doomed VR helmet that does smells. They sold the company to Google, we came business class, I'll visit constantly."

"Wow. Wow. Have you got rid of the wardrobe?"

"It was a blanket box," he says. "Pain and a half to climb out of. Actually, I've still got it. But I'm going to break it down and chuck it out when we get back. I mean, what if I have a kid and we play hide-and-seek and she climbs in there and then she has…different parents? I dunno, basically I don't think you can risk having a magic blanket box when you've got a toddler. If we ever break up we'll have to do it like everyone else."

"You're not going to, though, are you? God, you're so happy it's actually revolting."

"I love you too," he says, and hugs her tight.

○○

Eventually she and Zach sleep in the same bed, and he puts his hand out to hold hers.

She has emptied all those bottles, made him sandwiches that he could eat while lying down, abandoned her living room for him, wiped clean his sweating body, and this is the sort of thing that one of you will do for the other sooner or later if you stay together for long enough, she thinks, but usually it's not how you start . She doesn't like to be tended when she is sick, she likes to be left to feel bad on her own, and that isn't Zach's way, he is trusting and wide-eyed and accepts help and attention as the right of the poorly.

He did break his back, she reminds herself, climbing out of the attic that she put him in.

He has lost a centimetre or so of height to the fall, according to the doctor. "Would you still love me," he says seriously one morning, "if I was two inches high? A tiny man. Up to your ankle."

"I would love you just as much as I do now," she says, which is not a lie, although she has long since given up the idea that nobody should ever lie about love: she has declared her affection falsely to so many husbands, one more should make no difference.

He smiles at her, grateful.

"You should head back into the attic," she says. "Get back on the horse. Otherwise you might never make it."

"Uh," he says. "I'm meant to be careful about exerting myself. But once I've recovered a bit more, for sure!"

He is working again, from home, accommodations made by his workplace, and it's like having a large capybara in her space, docile and obliging but immoveable. Sometimes she rests an object on him, like they do on capybaras in videos, a piece of food which he invariably eats, a remote control, a book, which he will leave there for a few minutes and then move to the coffee table. The coffee table itself is piled high; she clears it once a day.

"I love you so much," he says, gazing at her.

She pats him on the shoulder. "You're on super codeine. You're watching 17Again for the fourth time."

"I'm so glad we're married," he says.

○○

It would be convenient if she loved him. He doesn't know the fall is her fault. As far as he's concerned, she's been an exceptionally supportive wife.

But this dazed and delighted husband is not right for her.

She brings up the attic again.

"Yeah," he says, "I don't think I want to."

"No rush. I was just reading something that said it'd be good for you. Psychologically."

"Maybe next week."

Next week she lowers the ladder, still instinctively pulling to the left even though it descends smoothly now, and puts on her most matching lingerie, and calls to him as beguilingly as she can.

"Why don't we head up?" she says. "Get reacquainted."

"I dunno. In the attic?"

"It's dark up there," she says. "And mysterious."

"I'm still feeling kinda weird about it," he says, "maybe we could just watch a movie?"

God. "Fine," she says, half-naked on the landing, "no worries, whenever you're feeling better."

○○

She talks to Elena about it, to try to get some new ideas, but of course she can't explain why it's so important.

"What if he never goes up?" she says. "And there's just this lurking attic, hanging over him for ever?"

"I don't know," Elena says. "Wait till you're rich and do a loft conversion, turn it into a spare bedroom."

God, imagine, she'd never get rid of him then.

Toby and Maryam have almost finished packing for their move, and she can't bear it, the idea of the whole building empty, just her and this blank of a man. She tries pouring a bucket of water through the attic floor while the light flickers above her, then leaves the house so that Zach finds the damp patch on the ceiling and the water pooling below; but he calls a handyman, who shrugs and says he doesn't know what happened.

"Hey," Zach says, "look, I don't know how to ask this, but that water in the attic. Was that you? The guy said it looked like someone had taken a bucket up there and poured it out."

"No," she says. "What do you mean? What water?"

"The water I was telling you about? That came through the ceiling?"

"Of course it wasn't me."

"I dunno," he says, "it just feels like you really want me to go into the attic. I was thinking, maybe you should talk to someone? It must have been traumatic seeing me fall, you know? And all that work you've been doing for me, which I appreciate so much."

"I'm fine," she says. "I don't care if you go in the attic."

"Okay. If you're sure."

God. This fucking husband.

Could you fake a stuck cat? Bohai suggests. Cute little kitten and it's up there and you need his help to get it down. But just like the water, Zach would only call for help.

She's going to have to take firmer steps.