Chapter 11

11

"He's running late again," says Jade when she answers the door to Algos. She turns quickly and I follow her in. "He called and said you can go straight down to his study. There are some background notes on his desk, he says, which you can get started on."

She shows me downstairs, hovers in the doorway as if reluctant to leave me alone. I feel her eyes on my back as I sit down at his desk but when I turn, she has closed the door silently behind her.

The walls are lined with reference books. One theme dominates. Pain: The Science of Suffering ; Why We Hurt ; From Prayer to Pain in the Nineteenth Century . I spot an old copy of Virginia Woolf essays On Being Ill and a collection of poetry by Emily Dickinson. Idly, I remove it from the shelf, curious—is it Eva's or Nate's? I turn to where the spine has been bent open and begin to read.

Pain has an element of blank; it cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not

I flip back to the opening page and see an inscription written five years ago on Nate's birthday.

Thank you for putting up with my element of blank. Yours forever, Eva.

I find myself checking the door again, wary that Jade could be watching me. I sit for a moment in his swivel chair, feeling his authority resonate as I examine the piles of clinical notes on the floor, the old papers and discarded ink cartridges. Next to his computer is a small anatomical model of a brain on a white plinth. I draw my hand along its bumps and ridges, the network of red veins running along its surface. An A4 file is placed neatly next to it, a Post-it on the cover.

Here are a few notes and reflections I've been working on over the last week or two. I'm keen to weave them in somehow, if you think they're suitable. Speak shortly.

Nate

There're only a couple of pages, no more than a thousand words of thoughts and reflections, and yet somehow it seems longer.

I stifle a yawn as I read through it. Paragraphs pile up, dense and impenetrable, swimming before my eyes. How best to distinguish acute from chronic pain? What are the long-term benefits of spinal cord stimulation? I search for anything that hints at a glimmer of personal insight, self-awareness. As an introduction to neuroscience, it's passable. As the seeds of a personal memoir, it's a disaster.

I do a word search. Eva's name lights up only once. Buried in the last chapter I finally locate her, hoping for a glimpse of emotional complexity.

Eva was lying on her side, her back exposed, where I observed little blood but a deep staining of the skin, indicating a passive distention of the inert vessels which takes place within an hour or two of death.

I draw breath, shake my head, press my fists into my eyes. So your wife dies and your first observation of her in a memoir is a passive distention of the inert vessels .

Anxiety curls through me. Does Nate really have the emotional intelligence to drill down that far? I glance up at his books. Philosophy and art and cinema. Travel and medicine, memoir and biography. All those words that should connect him to raw experience. Yet, somehow, it's all so lacking in these reflections, as if he buried his emotions long ago. Even the best ghostwriter is only as good as their raw material. I have to try to get started on something.

Every dead body is trying to tell us something. It's there waiting for us to listen, if we look carefully enough. What was Eva trying to tell me? We know that she died at approximately 4:00 p.m. on the Friday, before I returned home to discover her body the next morning. The truth is I don't remember a great deal about the rest of the day. I know I called the police and later, after they'd gone, I felt numb, unable to process the reality of what had happened.

I look at the picture of her on Nate's desk, her face angled away from the camera, oddly beautiful. I want to let her tell her own story but, for now, Nate is her gatekeeper, the only connection I have to her past, the only hope of ever knowing the truth. And yet his memories of his own wife are about as passionate as a lab report.

"Good to see you're deep in concentration."

Head in my hands, I jump at the sound of his voice, his looming presence behind me. How does he do that?

"Hi, Nate. Didn't hear you. Sorry."

"The power of good prose," he says lightly, picking up the textbook lying open next to me. "You must be desperate if you're reading The Oxford Guide to Neuroscience as light relief."

"What? Oh, that. Translating some of your terms."

He pulls up a chair next to me, apparently ready to get to work. I tie my hair back up in its band, assemble my features into something that reflects enthusiasm.

"I see that. You found my notes too heavy going?"

"No, not at all. There's some really useful stuff in here," I say awkwardly. I shuffle the pages together and place them next to me as if I am laying something dead to rest. Above us I can see the light and shadow of Jade's movements through the square of glass bricks in the study ceiling, hear the reassuring clatter of lunch being prepared, dishes being stacked. How I wish I were up there. Even Jade's froideur seems preferable to this.

"Nate," I hear myself say, "I really think we need to talk. It's my turn to tell you something, before we get started."

He looks at me, expectant.

"I should have said it when we first met but somehow it didn't seem relevant. You see, I actually spoke to Eva once. I interviewed her. Over the phone, not for very long at all. I mean, she was amazing." I pause, try to gauge his reaction, but his expression is set, inscrutable.

"What exactly did you talk about?"

"Oh, nothing, really, and everything. Her sculptures, how she was training to be a therapist. The piece never ran in the end. She invited me to go to one of her exhibitions, but I couldn't make it. I always felt bad about that..." I trail off, bite the inside of my cheek.

Tell him. Don't tell him.

"That's a shame. You'd have liked her if you'd met her properly. Everyone did." The shadow of a smile plays on his lips, and I find myself relieved that this hasn't triggered a stronger reaction. "Eva could be difficult to refuse, whatever she asked of you."

"I sensed that, yes," I manage. "I just thought you should know. No secrets, right?"

The early afternoon gloom of his windowless study draws tighter around us as we sit side by side. He switches on a small brass reading light and I glance at him in profile, the tips of his mouth sloping downward, his eyebrows drawn together like a battle line as if bracing himself for combat.

My notes twist angrily through his text, in brash shouty capitals: MORE OF YOU HERE, TOO CLINICAL. CLICHé ALERT!

His head leans one way and then another in an attempt to decipher my thoughts, his features darkening by the minute.

"Yup, okay. Got it. You want more gush, more emotional honesty." He crowns the words with ironic commas.

"Right. The reader will just keep wondering, what are you really feeling here?" I turn my chair to face him.

"That magic word again. I feel fine. But I don't really get your problem with—this." He taps the paper with the back of his fingers. "I've outlined everything I witnessed when I came back and found Eva. It's accurate and truthful. I don't really understand what more you want?"

I flinch inwardly as his indignation rises, that old habit of hypervigilance ever present. Does it signal another meltdown, are these red flags I should recognize?

"Well, I guess the point is it's factual and it's not badly written. But—" I pause with the effort of being delicate "—sometimes the facts alone make it feel less accurate. They can be...alienating to the reader."

"So you're saying you want me to exaggerate, give a sensational account of what happened?"

"I'm simply outlining what I know Priya will want."

He nods dismissively, keen for me to finish so he can speak again. "As I see it," he says, that tone again, "I write down the facts, my life, my work and what actually happened. You warm it up if need be and I'll say if I like it or not."

"I'm not sure if that's how it really works. Can I ask, have you ever talked to a psychotherapist about her—I mean, about your loss?" It's a swerve but I need to shake him up a bit, get to the heart of the issue. He looks indignant.

"Why would I? I've got my own inner therapist. I'm good at processing my feelings. I know myself better than anyone." I try to suppress a smile. "What's so amusing?"

"Nothing, I guess. Except I've heard a lot of men say the same thing about therapy."

"Women have it all worked out, right?"

"That's what you think?"

"I think you sound like a convert."

"It's not a religion," I retort.

"Well, a cult then."

"You really are resistant. There's nothing wrong with seeking professional advice. It can help to talk it through."

Nate sighs, shifts in his seat and leans forward. "Okay, the truth is, I tried it for a month or two actually, but it wasn't for me. The goal of therapy is to work on change, but perhaps I don't want to. I'm quite happy the way I am."

"If only I could be that sure. I mean, who doesn't want to change in some way, isn't that the whole point? I know I wish I could."

He shakes his head firmly. "Trawling through the past with someone, all that endless navel-gazing, it isn't my style."

"Much safer to stay the same and give nothing away." I tease lightly.

"Not quite what I meant."

"Little do you know, you're already shedding clues the whole time, giving away more than we ever really realize."

"Really? Surprise me, then," he says, sitting back and folding his arms, his forehead furrowing.

I hesitate for a moment, wondering how accurate I should be. A consuming interest in someone is never a good look.

"Okay, for starters, appearance is important to you. During our first interview, I noticed how you checked your reflection in the glass door on the way down here. You had a haircut earlier that day too because you knew you were going to be photographed before I turned up—I could tell by the red skin on the back of your head where it had been shaved."

His hand instinctively strokes the back of his neck. I plow on, secretly pleased.

"My feeling is you spend your life studying other people's brains so you don't have to turn the microscope on yourself. We're all guilty of that in our jobs, I guess. It's the way we like to stay in control." I pause for effect. "The smoking was a surprise though, I didn't expect that."

He sits up a little straighter. "Okay, my turn. You're an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. You like attention more than you care to admit, feel you can be overlooked in certain situations, so you reassure yourself that's a benefit in your line of work. But I'm not sure you really believe it." His eyes hook into mine and I struggle to muster a smile. "You're pretty allergic to the therapist's couch too, aren't you? You preach about it, may even have tried it but, like me, you decided it wasn't for you."

If only you knew , I want to say. Instead, I brush strands of my bangs across my forehead, suddenly worrying that my complexion is giving me away.

"I don't think you were too worried about experiencing pain. In fact, you displayed high tolerance levels in the lab. What you really don't like is feeling exposed."

"Touché," I say. Here I am, proving his little theory right, making my excuses to take flight.

"I'm sorry if I touched a nerve." He looks amused and entirely unapologetic.

"Sure. It's funny, if anything," I say, unconvincingly. "I'd happily talk about myself and bore you with my vanilla childhood, but we have work to do."

Satisfaction twitches at the corners of his mouth. "Nothing about you, Anna, strikes me as vanilla."

As another hour passes, I'm aware of the proximity of his foot close to mine, restlessly circling the air. I register the urge to kick him, hard, so he'll finally engage, stop treating whatever I say as irrelevant white noise.

"You missed this chapter. No red ink. What did I do right?"

"Sorry." I smile. "I just ran out of time."

"Or maybe red ink?"

At least there's humor in his eyes again, a self-deprecating lightness. Something that I imagine Eva would have found charming.

"Look, I know this is a trial for you. Emotion isn't something neuroscientists exactly embrace. Maybe we can even mention that in the opening chapter, an admission to the reader that this is a different medium for you?"

He nods, unconvinced, his fingertips tap on the back of his phone.

"I mean, not wanting to talk about emotions is something the reader would respect you for admitting to. We could explore it from a neuroscience perspective, how we use different parts of our brain to compartmentalise?"

"Sounds like pop psychology to me. Wrong discipline."

"But it's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that your science shouldn't be the most important thing about your book. You're excluding the reader. Do that and they won't read it. I don't blame them, I wouldn't either. You have to challenge yourself, aim higher."

I toss the notes I've been holding in my hand onto his keyboard. Some of the pages miss and fall in his lap. He stares at them for a moment or two, says nothing. Sweat prickles my palms. Will this be a confrontation? For a moment I think he'll explode but, he doesn't. Instead, he looks at me properly for the first time today and his mood shifts.

"Anna, look, I'm sorry."

I bend down to pick up some of the papers that have scattered to the floor. "I shouldn't have thrown them. I—"

"Seriously, you're right. I do rely on jargon, terminology, to hide behind. You're not the first person to point it out, or probably the last. I spend my life absorbed by the brain, the very place where emotions reside. I, of all people, can see the irony in that." He lets out a hollow laugh.

"If you can, then there's potential to change. As long as you trust the questions I ask you, and you're not defensive, we can do this."

"Right. A fruitful collaboration." He smiles, his features relax. Without warning he gathers up his chapters scattered on the desk, opens up the bottom drawer and throws them in, shutting it with a theatrical slam.

"Happy?"

"Not exactly, but it's a start," I say. "Let's begin with interviewing you. From now on, the only person asking questions will be me." He nods, and for the first time I sense he respects the steely finality in my voice.

I let myself into my apartment and hear the telltale signs of company. Amira is home earlier than usual, which explains the delicate scent of saffron and lemon permeating the hallway.

There's the suck of a fridge door opening, a man's gentle murmur I assume is her ex-boyfriend, Alex, followed by the distinct peal of Amira's laughter. I wrestle off my coat, absorbing a certain flavor of intimacy in the rise and fall of their conversation. I'd rather not intrude and head for the bathroom instead. Amira has always been more of an extrovert than me. Where she seeks out noise and company, I am a born scuttler, heading for the safety of an empty room. After four hours in Nate's study, pushing back against his iron-clad will, I need to recalibrate.

I turn on the hot tap to full, undress and step into the bath while it's still running and watch the steam turn the walls wet and glossy. I think of the flawless marble surfaces in Nate's bathroom where the bath, like a sculpted egg, takes center stage surrounded by mirrored mosaics.

By contrast, I am surrounded by flaws, cracks in the shower glass, the furred ancient taps, black spores of damp blooming between the tiles. The endless desire to compare is like a broken window where envy steals in. More of an impulse than a feeling, this longing keeps my mind focused. I sink beneath the bubbles until my skin feels suitably flayed and, finally, I decompress.

There is a rumble of knuckles on the door.

"Anna?"

I come up for air, open my eyes. "Yes? I'll come and say hello in a sec."

"I need a quick word." Amira's voice dips, a note of low urgency in her tone. I get out of the bath and wrap a towel around me, open the door and, even in the half-light of the hall, I can see that her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes gleam and the almost empty wineglass she clutches tilts at a perilous angle.

"Everything okay?"

"Sure. I just, I wanted to tell you something, before you came in and saw us."

"Us?"

"Us," she echoes, throwing a glance back toward the kitchen.

"You're back with Alex?" I offer. "That's fine. I knew it was on the cards. I've been there myself. On and off more times than a light switch. We've all—"

"Alex?" She recoils. "No way."

There's a moment of confusion before I make the connection. Her hesitancy, the guilt. A heaviness descends like rocks in my stomach. No.

"Tony?"

"He dropped by and I wanted to tell you before you found out. We've just started seeing each other again." She looks down, her tone gentle.

"What—?"

"Hey, sis," he calls from the kitchen in his crude singsong tone. I hear a cupboard door slam, the enthusiastic pop of another wine cork. Irritated, I wrap my towel tighter around me, dripping water on the floor, before locking my bedroom door.

I get dressed slowly, weighed down with a sense of foreboding. I felt the exact same way two years ago when they first met at my birthday party. There were twenty of us crammed around four tables in our local Turkish restaurant. The clatter of our voices bounced off the exposed brick walls and there was Tony and Amira sitting opposite me.

I tried to draw my gaze back to my friends, away from Amira's luminosity, her dark eyes and halo of curls. From Tony too, his usually pale skin tanned for once after teaching English for six months in Vietnam. He was supposed to be on the next leg of his journey, but he would never let me celebrate a birthday without him.

I had to admit there was something mesmerizing about the two of them, there always is when you see two relative strangers absorbed in one another, oblivious to everyone else in the room. Old friends nodded over at me with sly smiles and I shrugged, amused.

I was pleased for them, wasn't I? Why wouldn't I be? I tried to push away that old sensation, something slippery coiling in my chest. I love Tony, but I've never liked knowing about his affairs, nor him knowing about mine. It was better that way.

I think back to Dan, my last serious boyfriend, who I met on a press trip. Tony grew hostile toward him on my behalf when the relationship started to flounder. Over that final week, there had been vicious arguments between Dan and me, many of them Tony would have heard. He was staying over at the time after spending a month in Goa.

A month after Dan and I separated, I heard from an old friend that he'd recently come out of hospital after a serious bout of E. coli.

"He deserved it, didn't he?" Tony had said when I told him, giving me one of his strange wry smiles.

"Tony, nobody deserves a fortnight in hospital on an IV drip." I roll my eyes. "At one point they thought he'd need dialysis."

"Well, he shouldn't have been such a shit to my sister. I heard those things he called you. He needed a lesson."

" Lesson? Tony, what—"

He nodded, grinning. "He really should be careful where he leaves his toothbrush." He sniggers, delighted, letting the full force of it land.

"His toothbrush," I echo.

"I looked at it and thought, now, Tony, you're always up for a new experience. I wonder what it would feel like sticking that where the sun don't shine?"

"That's repulsive. He was seriously ill because of you. What the fuck?"

He shrugs. "Revenge. Come on, Anna, don't act so shocked. You're a master at that too," he fires back.

I was still cut up about Dan, but that ? Bile rose in my throat. Growing up, Tony's appetite for practical jokes was tolerated by my mother as harmless signs of a restless, creative mind. Salt in my coffee, that sort of thing. Often she found these episodes amusing, the price you pay for an imagination, as she used to say to me. But this?

I considered telling Amira when it happened, but something stopped me, watching them so happy together. This was the reason for my initial foreboding, that a point would come when I would be implicated, blamed either for my silence or my honesty. So when I could tell Tony was growing bored with Amira, as I knew he would, I decided to step in to help them both.

Less than a month after my birthday, I invited Tony to a hotel launch in town, introduced him to Agatha, a fashion PR I had met through a recent interview. Her eyes were the palest sea green and the ends of her auburn hair were dip-dyed silvery blue. Tony told her, ever so charmingly, that she looked like a mermaid. Of course she did. That night I left them at the bar alone together, took a cab home early, and one thing led to another. If it wasn't her, it would have been someone else. I thought Amira had recovered, but clearly not, since here they were. Back together.

None of this is new to me down the years, the infidelities, the restless desire to seek the next conquest—Agatha, Amira, many others after them, the inability to commit. No different to him abandoning the first episode of a new Netflix show.

"Please spare me the details, save it for your newest therapist. You have major issues," I had replied, maybe a little too lightly.

"Everyone has issues, Anna. You of all people should know that."

A plume of steam rises as Amira sieves the rice. I help carry small dishes into the sitting room. There's lemon chicken and grilled halloumi, chickpea stew with crispy onions.

"What a feast, Am," says Tony, distracted, not really looking at the food at all. I sit down at the table, watch as he examines my desk, as if it's a crime scene dense in clues. Tony wasn't thrilled when I told him I'd been hired as a ghostwriter, but he'd tried to be supportive. I can see it's still an issue for him as he peers at my printer and its in-tray, where the top pages of my book contract lie. I meant to post it back to Priya yesterday. He picks them up and starts to read.

"Uh. Confidential, thank you." I swoop over to swipe them from his hand.

I notice how Amira's glances stray to him as he hovers at my desk.

"Does Nate know you took all these?" she asks.

"Of course." I swallow hard. "He saw me take one of them and was fine about it." The little white lies come to me more easily these days.

Tony nods, still staring at the photos. "I'm curious, is this normal for a ghostwriter?"

"It's called research. Immersing yourself in your subject. Writing books demands that," I say, airily, aware of how pretentious I sound but riffing on it anyway. "You can spin so much around an image. There's a whole story in just one expression. You know that from your own work, don't you?"

He looks away, lets out a short contemptuous laugh. "Writing books? That's pushing it. You don't even get your name on it."

I open my mouth.

"What? I only meant you deserve better, Anna. A high-profile figure like him should credit you, at least."

I redden, angered, only because I've had the same thought. "Ghostwriting doesn't work like that."

"Doesn't it?" He lets the question hang as Amira walks over and they study a line of Post-its in yellow and orange that flutter on the wall above my desk. Below them is a small whiteboard on which I've felt-tipped two lines annotated with dates and details of their lives, one in green for Nate, the other red for Eva. They rise separately at first, meet and at their peak join together. After that, one dips sharply while the other carries on. It's a work in progress, still waiting to be fleshed out over the coming weeks. The undulating highs and lows of Eva's and Nate's lifelines.

"Come on, it's not that interesting. You're studying it like it's the Rosetta Stone."

"Poor old red line didn't stand a chance," he muses. "Still, getting to decide their fates must be fun."

"I'm mapping out the facts, not making it up. It's called a memoir," I remind him, frowning. "Apparently, they're based on true life?"

"I wouldn't bank on it if Dr. Reid's involved."

"Don't believe everything you read in the news."

"Don't believe everything he tells you."

"You two," Amira jumps in, infuriated.

Tony raises his hands in surrender. "Just playing around. She knows how proud I am of her, really."

He slopes away back to the table, holds up his empty glass for Amira to refill and asks about her day. She recounts another turbulent week at the magazine, a cover story pulled at the last minute, an actor threatening libel, the editor sacking a freelance picture editor who's six months pregnant. The usual dramas.

It's Tony's turn to talk about his week, a humblebrag very much for Amira's benefit, about the frustrations of preparing for his long-haul travel adventure next month: the visa queues, the reactions to various vaccinations, the malaria tablets that always make him queasy.

As he rakes through the remains of his rice, I catch a glimpse of the tattoo he got in Shanghai last Christmas. Four Chinese characters rising up his inner arm in blue ink. The tan is fading but Tony's other mementos endure, the leather bracelet wound around one wrist, the outsized jade gemstone on his middle finger, global traveler's code for spirituality and enlightenment.

He takes out a pouch of tobacco, rolls a cigarette. His fingertips brush Amira's arm for a second when he asks if she'd like him to roll her one. When he inhales, he tilts his head back and I watch as her eyes light up. I look down, shiver imperceptibly.

"You okay, Anna?" Amira looks at me.

"Just tired," I say, affecting to stifle a yawn. "Long day."

She picks up on my expression. "Of course. I meant to ask. Your first day ghostwriting."

"It was...interesting." I tell them vaguely about reading Nate's notes, breaking the news to him that his material wasn't working.

"So Dr. Pain's a terrible writer. No surprises there," quips Tony.

"It's all fine," I say and shrug. "He got the message surprisingly quickly actually. We're starting over on Monday, and I know I can get something good from him."

Tony and Amira exchange a look I can't work out and conversation circles back again to Tony's travels. His itinerary, his plans. Amira flatters him, and by the time we finish with more wine, he's scrolling for an Uber to take him back to North London where he's staying with an old friend for a few days. We stand up to say our goodbyes, but it's Amira who sees him to the door.

"So?" says Amira, walking back into the sitting room, a lopsided grin fixed to her face. "Why are you being so weird?"

"Weird?"

"About me and Tony." She kicks off her shoes, falls onto the sofa. "I saw you looking at us all evening."

I turn around and catch her looking at me as she sits down, hugging her knees to her chest. She looks beautiful this evening, her velvety teal top slipping from one shoulder, dark ringlets shimmering with gold highlights.

"I guess I worry about you getting hurt again, that's all. I'm allowed to say that about my brother. I think you deserve so much more."

"What is it about that word with you and Tony? Deserve. I'm not that naive, and I can look after myself."

"It's just—I know him so much better than you. He's not—"

"I get what this is about, Anna," she jumps in. "It's okay if you feel a little jealous. Tony told me—"

I snort. "He told you what?"

"He told me earlier he's worried about you. That you've become a bit...protective of him, or possessive or something. No big revelation, but he thinks this is a pattern of yours—" She hesitates, scans my face. "He says that's why he's been trying to travel much more lately. To encourage you to have your own life a bit more?"

"I'm the possessive one?" I let out a whoop of incredulous laughter.

"I knew you'd take it the wrong—"

"I'm happy for you both. Is that what you want me to say?" My voice rises and I register a tightening knot of rage inside me, one that will burn through me as I lie awake into the night playing Amira's words over and over.

"I'm just saying he cares so much about you, Anna, and so do I. And you've been so consumed with the Reid case..." She shakes her head, assessing me as she pours the last inch of wine into her glass. She's reached that dangerous stage where she's drunk enough to feel sober again, to believe her insights are acutely perceptive. "You guys have such a unique bond, it's natural, I guess because of what you've both been through."

"Such a unique bond," I echo, unable to catch her eye.

"I know how difficult it was after your father—" She stops for a moment. "He says how you both share all this stuff together but you never really want to talk about it."

"You two really have talked a lot, haven't you?" I say, coolly, slamming the dishwasher door shut, waiting for the comfort of its familiar purr to distract me from her needling voice.

"You know you can always talk to me about it, if you want."

I close my eyes a moment, rattled. Down the chute of memory I slip and slide. The smell of burned toast in my father's kitchen. The obscene scream of the smoke alarm, the electrical storm that followed. Tony's face when I returned that night. The secret that binds us together. How much was down to Tony, how much was down to me?

The blankness in my father's eyes is what stays with me. The sight of Tony smashing the smoke alarm with a broom until a tangle of wires spilled out. The noise stopped but it was all too late by then. Did it really happen? I have spent so many years perfecting the art of unremembering, unknowing what I really know. My mind flits back to the moment.

"Tony and I have talked about our parents many times," I say, neutrally. "I don't know why he's telling you all this."

I crave distance from her and yet she inches closer, close enough for me to see the fine dark hairs on her folded arms, how rapidly she's breathing.

"Look, I'm seeing Tony again, and we're happy." Her eyelids flutter closed for a second, her words feel stiff and rehearsed. "I want it aboveboard and open. It's important for both of us that you're happy about it too?"

Why would they care what I think? All I really want to do is leave. "I'm so pleased for you, really." I fold my features into the semblance of a smile. "For both of you. Welcome back to our fucked-up family."

When she hugs me, I feel relief flow through her, her limbs melt, soft as liquid. Quite suddenly she is languid, washed out by all this drama. She sinks back onto the sofa while I wash up the last of the dishes. My fingertips feel their way to the bottom, over the rubble of glass stems and cutlery. I read recently the most common household accident is cutting yourself on an upturned blade below the bubbles. A simple act of negligence. Only yourself to blame.