Chapter Fourteen

Patrick’s arm is flung around my shoulders, my face pressed flat against the warm expanse of his chest. We’re quiet right now, but it’s a soft kind of quiet. We’re about to cross Waterloo Bridge, my favourite bit of the journey, the lit-up London skyline splayed out like a winning hand of cards. Tonight it feels like crossing the Rubicon, the point of no return.

‘So there’s literally NOTHING there?’

‘Nope. No milk. No wine—’

‘Hang on,’ he says, throwing himself forward. ‘Driver!’

I’ve missed laughing the way he makes me laugh. I grab his arm, yank him back towards me.

‘It’s a good thing. I can’t drink another drop. I’ll die. Time to get excited about some delicious, nutritious hot water.’

‘Oh, so you’ve got a kettle?’

I cock my head, pull a face.

‘I couldn’t swear to it.’

My key scrapes loudly in the lock, another Rubicon about to be crossed. Patrick steps straight inside, his big brown eyes quickly scoping out the space. My sofa’s still here, a bog-standard Ikea number bought with one of my first pay packets, and I’ve accidentally left a print hanging up, a Modigliani of a woman in a green bonnet.

‘It’s pretty swish,’ he says, stroking the painted wooden frame of the big sash window that looks out over the narrow road. I liked how hidden away it was when I bought it, quiet and cosy.

‘Thank you,’ I say, pleased and self-conscious all at once. Marcus never seemed to come here: for him, Balham’s the equivalent of Antarctica.

‘So we’ve got some art work to gaze at,’ says Patrick, tilting his face and stroking his chin extravagantly, ‘but no kettle?’

‘You are SO uncultured,’ I tell him, grabbing his hand and leading him towards the sofa, marooned in the centre of the bare room.

‘Uh uh. I know your game. I’m going to get myself some of that delicious hot water before I let you ravish me.’ Patrick spots everything, even the tiny moment where I lose my game face. He puts his arms around me. ‘Hey, Mia, I’m joking. We don’t have to do anything. You know that, right?’

‘You’re lovely,’ I say, reaching up to stroke his face. It’s soft, his skin, its pale milkiness giving it a smoothness that I wouldn’t have appreciated all those times I snootily dismissed him as a callow youth. I try not to think about how different it feels from the stubbly landscape of Marcus’s face. This isn’t me. This is another Mia who I most likely won’t be on speaking terms with this time tomorrow. ‘I mean, you’re obviously a doofus, but you’re a lovely one.’

And then he kisses me again.

It’s me who suggests we go upstairs, me who pulls him down onto the bed, me who ignores the text beep from my phone, even though I know in my bones it’s from a newly landed Marcus, all ready to kiss and make up.

‘Are you sure about this?’ says Patrick, his fingers starting to undo the buttons that run down the front of my black cotton dress. I look at them weaving into the gaps in the fabric, grazing my naked skin, and think about stopping him.

‘I’m sure,’ I say, leaning upwards to kiss him, my hand slipping tighter around him, pulling us closer. I unbutton his shirt, push it off his shoulders with an urgency that comes from somewhere I can’t quite own. He looks at me – no, gazes at me – naked but for my black bra and knickers. I feel my hand unconsciously reaching to cover my stomach, but he gently puts it back by my side, continues to look. He smiles. ‘You’re even more beautiful than your imaginary incarnation.’

‘Have you hung out with her a lot?’

He makes an embarrassed face, shrugs, makes me giggle. I reach towards him and unbutton his jeans. He awkwardly shrugs himself out of them, looks back at me.

‘Socks on, right?’

Now he’s exposed too. He’s more lithe than skinny; his long legs have a racehorse quality to them, his chest punctuated by unexpected ridges of muscle, dusted with more hair than I’d have predicted. I run my finger down it, feel his heartbeat speed to my touch. I pull him back towards me, craving his lips on mine – right now, his kisses are my oxygen. I lose any sense of time, but as the wanting builds up inside me I roll on top of him, look down at the face that looks beautiful to me now. He stares back up at me, his long fingers pushing my hair away from my face. His eyes burn dark, suddenly hard to read.

‘What?’ I demand.

‘We shouldn’t do this.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He groans, slapping his palms hard against the mattress.

‘I can’t believe I’m saying this. I am going to hate myself tomorrow. But I’d rather hate me than have you hate me.’

I roll off him, turn my back, hot humiliation scorching through me like a forest fire.

‘Fine.’

‘Mia . . .’ He tries to roll me, but I make my body as heavy as lead. He leans in, his lips brushing my ear. ‘Listen to me. This is too important to trash.’

‘What, this is trash to you?’ I say, the words spitting out at him.

‘I’m not saying that. Jesus, you’re the therapist.’ I don’t feel like a therapist tonight. I feel like the vulnerable, stupid girl who got knocked up by a man who saw her coming. ‘I don’t want to take advantage of you. You’re in a state.’

‘What, I’m too much of a bunny-boiling loony to shag?’

He grabs my shoulder now, turns me over, forces me to look at him. I want to reach up to him, but I force myself not to, keep my eyes cold. Could this all be just another move? Pawn two steps forward, checkmate?

‘OK, stop it. You’re the one with a boyfriend.’ The shame I’ve been damming up torrents through me. How is it that he’s the one affording Marcus proper respect? What is wrong with me? ‘How about if I don’t want to get hurt?’

I look into his brown eyes properly now, so soft they could almost be velvet. I feel my own eyes filling, my heart too.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ I tell him.

‘Come here,’ he says, opening his arms. I snuggle against him, let him stroke my hair. He adjusts our position, pulls me back in. ‘Sorry, my head and my nether regions are having a serious disagreement.’

‘It’s pathetic how gratifying that news is.’

I don’t want to go to sleep – it’s stupid, but I don’t want to leave him. Tomorrow is another day, and there’s only so long I can keep real life chained up. It feels unsaid, neither of us articulating it, a thought bubble floating above us in the bare bedroom.

‘Do you want to tell me about it properly?’ he says, his body snaking itself around my exposed flesh like a creeping vine.

‘Oh Dr O’Leary, I feel like I could tell you anything.’ He doesn’t snap back with a smart reply, he waits it out. I told him a little bit when we were standing in the King’s Cross drizzle: that Lorcan and I are so terminally estranged that I don’t even know where he is any more, that I like to think it’s for the best, the only way I can protect myself, but that on a day like today I come face to face with how it makes my heart feel like a bloody steak, raw and tender.

‘I don’t mean to be a nosy parker,’ he says, stroking my nose like he did earlier. ‘I just . . . I hope you don’t end up with unfinished business. They do go,’ he adds, his voice low.

‘I know. I know he’s not immortal, but he could contact me. He’s the parent.’

‘I get that . . .’ says Patrick, still stroking me.

‘Anyway, I thought you said you didn’t have regrets?’

‘Er, hello, year one, Mia. We don’t always say exactly what we mean. Or maybe it’s that we think that if we say it with enough conviction it’ll start to be true.’

‘I know.’ It’s too uncomfortable. I can’t open up this creaking treasure chest of memories with him beside me, then say goodbye. I’ve had too many abrupt exits in life to go wilfully courting another one. I’ve got to get it all out, whilst we’re together.

‘Patrick, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. About the corruption. I can’t stand the idea that the people who should be on your side aren’t on your side.’

He sits bolt upright in bed like a meerkat, and I immediately regret letting the case puncture our fragile, precious bubble.

‘There’s a lot of people snuffling in the trough, chasing the kickbacks. People who think the system screws them and want payback.’ I can feel as much as hear the scorn that soaks his words.

‘Why don’t they get thrown out on their corrupt, sorry arses?’

Patrick shrugs, face like granite.

‘Goes too far up, some of this stuff.’

I stroke his fingers, searching for him.

‘Are you in danger, Patrick? You would tell me if you were?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ he says, pushing me flat, his hands tangled in my messed-up hair. ‘I’m made of stern stuff. But, Mia? If you can help me, you won’t just be helping me. You know that, don’t you?’

The alarm on my phone shrills out at 6.30, a relentless banshee. It’s downstairs in my handbag, and I stumble off in search of it, rudely awakened in every sense. There’s not one but three messages from Marcus, increasingly demanding. I’ve landed, baby, says the first. You snuggled up in our bed? Call you when I’m past customs. Typical Marcus: his bad mood’s evaporated so he assumes the world he surveys will reflect his shiny new reality. The next text is at least a bit less cocky: it makes me aware of how rare it is that I challenge him and let him get to a point of contrition. I can hear Patrick starting to stir upstairs, my shame stirring with him. What have I done? You sulking? Didn’t mean to abandon you, Mia. I’d do anything to be in that bed with you right now. xx. There’s one final text, probably sent around the time Patrick and I finally, reluctantly, went to sleep. Not going to ring in case I wake you. I love you, darling. You know that though, don’t you? xx. I stand there, Patrick’s shirt – the nearest thing I could lay hands on in my empty bedroom – hanging off me. I’m a horrible person: I’ve given myself a cancerous secret I can never tell Marcus, all for a man I can’t be with. I’m winded by another stab of shame as I remember the Stephen Wright conversation. How could I have been so careless with Gemma’s confidences? I love Marcus, I know he loves me.

And here’s Patrick, clad only in his boxer shorts, giving me a sleepy smile from beneath his messy ginger mop. He looks like he’s been assaulted by a tomcat.

‘Well, don’t you look a picture?’ he says, taking in the barely buttoned shirt. The thought of constructing a reply to Marcus, of meeting Judith, of going to that sterile, empty flat – I can’t do this. I can’t do it, and yet I have no choice. I feel like my evil twin stepped into my body, wreaked havoc and stepped straight back out again. It would be a horror movie if it wasn’t my actual life.

‘I’ve really got to get going,’ I say, avoiding eye contact. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t even have a towel to give you.’

‘Mia . . .’ As Patrick steps towards me, my whole body stiffens. He stops, thinking better of it, the light in his eyes dimming. I want to cross to him, wrap myself up in his spidery limbs, never let go, but what good would it do? I don’t want to get hurt. That’s what he said. It seems to be my speciality, just like it was Lorcan’s. I summoned Lorcan up, like the genie from the lamp, and look what happened. ‘It’s OK, I was a Boy Scout, I’ll improvise. Do you want to go first?’

‘No,’ I say, gesturing to the bathroom door, eyes sliding away. ‘Feel free.’

We’re both dressed now. I found a few stray things from the chucking-out pile that my cleaner had stuck in the cubby hole under the stairs. I’m unfashionable, but tidy. Patrick, meanwhile, looks a state, his shirt (clearly doubling as a towel) damp and crumpled, his hair refusing to submit to gravity.

‘Are you going straight to work?’ I ask, putting on a swift, efficient coat of lipstick in the mirror by the front door.

‘What, you mean looking like this?’ There’s an edge to his voice. ‘No, I’m gonna have to make a pit stop at home.’

‘That’s miles away.’

‘I know.’

His voice is hard and cold, a boulder rolled straight at me. I deserve it, but it still feels unbearable. I turn to him, pleading.

‘Patrick . . .’

‘Just to warn you, I really might have to call Gemma as a hostile witness.’

‘Don’t do this. Don’t use her to get at me. I don’t mean to be cold, it’s just if I start feeling any of this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to put one foot in front of the other. I’m seeing Judith in an hour, my tenant’s moving in . . .’

‘You’re quite the narcissist, aren’t you?’ he says, eyes narrowing. ‘I was giving everything I had to this case long before you came sashaying into my life.’

Anger whooshes up inside me.

‘Is it because of The Grove, is that why you’re going to call her? Is it because you somehow managed to wheedle that information out of me?’

Pain washes across his face, but then he hardens himself. Or maybe it doesn’t: maybe he’s used that narcissism he’s spotted and played me for a fool.

‘I knew about it anyway.’

‘You didn’t know know, you suspected.’

‘We haven’t got Christopher. We’re almost out of time. This was always gonna happen.’

‘How convenient. Convenient and coincidental.’

He looks at me, his eyes softening.

‘Mia, come on. Come back. This is us . . .’

But I’m throwing my files in my bag by now, my mind racing a million miles a second. If I’ve really done this to Gemma – become the person who’s forcing her to get up on the stand and betray the person she loves most in the world – I don’t deserve a shred of mercy. I promised I’d protect her. At least Patrick believes he’s doing what he promised – I’ve got no defence.

‘There is no us, Patrick. There’s one sordid almost shag that should never have happened.’ I hate this – the bile’s as much for me as it is for him – but I won’t let him see it. ‘You won. Congratulations.’

‘It wasn’t that way for me. It was never something sordid. I wanted you. In every sense.’

‘Mmm. Not that much.’

He cocks his head, eyes deep dark pools. I don’t want to leave him. I want to barricade the door, lead him back upstairs, forget the world outside exists.

‘You have no idea how much I wanted you,’ he says.

Past tense. It’s all I hear.