Max knew Kate had somebody there when he got home the next morning because her feet were definitely not that big. They weren’t Elias’s trainers, either, because he’d just been with Elias. There were, besides, voices coming from Kate’s bedroom. He went to her door.
“Kate?” he said.
“What?”
“Do you, um, want a cup of tea?”
There was silence. Kate came to the door, pulling on a jumper, and opened it a crack.
“You’ve literally never made me tea in your life.”
“That’s not true,” said Max, craning his neck to try to see past her. Kate grinned at him and opened the door a bit farther, so he could see the end of her bed. Max saw feet, which went some way to explaining the shoes.
“Hello?” said a voice—male—from within. Kate, giving up her attempts at discretion, opened the door all the way.
“Hi!” Max said. “I’m Max. I know exactly who you are.”
Without invitation, he came into the room and climbed into the bed on Kate’s side. Andrew shuffled up to make room and didn’t seem irritated by the intrusion. From where she sat at the foot of the bed, Kate could smell alcohol oozing from Max’s skin. He wriggled around to get comfortable.
“Man, you’ve got too much energy,” Andrew said.
“And you’re making my bed stink,” Kate said, hitting Max on the leg. He ignored her.
“So, what did we all think of the after-party?”
“I left, Max. Remember?”
“OK, well, it was great, you should have stayed. They had these massive speakers and neon paint all over the walls. Wait, you were sick, weren’t you?” Max looked at Kate and then at Andrew. “Oh, I get it. Lovesick.”
Andrew looked at Kate. “Did you bail to come and see me?” he said, half laughing.
Kate flushed.
“Well, next time you should come, you’re both invited. Except for Kate. She hates parties.”
“It’s true,” Kate said gravely.
Max sat up and ruffled Kate’s hair. He was pissed, showing off.
“But we love her, so we don’t mind.”
Kate batted his hand away.
“Guys, I’d love to join you for brunch,” said Max, “but I’ve got to go and see my parents. I just came back to shower.”
“We didn’t invite you for brunch,” Kate shouted after him, as he disappeared upstairs, leaving the bedroom door wide open.
By the time Max arrived at Latimer Crescent, he was beginning to sober up. The sky was cruelly bright, the sun burning off the last of his alcohol haze. He put on his sunglasses as he walked from the Tube, hoping to soften the headache that was forming at the front of his skull. At the house, he announced himself by banging around the kitchen, slamming drawers and opening cupboards.
“What are you looking for?” said Zara, coming downstairs to find him.
“Medicine.”
“Hangover?”
“No,” Max lied instinctively.
“That’s why you’ve got your sunglasses on inside, is it?”
Max took them off. His eyes were red, and the rims of his nostrils, too. He sniffed.
“Hay fever,” he said.
Zara didn’t mind Max partying, and in fact she rather liked it when he turned up at the house needing care and sustenance. It made her feel necessary. She opened the cupboard next to the fridge and handed her son a packet of painkillers.
“Here you are,” she said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
They had lunch out in the garden, Zara sitting back and soaking up the sun that came dappled through the leaves of the plum tree, Max with his sunglasses back on, piling his plate high with Parma ham and fresh bread. After the coffee, he’d moved back onto beer, and the bubbles were cold on his tongue.
“It’s from the new bakery,” William said, as Max cut himself another doorstop slice of bread. “Wonderful little place. They have all these sourdough cultures.”
“Oh yeah,” said Max.
“You know, every baker’s hands carry different bacteria, so no two bakers’ loaves will ever be the same. The bacteria mixes with the culture when they knead it, and with all the different stages—pre-ferment, ferment, proving, baking—every loaf is days in the making.”
Max chewed on the bread in a show of appreciation. He feared, given the state his insides were in, that digesting this slice was going to take almost as much effort as had apparently gone into creating it.
“I’ve started my own sourdough, actually,” said William.
“He has to find a way to keep himself busy, now he’s an old man,” Zara said.
“I’m afraid your mother has become insufferable,” said William to Max, in a matter-of-fact tone. “She’s working on a new film, and she seems to be under the illusion that she’s gained another twenty years of life as a result.”
Max laughed. It was a sign that they were both fairly content, when his mother and father were comfortable enough to publicly insult one another. “What’s the film?”
“It’s a gem, Maxie,” said Zara. “I’ve got the script on my laptop, I’ll send it to you. Fantastic writer. Very dark, very funny. You’ll like it, I think.”
“Are you directing?”
“The original director had to drop out, so they got me on board. All very last minute. We film in the autumn for release next year.”
“She dropped dead, not out,” said William. “Aneurysm. It’s dog-eat-dog, Max, the film industry. You ought to tell your friend Kate that.”
Even after nearly five years of what Max was sure he had portrayed as a completely platonic friendship, William was still in the habit of putting a euphemistic emphasis on the word “friend” whenever he was talking about Kate. Max chewed, thoughtfully, wondering whether to call his father out.
“Oh, for God’s sake. She’s not dead,” Zara said. “Just hospitalized. Kate will like it too. It will resonate with her, I think.” She raised her eyebrows at Max.
“Oh,” said Max, “you know, she’s doing quite well. I think she might have a boyfriend.”
“How wonderful,” said Zara. Max thought that she might have been more pleased by this, but then, he supposed, it would be odd if she were excited by the news that one of Max’s friends was sexually active. For a second, the thought came into his mind that both of his parents were now imagining Kate, with a new yet unseen boyfriend, having disinhibited, nonviolent sex. He regretted mentioning it.
“Well,” William said, clapping his hands together, “how about I show you my pre-ferment?”
Inside, William took from the fridge a jar containing a thick, white substance.
“He’s quite a specimen,” William said, putting on his glasses and peering closely. “Only a couple of days old; another day or so and he’ll be ready for the next stage.”
He handed the jar to Max, who looked at it. “Are you sure it’s a he?”
“Don’t,” said Zara, following them in from the garden. “He’s already attached enough as it is.”
The phone started ringing; Max and William ignored it. Zara went to answer.
“It’s just the prototype,” said William. He took back the jar and turned round to double-check that Zara was gone. “If it goes well, I might open my own place. When I’ve retired, obviously.”
“A bakery?” said Max.
“It’d be quite something, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s a great idea, Dad.” Max was genuinely enthused. “There are loads of good places you could do it around here. And around where my flat is, actually.”
“Not in London.” William lowered his voice conspiratorially. “That’s why we can’t tell your mother just yet. In Bisley.”
“That was Rupert,” Zara said, coming back into the kitchen. “He’s coming over for dinner. Will you stay, Max? You haven’t seen him for months.”
“Oh, I said I’d have dinner with Kate. But send him my love.”
“I will.”
Max heard himself ask: “How is he?”
“He’s doing well,” William said. “Still volunteering, some of it paid.”
“Oh,” Max said. “That’s good.”
Both his parents stood, looking at him, waiting for him to say something else.
“We’ll send him your love,” Zara said again, when he didn’t.
Before he left, Max went upstairs to his old room. He’d come to collect some cables so he could get the iMac working again. His room, as always, was far tidier than he’d left it, but this time it was more bare, too. The piles of paper that had been on his desk had been put away into a drawer, the books back onto their shelves. The sheets had been stripped from the bed and the coverless duvet was folded at its foot, with the pillows stacked on top, and the lampshade had been taken from the ceiling light, leaving the bulb bare. The walls might have been repainted, too. For a while, he sat on his bed. They were only small changes, and as such they elicited only a muted response in him: he wondered whether he ought to feel more sad than he did about his near-empty room.
He lay back, closed his eyes. Perhaps he should be feeling guiltier, too, about avoiding Rupert. He wasn’t having dinner with Kate: he had no plans later. But he was feeling a little tipsy from the beers, and it was a sunny afternoon. He wanted to keep on drinking, not to have to sober up for dinner so he could sit in the conservatory with his uncle, trying to keep his eyes focused. It was exhausting, seeing Rupert. He couldn’t ask what he did all day, because the answer would lead them nowhere Max wanted to go, and now Rupert was sober they couldn’t rely on alcohol to bridge any gaps between them. In fact, even before Max had turned eighteen, their adult friendship was formed next to the drinks table at family parties or during trips to the pub or to expensive restaurants, where Rupert would line up different wines and make Max blind-taste them. Max was a natural, Rupert had told him, chuckling and finishing, one after another, the glasses from which Max had sipped. One-on-one he could see him. Just not today; he wasn’t quite ready. Before he got up, he saw that on the ceiling the glow-in-the-dark stars, which William had stuck there for him when they’d first moved into this house, and which still had their glow the last time he’d slept in this bed, had been left.