Henry moves his hands through my hair, and I refuse to think about Christophe doing the same thing forty-eight hours ago. I. Refuse.
On the drive back into London, Henry told us about his brilliant plan, his perforated passport and summary deportation from France. He slept the night in the airport hotel and spent the best part of Sunday floating on his back in the pool. ‘Thinking,’ he said, after we dropped Vicky at her flat. She is more reluctant than me to forgive Henry – a non-inclusive goodbye, aimed only at me, a pointed ignorance of Henry’s own farewell, an emphatic closing of his car door. The difference, I suppose, is that I can empathize. I can see how he let it go too far; how he found himself in that castle bedroom, sleepless not with doubt but with certainty. Henry told me about April, getting together, breaking up, getting together again . . . sneaking out of the castle as the sun came up. It was a long story and we drove back and forth over the Thames, zigzagging its bridges and taking random turns and roads and exits, just driving and talking. The car itself has been vandalized; deeply and deliberately gouged along both sides – a gift from the disgruntled brother of Henry’s ex-fiancée. It’s been hard on him. April is now overdue with Henry’s best man’s baby, which must be disconcerting on several levels. I received Henry’s story as if it were about someone other than the man sitting beside me. And in a way, it was.
‘My place or mine?’ I asked him.
We stopped for groceries on the way, dropped into Henry’s for a change of clothes and his scissors. In my garden now, a mirror propped against the shed, I watch Henry in reflection as he examines my hair. He lifts what’s left of my fringe and snips at it with his scissors.
‘Are you sure you should be taking any more off?’ I ask.
‘If I could add it on, I would. But’ – cutting again – ‘what’s done is done.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Is that a big question or,’ he tugs at a lock of my hair, ‘hah, a big question?’
‘Both, I guess.’
‘Try and make the best of a disaster,’ he says.
‘Will you stay in London?’
Henry shakes his head. ‘I haven’t really thought about it. Trying not to, anyway. It’s a shame you missed the party,’ he says. ‘My dad would have liked you.’
‘Not your mum?’
‘She’d . . . she’d love you,’ he says. His expression flickers with something like embarrassment before he looks away. Henry moves to the back of my head, teases out the short hacked hair between his fingers and snips millimetres from the tips. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ he says.
‘Why didn’t you?’
Henry shrugs, shakes his head.
It was late when I arrived home after my aborted trip to see his parents, and I inflicted all my vandalism – negatives, sugar bride and groom, my hair – indoors. The birdhouse Henry made hangs from a nail on the side of the shed, unpopulated but still intact.
‘When I went up last week,’ Henry says, ‘my mum told me . . . she more or less admitted to having had an affair. Or a fling or a . . . whatever.’
‘Awkward.’
‘Uh huh. Her and Dad both, if I understood her. But . . . what I did was worse. I think it’s the worst thing anyone I know has ever done. So . . .’ He sighs heavily. ‘Not something you share with someone you care about.’
‘I slept with someone,’ I say, before I’ve decided exactly what it is I’m confessing to. Henry’s expression collapses. His lips part but he says nothing.
I shake my head, take hold of his hand. ‘After Alex died,’ I say.
Henry relaxes incrementally, and squats down at my feet.
‘Maybe a week after he died,’ I go on. ‘I . . . we were celebrating – that’s not right, remembering him; a wake, I suppose you’d call it. And . . . he was one of Alex’s best friends.’
Henry says nothing, merely smiles and nods. He appears entirely unfazed by this revelation, and I think – no, I feel – I feel a deep and keen and physical love for him. I feel it in my scalp and my lungs and the palms of my hands.
‘What I’m trying to say is . . . I understand. I understand how we can do . . . things. Make mistakes.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ he says again. ‘I was ashamed.’
‘What’s done is done,’ I say.
Henry smiles, kisses me, resumes fiddling with my hair.
‘Leave it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s got a year to grow out.’ Which kind of bursts whatever bubble we were inflating.
Henry cooks while I shower, and we eat off our laps in front of the TV, a horror movie where a petulant but inventive death refuses to be denied.
‘My dad’s always been big on tradition,’ I say.
‘What, like Christmas?’
‘Mostly, yes. Like flying kites on New Year’s Day . . .’ I drift off, realizing I won’t be around for that particular tradition this year.
‘We always have an argument at Christmas,’ Henry says. ‘Without fail. And New Year. And Easter.’
‘Do you know that film, The Princess Bride?’
‘Sounds a bit girly.’
‘You’d like it, I think. Pirates et cetera. We used to watch it every Boxing Day, for years. Ruining all the best lines by saying them out loud. Inconceivable. As you wish. My name is Inigo Montoya, and so on. There’s this one: Good night, Westley. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning. Or something like that.’
‘Okay?’
‘Westley is a cabin boy on the Dread Pirate Roberts’ ship. And Roberts says this to him every night.’
‘I’ll most likely kill you in the morning?’
‘Every night for three years. The point is, he never does. Kill him. They just continue on with their adventure. He . . . loves him, I suppose.’
Henry turns to look at me, a realization dawning in his eyes. ‘So he lives?’
I nod. ‘Happily ever after . . .’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘What I’m saying, Henry Smith . . . is I don’t want to leave you behind.’
Henry inspects his hands, first the palms, then the backs, as if looking for answers.
‘Bloody hell, Henry, do you want to come to Thailand, or what?’
Henry laughs, nods.
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll need to get a new passport.’