Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (10 page)

 

"It's gross."

"You're a bit slimy yourself." Dory looks scandalised at that, surprised enough to stop crying altogether. Lindsay tries really hard to keep his smile hidden, using his shirt sleeve to mop her face under the eyes then under the nose. "
That's
gross, you're like a pond monster."

"I am not!"
"You are, look, you've got snot all over my shirt."

"Sucks to be you," she says pertly, and then he can't help laughing.

"I see your brother's been giving you English lessons." "Anyway if I'm a pond monster you're a wookiee." "Are we finished insulting each other now?" "Pip says tell you only old men get beards."

"Pip's jealous because he can only grow hair on his toes and knuckles." He shifts his grip on her so he can pull the curtain closed. She feels heavier in his arms, she's relaxing against him all quiet and dozy with one little hand pressed flat against the side of his face, the other curled into a loose fist so she can suck her thumb and stroke her nose with her forefinger at the same time. "Are you ready to go back to sleep now?"

"Let me take her to the toilet first."

Lindsay almost drops her at the unexpected voice. He turns round to see Valentine in the doorway, not quite enough of a silhouette against the hall light to hide the strange look on his face. "How long have you been creeping around?"

"Give her here, can you make her bed back up?"

Lindsay sorts the little West Ham covers and pillows back into place while they're gone, and finds the lost rabbit tucked down between the mattress and the wall. Dory looks at him with such grown-up gratitude when she returns it's like he's saved her life. "Check down the side next time," he says quietly, watching Valentine settle her back in bed. "He's never getting stolen, I promise."

"Okay."

She lets Valentine kiss her on the forehead, hesitates for a moment, then holds her pudgy arms up to Lindsay until he sits on the edge of the bed again and kisses her goodnight as well. "Beaux rêves, chérie."

Valentine's gone by the time Lindsay manages to convince her to let go. Lindsay thinks he's gone back downstairs until he hears a noise and finds him in his bedroom scrubbing his damp hair with a towel. "She was having nightmares, she lost her rabbit." He feels like has to explain himself, like he's done something awful. It's there in Valentine's manner, the way he's not really looking up or smiling or even making any indication he's heard. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah."
"Right."

Silence again. Lindsay pulls the horrible gold and pink chair out from its place under the dressing table and sits down to wait it out, but Valentine seems
really
fucked off this time because it drags on for ages while he slams around the room finding a comb and a change of clothes.

Abruptly, he stops where he is and says, "Is the reason you don't wanna talk about all them years cos you met some woman and had kids and that's how come you suddenly know what to do with one when she's crying when before you always said nothing in the whole world scared you so much as someone else's bratty bastard crotchfruit?"

"You're ridiculous."
"Cos I don't
mind
, but-"
"You clearly
do
mind or you wouldn't be throwing such a fit."

"No I ain't throwing a fit, you'd know about it if I was." He struggles into a Care Bears t-shirt that's far too small for him and starts furiously combing his damp hair like that's to blame. "I noticed you never said no just now."

"No."

 

"No you agree you never said no or no you never got nobody pregnant?"

"What do you think?" "Lindsay!"

"I couldn't get anybody pregnant even if I wanted to. A nice doctor accepted a lot of my money to make sure of it."

"You're such a patronising fucking twat sometimes, you know?" "So grow up and stop having a tantrum."

In a way, it's sort of comfortable. For so long he and Valentine sniped at each other, then for so long they were apart. Since they met up again it's been sunshine and rainbows, like a cracking mask hiding something hideous underneath. It was always going to fall apart; maybe it's better to fight it out properly instead of putting up with the constant sense of unease.

"What's your problem, exactly? Your sister was crying, I made her stop. How is that bad?"

"You
hate
kids." "I don't." "You did." "But I don't now."

"Fear of the unknown, innit? You don't get from hating them to
that
without practice. And if you're someone's dad I wanna know about it."

"It's none of your business. You left
me
, remember?" Cheap shot. Valentine gives him such a hateful look it actually makes his stomach drop like when you think you're about to fall downstairs.

"Why can't you just answer?"
"Why does it matter?"

He knows why it matters. Every time Valentine goes round to Olly's house, Lindsay feels sick and murderous. He's got to put up with Valentine having photos in
his house
of his ex's swarm of children, and their felt-tip pen drawings stuck on the fridge with magnets, and Valentine's stupid mindless incessant chatter about every single detail of Lillian's hockey matches and how good Sammy's doing at school and Daisy's dance group got on Britain's Got Talent the other year and Joe needs glasses like Olly and Sam but he's having wicked Gryffindor stripes and and and- he
never shuts up
and Lindsay lets it happen because they're all adults, they should all know how to get along, he should be a bit more trusting, but it's so hard.

So he lets it all out like vomit, everything he's been avoiding for months: the travelling, the women, the accidental backslide into needles and tourniquets, Ellie, salvation, Montreal, kids, the antique bookshop they bought for something to do, how genuinely content and happy he was. Valentine throws his comb down and just sits there on the bed scrunching his hands in his hair until the spew trails off into thunderous silence. Then it's his turn.

"Sometimes I really miss Olly," he says, still not looking up. "Cos me and him... it weren't like I was
settling
just cos you weren't there. I think he was a bit just cos he knew I wouldn't go mental on him like all them idiot women but even so, me and him, it weren't even like friends with benefits or nothing. If you never texted me that time me and him would've been together ages or forever cos it was good, it worked. Then you come back and it's like... chucking him off for something better like changing your mind about your t-shirt, even though you still
like
your first t-shirt. And you know I love you, but changing that quick when I never thought me and him would ever break up... I mean it was all dead good, we was happy, you know? Then just BAM, that's the end and it weren't for no bad reason like we started falling out or nothing, it just stopped. And it don't mean I don't wanna be with you but if we're doing this hand-holding soppy truth shit it needs saying, I miss him sometimes really bad, I miss living with the kids. Is that what it's like?"

Hypocritical jealousy started raging like fire the second Valentine opened his mouth. Lindsay's made his thumb bleed again, just so he's got something to concentrate on.

"You said sweet dreams in French," Valentine says quietly. "Is that what you said to Alice?"

For a moment he's scared sick that Valentine's going to bring up what happened to Ty and Danny, and he's not sure he can take it. "Mm. Habit."

"We kinda lost touch. I should've made more effort with letters and stuff but I didn't wanna be pushy with them and keep sending letters they didn't reply to. Spose kids just move on quicker than grown-ups."

Lindsay can feel Valentine looking at him, but he doesn't want to look back. The idea of eye contact is unbearable, all those searching questions and blunt answers he doesn't feel like dealing with. It's funny how much they've got in common now, for people so completely different. Even the names. Olly and Ellie. It's ridiculous.

"If you miss them they could come over for a visit," Valentine says tentatively, and Lindsay makes an accidental sound of scorn. "Because that wouldn't be awkward at all, would it?" "Don't have to be. She's still your friend, ain't she? Like Olly's mine."

Another silence, even longer than before. The chair's uncomfortable, Lindsay's starting to go numb, but he doesn't want to move; it's as if moving would shatter something delicate in the air. Then Valentine speaks up again:

"You know what I said before... in France when me and you was fighting, when I went away?"

 

"You said a lot of things."

"You know when I said I don't care if you wanna be with other people, like if you fancy girls as well, I don't care if you wanna see other people so long as you're nice to me when it's just me and you? I still mean it. If it helps." It's a nice gesture, but he's lying. He wouldn't sound so strangled and heartbroken if he meant it. "I mean... I never known what it's like being any other way, I always knew I liked boys my whole life, even when I was like seven I knew it. So if you don't wanna be with me all the time... I don't mind, you can be with women as well if you want and I won't kick off, it's alright. If you're miserable. If it helps."

"Philip-"
"And I swear it ain't some open-relationship scam cos I still wanna be with Olly or nothing cos I don't, but... is that how it works, being bi? Are you miserable just being with one? I don't know what it's like but if you slept with all them women and no men that means you really really like it, and-"

"Maybe I slept with
all them women
because they didn't matter, did you ever think of that?" Valentine just sniffs loudly, so Lindsay tries to get a laugh with, "Disposable tarts, can't even remember their names," and it works.

"You're a sexist pig." "Then it's a good job I don't plan on trying to impress any women, isn't it? Unless... do you count?"

 

"Fuck off."

"No." He gets up off the arse-numbing chair and goes to sit on the bed. Valentine moves across the blankets to make space for him and they end up cuddling like teenagers, Valentine popping some of Lindsay's shirt buttons through so he can find some skin to touch and Lindsay threading his fingers through Valentine's hair and combing out the tangles he didn't reach yet. "I'm not miserable. I don't want to sleep with women. They're harder to get off than you are, anyway." Valentine makes a disgusted noise, but he doesn't talk any more and he falls asleep where he is, half-dressed with his palm to Lindsay's beating heart.

8.
October 2014

The weather starts to turn, but it doesn't seem to get that much colder. It just
rains
, endless miserable grey drizzle that always seems to find its way into your collar no matter how tightly you button up or how many times you wind your scarf round.

It's a week from Halloween, not even three months since they got back together, less than a month since Pip moved all his stuff into Lindsay's huge Georgian house in Dulwich and messed the place up, and already it's like he's been there forever. It's only weird when he thinks about it, but he can't help thinking about it
all the fucking time
– how easy it all is, how it's so comfortable, how domestic they are. It feels like they've been married for fifty years and it's so strange, it shouldn't be like this. He kicks his boots off just inside the door, stepping around the little puddles he's left on the hall floor so he doesn't get his socks wet, and unwinds metres of the cold damp Doctor Who scarf that suddenly feels like it's choking him. "Where are you?" he yells, even though it's kind of obvious. There's an amazing smell coming from the kitchen. He's already in preemptive mourning for his waistline.

"Where do you think?" Lindsay's at the table with whiskey and a cigarette and a book closed over his thumb to keep his page. He turns his face up for an upside-down kiss as Pip goes past him to get a Corona out the fridge. "You're late. If we had a dog your dinner would be in it."

"We can get a dog if you want. We can get a butch manly one so you wouldn't be embarrassed walking it, I wouldn't make you get a chihuahua or nothing. We can get a newfie. How come we ain't got no limes?" He finds a Jif lemon in the cupboard and squeezes half of that into the bottle instead, ignoring Lindsay's raised-eyebrow stare and muttered
that's disgusting
. "We could get a cavalier like Dory's, they ain't manly but they ain't
girly
."

"We're not getting a dog. Sit down."

He does as he's told, trying not to laugh while Lindsay fetches him the plate of bangers and mash that's been waiting in the oven. "I like you in housewife mode. Fussing round getting a nice hot dinner on the table for your breadwinner when he's done at work."

"Shut your face. I'd earn more sitting on my arse and letting interest build up for
one minute
than you make working in a whole year." He's not really annoyed, Pip can read his moods like a book. It's even more obvious when he doesn't go back to his seat but pulls out the one right beside Pip and starts playing with his hair as he eats. "Your hair's wet."

"Yeah, genius, it's raining out."
"It's going all... frizzy."
"I'm sorry I'm so repellent to look at. Leave off, alright?"

"Did you have a good day? Tell me what you did." Lindsay shuffles his chair a tiny bit closer, as close together as they can get, and keeps on stroking Pip's hair back off his face so he can lean in and press a little line of kisses on his cheek, from his jaw up just in front of his ear. It's still tender from the tragus piercing he got last week, but not sore-tender – more like sensitive-tender, and the kisses and the heat of Lindsay's whiskey breath and the tickle of his beard make Pip shiver, a surge of goosebumps rushing through his body. He can't help laughing, shaky and breathless.

"You're bored, ain't you?" "Can't think what gave you that idea," Lindsay murmurs, pulling bits of drizzle-dotted hair between his fingertips to squeegee off the rain.

"You're meant to have a nice time on your day off. Lounge round in your pants all day eating Frosties out the box and playing Nintendo, that's what days off are
for
."