Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine(66)

He walked unsteadily to the kitchen and returned with a big packet of peanuts.

“Fuck,” he said, “bowl.” He came back with a receptacle, into which he attempted to decant the peanuts. His aim was poor, and he began to pour them all over the coffee table. I started to laugh—it was just like Stan and Ollie—and then we were both laughing. He turned off the TV and put on some music, via another mysterious remote-controlled device. I didn’t recognize it, but it was pleasant; soft and undemanding. He chomped on a handful of peanuts.

“Eleanor,” he said, nut crumbs falling from his mouth, “can I ask you something?”

“You may certainly ask,” I said. I hoped he would swallow again before he spoke.

He looked closely at me. “What happened to your face? You don’t”—he leaned forward quickly, touched my arm over the blanket—“you definitely don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just being a nosy bastard!”

I smiled at him, and took a gulp of wine.

“I don’t mind telling you, Raymond,” I said, finding, to my surprise, that it was true—I actually wanted to tell him, now that he’d asked. He wasn’t asking out of prurience or bored curiosity—he was genuinely interested, I could tell. You generally can.

“It was in a fire,” I said, “when I was ten. A house fire.”

“Christ!” he said. “That must have been terrible.” There was a long pause, and I could almost see questions crystallizing, as though letters were emanating from his brain and forming words in the air.

“Faulty wiring? Chip pan?”

“It was started deliberately,” I said, declining to explain further.

“Fucking hell, Eleanor!” he said. “Arson?”

I sipped more velvety wine, said nothing.

“So what happened after that?” he said.

“Well,” I told him, “I mentioned before that I never knew my father. I was taken into care after the fire. Foster placements, children’s homes, back to being fostered again—I moved every eighteen months or so, I guess. I got a place at university—I was seventeen—and the council housed me in a flat. The flat I still live in.”

He looked so sad that it was making me sad too.

“Raymond,” I said, “it’s really not that unusual a story. Plenty of people grow up in far, far more challenging circumstances; it’s simply a fact of life.”

“Doesn’t make it right, though,” he said.

“I always had a bed to sleep in, food to eat, clothes and shoes to wear. I was always supervised by an adult. There are millions of children in the world who can’t say the same, unfortunately. I’m a very lucky person, when you think about it.”

He looked like he was going to cry—it must be all the wine. It does make people overly emotional, so they say. I could feel the unasked question hovering between us like a ghost. Don’t ask, don’t ask, I thought, wishing as hard as I could, crossing my fingers under the blanket.

“What about your mum, Eleanor? What happened to her?” I gulped the rest of my wine down as fast as I could.

“I’d prefer not to discuss Mummy, if that’s all right, Raymond.”

He looked surprised, and—a familiar response, this—slightly disappointed. To his credit, he didn’t pursue the topic.

“Whatever you want, Eleanor. You can talk to me anytime, you know that, don’t you?”

I nodded; I found, to my surprise, that I did.

“I mean it, Eleanor,” he said, the wine making him more earnest than usual. “We’re pals now, right?”

“Right,” I said, beaming. My first pal! Granted, he was a poorly turned out computer repairman with a range of unfortunate social habits, but still—pals! It had certainly taken me a long, long time to acquire one; I was well aware that people of my age usually had at least one or two friends. I hadn’t tried to shun them, and neither had I sought them out; it had just always been so difficult to meet like-minded people. After the fire, I never managed to find anyone who could fit the spaces that had been created inside me. I can’t complain; it was entirely my own fault, after all. And anyway, I’d moved around so much during my childhood that it was hard to keep in touch with people, even if I’d wanted to. So many foster placements, all those new schools. At university, I’d fallen in love with classics, happily devoting myself to my work. Missing a few nights out at the Union to get top marks and generous praise from my tutors had felt like a fair exchange. And, of course, for a few years, there had been Declan. He didn’t like me to socialize without him. Or, indeed, with him.

After graduating, I’d gone straight to working at Bob’s firm, and heaven knew there were no like-minded people there. Once you get used to being on your own, it becomes normal. It certainly had become so for me.

Why, now, did Raymond want to be my friend? Perhaps he was lonely too. Perhaps he felt sorry for me. Perhaps—incredible, this, but, I supposed, possible—he actually found me likable. Who knew? I turned toward him, wanting to ask why, wanting to tell him how glad I was to have finally found a friend, but his head had fallen onto his chest and his mouth was slightly open. He sprang back to life quickly, though.

“Wasn’t sleeping,” he said, “just . . . resting my eyes for a minute. It’s been a hell of a day.”