500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(27)

“And they still want to fuck me, can you believe it?” said Barnabas languidly.

The pain of it, Cormac thought. The amount of drugs he must need.

“I’ll need to clean it out,” he said, gulping.

“Yes, please,” said Barnabas. “I do pretty well, but it tends to make me faint.”

He slurped more of his wine, and Cormac got to work, glancing at the beautiful telescope and the great hanging works of art and out the vast floor-to-ceiling windows, the Thames in full flow, dredgers, commuting boats, sightseeing boats, and huge tugs full of slurry traversing up and down the great expanse underneath the bridges. It was a profound and extraordinary sight; the city lay at your feet, yours for the taking, everything you could possibly want. And what this beautiful dissipated young man had wanted was to stuff himself so full of drugs that he had created an entire hole in his body.

Cormac hadn’t really come up against money before—even the local laird was more or less skint, or certainly dressed as though he was. This hushed, thick-carpeted world was new to him.

He didn’t like it at all.

He refilled Barnabas’s glass at his request (Barnabas slugged it as if it were water), then he anesthetized the area—Barnabas laughed at the idea of that doing him any good at all—and cleaned and swabbed it, then filled it with packing and taped it together as best he could. It was nothing like enough.

“You need to be in hospital,” he said urgently. “If you get sepsis, it could kill you.”

“Certainly not,” said Barnabas. “I’m having far too good a time.” He waved his arm around. “You should join us tonight, there’s a Shoreditch restaurant opening. Some filthy fusion thing, but the champagne should be good.”

Cormac looked at him in amazement. “You’ve just met me!”

“I know!” said Barnabas. “It’ll be adorable! You’ll be like my pet nurse. I can pay you. Better than what you’re on, wouldn’t be hard. Look after me. Keep it clean. You wouldn’t even have to sleep with me!”

Cormac frowned. “Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to anyone like that.”

Barnabas pouted. “Most people want to sleep with me.”

Cormac blinked. “Where’s your mum and dad?” he said quietly.

Barnabas shrugged. “Oh, Mummy’s in Monaco of course. She gets her drugs through plastic surgery. We both pretend we never notice. Daddy has two other families now, I can never remember the order, so very dreary.”

Cormac looked at him. “I don’t even want to try stitching it up.”

“No,” said Barnabas.

“But could you . . . could you consider readmitting yourself? Otherwise you’re going to find yourself on the floor of A&E again.”

Barnabas waved his hand at Cormac. “Oh, I will, I will. When I’m not so busy.”

He picked up his phone and scrolled through Instagram, wincing at many different shots of his own beautiful face. Cormac stood up.

“Well, if you’re sure you must go, darling . . .”

“Please, please, check yourself in.”

“Oh yes, darling,” said Barnabas. “I’ll add it to the therapists, the rehab people, the psychiatrist, the art therapist, and the yoga guru list Mummy sent over.”

He waved his hand toward a pile of invitations and thick gilt-edged cards.

Cormac was still anxious about him. “Are you in pain?”

“Why, what do you have?” asked Barnabas.

“Not like that. I mean inside.”

Barnabas blinked. “No,” he said finally. “Everything’s fabulous!”

And he heaved himself to his feet.

“Come look.”

He grabbed Cormac by the shoulder, pulled him to the window.

“Look out there,” he said. “Look at everything down there. Look at it. Look at that old tower . . .”

He indicated the vast sprawl of the Tower of London, dotted with red beefeaters talking to brightly windbreakered tourists.

“See down there? That’s layers of living history. Right in front of you. There’s Traitors’ Gate. That’s where they rowed in Anne Boleyn for the last time. You can stand there, feel what went through her mind. Look at that bridge.”

Cormac gasped. He hadn’t even realized the Tower Bridge still opened up. But there it was, the cars and bright red buses lined up on either side of its bright blue span, as, incredibly slowly, the road itself, markings and all, began to move. It was hypnotic, particularly as a tall ship, sails furled, masts high, was carefully, elegantly, sailing straight toward it. On the banks of the river, all sorts of people gathered to watch—parents pointing for children; well-fed businessmen at expensive Shad Thames restaurants, their expense account lunches forgotten, standing up to get a better look—the sun gleaming off the water and the polished teak of the boat’s hull as she glided through, as if impudently unaware of asking an entire city to stop just for her beauty.

“Wow,” he said.

“The city is yours for the taking,” said Barnabas. “I don’t want any more of it.”

He collapsed back onto the sofa. He looked very wasted now.

“Do not,” he said, “let it use you up and spit you out. But do not waste it. And do not miss its magic.”