Girl A(47)

‘I had thought that I could be, like – motivational,’ Gabriel said, and Oliver snorted.

‘You’re a great kid, Gabe,’ he said, ‘but you’re not motivating anybody.’

There seemed to be an infinite number of courses, served with stern deliberation. When they were finally outside the restaurant, Gabriel explained that he would need to leave. The last train home would depart in half an hour, and he wasn’t sure how to get back to Euston. He had spent most of the meal trying not to cry, and was longing for the moment – the humiliating, private moment which must, finally, be near – when he could do so.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ Oliver said. Cautiously, as if he was asking for permission, Oliver took Gabriel’s index finger, then his middle finger and his thumb, and finally his whole hand, their fingers entwined. Oliver stumbled to face him – he was two bottles of wine down – and tipped his head upwards, until he was too close for Gabriel to see.

Gabriel had only ever kissed uninterested schoolgirls in the bedrooms of his friends, and Oliver’s force amazed him. There was a dogged determination in his hands, on Gabriel’s cheeks, and in his tongue, parting Gabriel’s lips, and – later, in Oliver’s bedroom, which looked south onto Tower Bridge, and which was precisely as Gabriel would have imagined it, right down to the black bedsheets and the touchpad lighting – in the rhythm of his mouth against Gabriel’s penis. When Oliver was asleep, Gabriel stood at the window – he couldn’t work the automated blinds, and had to prise them apart to see out – and surveyed the city, and thought pityingly of Jimmy Delaney, asleep in his university hall, with essays to write.

Gabriel returned to the Coulson-Brownes only once after that. There, he collected the belongings which he had salvaged from Moor Woods Road and took what he liked from his room. He left the tepee behind. The Coulson-Brownes provided him with a few months of rent on a flat in Camden, in exchange, he suspected, for never having him live with them again. ‘This is it,’ said Mr Coulson-Browne, ‘this really is it, Gabriel’, and Gabriel thought, triumphantly: Yes, it is.

Now he was tired, slack on the bench, without the energy to get back to the hospital. I jogged to the reception desk, collected a wheelchair, and helped him into it. The shadows of the forest fell closer across the lawn.

He didn’t speak again until we were in his room. He manoeuvred from the chair, and I wheeled it out to the corridor, so that he wouldn’t have to look at it in the night. ‘Will you come again?’ he asked.

‘I can stay nearby,’ I said. ‘I can come tomorrow.’

I didn’t know how to talk about the house on Moor Woods Road. It seemed impossible to ask anything of him when he was sitting on the bed, trying to take off his shoes.

‘Has Delilah told you about the inheritance?’ I asked.

‘She mentioned it. She said that there’s the house, and a little money.’

He lay down, and groped for his blankets.

‘She told me about your idea,’ he said. ‘About the community centre.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I need some time,’ he said. ‘Some time to consider my options.’

I paused, caught between the bed and the door. Gabriel, who had always been compliant.

‘The visitor,’ I said, ‘earlier today. Is this something to do with him?’

At the bed, I took his hand. I wanted to comfort him, I decided, but I also wanted him to stay awake.

‘Was that Oliver?’ I said. And: ‘Gabe – what did he do to you?’

He lay on his back, with his hands twitching on the blankets. Asleep, or ignoring me.

I sat on the lawn and rearranged the weekend. There were bed and breakfasts across the county: all of them were named after vegetation, and occupied. I found a spare room in a hamlet with nothing but a church and a pub, and drove there across the hot afternoon. Mum and Dad had intended to visit London on Sunday; they would have to wait. Harder than I expected, I said, by text. Another day at the asylum.

My host led me to a room attached to her family house, and presented a plate of biscuits and a handwritten Wi-Fi code. I was to use it responsibly. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is perfect.’ I thought of the Romilly Townhouse. The comfort that was to be found in its clean, vast spaces, and doormen appointed for discretion. ‘I’ll be outside with the little ones,’ she said, ‘and you’re welcome to join us.’ We each smiled, politely, quite sure that I wouldn’t.

I opened my laptop. The desk looked onto a bright, brilliant garden. Sunlight darted through oak trees and flitted across the grass. I ate the biscuits and worked, and watched my host playing with her children. She was an actress: a dinosaur and then a princess, and now a bridge, under which they scrambled. The garden was strewn with discarded props. Delilah had been right, in one respect. I was such a serious child. Even my games had required absolute commitment. I tried to imagine joining the children around the flower beds, accepting the roles I was assigned. It seemed inconceivable. They would see through me and cut me from the cast.

Some things were for the best.

I watched for a little longer, then I closed my laptop, and walked to the pub.

That night, muddled from an afternoon of wine and in the strange, warm room, I dreamt of one of Robert Wyndham’s parties. Long white tables adorned the lawn. Everybody was there: Delilah, Gabriel, Evie, Ethan and Ana. Everybody was well. I sat next to JP, who was telling some great anecdote, and I leaned into him. The party was raucous; I was struggling to follow his narrative. Glasses chinked, and the table behind us shrieked with laughter. I hushed them, wanting to hear the story, but it was impossible to concentrate on it, and after a time I stopped trying. Opposite me, Evie was grinning and bored. She slipped from the table and across the garden, to where the lawn met the forest. I stood, too. By the time I had left the table, she was already turning to the woods. I called to her, but she didn’t hear me, and in time she dimmed between the trees.