Does he know Mik? The body was so familiar. An impulsive, self-absorbed student with such fierce loyalty, not yet dimmed by a distrust of life’s tricks. That couldn’t be Mik now. Time must have changed him, too. That’s what it does.
‘How’s Liam?’ asks Howard.
‘Fine, he’s still looking for a place, but finding somewhere he can afford is difficult, you know. The firm he works for isn’t throwing a lot of shifts his way, and he needs an extra room for his kids so they can stay over, that’s only fair on them.’ Dan is aware he’s talking so he doesn’t have to say anything real, but he rambles on, and Howard listens. He always was a good listener. At the end of the endless conversation he says, ‘Well, something will come up eventually.’
‘Is that a euphemism?’ says Howard. ‘Just my little joke.’
‘Yeah, ha ha,’ Dan says, then hears himself say, ‘It’s not serious, or anything. I mean, we’re sort of together, but it’s not…’
‘No, sure. If you need a break come over here! I’ll treat you to beer. I’d love to see you.’
‘Thanks. And tell Mik,’ Dan says, prodded into generosity by Howard’s own example, ‘about the key still being there. That he can come and go as he likes. You all can.’
‘Can we?’ says Howard, a hint of that old amusement in his voice, just like whenever there was a falling out between them, usually Nicky and somebody else because Nicky could always rub them all up the wrong way. Howard would affectionately shuttle messages of conciliation until Nicky started crying and apologising, and nobody could stand against that.
He suddenly misses Nicky, in a way he hasn’t in years, since she first moulted – a flexing of a muscle he had long thought atrophied. But it passes and he feels loose, unconnected, when he remembers her face. He says to Howard, ‘Well, thanks,’ although he’s not certain what he’s thanking him for this time. The house, maybe? Yes, he still likes this house and the way it exists around and apart from the few years in which it held the Stuck Six. It is not defined by that event: no place can be.
Sometimes Dan thinks that people who don’t have painful moultings are at the mercy of those who do.
The shouting, the weeping, the need to change everything: their feelings take precedence over the emotions of the people who can get up after a moulting, put a skin aside, and feel quiet sorrow for what’s been lost without having to abandon everything that went with that life.
Liam moulted before his wife, and he told her nothing had changed, for him. It wasn’t only because of the Bond with the children. He found he still wanted to be with her, as a friend. A companion. He wanted to stay where he was. Then, fourteen months later, she moulted.
And she had warned him when they first met. Emily warned him that she wouldn’t even be able to look at him after the love left, but he didn’t believe it. Liam has told him all this and more on the long, intense Saturday nights they have shared since he moved in.
‘It’s my fault, really,’ Liam says, and Dan says, ‘No, no it isn’t.’
Every Saturday afternoon Liam takes the kids to the park behind the supermarket in Shefford, placing swings and roundabouts between them and himself. Feeling the Bond doesn’t make communication any easier, but at least that way he can watch them for hours. Then he comes back to the house and gets drunk.
Dan fetches two more beers from the fridge. This process has a while to go yet. They’ve only just started to list all the emotions they share, the foremost being a hatred of those difficult moulters. Dan’s mother was one. They moved house so many times, cut loose so many lives.
‘I have to get a birthday present for Molly,’ Liam says. He hesitates, then adds, ‘Can I get something delivered here? Then I’ll have time to wrap it. I want to give it to her myself.’
Dan hands him a bottle of beer, and retakes his place on the sofa. ‘Of course. You don’t have to ask.’
‘Yeah, I do. Look, I realise, it’s been months, and you never wanted a live-in lover. You were just helping out because you’re a good person, and this was meant to stay as a brief thing, I get it. I’m not your type, not deep down. And I’m trying to get over a break-up, so it’s not like I’m in the proper place for this…’
So they’ve moved on to the strangely formal honesty that comes before the argument that leads to the sex. Dan feels himself smiling in recognition of it.
‘I’m glad you find this funny,’ Liam tells him, gently. ‘Me, not so much.’
‘I’m sorry. Really.’ He tries to make the smile go away. ‘How old will Molly be?’
‘Six.’
‘Wow.’
Why a wow for being six? But Liam nods, as if he understands the sentiment. ‘I asked her what she wanted and she said a tank. I couldn’t work out if she meant a fish tank or a battle tank. I can’t get her a fish, though. Emily will kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, fish,’ Liam says, as if the answer is self-evident. ‘They die, don’t they?’
‘Battle tanks tend to have a higher mortality rate.’
‘Ha. Yeah. What time is it?’
‘Late?’
‘Already?’
‘Drink your beer and don’t think about it,’ Dan advises. They clink bottles and take long draughts of cold beer.
‘So, did you find out why Mik was here?’
‘Not really. Listen, I’m sorry about earlier. I want you to feel it’s your home, while you’re staying.’
‘It’s not,’ Liam says, simply. ‘I promise you, I am looking for a place. I want to be able to have the kids stay over—’
‘They can stay over here,’ says Dan, thinking of Howard, of what Howard would say.
‘They can’t.’
‘You’re ashamed of me?’
He waits for Liam to break, to start the argument. Not this time. This relationship is not as predictable as it seems. Liam is shaking his head. He doesn’t speak. He simply moves his head from side to side, his eyes closed, as if listening to his own music. How unreadable he becomes the moment he’s chased, and Dan had thought him so close, so easy to hold.
‘You’re right to be ashamed of me,’ Dan says, because now he wants to own the pain he causes. He thinks of the framed photograph of Edith Learner in the kitchen, put at the back of the cupboard under the sink, with a swatch of old skin inside. Such things should always be private. But then – how can he ever risk letting anyone know about that, about him, again? He’s so lonely, that’s what’s really happening here: it hits him so hard that he stops breathing. He’s so lonely.
‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ says Liam, and puts down his bottle, then holds out his arms.
‘Did you ever think of going to the British Museum, touching your old skin?’ Liam asks him, very softly, stroking his stomach as he lies beside him. Dan is aware that the beer is changing his shape; he’s not a beautiful man any more, not like Mik was. Is. But Liam has a paunch too, just the start of one. They’re not young men. There’s something so sad, and yet ultimately reassuring about that.
‘Why would I?’ Dan says. ‘I can remember what that was like.’
‘What was it like?’
All the reasons why he doesn’t love Liam flood over him, over the afterglow, over the night and vulnerability he felt, like a strengthening armour. ‘What kind of a question is that?’ he says.
Liam pauses. He takes his hand from Dan’s stomach. ‘I think it was like being in love with love,’ he says. Then he gets up and finds his clothes, scattered around the floor, and returns to the bedroom he’s using while he’s here, at the other end of the corridor.
In love with love.
Was that it, all along?
He had fallen in love with all of them, all at once. A miracle of instant inclusion.