CHAPTER TWO

It was true, what May said about Dad always winding up Uncle Nate - like he used to wind me up, but that isn’t why I still felt so guilty about what happened. That’s something I once admitted to Natalie: that I’d loved Nate more than I had loved my father. Yet it was Nate who I had killed.

It was strange, travelling with May, sleeping in the same room. Did she know? We took the Eurostar, but first class. May had done well since Nate’s death, I knew that from my last visit home; she had taken what little he had left her and translated it into a healthy estate.

Riding first class reminded me of the time Dave and I had travelled back from New York after our visit to Baltimore, when we could only get business class tickets. It was strange, too, to be travelling without - and away from - him. He was the longest I’d spent with any man and I wasn’t tired of it yet. Oh, once in a while I could kill him to shut up, or yearn to find a space to crawl into where no one - not Dave, not Alton, not Natalie or Sheila, nor least of all anyone from the office - would find me, to have time to think and to be, but I suppose that’s true of everyone. Nor does Alton leave that sort of option open; he needs me when he needs me however hard I try to convince him otherwise, which isn’t very.

May asked about him. I told her:

‘I was very close to Sandy, Alton’s mother. He’s known me most of his life. It makes it easier for him and that makes it easier for me.’

She scowled. She’s ambivalent towards me. Part of her wants to make up, wants us to be friends, at least to be family, so she expresses interest and concern. But she doesn’t want to hear that things are good for me: she only wants to hear I’ve got problems. It’s not a conscious meanness; she’s trapped by her inability to put the past behind us both. I can’t blame her. I haven’t put it behind me either.

On the train, she showed me a recent photo of Amy and Alan. I didn’t see them when I was last back in Oz. They hadn’t wanted to see me. I couldn’t blame them for that either. They didn’t look so different from when they were kids. They’d taken after their mother: small and dark, but a good-looking couple, quite alike - obvious siblings - and smart.

I was sad. I’m an only child, and I wanted to be able to think of, and enjoy, them as family. Being part of a family - with Dave and Alton, and a bit with Jada and Frankie - has taught me to appreciate the benefits; I don’t have to suffer even the small aggravations of life entirely on my own, like it was all a personal plot against me; maybe that was why I’d told fibs about having brothers - maybe I meant Amy and Alan, but as I knew I couldn’t lay claim to them because of how they felt about me, the brothers were an idea to fill the same space.

We arrived at theGare du Nord and took a