A Spot Of Bother

81

Jamie was waiting for a prospective buyer in the Prince’s Avenue flat, the one where he’d met Tony for the first time.

The owners were moving to Kuala Lumpur. They were tidy and childless, thank goodness. No abstract expressionistic ballpoint pen on the skirting boards, no scree of toys on the dining-room floor (Shona was showing a couple round the Finchley four-bed when the woman twisted her ankle on a Power Ranger Dino Thunder Bike). Worked in the city and hardly touched the place from what he could see. You could have licked the cooker. IKEA furniture. Bland prints in brushed steel frames. Soulless but salable.

He walked into the kitchen, touched the paintwork with the tips of his fingers and remembered watching Tony with a brush in his hand, before they’d even talked, when he was still a beautiful stranger.

Jamie could see now, with absolute clarity, what he’d done.

He’d bided his time. He’d got away. He’d built a little world in which he felt safe. And it was orbiting far out, unconnected to anyone. It was cold and it was dark and he had no idea how to make it swing back toward the sun.

There’d been a moment, in Peterborough, shortly after Katie punched him, when he realized that he needed these people. Katie, Mum, Dad, Jacob. They drove him up the wall sometimes. But they’d been with him all the way. They were a part of him.

Now he’d lost Tony and he was drifting. He needed a place he could go when he was in trouble. He needed someone he could call in the small hours.

He’d fucked it up. Those horrible scenes in the dining room. His mother saying, “You know nothing.” She was right. They were strangers. He’d made them into strangers. Deliberately. What right did he have to tell them how they should run their lives? He had made damn sure they had no right to tell him how he should run his.

The bell rang.

Shit.

He took a deep breath, counted to ten, put his selling brain in and answered the door to a man with a very obvious toupee.