Page 34 of All of Us Murderers

Zeb could see Gideon putting together memories. “You were writing a book. In the office. Well, that explains why I never had more than about forty percent of your attention.”

“You always had my full attention,” Zeb assured him. “The job didn’t, I grant you.”

“And—did you say three thousand? Three thousand pounds?”

“Guineas, actually.”

He hadn’t told anyone this before: as a habitually broke man with habitually broke friends, he didn’t want either to brag or to be deluged with requests for ten pounds till next quarter day.

He felt a certain embarrassment telling Gideon now.

But he’d asked, and he needed to believe Zeb could cushion his financial catastrophe, plus it was a conversation about something other than this house, Elise, Wynn.

Gideon looked stunned. “But that’s astonishing. That is absolutely wonderful. My God, Zeb, congratulations! Why did you not say? And why on earth have you not told your family this? They’ve been calling you a worthless sponger for days!”

“Because they think I’m a worthless sponger, I suppose,” Zeb said. “Hawley and Bram would have a field day mocking what I write, and I would rather not be ridiculed for it.”

“Well, I’m sorry. You should be able to share this with your family. You should be immensely proud of yourself because this is tremendous. Ah, what is it you write that’s so unfit for the family?”

“It’s fit for most families, just not mine. I write children’s stories.”

“Good Lord. Really?” Gideon cocked his head. “Actually, I can see that, now you say it. That’s marvellous. My sister’s twins are six now, and I’d love to find them a new favourite book because we’ve all read them their current obsession to the point of nausea. Might they like your work?”

“Possibly. The first one is called The Fairies of Faraway Meadow.”

Gideon’s mouth dropped open. “What,” he said with force. “What? What the—You wrote that? You are Zinnia Waters?”

“You know it?”

“Know it? I can recite it!” Gideon yelped.

“‘Around the corner, down the lane, and just a little way out of sight lies the doorway to Faraway Meadow’—I have read that more times than I want to remember. I can’t take the twins on a walk without them spotting a dozen corners, lanes, and doorways that might lead to your blasted fairyland!

My brother-in-law says he forced himself back to work just so he wasn’t at home being ordered to read Faraway Meadow twice a day! ”

It was always nice to hear one’s work had caused significant anguish. Zeb beamed. “He’ll be horrified to know the third one comes out in February, then. And I’ve signed a contract for another three.”

“My nieces will be overjoyed. They eat, sleep, play, and live Faraway Meadow. You can have no idea how they love it. Or do you? I suppose England is full of similarly possessed children.”

“The publisher does receive quite a lot of letters.”

“I imagine they do. Good God almighty, Zinnia Waters. I don’t suppose you’d sign my nieces’ books for them?”

“I’ve actually just got early copies of the new one. They could have it for Christmas? One each to avoid fighting?”

“My nieces will adore me,” Gideon said. “Oh good Lord.”

“What?”

“I was just imagining telling the girls that I know Zinnia Waters and how excited they would be. And then I thought about trying to explain how I know her.”

“You will need a story,” Zeb agreed.

“I don’t want a story. I want to tell them at the very least that Zinnia Waters is my friend and I am immensely proud of that. Proud of her. I don’t know if I have the right to say I’m proud of you, but I really am.”

“Well.” Zeb could feel himself going pink. “It’s just books.”

“It’s not just books. You’ve obviously worked extremely hard, for a long time, and—” He stilled, then went on, slower. “And you didn’t just hide that from your family. You hid it from me.”

Zeb’s stomach dropped. “It wasn’t a secret. I just—well, I didn’t know if it would come to anything. It might very well have failed, and I didn’t want to have to tell you about another failure.”

“God,” Gideon said. “You should not have felt like that. I shouldn’t have made you feel like that.”

He had, though. There had always been that element of Gideon the sensible one, wearily dealing with Zeb’s disorganisation, reminding him of things to be done, finding things he’d put down somewhere, coping with another job of work undone.

Zeb hadn’t minded, precisely, or if he had minded, that was his problem.

Gideon was competent and organised; naturally it was tiresome for him to deal with habitual chaos.

Zeb had grown up used to endless exasperation from his father and brother, and Gideon had been infinitely more tolerant than either of them.

All the same, Zeb had undeniably wanted to show him a proven success, rather than a manuscript he hadn’t finished, a dream that might founder.

“I wanted to see if it would go anywhere before I told you, that’s all,” he said. “I wanted to get something right.”

“You got so much right.” Gideon’s voice was aching.

“So much. I’d never kissed a man before you, and you made me fit into my own life.

You were endlessly patient with me. You made me laugh.

You made me happy. And in return, I didn’t make you feel you could trust me with your dreams, or your trouble with your brother, or—Jesus, did I do anything at all for you? ”

“You bent over backwards for me at work. You sorted out a thousand problems. You took out spiders and never laughed at me for it. For God’s sake, I still use the magic box!”

Gideon had instituted the magic box. If Zeb emptied his pockets into the box by the door when he came home then, as if by magic, things would be there when he looked for them.

It was a ridiculously simple idea—perhaps one he might have or should have thought up for himself, but he was never terribly good at that sort of thing.

In any case, it had worked like, well, magic.

Gideon had bought him a lovely carved wooden box for the purpose, and then a second one that lived by his armchair, and repeated Magic box!

every time he saw Zeb with unconsidered things in his hands until it had become habit.

He still heard Gideon’s voice in his ears every time he came home and had got really quite good at not losing his keys.

“That’s still working?” Gideon said. “Oh, good. I did think—wait. Wait. The magic box. As in, the queen’s magic box?”

“Oh. Um.”

“The Queen of the Fairies’ magic box, which contains whatever you need when you open it?”

That magic box had been stolen by goblins in the second Faraway Meadow book, thus putting the plot in motion. Zeb realised he was flushing. “Well, it gave me the idea.”

“I thought of you every time I read that blasted book,” Gideon said. “Every single time. I thought it was just—I don’t know. Fate being unkind.”

“No, it was me. Not me being unkind, I mean; I wrote it because it’s such a good idea.

Your idea. And what I said before about another failure—I didn’t mean you made me feel incapable.

I meant, you always said I just needed to find work that suited me, and I wanted to show you that I had.

Ta-da, look at me, published author!” He grimaced.

“This wasn’t quite how I imagined telling you. ”

“But if I had paid less attention to your inability to put your clothes away and more to what you were actually doing and thinking—”

“Look, I’m a shambles,” Zeb said. “I turn up late, fail to get my hair cut, and forget everything, and it drove you mad. I do know that.”

“You are also profoundly kind, have behaved through the nightmare of the last few days with astonishing decency and steadfast courage, and you’re a bestselling author. And something of a shambles, granted, but right now, I cannot remember why I let that matter.”

“It does matter sometimes. I know it does. It’s not precisely entertaining always losing my things and leaving jobs undone and having people be cross or disappointed. I know it bothered you.” He took a deep breath, letting the truth bloom in his chest. “But you wanted me anyway.”

Gideon’s eyes snapped to his. “Yes,” he said quietly.

“I wanted you from the moment I saw you, and that was terrifying. You changed my practical, functional, joyless life when you offered to buy me that drink, and then you built me—us—a new life, one I’d never had the nerve to reach for myself, over every day that followed.

Losing what we had was the stupidest thing I have ever done. ”

“We both made a pig’s ear of it. Could we stop doing that?”

“I doubt you could stop being a shambles,” Gideon said. “It seems to me an inherent part of your nature. I could approach that better.”

Zeb had to swallow a hard lump in his throat. “But you did. You helped me make my life function, so it wasn’t a sequence of small disasters, or big ones. If I’d listened to you, I wouldn’t have messed everything up.”

“If I had listened to you, neither of us would have.”

Zeb took his hand, feeling the fingers interlace, the palms connect, a shiver running up his arm. “Suppose we start again. Suppose we get out of this house, and go home, and do better this time.”

“Yes,” Gideon said. “Please.”

They stared at each other. It was cold, and the candles were guttering. Elise was dead, Wynn was deranged, and the house was a prison, but here they were, hands twined, together.

“I expect a sensible person would say, now we’ve got that out of the way, we should discuss all the terrible things,” Zeb said. “But I think you should come to bed with me, because I want to hold you and be with you, and I can’t think of anything that matters more than that.”

Gideon’s hand tightened. “Agreed.”