Page 96 of Darling
“Leo, I need you to know that I was faithful to your mother every single day of our marriage. While she was alive, there was never anyone else. I worshipped her.”
He nods, tears shimmering in his eyes. “I know, Dad. I didn’t mean that. I know you loved her.”
“Regardless, I was wrong to react like that. I’m so bloody sorry.”
He looks down. “I knew you’d react like that. I wanted you to.”
“Youwantedme to hit you?”
“No. Not that. I just wanted… something from you.” He turns and shoves a hand through his hair. “You never talk about her;wenever talk about her. It’s like… like you forget she ever existed. I wanted to remind you.”
I blink at him in horror. “Remind me? Leo, I neverstopthinking about her. Every second of every minute of every day,I think about her. I miss her. I’ve been so bloody lost since she left.”
His voice cracks when he says, “Me too. I’m so fucking lost, Dad. It’s like… I’m stuck there. I’m stuck as this seventeen-year-old kid who lost his mum and his friends and his fucking career in one go, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with that. Like, I’m supposed to just get over it and get on with it. It’s so fucked.”
“I thought the counselling… you were better.” He’d spent a year, twice a week, speaking to a very experienced, very expensive child psychotherapist called Dr Sadie English. My own solution had been to bury myself in work.
“Because that’s what you wanted to think.” His voice isn’t cruel this time, though god knows I deserve it. He’s exactly right, Ididwant to think that. I didn’t want to deal with Leo’s grief; I didn’t even want to deal with my own.
“I’ve made such a mess of things.” I sigh as I move to sit on the chair. We’re both silent a long time before Leo turns to face me, looking at me very intently before he says:
“Dad, are you gay?”
Christ, I’m not ready to have this discussion, though I know now that I’m going to have to—and soon—because some seal has come loose and there is no reattaching it. Leo and I need to talk. Properly.
I look at him.
“Leo, are you an actor?”
??
Doreen is sitting in her usual spot when I approach Asher’s apartment.
“Good morning, handsome,” she says with a wide-open smile. “You bringin’ breakfast for that angel again?”
“Ah, not this time, Doreen.” She tuts good-naturedly and goes back to reading her magazine. I’d considered stopping to get him breakfast, something sweet as a peace offering, but I didn’t think this was the kind of thing that could be fixed with baked goods or confectionery. I ring his doorbell and wait until finally I hear someone shuffling towards the door. It’s not Asher, it’s his friend Amata, whom Gael had introduced me to last night. Whom Gael had seemed particularly taken with last night. She’s wearing pyjamas, the glitz and glamour from last night scrubbed away.
“Good morning,” I say with a careful smile. She doesn’t return it, which tells its own story. “Can I speak with him, please?”
She folds her arms and glares. “I don’t know, are you gonna upset him again?”
“Amata,” says Asher from behind her. When I look up, he’s standing at the end of the hallway wrapped in a blanket, hair big and fluffy, and eyes rimmed red. He looks very young and very small. Amata gives me a look of warning and spins on her heel to go past him and into the bedroom, where she closes the door. I stand awkwardly for a few moments until he gestures me in with a flick of his head.
As I’m going past the bedroom, the door opens, and Amata reappears. “I’m going to get some breakfast,” she tells us. “I’ll bean amount of time.” And she’s gone.
In the lounge, Asher is sitting cross-legged in the middle of his large sofa, blanket still wrapped around him, and it takes everything in me not to go to him and pull him into my arms.
“Well?” he says after a frankly torturous amount of time. “What did you want to talk about?”
His body language suggests he wouldn’t welcome my sitting close to him, so I pull out one of the chairs from under the little dining table, set it down across from the couch, and sit on it.He’s sad, certainly, but there’s something else in his eyes, anger maybe. His mood reminds me a little of the night in the hotel, when he’d gone and come back laden with a determined air and a few kilos of sweets.
“Well, firstly, I’m sorry about last night. It took me longer to get away than I hoped, and when I got to my office, Leo was there.” His body language changes, stiffening a little. “He told me he’d said some things... he was quite regretful, I think.”
“He knew,” Asher says. “I never confirmed anything, but he knew. I think he knows about Felix, too.”
I nod in confirmation. “Yes. We had a chat last night, it seems he’s worked out some things. I didn’t deny anything, but we need to talk, properly—something I’ve been avoiding for a long time, likely since his mother died.” Last night, we agreed to see a family therapist. I agreed to put him first for a while, because although Stella was the one who’d died, Leo confessed it had long felt like he’d lost both his parents. We also agreed to talk more about his mother. “We have some work to do on our relationship.”
“He seemed really… sad.” Asher’s voice is empathetic.