Page 128 of Every Silent Lie

“Tell me,” he says, handing me a cup piled high with marshmallows and cocking his arm for me to link. “I want to hear about him, if you want to talk about him.”

If I want to talk about him. Always. And I feel strong enough to now. “Noah had a teacher called Miss Honey,” I say, letting Dec walk us on, watching as the steam breaks through the gaps in the puffs of sugar and dissipates in the frigid air. “He threw a tantrum on his first day when Miss Honey introduced herself as Miss Honey. Stood up from the carpet and declared her a liar.”

“Oh God,” Dec says around a light, soft laugh.

“Yeah, the first day of pre-school didn’t go to plan.” I smile to myself, revisiting the moment we had to sit Noah down and explain why his Miss Honey didn’t look like the Miss Honey. His little four-year-old mind just couldn’t get around it. “I bought him the book for his birthday,” I go on, dipping and nibbling a bit of marshmallow. “That just made things worse.”

“How?”

“None of the characters drawn in the book looked like the characters in the movie.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yes. It was stomped on and tossed in the recycling bin.”

“Poor kid.”

“He told all the kids Miss Honey was a fraud.”

“The innocence,” he muses. “How simple the world is when you’re a kid. No adulting to do. No one to keep happy, no bills to pay, feelings to hurt, or grief and heartache to feel.”

“Kids are not kids for long enough anymore.”

“Here.” Dec plucks a marshmallow off the top of my cup and pops it in my mouth so I don’t have to release him to do it myself. “Good?”

“Very,” I waffle around the lump, making him smile. “Have . . . ou . . . ied . . . ot . . . et?”

“Sorry, what?”

I chew and swallow, licking at my lips. “Have you tried the hot chocolate yet?” I can’t get to mine until I’ve chomped my way through these marshmallows.

Dec dips and blows across the top, making the steam billow away from us, then he tentatively puts the cup to his lips and takes a sip. “Oh wow,” he murmurs, his eyes widening at me. “That’s insane.”

I smile, that statement coming out of Dec’s mouth sounding odd. “Good?”

He stops us walking and reaches for my cup, knocking off the marshmallows and sending them tumbling to the ground. “You don’t need those. Get to the good stuff.”

“It’s that good?”

“Try it.”

So I do, blowing too, before taking a sip, my eyes widening also. “Christ.”

“Right?” Dec sups some more, looking up to the sky. “I think it’s got a bar of melted Dairy Milk in it.”

“Definitely,” I agree. “It’s so velvety.”

“But not too sickly.”

“I can’t confirm that until I’m finished.”

And we stand beside each other, working our way through our drinks, the heat in my belly warming me up a treat. But not as well as Dec’s arm around me. I watch him tip his head back to get the very last drop from the bottom of the cup, his stubble-coated throat appearing from beneath his scarf. Unable to resist, and not wanting to, I turn into him and reach up on my tippy-toes, pushing my lips onto his neck, feeling him swallow under my mouth, his cup poised at his lips for a second before he pulls it away and peeks down at me, lowering and angling his head just right to kiss me, our chocolatey tongues swirling softly, our bodies pushing closer.

“Yum,” he whispers, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth. When I smile, it pops free, and Dec inhales, taking my cup and tossing it in a nearby bin with his before tucking me under his arm and getting us walking again. “What’s your least favourite colour?” he asks.

“Yellow.”

“Figures.”