Essex Fashion Week was being held at a golf and country club near Chigwell, the sort of place that self-identified as a manor despite having been built in the 1990s. We eased into a gravel-lined car park not far from the main building, which was an inoffensive white square topped by a triangular roof that seemed to want to suggest chalet. Pale green countryside, most of which was golf course, surrounded us on all sides. So far, so chocolate box.
“Ye gods,” said Niall, as a bevy of heavily bronzed women in tiny dresses tottered past on skyscraper wedges. “We’re a pair of pale-skinned brunets in Essex. I think they’re going to burn us like at the end of The Wicker Man.”
I nodded. “Or you’ll be whisked off to Room 101 and threatened with an immediate spray tanning.”
“And I’ll say: ‘Do it to Ash, do it to Ash!’”
“But,” I said, in a brainwashed monotone, “I love Essex.”
Niall chuckled, the spring sunlight picked out a gleam of gold in his dark hair, and I suddenly remembered, not so much with my mind but with a rush of unexpected feeling, why we’d once been friends.
We made our way towards the main entrance, following the crowds into which we absolutely did not blend. I tried to ignore the stares. I think people were trying to work out whether we were celebrities or not.
“Follow the orange brick road,” I whispered to Niall.
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he whispered back.
Inside, a champagne reception was in full swing. Not wanting to jeopardise my equilibrium or start an argument with Niall, I virtuously declined my free drink. We were in a fairly generic function room, most of which was taken up by a catwalk in the middle and a lavish VIP area. There was a lot of activity over there, the click and flash of cameras filling the air like a chorus of clockwork crickets. Essex seemed to really love its reality TV stars and talent show contestants.
We wandered over to the exhibition rooms, where there were a number of booths belonging to local boutiques, fashion brands, and salons. If I’d ever wanted hair extensions, now was clearly the time.
Niall, on his third glass of champagne, had relaxed enough to charm a very blond, very gay seventeen-year-old and buy a T-shirt which read “Live Young, Die Fast.” He took off his shirt and put it on immediately (much to the appreciation of the seventeen-year-old).
“I can’t tell whether it’s ironic, a mistake, or absolute genius,” said Niall. “But I think I love it.”
“It’s well reem,” avowed the seventeen-year-old, nodding sagely.
Just then came a cry of “Oh. My. God. Babes.” And I turned just in time to receive an armful of Darian. “I didn’t fink you was coming.”
“Neither did I,” I said, when he stopped kissing me long enough to allow me to answer.
“Aww, babes, you’ve made me so ’appy.”
“That’s like so beautiful,” said the seventeen-year-old.
“Research,” said Niall. “I see.”
I blushed so hard, it was almost painful. As though I were about to spontaneously combust. “Um, yes. Darian, this is my friend Niall. Niall, this my . . . my . . . Darian.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Darian,” said Niall coldly.
Darian flashed one of his bright white grins. “Fanks, mate, glad you could make it.”
Niall glanced between us.
Darian tugged on my hand. “Come on, babes, you gotta meet everyone.” He wriggled. “Omigod, still can’t believe you came.”
I cast a helpless glance in Niall’s direction. He shook his head and followed as Darian pulled me into one of the side rooms. It was full of people. Golden-legged women in bright dresses. And athletic-looking men in very shiny, very pointy shoes. Oh, God.
“Ahwight, you lot,” Darian called out. “This is Ash what I was telling you abaht. And ’is mate, Niall. They’ve come all the way dahn from London.”
We were surrounded.
Names flew shrieking past me like fighter planes. Most of the women, at least, seemed to be called Lauren.
“This is Gary,” babbled Darian.
I shook hands with a man who basically looked like the Platonic ideal of David Beckham. God. No wonder Darian had his name tattooed on his hip. If I’d slept with someone like Gary, I’d want the world to know it too.
“And this is my nan.”
I bent down on instinct to receive a brief hug from a tiny old woman wearing a lot of purple.
“And this is my girl Chloe.”
I exchanged double-cheek kisses with Jessica Rabbit, bouncing awkwardly against her truly spectacular cleavage.
“She’s like my best mate in the world,” explained Darian. “If I ’ad a sister, she’d be my sister.”
“So it’s not incest or nuffin like that,” she agreed placidly.
Incest? What the fuck?
“You’re sleeping together?” The words tore out of me before I could stop them.
She giggled. “That’d be silly, Darian’s gay.”
I glanced hastily at Niall. His expression was unreadable.
“But you just said,” I went on carefully, “it wasn’t like incest.”
“I just meant we’re like so close in this deep like . . . what do you call it . . . like being on the same wavelength all the time . . . psy-psy-psychotic?”
“Psychic, babes,” offered Darian.
“Yeah, yeah, not psychotic. That’s like wanting to kill people . . . Oh no, I didn’t mean that.” She laughed. It was peculiarly charming, though it had no right to be. “It’s just we’ve got this bond, right, so it would be sort of like incest if we was really related.”
“Right,” I said, as it seemed the safest possible answer.
“They did practically grow up together,” said Nanny Dot. “She was always popping round ’ere and he was always over there.”
“I fink I told you Chlo’s got ’er own boutique,” added Darian proudly. “And these,” he gestured to indicate the clothes that surrounded us, “are all ’er designs. Me ’n’ Gary and some of the ghels are gonna be modlin ’em later.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
Chloe smiled, showing teeth as white and straight as Darian’s. “I love clovves, so it’s like hunjed pahcent dream come true.”
Gary put a perfect hand gently on her shoulder. “You totes deserve it, Chlo. You worked well ’ard for this. You should get me to do your PR for you. I’m finking like qualidee geezas on the door wif their shirts off.”
“I’m not sure that’s right, honey,” she said.
“You leave it to me, ghel,” said Gary, enthusiasm undiminished by outright rejection. “There ain’t nuffin that don’t need qualidee geezas.”
The man had a point.
“Maybe you should do it, then,” said Darian mischievously.
“Naw, naw, I’m gonna be organising it, aren’t I? Someone ’as to check the geezas. Make sure they look ahwight. I mean, bloke comes in, nice face, so you get ’im out there. Turns out ’e’s a right chubber. Can’t ’ave that.”
Chloe turned to me. “You should come see the shop, honey.”
“I don’t really need a sequinned minidress, thanks,” I said.
“I do men, too.”
“She ain’t lying,” said one of the Laurens, to great hilarity.
“It’s just down Brentwood,” she continued, when the laughter had died away. “It’s called Bedazzled. I fought it’d be like . . . Vajazzled except, y’know, be dazzled. I fought it was, y’know.”
“Um, you know,” I said, “you know bedazzled is a real word, right?”
She blinked, her lashes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. “Is it?”
“‘Pardon my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun, that everything I look on seemeth green.’”
There was a long silence.
“Shakespeare,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” breathed Chloe. “That’s so clever of you to know that. Darian, babes, he’s so clever.”
“Well,” I said, “you invented it independently of Shakespeare, so that technically puts you on par with him.”
She shook her head, tossing a chaotic spill of wine-dark curls over her shoulders. “You’re so sweet, honey, but I wouldn’t get bedazzled like you said cos I always wear sunglasses.”
Beside me, Niall burst into hysterical laughter.
Thankfully, at that moment, we had to go and take our seats because the show was starting.
“I want an explanation,” whispered Niall, as people began drifting slowly back to the main function room, carrying us along like flotsam.
“I wasn’t completely lying,” I lied. “I am thinking of setting the next book here.”
“Not completely lying,” he snarled. “Fuck you. All you do, all you’ve ever done, is lie to me. And what about Daryl, or whatever his name is? I suppose you’re researching his cock?”
“It’s Darian. And I . . . I like him.”
Niall snorted. “How can you like him? Even putting aside the fact you’ve spent the last five years telling me you’re incapable of liking anyone, he makes Winnie-the-Pooh look like Kasparov.”
“Well, I wasn’t intending to play chess with him.”
“No shit. It’s pathetic, Ash. Even for you. The depressive and the idiot.”
I flinched, glancing around in case someone had overheard. “Can you keep your voice down, please? I don’t want everyone to know, okay?”
There was a pause.
“You mean you haven’t told him?”
“N-no.”
Niall shook his head. “You and your fucking lies.”
And then the lights dimmed and the show started. It consisted, for the most part, of a succession of big-haired, highly glossed, occasionally orange models strutting up and down in a variety of figure-revealing outfits. The designers and the dresses soon blurred into an interchangeable rainbow, and my mind drifted, idle as smoke rings on a Sunday afternoon. I thought of Darian. Even here, where everything was bright and brash and fake, he glittered like something real.
It was terrifying to want something as much as I wanted him. It was far too precarious and far too dangerous to imbue anything, or anyone, with that sort of power. Not when I couldn’t trust myself. All it did was make him into something else I would lose, destroy, or have taken away.
But, in truth, I would have told a thousand lies to have him, and a thousand more to keep him.
As Niall had discovered a long time ago, the ability to make me happy was its own curse.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, when the lights came up and the applause died away. “I was starting to lose the will to live.”
“I’m afraid there’s more later.” I flicked through the booklet. “And we still haven’t seen Chloe’s collection.”
He peered over my shoulder and groaned. “Well, at least it wraps up with designer underwear. I’m not very interested in clothes, but I’m quite interested in watching muscular young men walk up and down in tight pants.”
“That’s our national sport, darling.”
He grinned. Perhaps I’d been forgiven. Again.
“I’m—”
But before he could finish, Darian came bounding over. It was all I could do to repress my stupid smile.
“Babes.” He hunkered down in front my chair. “I gotta massif favour.”
“Believe me, this is already a massive favour.”
“Yeah, I know. But the fing is, right, one of Chloe’s models ’as gone down wif leprosy . . .”
“Wait,” interrupted Niall. “Leprosy?”
“That’s what Chlo said. That fing wif your throat where you can’t talk.”
“That’s laryngitis.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s she like? Anyway, babes, do you fink maybe you could come and stand in or summin?” He looked up at me with huge, beseeching eyes. “Please, babes.”
“Holy fuck, no.”
“It’s not a big deal or nuffin.”
“It is a big deal. Darian, I could never do something like that. I’m sorry.”
Respected Crime Novelist Has Nervous Breakdown in Essex. On Catwalk. While Orange.
“You just ’ave to walk up and down,” he said reassuringly. “You’re well sexy, babes, I promise. You look more like a proper fashion model than I do.”
Flattering but very much not the point. I shook my head. “I can’t. It’s . . . I just can’t.”
“He said no.” That was Niall. I should have been grateful, but, somehow, I wasn’t. It was an unwanted reminder of my own frailty and everything I should have been able to do but couldn’t.
Heedlessly, I gripped Darian’s hand. “I’m so sorry.” I stared into his upturned, hopeful face. “Please don’t ask me to do this. I really can’t.”
He grinned and squeezed my hand. “It’s ahwight, babes. Just fought I’d give it a go.”
I squeezed back. “You don’t . . . you don’t mind?”
“Course not. Still love you, babes.”
“Pardon?” But he’d bounced away.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Niall dryly. “That’s just the way they talk around here. They love everything. Especially hair spray. Shall we get going?”
“What? You want to leave?”
“I thought you would.”
“But . . .” I cast a slightly hopeless glance in the direction Darian had gone.
Niall made an impatient sound. “This is fucking ridiculous. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Darian—”
“It’s the sex,” I drawled. “It’s fantastic.”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “But you need to get over it, right now. Before someone gets hurt. Before you hurt yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re ill, Ash. You’re not capable of living a normal life. You know it. I know it. But do you think it’s something Darian is going to understand or accept? You haven’t even told him you’re bipolar, for God’s sake.”
“It hasn’t been a problem with him,” I said faintly.
“Oh, come on, you’re giving him false expectations. Have you seen the way he looks at you? He’s going to want things from you that you just can’t give him. Like today. Like now. You’re lying to him and lying to yourself. You’re building a house of cards and it’s going to come crashing down. I can’t keep saving you.”
“I seem to be quite busy with all this lying and building you have me doing,” I snapped. “And, for the record, I’ve never wanted you to save me.”
“Without me you’d be dead or in an institution.”
I stood up, and then blurted out: “Well, maybe false expectations are better than no expectations.”
Niall shrugged. “Let’s not have this argument. Let’s go home.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
And ran after Darian.
He’d long since been swallowed by the crowd, so, after some aimless shoving, I made for Chloe’s booth. She was surrounded by people in various states of undress and looked about as stressed as someone with that much Botox could look, but she still had a smile for me.
“Darian . . .” I panted, “. . . he said you needed help.”
“Oh, honey, are you sure? He didn’t fink it would be your fing.”
“It’s not, but . . . I’ll . . .” I felt suddenly sick on the magnitude of it all. “. . . try. Though if you come near me with spray tan, I will end you.”
She giggled. “Ahwight, honey. You’re literally saving my life ’ere.” She kissed me chastely. She smelled sweet and sticky, and her lips tasted faintly of strawberries. In some strange way, it reminded me of Darian and gave me courage.
She dived into her rails of clothing and returned a few moments later with her arms full of dark fabric.
“Try this, honey.”
I clutched and looked round anxiously for somewhere to change that wasn’t in full view of Essex.
Chloe nudged me into a sheltered corner and pulled some of the racks in front of me. “There you go.” She smiled and left me to it.
Oh God. Oh God.
Just don’t think about it.
I shed my bespoke suit and stuffed it into a Tesco’s carrier bag I found lying on the floor (oh, how the mighty have fallen), and then slithered into a pair of artfully distressed waxed denim jeans that fit so tightly they came perilously close to being leggings. There was no way my wallet wouldn’t ruin the line, so I dug out my Oyster card and my door key and slid them into the back pocket as though I were a sixteen-year-old on the pull.
Oh God. Oh God.
I hadn’t worn anything like this since . . . well. Before hospital at least.
And then I shook out the top, which turned out to be a very low-cut V-neck in Jersey cotton, also distressed, with ripped sleeves and a pattern of holes and tears about the neckline and across the front.
I clutched it to my naked chest like an assaulted Victorian virgin.
“Chloe,” I whispered. “Chloe. I can’t wear this.”
“Course you can, honey. What’s the problem?”
Before I could stop her, she swept behind the racks and—in sheer fright—I dropped the T-shirt.
“Fuck.” I scrabbled after it, an operation rendered both difficult and intimately painful by the jeans. And then Chloe gently caught my wrist, and I froze.
The pad of her index finger traced the long, jagged scar that ran up my forearm. I normally wouldn’t have allowed anyone to do that, but it was as if she held me bewitched with the warmth of her painted eyes.
“Oh, honey,” she said softly. “You was really going for it.”
I shuddered, then nodded.
She let me go, leaving the rest untouched. I think I was relieved. The ruined skin on my arms burned and shivered like a waking monster.
The next moment, she was all business again, casting an appraising look over the rest of me.
“You look lovely,” she said. “It really suits you, that look.”
“Scarred and shirtless?”
“But,” she continued, ignoring me, “you’ll need a belt wif those.” She pointed helpfully in the direction of my hips. “Put the top on and I’ll get you like a coat or summin. And some boots.”
She was back in what felt like seconds, with a studded belt and some heeled, snakeskin-patterned boots that I was still dazed enough to put on without protest.
“I was going to ’ave Darian modlin this wif nuffin else.” She smirked and passed me what appeared to be a loose-knit octopus.
Good lord, a dwelkin.
“Wait, just this?” I said. “It’s a cardigan.”
She gave a horrified shriek. Suicide and self-harm were something this girl could take in her stride. But cardigans were beyond the pale. “It’s not a cardigan,” she squeaked. “Well. It is a cardigan but it’s like . . . a real glamour cardigan, janarwhatamean?”
“I think, my dear, that’s what they call an oxymoron.”
“A what?”
“A contradiction in terms.”
“Well, they ’aven’t seen my cardigans, ’ave they? Put it on.”
I stuck my arms through the sleeves. It was basically a cross between a cardigan and a shawl, with waterfall lapels at the front and a pair of asymmetric tails at the back that flowed down past my knees. There was also a sort of scarf, which turned out to be very long and growing like a set of tentacles from the collar.
“I feel like I’m in hentai,” I muttered as I got tangled up.
“What’s that, honey?”
“Nothing.”
She caught up the two ends of the scarf and wound them about my neck and shoulders, letting them fall loosely where they would. It should have been an ill-intentioned object, but the wool was incredibly soft. Maybe I was losing it in my old age, but I think I genuinely liked it.
Also, Chloe was right. The thought of Darian wearing nothing but this was pleasing in the extreme.
She smiled proudly at me. “See. It’s like a cardigan but like not a cardigan. Like sexy but snuggly.”
“Well I’m neither sexy nor snuggly.”
She giggled. “That’s not what Darian says.”
I blushed.
“You aren’t going to tell him, are you?” I said.
“Tell ’im what?”
“About my . . . about . . .” I gestured to my arms. “I just don’t want him to know.”
She gave one of her slow, contemplative blinks. “Do you fink just cos ’e’s ’appy ’e ain’t nevva ’ad summin bad ’appen to him?” Before I could I answer, she went on, “Now, honey, I know you said no to spray tan and I’m like totes respecting that, but ’ow do you feel about bronzer?”
About ten minutes later, I was bronzed, glossed, quiffed, lash-curled, and guy-linered. What the fuck had I done? I stared at a stranger’s reflection in the mirror. To be fair, it wasn’t awful. It just wasn’t me.
But then again, I haven’t really recognised myself for a very long time.
I drew in a few slow, steadying breaths. All I had to do was keep breathing, walk a few meters down a catwalk, and come back again.
Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could.
I nearly laughed aloud at how easy it seemed just then. The stranger’s eyes shone.
“Ohmigod, babes.” Darian’s reflection appeared next to mine and I spun quickly away. He was wearing ripped jeans, a white shirt split to the navel, and a slim-fitting blue velvet jacket. “You look well nice.” His eyes travelled up and down my body, making me hot and self-conscious and thrilled all at once. “Well nice. Like . . . like Sandy at the end of Grease.”
My mouth fell open. “Did you really just compare me to Olivia Newton-John?”
“I just meant like going from, y’know, prim to all sexed up.”
“I feel . . . weird.”
“You look amazin. Amazin.”
He pulled me against him, hands snaking under the glamour cardigan to make the acquaintance of my arse.
Chloe gave a warning screech. “Don’t smudge ’im!”
He grinned, tilting his head because, in my heels, I was just a little bit taller than he was. “You’re giving me chills, babes.”
“Is that so? Are they multiplying?”
“Hunjed pahcent.”
“You’d better shape up, then.”
“You’re like totally the one that I want. Fank you for doing this, babes. You didn’t ’ave to, y’know.”
“I . . . know. I just. I don’t know. I just hope I don’t fuck it up.”
“What’s to fuck up, babes? It’s just walking down a room wif everybody finking they want to do you.”
I gave a shaky, unconvincing laugh.
“I know it ain’t you,” he said, after a moment. “But it ain’t nuffin to be scared of.”
“Fear isn’t rational.”
He nodded. “We’ll be cheering you on all the way.”
I raised a brow. “And wanting to do me?”
“Always, babes. It don’t matter what you’re wearing.”
Heedless of Chloe’s warning, I kissed him. It was a claggy business.
When we unstuck our mouths, Darian was laughing. “I fink we just swapped lip gloss.”
The next twenty minutes of my life rushed by like motorway traffic and I had no idea how I got through them. The only thing I could recall with any certainty was the heat of Darian’s hand holding mine. Backstage at a fashion show, it turned out, was madness without method. Nothing but shouting and running, a tornado of light and chaos and shoes. It was impossible to understand what was happening, but somehow things came together. And the models, who had been dishevelled and borderline hysterical in the seconds before, glided onto the runway like swans.
Could I do this? I didn’t think I could do this.
“I’m gonna be right back,” said Darian. “Just gonna do my fing.”
My hand clenched about his, my nails pressing pale, desperate smiles into his skin. But I had to let him go. So I did.
Then Chloe was hustling me to one side. “This way,” she whispered. “You can watch ’im.”
Backstage, unsurprisingly, afforded a poor view. Through a dazzle of light, I watched Darian recede and then come back to me. His face, his body, the way he moved were all so composed that it wasn’t until he stepped through the wings, grinning, that I quite believed in his return.
“See, babes,” he said. “Nuffin to it. Serious face on. Giving it a bit of strut.”
It was slightly too late to say that I didn’t strut (I don’t) or that I really didn’t want to do this (I didn’t). But when I stepped onto the catwalk, all of Darian’s friends leapt to their feet and burst into wild cheering. Essex, obviously thinking something important was happening, did likewise. I don’t think I was much of a model, but I walked, turned, and did not fall over, cresting a wave of entirely undeserved appreciation that continued even as I fled into the wings, where I landed, breathless but safe in Darian’s arms. Kissing him to a chorus of applause that flashed like fireworks behind my eyes.
From there came a haze of laughter and congratulations, Chloe’s voice rising stridently across the noise: “Y’know what, honey, you can ’ave the glardigan. It’s yours.”
“G-glardigan?”
“Yeah, it’s like glamour and cardigan, innit?”
Of course.
The day unravelled into evening, event into after-party, sweeping me along with it. A group who—Darian informed me—had been on Ess Fakta performed to great enthusiasm, and then a DJ took over. We tumbled round a table near the bar, Gary going to secure the first round.
The revelation that I didn’t drink inspired a squeal of glee from Darian’s friends.
“They’re meant to be togevver!” cried one of the Laurens. “So romantic.”
“I just don’t see why you ’ave to be blatted to ’ave it up,” said Darian. “I am hunjed pahcent sober and hunjed pahcent li-ving.”
Chloe shook out her mane, which caused a cascade reaction through the group, and suddenly everyone was checking their hair. “You are so right, honey.”
He was. He was. Just then, I didn’t need a drink to feel drunk.
Darian wound an arm round my waist and said quietly, “You gonna come dance wif me later?”
I put my lips to his ear. “I want to fuck you later.”
He gave me one of his wide-eyed, shocked looks, but I knew he was only teasing.
Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up, and there was Niall.
“I didn’t fuck it up!” Even I could hear how absurdly giddy I sounded, too bright, too happy, as though, at any moment, I would swoop away on the wings of mania. I tried to care, but I couldn’t. Darian and I would run hand in hand across the clouds together.
“Well. Congratulations.” I caught the sourness of drink upon Niall’s breath.
There was an awkward silence.
“He was so good, Niall,” said Chloe valiantly. “You would have fought he was like a pafeshunal model or summin.”
“I, um, I thought you’d left,” I said.
He scowled. “As if I could. Someone has to take care of you.”
“I can take care of myself,” I muttered, with all the dignity of a teenager.
“Essex is well safe,” said Gary, returning with a tray of drinks and passing them round. “Like there was this one time, right, when Darian fought he was being burgled.”
A ripple of amusement passed over the table and Darian put his face into his hands. “You always ’ave to tell this story.”
“Cos it’s hilarious, that’s why. So Darian ’ere was carrying on like a right ghel, totally freaking out, ringing me up, being all ‘What should I do, what should I do, I fink there’s somebody trying to get in through the patio doors.’ And I was like ‘Phone the police, you donut, what am I supposed to do abaht it?’”
He paused with the casual ease of an experienced raconteur, dropping down into a free chair, and extending both arms across the shoulders of his neighbours.
“So there ’e goes, creeping down the stairs at three in the morning, wif me on the phone and armed wif an eyebrow pencil—”
“It was well sharp,” put in Darian.
“And, y’know what, right? It’s a duck aht there.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Darian, “but it was obvs trying to burgle me. It was a bad duck.”
“I think we should be going,” interrupted Niall. “We need to get back to London.”
“But I don’t want to go,” I said plaintively.
“It’s ahwight,” said Darian. “’E can stay wif me. Protect me from bad ducks, right, babes?”
I tucked my head against his shoulder. “See, he needs me.”
“Aww, I do.” Darian looked up at Niall and smiled. “We’ll be ahwight. I’ll take care of ’im.”
I saw something flash across Niall’s face like a shadow. I sat upright, filled by a sudden, despairing premonition. I shivered, even in the warmth of the glardigan, and flashed Niall a frantic look, as though, in a split-second, I could make him understand: Please don’t do this to me. Let me have this. Let me have this happiness.
“You can’t take care of him,” Niall said flatly. “He’s a type 1 bipolar depressive with clinical anxiety disorder. I don’t think you even know what that means.”
For a moment, Darian was silent. His was the only response that mattered, though I told myself it didn’t. Watching him was like waiting for an axe to fall, but I could not look away.
“I do actually,” he said, at last. “I saw a fing on the telly wif Stephen Fry.”
Niall gave a harsh, barking laugh. “Oh, you saw a thing with Stephen Fry. Well, thank God for that, we’re saved. Did you get that, Ash? You’re going to be fine. He saw a thing with Stephen Fry. We’re in the presence of a fucking expert here.”
“I didn’t say I was an expert in anyfing,” said Darian slowly. “Just that I wasn’t totally clueless.”
“I remember reading somefing in a magazine,” added Chloe, “abaht Robbie Williams. Doesn’t ’e ’ave bipolar as well? It was somebody what used to be in Take That anyway.”
“Was it Gary?” asked one of the Laurens.
Chloe shook her head. “Naw, he was the one what was struggling wif his weight. I fink it was Robbie.”
Niall slammed his hand onto the tabletop, knocking over a couple of drinks and causing Darian’s friends to jump to their feet screaming in fear for their minidresses. Only Darian didn’t move.
“You don’t have a fucking clue,” Niall yelled, over the chaos. “And I’ll tell you now, you can’t fucking handle it.” He threw his words down like swords. “What are you going to do when he won’t get out of bed or take his medication? When he cuts words into his arms, drinks when he shouldn’t, takes drugs when he shouldn’t, or sleeps with strangers who are bad for him?”
Darian flinched.
“Or what about when he keeps you up all night because he can’t sleep. Or has a panic attack out of nowhere. And, let’s not forget: what about when he tries to kill himself, again? Or he has another manic episode and won’t eat or sleep or stop talking, and thinks he’s . . . what was it again, Ash? Oh yes, Thomas Mallory, and the second coming of Arthur Pendragon.”
I stared at him, silent and stricken. I didn’t dare look at anyone else. Least of all Darian.
“What abaht it?” said Darian, finally.
Niall shook his head. “You have no idea, do you? You have to live with it, or the threat of it, every single day. Do you really think you could cope with that?”
“I dunno.” Darian shrugged. “Maybe it ain’t abaht coping or not coping. Maybe it’s just abaht wanting to be wif someone.”
“You’re so fucking naïve.”
Darian stood up. He was taller than Niall and frowning. “I don’t fink I am. I fink you just fink I am cos I don’t talk or fink like you do.” He paused. “I fink.”
I couldn’t stand it. Voices were swirling around me, talking about me but not to me.
“You can’t help him, Darian. You can’t make him better.”
“I didn’t say I was gonna.”
“You can’t make him happy either.”
Darian shrugged. “I fink I got the right to try.”
It was like being in hospital again. Reduced from the first person to the third. From subject to object. I was disappearing into other people’s sentences. I wanted to speak, but I didn’t dare. I didn’t know how it would sound. Whether my voice would break. If I would be plausible. If I had the right to want anything at all. What use to the sane, after all, were the words of the mad?