14
So here we were, me and the man who wanted to run the National Health Service, sitting side by side on plastic chairs in a hospital corridor. On the wall opposite was a faded poster for FAST, about the importance of calling the ambulance immediately if you thought someone was having a stroke. The hallways echoed.
A door opened and a worryingly young consultant stuck his head out. “Derek Waterhouse?”
Derek got up. Then he looked at me, waiting. I stood up, hardly able to believe what he was asking of me. He’d been so guarded, so secretive, and now he wanted me to come in with him?
“Yes,” he said, in answer to my unspoken question, and glanced at the doctor. “Is that okay? He came to hold my hand and I think I need it.”
“It’s fine. Come on in.”
We went inside and sat down. Derek was already taking the hand-holding thing to an extreme. My hand was turning numb.
“Okay,” said the consultant, fiddling with his computer. “Good news.”
“Is it?”
“Yep.” He swivelled the screen round to show us. I’d often wondered what went on in Derek’s head, but had never expected to find out quite so graphically. “This is your brain shortly after your car accident.” He tapped one side of the screen. “That’s the shadow we were a bit concerned about.” I was already ahead of him, and so was Derek. I felt his grip relax.
“And that’s the scan we did this morning,” said the doctor, pointing to the other image. No shadow. “Probably just a minor bleed that’s been reabsorbed into the body.”
Derek exhaled. “So you’re not going to have to drill into my head?”
The doctor laughed. “Nope. No drilling.” He sobered a little and folded his hands. The watery afternoon sunlight glinted on his wedding band. “So. That brings us to the other thing.”
“Right,” said Derek. “That.”
I gave his hand a squeeze and he pressed his thigh against mine.
‘That’ had been the easy part, on the face of it. Just a simple cheek swab, instead of the rigmarole of hospital gowns and clanking equipment that had gone into his MRI, and yet it was the tiny swab he’d dreaded more than the other. Just a blob of genetic material that determined his entire destiny. Obviously I’d always had qualms about the idea of genetic testing – it skirted too close to the territory of eugenics for my liking – but now I saw the objections on a personal level. It seemed harsh, Calvinist, a definite damnation. As Derek had said, did you really want to come that close and personal with your own expiration date?
“I expect you have a lot of questions,” said the doctor.
Derek shook his head. “No. Not really. Or maybe too many to count. I’m not sure. I’m only doing this because it’s somehow become more terrifying than not knowing.”
“It’s okay,” I said, for no other reason than I could. Just to let him know I was here. He smiled at me, but he looked scared to death.
“Well, we’ve talked about the odds,” said the doctor. “It’s literally a coin-flip. Fifty-fifty. You’ve either inherited the gene from your mother or you haven’t.”
“I know. I’m so rooting for my father’s DNA right now. You have no idea.”
“If it’s any consolation, your brain looks extremely healthy. That little dark halo around the brain tissue that we were worried about? Yeah – probably just minor swelling from your accident. We wouldn’t have even thought twice about it if you hadn’t mentioned your family history.”
“I know,” said Derek. “But before the accident…and the reason I got into it in the first place. I’m usually much faster on the brakes than that.”
“It was dark,” I said. “And raining. Accidents happen.”
“I know. But I’ve been forgetful. Distracted. You know how it’s been.”
“Could just be a symptom of stress,” said the doctor. “Any upheavals in your life lately? Changed your habits? Working hours? Planning on moving house? Falling in love?”
And with that Derek actually blushed. “Is that a diagnosis?” he said.
“No,” said the doctor. “But it is famous for being one of the things that can make people a bit scatterbrained. Look, we’ll deal with the test results when we get them, okay? There’s genetic counselling available, and excellent preventative care. And there are new research breakthroughs all the time. Plus you’re making all the right moves in terms of prevention. You run, your BMI is ideal, you don’t smoke, your blood pressure is a dream…” He waved his hands over his notes. “These are all the things you should be doing going into your forties, and you’re doing them anyway. You’re the perfect patient.”
Afterwards we went out into the pale autumn sunlight. “You take your responsibilities very seriously, don’t you?” Derek said, and I realised I was still holding his hand.
“Of course I do.” He didn’t let go. “Are you all right?”
He sighed. “I think so,” he said, as we walked to the Underground. “Is it insane that as soon as he said I didn’t smoke I suddenly craved a cigarette? I haven’t smoked in over seven years.”
“It is insane, but that’s you all over. Sometimes I think you were born contrary.”
Derek gave a soft laugh. “You know what my mother did when I said I wanted to go into politics?”
“No.”
“She laughed. She said it was the last thing she could ever imagine me doing. She said she always thought I’d start a punk band or end up harassing whaling boats with Greenpeace. And I wanted to become part of the establishment?”
“I can see it,” I said. “You do have a rebellious streak.”
We were at the station turnstiles now, but as I took out my Travelcard to swipe it, Derek caught hold of my sleeve, pulling me to the side of the entrance. “Listen,” he said. “And I’m really serious about this.”
“I’m listening.”
His eyes were like burnished copper in the shade of the station awning. “Whatever happens,” he said. “While we’re waiting for the results, and whatever they are, I want you to promise me that you won’t treat me like a patient. I want to be your lover, Toby, not some…invalid.”
“You are my lover,” I said. “And I promise to treat you that way, although–”
He groaned, exasperated by my mother hen instincts once more.
“–what?” I said. “The bullwhip? Really?”
“I needed to relax.”
“By asking Cerys to break out the bullwhip? That’s insane, Derek. You were worried about a shadow on your MRI and you wanted her to work you over with a bullwhip?”
“She’s very safety conscious,” he said. “Wears goggles and everything.”
“I don’t care. You must see the problem with this scenario, surely?”
Derek sighed. “Fine. So I suppose now at least I know what you don’t want for Christmas.”
“Bullwhip lessons?” I said. “I don’t think so. I haven’t even got the hang of floggers yet.” I glanced around, wondering if we should be having this conversation in public, but nobody was listening. They were moving through the turnstiles at the usual fast London pace, all caught up in their own worlds of electronic communication.
“Fine,” said Derek. “No bullwhips. Can we at least get a sex swing?”
“No.”
“You’d love it if you tried it.”
“It’s not me I’m concerned about,” I said. “I’m more worried about your bedroom ceiling.”
“Pfft. That house was built in 1832. It survived the Blitz, for fuck’s sake. I think it might even be listed.”
“If it was built in 1832 it almost certainly is, and I won’t be party to your attempts to destroy it by suspending a chubby Jewish pornographer from the ceiling.”
He laughed and hugged me. “You are not chubby.”
“I am. You’re going to have to stop feeding me so much Italian cheese.” I reached for my card again. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“You could always come running with me,” he said, as we descended the escalator.
“Well, let’s not do anything insane.”
“So, bullwhips, sex swing and cardio. These are all insane by your standards?”
“By my incredibly out-of-shape standards? Yes. Absolutely.”
“Your standards are not my standards,” he said. “And I think it’s very unfair for you to apply them that way.”
We stepped onto the platform, still wrangling. “Fine,” I said. “I accept that. All I’m asking is that you don’t stare too long into the abyss of your own mortality and use it an excuse to schedule marathon sadomasochism sessions or start jumping out of planes and things.”
There was an awful light in his eyes. “Oooh,” he said. “I’ve never jumped out of a plane before.”
“No.”
“Oh, don’t be like that. I could probably raise a lot of money for charity doing things like that. People would pony up a lot of money to push a politician out of a plane.”
“Derek, stop it,” I said. “Getting pushed out of planes for money is a gateway drug to I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, and we’ve talked about that. Everyone has their limits, and mine is eating live cockroaches on prime time television.”
He laughed and took my hand again. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a gleam of flirtation. “I misbehave a lot, I know. That’s why I need so much discipline.”
He teased me, because that was what he did, but ever since our breakup I could tell he was holding back, resisting his desire to ask for the kind of intense, aggressive sex he usually loved. The first time we went to bed together after our reconciliation was strange; I thought Derek would seize the passion and the drama of the moment, but instead I found myself taking off his glasses and setting them quietly on the bedside table before kissing him. I remember how he trembled as he wrapped his thighs around me, how delicate his sharp, narrow jaw had felt under my hand. He seemed diminished somehow, absolutely vulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with the stylised way he laid himself bare to me in sex games. He cried when he came. I know because I tasted his tears, two tidy salt droplets, one at the corner of each eye. I licked them up one after the other, then kissed his pant-parched lips and told him that I loved him more than anything.
Since then we’d been very careful and tender with each other, perhaps now that we understood how easily we could be broken. We would lie there in the dark, my ear pressed to his heart and his fingers tracing circles on the back of my shoulder as we talked happy nonsense for hours. Even in the kitchen we were gentle with one another, his hand on my waist as he showed me the foolproof, no-tears way to dice an onion. He taught me how to make handmade pesto, and then later that night he said that I’d taught him how to make love, an admission that made my heart ache.
“There was this book,” he said. “That my mother fell in love with. Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. It’s about this ambitious Chinese girl who wants to be a writer, and all the way through she’s saying ‘I want all the shiny things in life. I want this, I want that. I want more.’ And I remember my mother laughing and saying and I had to read it, because the main character was so much like me. I read it, and I liked it. And I got it, because she was right. I have always been ravenous. That’s the exact word. I’m so impatient to devour everything that I forget to savour, to linger over, to enjoy and to feel. I get that with you, Toby. You showed me how to be soft, how to be slow, how the smallest touch of your hand can say a million different things, both dirty and sweet.”
I loved him so much it left me dazed. I think he felt the same way too, because we were very soft with one another all through this strange honeymoon, with the shadow of the test hanging over us. We spoke quietly and fucked gently, although as the weeks wore on I sensed him beginning to get more restive. He extended his runs, and prowled around the house in his bare feet, and the next time I was inside him I was acutely conscious of the restrained tension in his body. He was healing, coming back to himself, and I was glad of it, because for all I loved this new vulnerability, I loved him more. I loved his dirty mind and caustic tongue and even his ravenous impatience, because they were all – like this slow sweetness – parts of him.
One Friday night I came out of the bathroom to find him reading something on his tablet. He was lying on his stomach on the bed, wearing only a towel around his waist, his hair still damp from the shower. There was a bottle of baby oil on the bedside table, set on a saucer so that the oil wouldn’t wreck the varnish on the wood, and that made me smile, how it was sat there the way a fussy mother might serve yoghurt, perhaps with a paper doily between the dish and the carton. But I knew what it meant, and what he was angling for: baby oil came after a spanking.
When he saw me he looked up with such a guilty expression that I thought he had to be looking at porn. I peered over his shoulder, eagerly anticipating filth, only to find he was looking at a medical website listing the early signs of Alzheimer’s.
“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to look at those kind of things until the test results came back?” I said.
“Mm,” he said, and carried on scrolling.
“Derek?”
It was the tiniest movement of his hips, but as soon as I saw it I understood it immediately. With the smallest of shimmies he had loosened the towel around his waist, enough to fill my head with the possibility of whisking it away and baring his upturned bum. There, in that one little motion, was all that restiveness, those long runs, all that barefoot pacing. I felt the weight of his need in that moment, and could barely believe the strength of my own desire to meet it.
“Stop it,” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a bratty, challenging look, then returned to what he was doing.
“I mean it,” I said.
Derek shifted his hips again. I rose to the bait, although I resisted the urge to remove the towel. I knew what he was angling for and I was conscious that my role here was to let him infuriate me. I thought of the paddles and floggers and whips beneath the bed and my head spun, but I was determined not to let them overwhelm me. I was very new to this, green in more ways than one, but for the first time outside the realms of fantasy he had overcome my reluctance to hurt him. I wanted to see his skin pink up under my hand. I wanted to hear his cries for mercy.
“Stop it,” I said, again. “Stop it at once or I’ll spank you.”
Derek opened up another window, expanded the screen so that I could see and gleefully, ostentatiously Googled ‘symptoms of a brain tumour’.
“Right,” I said. “That’s it. You asked for it.” I flipped the towel open. His arse was pink and white, perfectly tempting.
“How many?”
“Um…five?” I said, unable to keep the question mark off the end.
“Be assertive, Toby,” he said, in a whisper like a stage prompt, and I took my cue.
“Six,” I said. “Now, turn that thing off.”
He shut down the tablet, gave me a coy yet simmering look over his shoulder and assumed what I supposed was the position. He was on his elbows and knees, head down over his forearms, his hands clasped together as if they were bound. I thought of the black leather restraints I’d seen in the drawer and pictured them around his pale wrists, and the hunger it woke in me was so huge that it was almost monstrous. His knees were apart, his back arched to display his arse to its best advantage.
“All right,” I said, still partly talking myself into it. “You brought this on yourself, you know.”
He said nothing. The room seemed hugely, yawningly quiet. I raised my hand and brought it down hard on his right cheek. It stung my palm and I was shocked at the strength and noise of the blow, but he only flinched a little. “I told you to stop,” I said, and hit him again. “And you didn’t.”
As I watched his skin turn pink I felt the pulse in my cock thrum even harder. He didn’t make a sound, but he shifted his knees apart. His balls hung defenceless between his legs, and when I tilted my head to peek I saw how hard he was, and how untouched.
“If you take the next two strokes without making a sound,” I said. “I’ll touch your cock. Would you like that?”
He sniffed hard, and when he spoke I heard the tears in his voice. “Yes, sir. Please, sir.” I’d hurt him, but I got a grip on myself. He hadn’t used the safeword, and he was used to far worse punishment than this. And I’d promised him that I’d stop treating him like he was made of bone china.
I slapped the other cheek. I heard his breath shudder, but he was keeping it together. He wanted me so much. The second stroke landed harder than I meant it to, and his thighs trembled. He turned his head slightly and I saw the tears on his face and his lips – swollen from biting – parted in a gasp. When I touched his thigh he flinched as if I’d hit him a fifth time, but having been here myself I now understood why; right now he felt as though every nerve ending in his body was alive with anticipation. He moaned as I took hold of his cock, and I felt pre-come leak out and wet my palm. I was breathing fast now, insanely hard, already fantasising about what it would be like to fuck him in this condition, to push inside him while he was whipped and shaking and hypersensitive.
“You’re wonderful,” I said, taking my hand away before I gave in to the urge to cut short the punishment and just skip ahead to the sex. I wanted to spread him open and lick him and suck him and fuck him until he cried. I was close to tears myself, soaring with the realisation that I’d finally grasped what he wanted. I licked the taste of him from my palm, so that when my hand landed again it did so with a sharper smack. He gasped and I brought down my hand one last time, and this time he cried out, soft and suppliant and all mine.
I had no difficulty doing what I was supposed to do next, to soothe and praise and tell him I adored him. His defencelessness meant so much more now that I’d sat beside him on a plastic chair, breathing in the smell of hospital hallways. This was no longer just part of a sex game: now it was part of a vulnerability that left me so breathless and humbled that it almost felt like a religious experience.
I saw the tears drip down onto his forearms. “You did so well,” I said, as I reached for the baby oil. “I can hardly believe the things you make me feel.”
He whimpered softly as I poured the oil over his buttocks. His skin was hot and I leaned to kiss each glowing cheek, one after the other. The oil dripped down the crack, and I moaned out loud at the thought of touching him there. He was already a perfect pink quivering mess on the outside, and I barely dared imagine what he’d feel like in there, where he was so tight and sensitive.
I kissed his arse again, letting my beard brush over the sore skin. “I do this because I love you,” I said, parting his cheeks with my thumbs. “Because you want it. Because you asked me for it.” I was near the centre now. I could feel the soft crumpled aperture under my thumb and couldn’t resist any longer. I bent and dragged my tongue over it, swiping up to the top of the crease. “And because it fucking turns me on.”
“Oh God, please,” he said, and he was crying. Actually sobbing because he wanted me so much. I pushed two fingers into him, sliding in easily. He moaned and rippled his muscles around me, as tight and greedy as he sometimes felt when we were going at it hard and were very nearly there. When I found his prostate he let out a small, soft scream and got up on his hands and knees, eagerly pushing back into my touch.
I slipped my fingers out and took hold of his cock, letting my dick settle in the crease of his arse. It would have to be on the outside, because there was no question of a condom at this point. There was baby oil everywhere, running down his thighs and all over my balls, but the touch of him was like heaven. I pictured myself coming all over his pink cheeks and that was already enough to set my brain on fire. I could feel the first shudders building, but at that moment he arched and I thrust and somehow the head of my cock found the hole. And the whole thing was so slippery that it just popped right in.
I froze, barely resisting the urge to just keep going.
Derek looked over his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re both clean. You can if you want to.”
“Are you sure?” I said, even though my arse had developed a mind of its own and was propelling me forward. Bareback. Oh God. I could feel every little groove and ripple inside him.
“Very sure. Please, Toby. Just fuck me.”
That awkward entrance had slowed my build with a brief chill of panic, but now it was back with a vengeance. I could feel my orgasm stretching, growling, pacing faster and faster, getting ready to roar. He was meeting me thrust for thrust, perhaps almost as desperate to get off as I was. “Can I come in you?” I panted, not entirely sure if I’d even be able to make myself pull out.
“God, yes,” he said. “Oh, fuck, yes.” He bucked under me, swearing and sobbing as I felt him come in my hand. The sticky fluid felt almost scalding and I fucked him hard and deep, letting the contraction of his muscles finish me, riding wave after wave of pleasure until there was nothing in the world but the thundering, pounding feel of me and him, and the perfect silence left behind in my mind as we collapsed on the bed.
I slipped out and he rolled over to face me, his face tear-streaked, flushed and adoring. He kissed me as if he was starved for it, and with the first touch of his lips I realised I was, too. I had just fucked him raw without kissing him once and the thought made me so hungry for his mouth that I found myself kissing him the way I don’t think I’d kissed anyone since I was eighteen and trying to arouse every man I met into wanting me enough to take my virginity. He made soft, satisfied noises in his throat as I kissed his mouth and neck in something like a trance. I was half-swooning, dazed by the sweetness and obscenity of the things he made me feel.
“How did I do?” I asked, eventually, in a whisper. We were quiet now. Very quiet and cuddly.
“Mm?” He paused, preoccupied with running his lips back and forth over my eyebrows.
“Did I do it right?”
He lowered his head, kissed the slope of my nose, my lips. “Did you love it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you did it right.”
*
In the morning he woke me up with breakfast in bed, scrambled eggs and fried mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes fried on the vine, their skins blistered and tangy with a splash of balsamic.
“Am I to take it that you’re pleased with me?” I said.
“Ecstatic.” He sat down slightly gingerly on the end of the bed, piquing my curiosity.
“Are you sore?” I asked.
“A bit.”
“Show me.”
He gave me a wicked, lopsided grin and got up, lifting the skirt of his dressing gown to show me his buttocks and thighs. I gasped, almost inhaling toast crumbs. The right cheek was worse than the other, the skin a deep plum colour in places. In places I could make out the shape of my hand, the finger marks dark red against the purple. “Jesus,” I said.
“It’s nothing,” said Derek. “You were barely tickling me. Next time I think we should get the paddles out.”
I shook my head. “No. Floggers. I want to try floggers next. I’ve always wanted to get the hang of those. I like that sort of glowy, spreading sting that you get. It’s very sensuous.”
He smiled and plucked a cherry tomato from the vine. “I love your enthusiasm,” he said. “Floggers it is. Just be sure to finish me off with a good spanking at the end.”
“Can we at least wait until your bottom is a normal colour again?” I had a sudden thought. “And speaking of normal, can we talk about your pain threshold? I’m sure I read somewhere that redheads had an extraordinary tolerance for pain.”
Derek laughed. “Yep. We’re basically genetic mutants,” he said, biting into a piece of toast. “Built for bondage.”
There was a brief pause at the mention of his genes. We’d been surprisingly good at not talking about that. “Are you okay?” I asked, tenderly prodding the awkward moment.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m just a bit…you know.”
“No. What?”
He sighed. “It’s like I told you,” he said. “I always played games in the past. Set up scenarios with lovers to see how far I could push them, all as a means of keeping them at a distance.”
We’d been talking at cross-purposes, but I didn’t mind. I was just as curious about this. “And last night?” I said.
His smile was like the sun coming out. “Last night was the most incredible night of my life.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
Derek crawled across the bed and – taking my face between his hands – kissed me. “For you, too?” he said.
“God, yes. It felt like…like worship. I’ve never felt so completely adored.”
He ran his hands through my hair. “You are.”
Anything could have happened right then, but then there was a loud thud from the hallway, interrupting the moment. “What was that?” I said.
He got up from the bed. “Post, I think?”
“What on earth did you order that made that much noise dropping on the doormat?”
Derek grinned. “Sex swing. Surprised they got it through the letterbox, actually.”
I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what it had ever done to him that made him so determined to destroy it. I was fairly sure you couldn’t fit a sex swing through a standard letterbox, even if you packed it correctly, but then Derek came back into the room, clutching a package, a pizza delivery flyer and the letterbomb I’d almost forgotten about. It was a white envelope, with NHS in big chunky blue letters. Official letters.
“Oh God,” I said, gathering up my own dressing gown and covering myself up. “Is that…?”
He nodded and sat down on the end of the bed. “Yeah. I think so.”
I moved to sit beside him, hip to hip. He held the letter in his lap, and stared at it for far too long. I rubbed the back of his shoulder, if only to let him know that I was here, but I had an inkling of just how alone he must have been feeling in that moment.
“Are you going to open it?” I said.
Derek chewed his lower lip for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m almost tempted to set fire to it and pretend the whole thing never happened.” It seemed to occur to him for the first time, that ignorance might be – if not actually bliss – then at least better than the alternative. “What if we did that? What if we just went on the way we have been for the past few weeks? Haven’t we been happy?”
I sighed, choosing my words carefully. “Yes,” I said. “We have. But here’s the thing. You did this because not knowing was worse than knowing. Your words, not mine.”
He exhaled slowly. “I know.”
“And yes, we’re happy,” I said. “And we’ve done a brilliant job of putting it out of our minds, but think about where we are, Derek.”
“And where is that, exactly?”
I kissed his shoulder. “We’re in the honeymoon period. We’re insanely in love and having sex for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And while that’s amazing and gorgeous and everything I’m living for right now, we have to face the truth. We’re not always going to be so easily distracted with one another, and what happens then? What happens maybe two years from now when you lose your car keys? Or misplace the cheese grater again? We’ll be right back where we started. Perhaps in a worse place because you had the opportunity to know and you threw it away. This thing isn’t going to stop haunting you or go away. It’s always going to be in the back of your mind when you’re thinking about your career or your health. And what if we want to have a baby?”
He made a soft, incredulous noise. “Well, then you’ll be the sperm donor,” he said. “These busted genes end here.”
“You don’t even know they’re busted,” I said, thinking of horrible Jacinta and her penchant for passive eugenics.
Derek sighed heavily and turned his head slightly to look at me. “You’re serious? You’d have children with me?”
“If you want them. There’s no reason we can’t.”
He frowned and looked back at the envelope. “Sounds drastic,” he said. “And disruptive.”
“Well, children generally are.”
“How about a cat?” he said. “I’ve always wanted a cat.”
He was prevaricating. “Babe…”
Derek sighed. Swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I need to do this.” He stroked his thumb over the flap of the envelope. “Oh God. This is it.”
“It’s probably good news,” I said. “They’re not going to send a bombshell like that through the post, are they?”
“No, but it might be one of those letters that doesn’t specifically say they found something, just that they want you to come in and discuss their findings.” His voice took on a new level of panic. “Oh shit. What if it’s that? On a Saturday, when I can’t make a follow up appointment. Maybe I should wait to open it until Monday?”
“What? And spend the whole weekend with Pandora’s…letter here? That sounds joyful in the extreme.”
He scrubbed his hand over his open mouth. “I don’t think I can do it, Toby.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“That’s a terrible thing to ask you to do. Read out my death sentence.” He stared at the letter, shook his head and then handed it to me. “I’m sorry.”
He flopped back on the bed with his hands over his face. My hands were trembling a little as I opened the envelope, unfolded the letter. I scanned it briefly, barely restraining myself from screaming before I went in for a second reading, to make absolutely sure that I had it right.
“You don’t have the gene,” I said, feeling light-headed.
Derek leapt up. “What?”
“You don’t have it. You don’t have the mutation from your mother.”
He grabbed me around the shoulders, shaking as he leaned in to read the letter. I could hardly see the words through the tears of relief streaming from my eyes. “It’s no guarantee that I won’t develop Alzheimer’s,” he read. “But not that particular familial form of early onset Alzheimer’s. Oh my God, Toby. Oh my God.”
We hugged and cried and kissed. “Thank you,” he said, over and over. “Thank you so much.”
“For what?”
“For being here. For making me see sense. For opening the letter.”
He sounded like he didn’t quite understand how this was supposed to work, and I had an awful sense of how lonely he must have been at times in his life, how self-reliant out of necessity. Well, no more. “I love you,” I said. “I’m supposed to do these things for you.”
His eyes were shining with tears. “You’re the greatest fucking thing that ever happened to me. And I’ve had over forty thousand people put their cross in a box with my name on it. Nothing in the world has ever made me as happy as you, as this.” He waved the letter and set it down on the bed. “I feel like I’ve been handed a whole new life. We should do something.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “Everything. Let’s get a kitten. Or go to Paris. Or Germany. We could do one of those booze cruises down the Rhine. You’ll love it. You don’t like my job? Then fuck it – I’ll resign my seat and we’ll piss off and start a cheese farm in the Cotswolds like that guy from Blur. I’ll do anything for you.”
I shook my head. “No. You don’t have to give up your job. What about your bill? You can’t give up on that. It’s got an excellent chance of becoming law. I might give up my job, but yours…”
“You’re not going to write any more?” he said. “But you love writing.”
“No, I’m just going to write something different. Fiction. That’s not porn. Sci-fi or something. I don’t know. Just not politics.”
He sighed. “You hate politics.”
“I do, yeah.”
“How’s that going to work, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just is. We’ll figure it out. Like Michelle Obama: she loathes politics, but she lives with it. I’ll be one of those quiet, behind the scenes types. More Sarah Brown than Cherie Blair.”
He laughed. “Or Claire Underwood. You’re already planning my ascent to Downing Street?”
“Of course. We have to get back to the right timeline, remember? The one where you’re prime minister–”
“–and you don’t have a beard,” he said, running his thumb along my jaw.
“Should I shave?”
“No. I love your beard.”
“Don’t you want to be prime minister?”
He stroked my face and smiled. “Yes, but I don’t think it’s dependent on your hair follicles.”
“How can you say that? We had a whole theory and everything.”
“That we came up with our back teeth awash in whiskey and amaretto,” he said. “Come on, Toby – think. Things started getting all fucky in 2016 long before you decided to grow a beard. That year came straight out the gate and killed David Bowie, for God’s sake.”
“True,” I said. “And this one’s been…strange.”
“And wonderful, I hope,” he said, and ran his fingers through my hair. He kissed me and sighed. “This will always be the year I met you. Imagine that.”
“You think they’ll write about us in the history books?” I said. “When I’m the Clementine to your Churchill?”
“I don’t give a shit about the history books,” he said. “I meant to me. To me it will always be the year I met you, and that’s all that matters.” He kissed me once more, slow and sweet. “Now, can we please go and have a long hot bath together and get on with the important business of living happily ever after?”