Page 40 of Always Alchemy

I pick up a blue shot and neck it.Jeeeeesus fuck,that’s revolting. A white one comes next. Then another blue. Then another white.

The second Malibu-Baileys concoction barely makes it down my oesophagus before my stomach declares Game Over.

I didn’t even makeit into a stall. The urinal in the black marble bathroom of this centuries-old establishment is now splattered with my vomit. I sit on the floor next to it, head back against the cool marble wall, trying to catch my breath as Stephen gamely mops up the overspill with one of the fluffy white washcloths they give you instead of paper towels in places like this.

‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, then: ‘I think you scored a bit of an own goal.’

He sniggers. ‘I’m beginning to work that out.’

‘I’m not drinking the rest.’

‘Fair play. I don’t want to play nanny all night. Think you’ve got it all out of your system?’

‘The worst of it, yeah.’ I blow out a breath. God, that was revolting. ‘Now I remember why I rarely drink.’

‘You did well, considering.’

I close my eyes for a second. When I reopen them, he’s rinsing a new cloth under the tap and mopping the urinal clean. ‘You’re a very good guy, you know that?’

‘Not fair to leave it for the cleaners,’ he mumbles.

‘Totally agree. Sorry I’m not pulling my weight.’

‘You get a free pass. Besides, I’ve cleaned up so much of Chloe’s vomit this past couple of years that I think I’m getting immune to it.’ A pause. ‘You’re a lot less cute than she is afterwards, though.’

‘Facts,’ I agree. ‘Anyway, I think we brought some life and soul to this place.’

‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘All these posh wankers know how to party. I don’t get why they have this whole charade around respectability when they’re more badly behaved behind closed doors than your average punter down the pub on a Friday night.’

‘It’s total bullshit,’ I agree. ‘It doesn’t do anything for me.’ It’s been fun, having a night out here. So many of my mates are members. Apparently Anton, Rafe, Zach and Cal have all been members since they turned twenty-one, and their fathers are members, too. While I’ve worked my arse off to be taken seriously, to be seen as respectable, I could take or leave this kind of elite establishment. It’s far too “silver spoon” for my liking.

‘You fit in better than me,’ he argues.

‘Nah. Not really. And look at Aide. He fucking hates it.’

My mate Aide, a self-made man like me and Stephen’s boss at Totum, absolutely despises places like this. He lasted through dinner before pleading off on the basis that his daughter had a very early ballet lesson. Sounded tenuous, to say the least.

Stephen found out at some point that I was great friends with Aide and may have played a part in his landing a job at Totum. I’ll never know if it was Nat or her mum who let it slip or whether Stephen worked it out for himself, but I’ve always maintained the truth: that he got that job solely onhis own merits. He’d forgiven me by then, so making the connection between his beloved boss and his childhood attacker didn’t hit him as hard as it could have.

At least, Ithoughthe’d forgiven me.

‘Are we good?’ I ask him now.

He stares. ‘Yeah, mate, ‘’course we are.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper. I’ve said the words to him a million times over the past year, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop saying them.

He sighs and straightens up before squatting down in front of me. ‘I know you are. And it’s okay. It really is. We’re all happy.’

‘I know, but… it was such a terrible thing I did to you.’ I sniff. ‘I took youreyefrom you, for fuck’s sake. Gabe was right back there. I got away lightly.’

‘Adam,’ he begins, and then pauses. ‘Look. I don’t even know how to say it, really, okay? But what’s done is done. It happened. And it changed the course of our lives, and you met my sister, and you’re going to spend every single day caring for her and making her happier than any of us could have dreamed of for her, andthat’swhat counts.’

‘Yeah, but?—’

‘You did what you did. But that wasn’tyou, mate. That was a terrified, grieving, neglected kid who went crazy because he needed to. The shit your family went through—fuck. That was worse than anything you put me through. Honestly. You need to let go of that shit. You have enough on your shoulders.’

He’s said these words to me before, but there’s something about this drunken state that allows me to really feel it all, to lean into the guilt and the shame and the regret, but also his compassion. His generosity of spirit.

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