Page 90 of Don't You Forget About Me

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At the end of my shift and for a second time today, I head up the stairs to the flat, with considerably less lightheartedness than I did before.

The door’s closed this time, and Lucas answers as soon as I knock. ‘Drink?’ he says.

‘Just a cup of tea, thanks.’

‘Aw man, making me drink alone? Can’t tempt you to a whisky?’

I shrug. ‘Sure.’

I don’t like this creaky, ingratiating imposter. Say what you want about your late wife, just don’t involve me. Lucas heads to a kitchen, off the sitting room we’re in, and I survey the small spartan flat, TV in one corner, potted fern in another.

I drop down into the sofa in front of a coffee table that’s piled with pub admin flotsam and jetsam, spreadsheets, bank statements. For the first time I realise it’s probably quite lonely, being away from your home city, living above your time-sucking place of work.

Keith clatters in, feet loud on the wooden floor, and as ever, he’s gratefully seized upon by me. He settles at my feet while I pat the scruff of his neck.

Lucas hands me a glass and sits down opposite in a wicker (ha) chair, placing his whisky on the table between us.

‘I wanted to explain about earlier. The phone call I was having when you came in.’ He pauses. ‘Saying you don’t care about your late wife is quite unusual. Dev says he told you about her?’ Lucas rolls his eyes, but smiles, and I nod, self-conscious.

‘Lucas,’ I say, raising my voice slightly to ‘prim’, ‘you honestly don’t have to. It’s none of my business. I’d rather not pry.’

‘I want to explain,’ he says.

He swigs from his drink and I do alike, rather than offer any reply. On the one hand, what I heard was ugly; on the other, why explain himself, if he is a wrong un?

Maybe part of the brooding bad boy psyche. He needs to control his image.

‘I was talking to a friend of mine in Dublin … A former friend of mine. Owen. He was having an affair with Niamh right before she died.’

I open my mouth and close it again, and gulp. ‘Oh.’

I’d made the rules: Niamh was tragic, and devoted. Not unfaithful.Oh.

‘I found out a few weeks before Niamh got her diagnosis, but it had been going on months before that. She was having loads of nights out with girlfriends and I got suspicious and turned up at the bar she was out at, and caught her with her face locked onto Owen.’

‘Oh, God.’

He leans back.

‘We were in trouble anyway. We got married too young, for the wrong reasons – her family wouldn’t have us living in sin. It was never right. There wasn’t a friendship there, which is what it always has to be underneath, right?’

I clear my throat and nod.

‘… I could say more, but don’t speak ill and all that. The point is, I knew we were over, before Owen. It was confirmation. Could’ve done without knowing the other man quite so well, but there we go.’

I nod as if I understand, except I don’t really understand. I feel glad of the heat and tingle of alcohol in my stomach.

‘And then she found out she was ill?’

‘Yeah. We’d agreed she was moving out. Then she went for a routine check-up after having these headaches and was told there was no hope. It was an aggressive cancer, and it was inoperable.’

Lucas’s voice has grown thick and I merely take in this information, knowing I will lie awake for an hour when I go to bed tonight, trying to figure out how it must’ve felt. She left you and now she’s leaving you.

‘They gave her six weeks. She made eight. I told her, just go and be with Owen and we’ll work out the rest.’

‘That’s incredibly heroic,’ I say to Lucas, then in case he thinks I’m being flip: ‘I mean that. Incredible of you.’

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