Page 96 of Last Night

‘I miss her too,’ he says, into my hair.

‘Really?’ I look up at him. I blink and focus enough to see he has tears in his eyes. ‘I wasn’t sure if you did.’

‘Yes,’ he says, voice very low. ‘Very much. Not in the same way you do, I can’t miss a relationship I didn’t have. I’d been missing her for a long time. But it’s like I’ve lost a part of myself, my past. So many things only Susie shared with me. I already was pretty isolated, but now I realise, I wasn’t. Not like I am now. And like you, there are things between us that will always be unfinished. After the police called, I sat in silence, before the tears. I wasn’t ready. This wasn’t how it was going to end. I know you only saw the anger. I think there was still some love, underneath. Or a bond at least, whatever you’d call it. I know there was on my side. I found out I’d always been clinging hard to a notion of a point in the future when we could reconcile. The way things were between us wasn’t ever going to be forever, you know? And it turned out, it was.

I’ve never heard Finlay, or indeed anyone, sound this raw.

‘I’m sorry for being like this,’ I say, in the deep silence that follows.

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t mean to suggest my loss is greater.’

‘I know you didn’t. Come and sit down,’ Finlay says, and guides me to the edge of the bed. ‘How about a cup of milky tea with a large sugar in it? It’s what my mum would suggest.’

‘Sounds perfect,’ I say, smiling. It actually does. I watch as Fin goes to fill the kettle in the bathroom, rustles around in the stash of sachets and plastic pots of UHT milk, clanks the china cups.

‘Why have you got the television on, on mute?’ he says, noticing the dancing picture in the gloom.

‘I turned it on and I didn’t know how to turn it off.’

‘Silent rugby at Twickenham is oddly hypnotic.’

Fin hands a cup to me, demonstrating good manners in twisting it so the handle is nearest. From his bearing, you’d think he went to a posh school, not my school. He is a bit of a Gatsby.

‘Thank you.’

‘Want to be alone, or shall I stay for a while?’ Fin says.

‘Stay! If that’s OK.’

‘Of course.’

Fin pours hot water onto a tea bag, dunks it and casts it aside, and walks to the bed. It’s so huge that he can lie on it and channel surf without it feeling as if we’re in bed together.

As I drink, I realise that as well as being emotionally unsettled, I was half drunk and dehydrated. Halfway down the cup, I feel significantly steadier.

Finlay holds the remote aloft and clicks through channels rapidly. For a few seconds, a male model with goatee and top knot in huge plus fours swingsdown a catwalk and holds a jacket off his shoulder, before pulling it up, wheeling round and stalking onward.

‘Oh fucks sake. Where’s the off button on this thing?!’ Finlay points the remote while pretend hammering at it in straight-faced ire, and I gurgle with delight both at the incident, and Fin having a sense of humour about it.

I have a tiny revelation: I like him. I’m not sure I trust him, but I do like him.

‘Oh my God, can you do that?’ I say.

‘What, walk? Yes. Thank you.’

‘Can I see a modelling picture? Are there any online?’

‘No, too old, I’m afraid. Archive material. They were still using Box Brownie cameras.’

I gurgle some more. This was the brightener I needed.

‘Did you do any famous “campaigns”, as I believe they’re called?’

In laughter, I’ve unintentionally rolled closer to Finlay. Our arms are nearly touching, and neither of us are moving away again.

‘Hmmmm, not telling you. You’ll look it up.’

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