Page 37 of Glitterland
“They’re only small words. It’s probably a phrase, something a bit colloquial.”
“No idea, babes. Don’t even know ’ow to start, to be ’onest wif you.”
“Well ‘otherwise’ usually means you need to re-arrange some letters. So the keyword is ‘honestly’—but, ‘no’ is telling you it means the opposite.”
“I feel like my head’s gonna fall off.”
“It’s ‘on the sly.’”
“What?” He turned, wooden spatula in hand, and narrowed his eyes to shining blue-grey slivers. “Are you making this up?”
“No! ‘On the sly’—it’s an anagram of ‘honestly,’ meaning the opposite.”
He shook his head, throwing mince into a frying pan full of browning vegetables. “Is this what you’re into then? Messing abaht wif words and that?”
“It’s just a habit really. Not much else to do—” I stopped in sudden horror. I’d been about to say ‘in hospital.’ Grey days, carefully ordering and disordering the meanings of things, putting down the letters one by one, like a bricklayer. “—at university.”
“I couldn’t wait to get done wif school, me. Three more years? Couldn’t be doing wif that. I was like—” He performed a gesture I thought was meant to signify a sixteen- year-old Darian telling the British Education System to talk to the hand. “—no fanks.”
I had no conscious memory of putting the crossword down. But, somehow, I had. I was just sitting there foolishly, talking to Darian while he performed his haphazard alchemy at the stove. There had been nothing like this in my kitchen, and for that matter my life, since Niall, and possibly not even then. I think he’d resented cooking as much as I did, but if he hadn’t provided food, then we would not have eaten.
I propped my chin on my hand. “Oxford was the best time of my life. I was eighteen and full of hope. I was going to change the fucking world.”
“Wif doing crosswords and eating beans outta the tin?” Darian had his back to me, preoccupied with a pan of boiling potatoes, but somehow I knew he was grinning.
“I never ate beans out of the tin! I was in my prime.”
“Yeah, cos now you’re all crusty and past it and like, ‘I remember when all this was grass, where’s my shopping trolley on little wheels.’ What are you, like twenny-five?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Man, your life is over.” He swept over with a block of cheese, a plate, and a grater and plonked them down in front of me. “’Ere, might as well make yourself useful.”
I drew back. “Oh no, I do not do manual labour.”
“Babes, manual labour is like pulling a plough or stacking shelves down the Costcos. That’s grating cheese.”
I sighed and picked up the grater without further protest. “How much?”
“What?” He blinked at me.
“How much cheese do you want grated?”
“All of it, duh.” He flitted off to drain his potatoes. “So, what else you do at university? Or was it all crosswords and Scrabble parties, wif the beans served under ’em silver dome fings?”
“Actually, I was my college Scrabble champion.”
“Really?” He gave me an impressed look over his shoulder. “Is that cos you’re all good wif words and stuff?”
I grated doggedly. It was totally manual labour. And since when did I say “totally”? “On the contrary, it’s because I’m quite good at maths. Scrabble isn’t a game about letters, it’s a game about numbers. There’s no poetry in it at all. If you’re looking to make beautiful words, you’re looking to lose.”
“Well what wif it being a game, maybe I’d be looking to ’ave fun or summin crazy like that?”
He came back, took the grater from my inept hands, and finished the job himself in about two vigorous seconds. I somehow managed not to comment.
“Crazy,” I agreed. Out of nowhere, I wanted to kiss his wrists, like I had in Brighton.
He mixed the cheese—all of the cheese, enough for a heart attack—into the mash and began layering it onto a baking dish full of mince and vegetables. Finally, he gave the whole thing a vigorous scattering of salt and pepper, and bunged it into the oven.
