Page 92 of Fe
He gave a short laugh. “The last person I needed to see was my mother. But I had to call Alejandro’s family. Though not at that time in the morning. They were going to have plenty of sleepless nights to come, why make that night one of them? So I waited for morning.
“I could hardly bear to think about him and his state of mind, how he must have been feeling. He’d been fighting a battle on his own and I could have fought with him. I felt guilty and…hurt he’d not talked to me. And then I had to hurt someone else. He had a big family. His parents lived—still live—in Epsom. I waited until eight-thirty and I rang his older brother, Mateo. I could hear his kids in the background. Opening their presents. It was awful. He howled.”
Ripley pulled his hand from Fen’s and put both hands over his face. Fen’s eyes were full of tears. He understood everything now. Well, maybe not quite everything, but enough. He unfastened his seatbelt, leaned over and put his arms around Ripley.
“I’m fine.” Ripley pulled free.
“You’re clearly not.” He was pale but there were no tears. Fen blinked back his.You’re broken, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be mended.
Even if Ripley didn’t want him after six months, maybe Fen could use that time to make him see things differently. Life was too short to spend years mourning something you’d lost, blaming yourself for an event you’d decided was your fault.
Ripley sighed. “I should have got over it by now.”
“Who says? There’s no one-size-fits-all for grief. No one can dictate how long it should last. You’ll let go when you’re ready. Maybe you’ll never be ready and that would be sad, but no one should push you into moving on.” Much as Fen might want to.
“Alejandro gave me the wooden puzzle box,” Ripley said quietly. “I never managed to open the bottom of the damn thing. Alejandro thought it was hilarious I couldn’t work it out. I took it to my mother’s, along with a few other things of his, because I decided it was bad for me to have reminders of him around, that it was stopping me from letting him go. My desperation to get that box back shows it’s not true.”
Fen thought about whether to tell him what he’d seen. Better to do it now than keep quiet, maybe? “If you’ve not opened it, I guess you don’t know there’s something in the bottom section.”
Ripley turned to face him. “What?”
“Paper. Maybe a letter. I didn’t read it. I saw the box in your wardrobe when I was packing your stuff and I played around with it. It bugged me I hadn’t been able to open it before and thought I’d have another go. You have to sort of press a point on the inside and outside at the same time, move a bit of wood and the bottom slides open. But I didn’t read the letter, I swear. If that’s what it is. I didn’t even take it out. It might not be anything.”
“Right.”
“Did he leave a note?”
“Yes. His parents have it. It was in the till at the restaurant, addressed to ‘To those I love.’ Nothing specifically for me.”
After nearly three years together, that must have hurt.
“Yes, it did,” Ripley glanced at him.
“I forgot you’re a mind-reader.”
Read this, then. You’re lucky to have had someone who loved you, not everyone is so fortunate.But Ripley wasn’t in the frame of mind to see that. At least Fen had a mum who loved him to bits. Ripley had lost the only parent who seemed to care about him.
“We better get going.” Ripley started the engine.
Fen knew Ripley didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There was more to be said, but not now.
“Have you readanything by Douglas Stuart?” Fen asked.
“No.”
“He’s one of my favourite writers. Want me to tell you a little about his books?”
“All right.”
Fen talked for most of the way back. When he’d run out of things to say about the fabulousShuggie BainandYoung Mungo,he chatted about Andy Weir’s books, then Tom Wood’s. He talked about food, things that interested him about London, contradictory proverbs and in desperation, weird collective nouns.
Finally, Ripley joined in. “A business of ferrets.”
“I didn’t know that one. A cauldron of bats.”
“A smack of jellyfish, a shiver of sharks, a murder of crows.”
“Wow, you’re good at that.”
