Page 124 of Bare

On the windowsill in the living room: the vase. Diane's vase. Five pieces, rejoined. The cracks filled with gold, actual gold, a resin mixed with gold powder, Rory's technique applied to ceramics. The breaks visible. The repair beautiful.

Diane had seen it on her visit, the first visit, a Sunday in December, Rory cooking, Malcolm in the next room with Freddie and a book about engineering. She'd stood at the windowsill and looked at the vase for a long time.

'It's broken,' she'd said.

'It was broken. Rory fixed it.'

'With gold.'

'With gold. It's a Japanese technique. Kintsugi. The repair becomes part of the object.'

'The cracks are visible.'

'That's the point.'

She'd looked at the vase. At the gold in the cracks.

'It's better,' she'd said. Quiet. The vase was not the subject.

Neil stood by the window with his coffee. The vase on the sill. Rory's painting on the wall above the sofa, moved from the old flat, the first painting he'd ever hung. Two figures, nearlytouching, the gold palette. Still the most honest thing in any room it occupied. Freddie's whale drawings on the fridge, which had migrated from flat to flat like a pod. The spider plant, alive despite everything.

The flat smelled like a home now. Linseed and coffee and cedar shampoo and the faint plasticky sweetness of the whale poster in the next room.

The studio. The door was open. The easel held a new canvas, work in progress, the early stages. On the worktable, beside the paint tubes and the brushes and the custard cream tin: the sketchbook. Neil's sketchbook. Open to the latest drawing.

He'd drawn Rory's face.

Imperfectly. The fluency would come. The proportions were still approximate, the shading uneven, too heavy on the left side, too light around the mouth. The lip ring suggested rather than rendered. The hair a mess of charcoal strokes that didn't quite capture the curls.

But the face was there. Forward. Eyes open. Looking at the viewer, at Neil, with an expression that was open and amused and patient and brave. All the things Rory was. Set down in charcoal on paper by a hand that had remembered how to look.

He closed the sketchbook. Back to the kitchen. Poured a second coffee and carried it down the hall.

Freddie's room. The door ajar, four fingers. The hall light on. The breathing. The dragon. The whale poster. The boy asleep in a bed in a room in a flat that contained two men who loved him and each other and a vase repaired with gold and a sketchbook with a face in it and a coffee pot beside the kettle and a painting above the sofa and the whole messy, imperfect, ongoing work of a life built from scratch by people who were learning as they went.

The master bedroom. He set the coffee on Rory's side. Slid under the sheets. Rory shifted, the automatic adjustment of abody that knew where the other body was even in sleep. The arm came across. The weight settled.

'Morning,' Rory said. Eyes still closed.

'Morning.'

'Coffee?'

'On the nightstand.'

'You're a good man, Mr Ashworth.'

'I know.'

'Say it.'

'I love you.'

'Again.'

'I love you. Now drink your coffee.'

Rory reached for the mug eyes closed. Drank. Set it down. Pulled Neil closer.

Outside, November. Grey sky. The city starting.

Inside: coffee, warmth, the weight of an arm.

Neil closed his eyes. Opened them.

Bare.