Page 88

The spending started the following morning.

He bought a ceramic jug from a woman on Westbourne Grove who told him it was hand-thrown in Stoke-on-Trent, a set of Japanese kitchen knives that Colin tested on his thumb, and a vintage Polaroid camera that he immediately turned on Tala.

Beeswax candles followed, then a doorstop shaped like a dachshund, three metres of Liberty print fabric that he had no plans for, and a jar of Seville orange marmalade from a stall whose owner described the pectin content with a passion Cassian recognised from the way he himself talked about Chelsea buns.

Colin didn’t scold him. When Cassian walked through the kitchen door at Ledbury Road carrying a Victorian microscope in one hand and a bag of salted liquorice in the other, Colin took the liquorice, tried one, said “that’s foul,” and went back to sanding a cabinet door for the woman on Elgin Crescent. When Cassian arrived the next day with a taxidermied pheasant under his arm, Colin looked at it for a long time, then moved the fruit bowl to make room on the counter for it.

Diwa, to his credit, attempted enthusiasm for every purchase. He examined the microscope with genuine delight, admired the jug, and wore the hand-knitted scarf Cassian had found at a charity shop on Kensington Park Road even though it was hideous and the wool made his neck go violently red.

Cassian pushed Tala through Holland Park on Tuesdays and Thursdays, her pram loaded with whatever he’d acquired that morning. Tala accepted the clutter, chewing the ear of a knitted rabbit from a basket outside a shop on Clarendon Cross while he negotiated the price of a kilo of local honey from a man who kept bees on a rooftop in Kensal Rise.

The honey was thick and dark, floral in a way that sat at the back of his tongue. Diwa would know what to do with it. Calamansi juice, maybe, or stirred through yoghurt.

Cassian tucked the jar into the pram’s basket beside Tala’s changing bag, checked the time on his mobile, and turned south towards the top of Portobello Road. The route home was shorter that way.

He saw Ruari from forty metres away.

Two girls in princess dresses had him by the hands, one on each side, pulling him down the middle of the road. The older girl wore a lilac gown with a glittered bodice, her dark hair pinned up with hair slides. The younger one was in head-to-toe pink, a plastic tiara sitting crooked over one ear, and she was bouncing on her toes and pointing at the gelato cart near the junction with Elgin Crescent.

Ruari had his head tipped back, laughing at something the older girl had said. He wore a T-shirt that strained across his shoulders and jeans that sat low on his hips, and he looked unbearably good.

The younger girl tugged Ruari’s hand and he folded himself down to her level, bad knee braced against the kerb. She pointed at the gelato cart again. Ruari considered it, grave as a judge, then stood and let her drag him forward, his massive frame surrendering to the governance of a five-year-old in a tiara.

All three of them skipped, Ruari’s version a lopsided, knee-sparing lurch, his nieces shrieking on either side of him.

Cassian’s foot lifted off the pavement. He took one step towards the happy little group, and then his body stalled, his hand white-knuckled on the pram handle. Walking up to the man skipping down Portobello Road would undo every sentence in the notebook. He would reach Ruari and his own mind would go smooth again.

The girls took their gelatos. The older one curtseyed. Ruari bowed back, deep and ridiculous, and Cassian bit his bottom lip until it bled. That got him moving. He turned the pram around and went home the long way.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Cassian could not sleep.

He’d tried everything short of pharmaceuticals: warm milk that Colin had heated and delivered to his bedside without being asked, a guided meditation that Diwa had loaded onto his tablet, and forty-five minutes of a Love Island reunion special that usually worked like a sedative. None of it touched the buzzing in his head.

He rolled onto his back and opened his camera roll.

The photos scrolled in reverse, the most recent first: Tala with banana on her chin, a Polaroid of Colin holding up a sanded cabinet door, a close-up of the taxidermied pheasant that Cassian had taken from three different angles because he’d wanted to capture its expression. Then further back, past Diwa’s experimental calamansi cake and a selfie of Felix pretending not to enjoy having Fallon asleep on his chest, to the stretch of months where every second thumbnail was Ruari.

He looked up. Diwa’s rough grid of frames sat in the streetlight leaking through the curtains, nine rectangles arranged in three rows of three, each one empty.

He’d been looking at them for months. He’d told himself they were an art installation because Diwa had called them that. He looked down at a photo of Ruari and himself beside the Mini, and then up at the frames. He had plenty of photos worthy of display.

They were empty because he hadn’t let himself put them up.

Cassian took stock of the room.

The Victorian microscope sat on his desk. The taxidermied pheasant occupied the dresser, flanked by beeswax candles and the dachshund doorstop. He pulled the notebook from under his pillow and opened it to the ME page.

He ran it again, pointing at each item, and asking himself: did I really want this?

Every object failed the test. Each one was a swerve around the single desire he’d forbidden himself, a substitute grabbed from the nearest stall so his feet wouldn’t carry him across the road, into Proving Ground, and back to the alpha behind the counter.

His face went hot. The anger wasn’t aimed at Charles, or the Lumineer, or the doctrine that had taught him his own judgement couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t even aimed at Ruari, whose drinking and whose cycling moods had given Cassian a legitimate reason to walk away.

The rule keeping him from Ruari was his own.

The Lumineer hadn’t handed it down. The ME page hadn’t told him to stay away forever. It had told him to know his own mind.