The rain hammers hard at the windows and it’s making Adele sleepy as she lies on her bed with Rob after his therapy session. She should be in the art room, but she’s bored of painting. She went to yoga to pacify the nurses – apparently it would help relax her, and it did, mainly from the dullness of it – but really she wants to be in the fresh air with Rob. Maybe out on the moors as a change from the lake. Even though they’re not supposed to go off the grounds without a ‘group leader’, they could probably sneak away and no one would notice. That’s the thing with hippies, as Rob says. They’re so full of trust. They don’t even lock the gates in the daytime.
‘I am awake,’ Rob says beside her, pinching himself. ‘Only just though. This is all so dreary.’
She giggles and sighs. She had hoped that the storm would clear the air entirely, but instead the fierceness has died down to this constant grey downpour, and he’s right, dreary is the word.
‘When is this going to work?’ he asks. ‘I’m so bored of counting my fingers. I half expect to see eleven one day.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘If you do, you’ll know you’re dreaming. And then you can picture the door and open it to take you anywhere you imagine. Anyway, it’s only been a few days. Patience, young Jedi.’
‘If this is all a piss-take then my revenge will be sweet and terrible.’
‘Where will you take your dreams?’ she says. ‘When you can create the door?’ It’s comfortable lying here beside him. Not like with David, no heat of that passion, no pounding of her heart, but something different. Something calm and comforting. ‘Will you go home?’
He laughs then. Not his infectious warm laugh, but the short bark reserved for irony. She knows these things now.
‘Fuck no. Although I might dream of some decent food. This place really needs to learn to add some flavour to its lunches. Mmm.’
He’s trying to swerve the conversation, and she notices. She’s always thought he doesn’t talk about his family for her sake, because she no longer has one. Suddenly, she feels like a bad friend. So much has been about her, her loss, how to pick herself back up, how to move on, that she realises he’s never really opened up about his own world. He’s entertained her with tales from his drug-taking, but that’s about it. Nothing real. Nothing emotional.
‘That bad?’ They’ve been lying on their backs staring up at the ceiling, but now she rolls onto her side and up on one arm. ‘Is that why you took smack?’
‘No.’ He smiles. ‘I took smack because it feels good. As for family, well, I mainly live with my sister. Ailsa. She’s thirty.’ He sees her reaction to the age gap. ‘Yep, I was an afterthought, which is a really polite way of saying mistake. Anyway, I live with her now. And she’s a fuck-up, just in a different way to me, but thinks she’s God’s fucking gift. It’s all a bit shitty – you really don’t want to know about it.’
‘You’re my friend,’ she says, poking his skinny ribs. ‘Probably my only real friend other than David. Of course I want to know about it.’
‘Well, you, my tragic Sleeping Beauty princess, are far more fascinating than me.’
‘Obviously.’ She blushes slightly. She likes it when he calls her that, even though she shouldn’t, and her parents are dead, and it sounds almost mocking of them.
He sighs dramatically. ‘God, I want to get high.’
‘I’ve never taken drugs,’ she says. ‘Not even weed.’
It’s his turn to be surprised. ‘No shit.’
‘Yeah, literally no shit. We live – lived – in the middle of nowhere. Bus into school and bus back, and then when I had my problems I was home-schooled for a while.’
‘Every layer under your flawless skin gets more interesting. Home-schooled? God, no wonder you fell in love with country boy.’
She lets the small dig slide by. She knows he already thinks she’s too dependent on David. It’s as much in what he doesn’t say as what he does.
‘We’re probably going to have to rectify that,’ he says. ‘You would love it.’
She laughs aloud. Rob makes drugs sound like the most normal thing in the world. For him, she guesses, it kind of is. And he’s not so bad.
‘Some weed at least.’
‘Okay,’ she says, playing along. ‘I’m up for that.’ And in the moment she is, but she also knows that it’s not exactly likely to happen in Westlands. She can feel free and wild like Rob without actually having to do it. But maybe she should do it, she thinks, rebelliously. Maybe she should behave like a normal teenager for a while.
What would David think? She tries to squash the question. She knows the answer. David would not be happy. But should her first thought about every decision be to question what David would want her to do? That can’t be normal. Maybe she should be a bit more like Rob. Irreverent. Independent. Just thinking it feels like a betrayal. David loves her and she loves him. David saved her life.
Anyway, she thinks. Maybe she could do it and not tell him. It wouldn’t be a big secret. It would just be one moment of fun she’d keep to herself. She might not even like it. She looks down at David’s watch, dangling loose on her wrist. It’s gone two.
‘I’m going to hold you to that,’ Rob says. ‘We’re going to get mashed together. It’ll be brilliant.’ She can already see his mind ticking over, wondering how he can make this a reality. She wonders what he’d be like if he’d had her life. Maybe he’d have been at some great university now, on a scholarship. Maybe he’d have been the son her parents really wanted.
‘I have to go,’ she says, and he looks up, surprised.
‘Not another session?’
She shakes her head, awkward. She hasn’t told him about this. ‘No, it’s my lawyers. They’re coming in. I want to talk to them about some stuff. You know, all the inheritance things.’ She doesn’t know why she feels so flustered, but she does. ‘See how clearing out the damage on the house has gone. Getting security people to set up alarms and stuff around the land.’
‘They’re coming in for that?’ She can almost hear his brain ticking over.
She lets her hair hang over her face as she gets up. ‘Yeah. It’s complicated.’ Finally, she gives him a dazzling grin. A heart-melting grin. One that says everything is fine. ‘You concentrate on pinching yourself. If you don’t get the hang of this soon, I’m going to think you’re faking your nightmares.’
He smiles back. ‘Okay, Yoda. But only for you. I might have a wank first though.’
‘Gross.’
They’re both smiling as she leaves, and that makes her happy. She knows Rob worries. She knows he thinks David has too much control over her. And she knows that he absolutely wouldn’t be happy with what she is about to do.
