Best before: 19 March 2007

I stared at it. I half laughed, and then my eyes filled with tears. ‘Is that the –’

‘Date of my accident. Yes.’ He raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t get maudlin, Clark. It was meant to be funny.’

‘It is funny. In a crappy sort of way.’

‘Nathan will enjoy it. Oh, come on, don’t look like that. It’s not as if I’m ruining my perfect body, is it?’

I pulled Will’s shirt back down and then I turned and fired up the ignition. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what any of this meant. Was this him coming to terms with his state? Or just another way of showing his contempt for his own body?

‘Hey, Clark, do me a favour,’ he said, just as I was about to pull away. ‘Reach into the backpack for me. The zipped pocket.’

I glanced into the rear-view mirror, and put the handbrake on again. I leant through the front seats and put my hand in the bag, rummaging around according to his instructions.

‘You want painkillers?’ I was inches from his face. He had more colour in his skin than at any time since he came back from hospital. ‘I’ve got some in my –’

‘No. Keep looking.’

I pulled out a piece of paper and sat back. It was a folded ten-pound note.

‘There you go. The emergency tenner.’

‘So?’

‘It’s yours.’

‘For what?’

‘That tattoo.’ He grinned at me. ‘Right up until you were in that chair, I didn’t think for a minute you were going to actually do it.’

16

There was no way around it. The sleeping arrangements just weren’t working. Every weekend that Treena came home, the Clark family began a lengthy, nocturnal game of musical beds. After supper on Friday night Mum and Dad would offer up their bedroom, and Treena would accept it, after they had reassured her that no, they were not in the least bit put out, and how much better Thomas was at sleeping in a room he knew. It would mean, they said, that everyone got a good night’s sleep.

But Mum sleeping downstairs also involved her and Dad needing their own quilt, their own pillows and even under-sheet, as Mum couldn’t sleep properly unless her bed was just as she liked it. So after supper she and Treena would strip Mum and Dad’s bed and put on a new set of sheets, together with a mattress protector, just in case Thomas had an accident. Mum and Dad’s bedding, meanwhile, would be folded and placed in the corner of the living room, where Thomas would dive into it and on to it and string the sheet across the dining chairs to turn it into a tent.

Granddad offered his room, but nobody took it. It smelt of yellowing copies of the Racing Post and Old Holborn, and it would have taken all weekend to clear out. I would alternately feel guilty – all this was my fault, after all – while knowing I would not offer to return to the box room. It had become a kind of spectre for me, that airless little room with no windows. The thought of sleeping in there again made my chest feel tight. I was twenty-seven years old. I was the main earner of the family. I could not sleep in what was essentially a cupboard.

One weekend I offered to sleep at Patrick’s, and everyone looked secretly relieved. But then, while I was away, Thomas put sticky fingers all over my new blinds and drew on my new duvet cover in permanent pen, at which point Mum and Dad decided it would be best if they slept in my room, while Treena and Thomas went into theirs, where the odd bit of felt tip apparently didn’t matter.

Once you had accounted for all the extra bed stripping and laundry, me spending Friday and Saturday nights at Pat’s, Mum admitted, wasn’t actually much help at all.

And then there was Patrick. Patrick was now a man obsessed. He ate, drank, lived and breathed the Xtreme Viking. His flat, normally sparsely furnished and immaculate, was strung with training schedules and dietary sheets. He had a new lightweight bike which lived in the hallway and which I wasn’t allowed to touch, in case I interfered with its finely balanced lightweight racing capabilities.

And he was rarely home, even on a Friday or Saturday night. What with his training and my work hours we seemed to have become used to spending less time together. I could follow him down to the track and watch him push himself round and round in circles until he had completed the requisite number of miles, or I could stay home and watch television by myself, curled up in a corner of his vast leather settee. There was no food in the fridge, apart from strips of turkey breast and vile energy drinks the consistency of frogspawn. Treena and I had tried one once and spat it out, gagging theatrically, like children.

The truth of it was I didn’t like Patrick’s flat. He had bought it a year ago, when he finally felt his mother would be okay by herself. His business had done well, and he had told me it was important that one of us get on to the property ladder. I suppose that would have been the cue for us to have a conversation about whether we were going to live together, but somehow it didn’t happen, and neither of us is the type to bring up subjects that make us feel a bit uncomfortable. As a result, there was nothing of me in that flat, despite our years together. I had never quite been able to tell him, but I would rather live in my house, with all its noise and clutter, than in that soulless, featureless bachelor pad, with its allocated parking spaces and executive view of the castle.

And besides, it was a bit lonely.

‘Got to stick to the schedule, babe,’ he would say, if I told him. ‘If I do any fewer than twenty-three miles at this stage of the game, I’ll never make it back on schedule.’ Then he would give me the latest update on his shin splints or ask me to pass him the heat spray.

When he wasn’t training, he was at endless meetings with other members of his team, comparing kit and finalizing travel arrangements. Sitting amongst them was like being with a bunch of Korean speakers. I had no idea what any of it meant, and no great desire to immerse myself.

And I was supposed to be going with them to Norway in seven weeks’ time. I hadn’t yet worked out how to tell Patrick that I hadn’t asked the Traynors for the time off. How could I? By the time the Xtreme Viking took place, there would be less than one week of my contract left to run. I suppose I was childishly refusing to deal with it all, but truthfully, all I could see was Will and a ticking clock. Not a lot else seemed to register.

The great irony of all this was that I didn’t even sleep well at Patrick’s flat. I don’t know what it was, but I came to work from there feeling like I was speaking through a glass jar, and looking like I had been punched in both eyes. I began painting concealer on my dark shadows with the same slapdash abandon as if I were decorating.

‘What’s going on, Clark?’ Will said.

I opened my eyes. He was right beside me, his head cocked to one side, watching me. I got the feeling he might have been there for some time. My hand went automatically for my mouth in case I had been dribbling.

The film I was supposed to have been watching was now a series of slow-moving credits.

‘Nothing. Sorry. It’s just warm in here.’ I pushed myself upright.

‘It’s the second time you’ve fallen asleep in three days.’ He studied my face. ‘And you look bloody awful.’

So I told him. I told him about my sister, and our sleeping arrangements, and how I didn’t want to make a fuss because every time I looked at Dad’s face I saw his barely concealed despair that he could not even provide his family with a house we could all sleep in.

‘He’s still not found anything?’

‘No. I think it’s his age. But we don’t talk about it. It’s … ’ I shrugged. ‘It’s too uncomfortable for everyone.’

We waited for the movie to finish, and then I walked over to the player, ejected the DVD and put it back in its case. It felt somehow wrong, telling Will my problems. They seemed embarrassingly trivial next to his.

‘I’ll get used to it,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fine. Really.’

Will seemed preoccupied for the rest of the afternoon. I washed up, then came through and set up his computer for him. When I brought him a drink, he swivelled his chair towards me.

‘It’s quite simple,’ he said, as if we had been in conversation. ‘You can sleep here at weekends. There’s a room going spare – it might as well get some use.’

I stopped, the beaker in my hand. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not? I’m not going to pay you for the extra hours you’re here.’

I placed the beaker in his holder. ‘But what would your mum think?’

‘I have no idea.’

I must have looked troubled, because he added, ‘It’s okay. I’m safe in taxis.’

‘What?’

‘If you’re worried I have some devious secret plan to seduce you, you can just pull my plug out.’

‘Funny.’

‘Seriously. Think about it. You could have it as your backup option. Things might change faster than you think. Your sister might decide she doesn’t want to spend every weekend at home after all. Or she might meet someone. A million things might change.’

And you might not be here in two months, I told him silently, and immediately hated myself for thinking it.

‘Tell me something,’ he said, as he went to leave the room. ‘Why isn’t Running Man offering you his place?’

‘Oh, he has,’ I said.

He looked at me, as if he were about to pursue the conversation.

And then he seemed to change his mind. ‘Like I said.’ He shrugged. ‘The offer’s there.’

These are the things that Will liked.

Watching films, especially foreign ones with subtitles. He could occasionally be persuaded into an action thriller, even an epic romance, but drew the line at romantic comedies. If I dared to rent one, he would spend the entire 120 minutes letting out little pffts of derision, or pointing out the great clichés in the plot, until it was no fun for me at all.

Listening to classical music. He knew an awful lot about it. He also liked some modern stuff, but said jazz was mostly pretentious guff. When he saw the contents of my MP3 player one afternoon, he laughed so hard he nearly dislodged one of his tubes.

Sitting in the garden, now that it was warm. Sometimes I stood in the window and watched him, his head tilted back, just enjoying the sun on his face. When I remarked on his ability to be still and just enjoy the moment – something I had never mastered – he pointed out that if you can’t move your arms and legs, you haven’t actually got a lot of choice.

Making me read books or magazines, and then talk about them. Knowledge is power, Clark, he would say. I hated this at first; it felt like I was at school, being quizzed on my powers of memory. But after a while I realized that, in Will’s eyes, there were no wrong answers. He actually liked me to argue with him. He asked me what I thought of things in the newspapers, disagreed with me about characters in books. He seemed to hold opinions on almost everything – what the government was doing, whether one business should buy another, whether someone should have been sent to jail. If he thought I was being lazy, or parroting my parents’ or Patrick’s ideas, he would just say a flat, ‘No. Not good enough.’ He would look so disappointed if I said I knew nothing about it; I had begun to anticipate him and now read a newspaper on the bus on the way in, just so I felt prepared. ‘Good point, Clark,’ he would say, and I would find myself beaming. And then give myself a kick for allowing Will to patronize me again.

Getting a shave. Every two days now, I lathered up his jaw and made him presentable. If he wasn’t having a bad day, he would lean back in his chair, close his eyes, and the closest thing I saw to physical pleasure would spread across his face. Perhaps I’ve invented that. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to see. But he would be completely silent as I gently ran the blade across his chin, smoothing and scraping, and when he did open his eyes his expression had softened, like someone coming out of a particularly satisfactory sleep. His face now held some colour from our time spent outside; his was the kind of skin that tanned easily. I kept the razors high up in the bathroom cabinet, tucked behind a large bottle of conditioner.