After You

Mrs Traynor tucked her handbag under her arm and walked back to her car, where Lily was waiting.

I watched the Golf disappear, and then I called Sam.

A buzzard wheeled lazily in the azure sky above the field, its enormous wings suspended in the shimmering blue. I had offered to help him finish some bricklaying but we had done one row (I had handed him the bricks). The sultry heat was such that he had suggested we had a cold beer during our break, and somehow after we had lain back in the grass for a while, it had proven impossible to get up again. I had told him the story of the beef cheeks and he had laughed for a full minute, trying to straighten his face when I protested that If they had only called them something else and I mean, it’s like being told you’re eating chicken buttock or something. Now I was stretched out beside him, listening to the birds and the gentle whisper of the grass, watching the peach-coloured sun slide gently towards the horizon, and thought, when I was managing not to worry whether Lily had used the word pussy-whipped yet, that life was not all bad.

‘Sometimes when it’s like this I think I might not bother building the house at all,’ said Sam. ‘I might just lie in a field till I get old.’

‘Good plan.’ I was chewing a grass stalk. ‘Except the rainwater shower is going to seem a lot less appealing in January.’

I felt his laugh, a low rumble.

I had come straight to him from the restaurant, inexplicably unbalanced by the unexpected absence of Lily. I didn’t want to be in the flat alone. When I had pulled up in the gateway of Sam’s field, I had sat as my car engine ticked its way to sleep and watched him, content in his own company, scraping mortar onto each brick and pressing it to the next, wiping the sweat from his brow on his faded T-shirt, and I had felt something in me unwind. He had said nothing about the slight awkwardness of our last few conversations and I was grateful.

A solitary cloud drifted across the blue. Sam shifted his leg closer to mine. His feet were twice the size of my own.

‘I wonder whether Mrs T has got her photographs out again. You know, for Lily.’

‘Photographs?’

‘Framed pictures. I told you. She didn’t have a single one of Will anywhere that time Lily and I went to her house. I was quite surprised when she sent the album because a little bit of me had wondered if she’d destroyed them all.’

He was silent, thinking.

‘It’s odd. But when I thought about it, I don’t have any pictures of Will on display either. Maybe it just takes a while to … to be able to have them looking at you again. How long did it take you to have your sister by your bed again?’

‘I never took her down. I like having her there, especially looking like … like she used to look.’ He lifted his arm above his head. ‘She used to give it to me straight. Typical big sister. When I think I’ve got something wrong, I look at that picture and I hear her voice. Sam, you great lunk, just get on with it.’ He turned his face towards me. ‘And, you know, it’s good for Jake to see her around. He needs to feel that it’s okay to talk about her.’

‘Maybe I’ll put one up. It will be nice for Lily to have pictures of her dad in the flat.’

The hens were loose and a few feet away two of them shivered into a patch of dirt, ruffling their feathers and wiggling, sending up little clouds of dust. Poultry, it turned out, had personalities. There was the bossy chestnut, the affectionate one with the piebald comb, the little bantam that had to be plucked out of the tree every evening and put to bed in the coop.

‘Do you think I should text her? To see how it’s going?’

‘Who?’

‘Lily.’

‘Leave them. They’ll be fine.’

‘I know you’re right. It’s weird. I was watching her in that restaurant and she’s so much more like him than I first realized. I think Mrs Traynor – Camilla – could see it, too. She kept blinking at Lily’s mannerisms, like she was suddenly remembering stuff Will did. There was this one time when Lily raised an eyebrow, and neither of us could take our eyes off her. She did it just like he used to.

‘So what do you want to do tonight?’

‘Oh … I don’t mind. You choose.’ I stretched out, feeling the grass tickle my neck. ‘I might just lie here. If you happened to fall gently on top of me at some point that would be okay.’

I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.

‘So … shall we … talk about us?’

‘Us?’

He pulled a blade of grass through his teeth. ‘Yup. I just thought … well, I wondered what you thought was going on here.’

‘You make us sound like a maths problem.’

‘Just trying to make sure we don’t have any more misunderstandings, Lou.’

I watched him discard the grass, and pick a new blade. ‘I think we’re good,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not going to accuse you of having a neglected child this time. Or a trail of imaginary girlfriends.’

‘But you’re still holding back.’

It was gently said, but it felt like a kick.

I pushed myself up on my elbow, so that I was looking down on him. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? You’re the first person I call at the end of the day. We see each other when we can. I wouldn’t call that holding back.’

‘Yup. We see each other, we have sex, eat some nice meals.’

‘I thought that was basically every man’s dream relationship.’

‘I’m not every man, Lou.’

We gazed at each other in silence for a minute. I no longer felt relaxed. I felt wrong-footed, defensive.

He sighed. ‘Don’t look like that. I don’t want to get married or anything. I’m just saying … I’ve never met any woman who wanted less to talk about what might be going on.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting slightly into the sun. ‘It’s fine if you don’t want this to be a long-term thing. Well, okay, it’s not, but I just want an idea of what you’re thinking. I guess, since Ellen died, I’ve realized life is short. I don’t want …’

‘You don’t want what?’

‘To waste time on something that isn’t going anywhere.’

‘Waste time?’

‘Bad choice of words. I’m not good at this stuff.’ He pushed himself upright.