Читать книгу Three Steps Behind You - Amy Bird - Страница 16

Chapter 4

I always sleep with the door open, just because I can. Once you’ve slept with it closed, locked, against your own volition, I think you always will. I bet Adam does, too. Although I can imagine Nicole wanting to seal them in, into that prison of a bedroom, with her.

He always used to sleep with the door closed, before, when we were kids, when I was staying. He liked the dark, unlike some boys. His own space, cut off from other people. Adam must have been thrilled when he got the house in West Hampstead. Or rather, thrilled that he had found a wife who owned such a house. Comforted that he could still live there after her death.

My bedroom ceiling here has stars on it. Stars and little aeroplanes and space ships. Only partly because of the time when I couldn’t see them. Mostly because Adam had them, in his room. When Adam was pretending to sleep so that I wouldn’t exhaust myself from talking to him, his face turned to the wall in the bed on the opposite side of the room, I used to stare at those stars. Sometimes I’d wish on them. The main wish: that Adam and I would be together for always.

I don’t need to wish that now, though, here, tonight. You see, I know now that Adam and I will always be together. Sure, we sleep in separate beds, miles apart – 3.2 miles, to be precise. But even though I am tucked up here and he is there, doing unthinkable things with Nicole, we are together really. It was like that before, when we had separate rooms. I knew he was with me really.

Most people are not lucky enough to have a twenty-nine-year friendship like ours. I think I always knew it would be special, from the moment we started playing together, when we were eight. We had all the same interests. He joined chess club, I joined chess club. He went to the library, I went to the library. He played football, I played football. Like every good shadow, I was always there. We shared everything, then.

So I suppose I should be content. I suppose I should be happy, lying here, with my hands under my covers, preparing all of myself for sleep. But we’ve been so close, in the past. Even closer than now. True, he invites me round for dinner all the time. When Helen was there, I just had to take me chances, pop in when I could. Since she died, he’s more open to me being there. But I want to be closer. Again.

Oh! But of course! The method will give me that closeness! I sit up in the dark. Nicole is perfect for book four. I should have realised that is why I was led to her, as my woman to get close to, for Luke. It’s almost as pure and perfect as the epiphany that prompted book three. Her flesh will bring Adam and I as close as we were in that book, it will give me the closeness I’ve craved ever since.

For this is it: Adam has been there. In Nicole. If I, as Luke, have the most intimate closeness to, in, Nicole, I will be where Adam has been. And it will be like I am touching him. Our ultimate manhood brought together in Nicole.

Luke, then, will do it for me. Luke – my character, my invention – holds the key to unlocking those remaining layers that separate us. Yes, all the other goals remain the same. Through Nicole, through being with her, to understand what it is to be with a woman, I can method write that as well as the other parts of the book, and so I will get published. I’ll be able to afford a place on his street. I’ll get close to my main reader again, the one for whom I write all my work and live all my life: Adam. And when he sees the next book, and the fame that it brings me, he’ll appreciate my work. On page, and off. Yes, all that.

But now, I see, much more than this, I will achieve my prime goal: I will be as close to Adam again as I was in book three.