The wrapping paper had brightly coloured Chinese kimonos on it. I didn’t have to look at it to know I would save it. Perhaps even create something to wear based on it. I removed the ribbon, putting it to one side for later. I opened the paper, and then the tissue paper within it, and there, staring at me was a strangely familiar black and yellow stripe.
I pulled the fabric from the parcel, and in my hands were two pairs of black and yellow tights. Adult-sized, opaque, in a wool so soft that they almost slid through my fingers.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I had started to laugh – a joyous, unexpected thing. ‘Oh my God! Where did you get these?’
‘I had them made. You’ll be happy to know I instructed the woman via my brand-new voice recognition software.’
‘Tights?’ Dad and Patrick said in unison.
‘Only the best pair of tights ever.’
My mother peered at them. ‘You know, Louisa, I’m pretty sure you had a pair just like that when you were very little.’
Will and I exchanged a look.
I couldn’t stop beaming. ‘I want to put them on now,’ I said.
‘Jesus Christ, she’ll look like Max Wall in a beehive,’ my father said, shaking his head.
‘Ah Bernard, it’s her birthday. Sure, she can wear what she wants.’
I ran outside and pulled on a pair in the hallway. I pointed a toe, admiring the silliness of them. I don’t think a present had ever made me so happy in my life.
I walked back in. Will let out a small cheer. Granddad banged his hands on the table. Mum and Dad burst out laughing. Patrick just stared.
‘I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ I reached out a hand and touched the back of his shoulder. ‘Really.’
‘There’s a card in there too,’ he said. ‘Open it some other time.’
My parents made a huge fuss of Will when he left.
Dad, who was drunk, kept thanking him for employing me, and made him promise to come back. ‘If I lose my job, maybe I’ll come over and watch the footie with you one day,’ he said.
‘I’d like that,’ said Will, even though I’d never seen him watch a football match.
My mum pressed some leftover mousse on him, wrapping it in a Tupperware container, ‘Seeing as you liked it so much.’
What a gentleman, they would say, for a good hour after he had gone. A real gentleman.
Patrick came out to the hallway, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if perhaps to stop the urge to shake Will’s own. That was my more generous conclusion.
‘Good to meet you, Patrick,’ Will said. ‘And thank you for the … advice.’
‘Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ There was a definite emphasis on the word
‘Well, you’re a lucky man,’ Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. ‘She certainly gives a good bed bath.’ He said it so quickly that the door was closed before Patrick even realized what he had said.
‘You never told me you were giving him bed baths.’
We had gone back to Patrick’s house, a new-build flat on the edge of town. It had been marketed as ‘loft living’, even though it overlooked the retail park, and was no more than three floors high.
‘What does that mean – you wash his dick?’
‘I don’t wash his dick.’ I picked up the cleanser that was one of the few things I was allowed to keep at Patrick’s place, and began to clean off my make-up with sweeping strokes.
‘He just said you did.’
‘He’s teasing you. And after you going on and on about how he
‘So what is it you do for him? You’ve obviously not been giving me the full story.’
‘I do wash him, sometimes, but only down to his underwear.’
Patrick’s stare spoke volumes. Finally, he looked away from me, pulled off his socks and hurled them into the laundry basket. ‘Your job isn’t meant to be about this. No medical stuff, it said. No intimate stuff. It wasn’t part of your job description.’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘You could sue. Constructive dismissal, I think it is, when they change the terms of your job?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. And I do it because Nathan can’t always be there, and it’s horrible for Will to have some complete stranger from an agency handling him. And besides, I’m used to it now. It really doesn’t bother me.’
How could I explain to him – how a body can become so familiar to you? I could change Will’s tubes with a deft professionalism, sponge bathe his naked top half without a break in our conversation. I didn’t even balk at Will’s scars now. For a while, all I had been able to see was a potential suicide. Now he was just Will – maddening, mercurial, clever, funny Will – who patronized me and liked to play Professor Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. His body was just part of the whole package, a thing to be dealt with, at intervals, before we got back to the talking. It had become, I supposed, the least interesting part of him.
‘I just can’t believe … after all we went through … how long it took you to let me come anywhere near you … and here’s some stranger who you’re quite happy to get up close and personal with –’
