“If something happens to me,” Justin said, “I don’t want my parents called. I don’t want them there. I don’t want them to know.”
“Why not?” He was picking the seal off his bottle of juice, head down. “Justin?”
“Never mind. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No. Tell me, Justin. Why not?”
After a moment Justin said, “I went back to Belfast for Christmas, our first year of postgrad. Not long after you came. Do you remember?”
“Yeah,” I said. He wasn’t looking at me; he was blinking at the cricketers, white and formal as ghosts against the green, the thwack of the bat reaching us late and faraway.
“I told my father and my stepmother that I’m gay. On Christmas Eve.” A small, humorless snort of a laugh. “God love me, I suppose I thought the holiday spirit-peace and good will to all men… And the four of you had taken it so completely in your stride. Do you know what Daniel said, when I told him? He thought it over for a few minutes and then informed me that straight and gay are modern constructs, the concept of sexuality was much more fluid right up through the Renaissance. And Abby rolled her eyes and asked me if I wanted her to act surprised. Rafe was the one I was most worried about-I’m not sure why-but he just grinned and said, ‘Less competition for me.’ Which was sweet of him, actually; it’s not like I was ever much competition to him anyway… It was very comforting, you know. I suppose it made me think that telling my family might not be such a huge big deal, after all.”
“I didn’t realize,” I said. “That you’d told them. You never said.”
“Yes, well,” Justin said. He picked the cling-film away from his sandwich delicately, being careful not to get relish on his fingers. “My stepmother’s a dreadful woman, you know. Really dreadful. Her father’s a carpenter, but she tells people he’s an artisan, whatever she thinks that means, and she never invites him to parties. Everything about her is pure faultless middle-class-the accent, the clothes, the hair, the china patterns, it’s as if she ordered herself from a catalogue-but you can see the incredible effort that goes into every second of it. Marrying her boss must have been like attaining the Holy Grail. I’m not saying my father would have been OK with me if it hadn’t been for her-he looked like he was going to be sick-but she made it so, so much worse. She was hysterical. She told my father she wanted me out of the house, right away. For good.”
“Jesus, Justin.”
“She watches a lot of soap operas,” Justin said. “Erring sons get banished all the time. She kept shrieking, actually shrieking, ‘Think of the boys!’-she meant my half brothers. I don’t know if she thought I was going to convert them or molest them or what, but I said-which was nasty of me, but you can see why I was feeling vicious-I said she had nothing to worry about, no self-respecting gay man would touch either of those hideous little Cabbage Patch Kids with a barge pole. It went downhill from there. She threw things, I said things, the Cabbage Patch Kids actually put down their PlayStations to come see what was happening, she tried to drag them out of the room-presumably so I wouldn’t jump them on the spot-they started shrieking… Finally my father told me it would be better if I wasn’t in the house-‘for the moment,’ as he put it, but we both knew what he meant. He drove me to the station and gave me a hundred pounds. For Christmas.” He pulled the cling-film straight and laid it on the grass, the sandwich neatly in the middle.
“What did you do?” I asked quietly.
“Over Christmas? Stayed in my flat, mostly. Bought a hundred-quid bottle of whiskey. Felt sorry for myself.” He gave me a wry half smile. “I know: I should have told you I was back in town. But… well, pride, I suppose. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. I know none of you would have asked, but you couldn’t have helped wondering, and you’re all too sharp for your own good. Someone would have guessed.”
The way he was sitting-knees pulled up, feet neatly together-rucked up his trousers; he was wearing gray socks worn thin by too much washing, and his ankles were delicate and bony as a boy’s. I reached over and covered one of them with my hand. It was warm and solid and my fingers almost circled it.
“No, it’s all right,” Justin said, and when I looked up I saw that he was smiling at me, properly this time. “Really and truly, it is. At first it did upset me a lot; I felt like I was orphaned, homeless-honestly, if you could have seen the level of melodrama going on in my head… But I don’t think about it any more, not since the house. I don’t even know why I brought it up.”
“My fault,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He gave my hand a little fingertip pat. “If you really want to get in touch with your parents, then… well, it’s none of my business, is it? All I’m saying is, don’t forget: we’ve all got reasons why we decided no pasts. It’s not just me. Rafe… Well, you’ve heard his father.”
I nodded. “He’s a git.”
