Chapter 1: THE MAN MARCUS TRUSTS

Marcus called him brother the way other men said hello, and Daman had always answered to it.

Five o’clock, and the garden was loud.

Somebody’s speaker crackled on the patio. Over by the cool box a few of the lads were still arguing about Arsenal and Tottenham as if the result might change. Smoke from the barbecue lay flat across the grass. Children ran between the tables, and there were paper plates everywhere, and bottles, and noise.

Marcus took this day seriously. Every summer, the same: friends, colleagues, family, all fed and watered in honour of the lives they’d built. He sent the invitations himself.

Daman had been there under an hour and was already working out when he could go.

He’d come with Rie and the children. Rie in blue, hair pinned up, laughing with a paralegal by the drinks. Amara and Elian had chased a football straight into the flowerbeds and weren’t coming out.

Rie caught his eye across the lawn and mouthed, “You okay?”

He nodded. She held up eight fingers. He nodded again. Eight was bedtime, and she turned back to her conversation.

Lola came across the lawn in a short green dress with a tray of empty glasses on her hip, hair down. Her perfume got to him a second after she did. He noticed before he’d decided to, and found the grill very interesting.

Months of that.

It had started as nothing. Admiration, if you wanted to call it that. Marcus had married a beautiful woman ten years younger than himself and there was no crime in looking. Then looking turned into remembering, which was worse. The way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was nervous. Two fingers to tuck her hair behind her ear. Glasses stacked by size, even here, even at a barbecue. He had no business knowing any of it.

“Tell me honestly. Those steaks aren’t burnt, are they?”

Marcus had come up beside him with the tongs, and his other hand landed on Daman’s shoulder. Daman looked at the grill. Black.

“They’re not burnt.”

Marcus relaxed.

“They’re just black.”

“They’re not black.”

“Practically charcoal, Marcus.”

“You’re supposed to be my brother.”

“I am.”

“Terrible job of showing it.”

Lola laughed somewhere behind them. Daman turned and she was already looking at him. The laugh thinned into something smaller and less sure of itself. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, for a second, and she swallowed and looked away.

Marcus hadn’t turned round at all. He was telling the grill, or Daman, or the garden in general, that nobody appreciated his cooking. Brotherhood was a fixed point for Marcus. You didn’t check it, any more than you checked the floor before you stepped.

Neither of them said anything. Then Marcus was off to his guests, shaking hands, his voice carrying back across the lawn. “Enjoy! Enjoy!”

Lola went back to her glasses.

“You’ve been staring,” she said, not looking up.

“Have I?”

“Don’t play dumb. You’re not dumb.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“God, you’re annoying.”

“And yet you’re still talking to me.”

She rolled her eyes and kept stacking.

He smiled into his wine. Idiot. Standing about on the edge of something and calling it a chat.

Rie came past with a pile of plates and touched his arm, quick and warm. “You’re staying to help him clean up, yeah?”

“Yeah. Won’t be long.”

“Love you.”

She kissed his cheek, and waved to Lola on her way out. “Thanks for having us, hon. Lovely, as always.”

“Thanks for coming, Rie.”

Nothing in it. Why would there be?

By quarter past eight they’d gone. Her text came soon after. Home safe. Don’t be long. Love you. And a heart.

Nine. Ten. The garden thinned out and somebody turned the music down to something you could talk over. By eleven there were only a few left, and Marcus was telling the one about the client who sued over a garden gnome, laughing before he got to the end. By midnight the house was empty, and every flat surface had a bottle on it. Marcus would call it a triumph. He had told everyone he could handle his drink, and he had been wrong.

Daman found him on the living-room sofa with one leg trailing off the edge and his shirt half out, unaware of any of it. He took the blanket from the armchair and put it over him.

Marcus stirred. “Daman?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“You leaving?”

“Eventually.”

Marcus tried to sit up, thought better of it, sank back. He said something, waved a hand towards the hall, and was gone mid-word.

The kitchen lights were low. After all that noise the quiet felt close, nearly private. Daman poured himself some water and stood at the counter. Footsteps behind him. He knew them. He kept looking at the dark window until she spoke.

“You’re still here.”

He turned. “So are you.”

“It’s my house.”

“Technicality.”

She went past him for the glasses on the counter, her reflection sliding across the window. “Go home, Daman. I can manage.”

“I told Rie I’d help.”

“Rie assumed there’d be a host upright to help.”

“Doesn’t make it less true.”

Her mouth twitched, nearly a smile, and she turned back to the glasses.

He put the water down. Neither of them spoke for a while. She looked at him, and he looked back, and there were things he wanted to say, and he thought she had some of her own. Neither said them. She looked away first.

Marcus was snoring in the hall. You could hear it from here.

“He’s hopeless with drink,” Daman said.

“That’s Marcus. He thinks every man can handle it.”

They cleaned until 2:54, when Lola called him to help get Marcus upstairs. After that they went back to the kitchen and she made coffee, and he looked at his watch and then got his coat.

“You could crash in the guest room.”

“Tempting.” He shook his head, half smiling. “Rie’ll be wondering where I am.”

“At half past three? She’ll be thrilled.”

He laughed. “You’re not helping.”

“Wasn’t trying to.”

At the door he stopped. Picked up his keys, put them down, picked them up again. “Tell Marcus I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“I will.”

He looked at her.

“Goodnight, Lola.”

“Goodnight. Give my love to Amara and Elian.”

He nodded and went out, and pulled the door shut quietly behind him.

Gravel under his shoes. The drive home should have taken nine minutes. It took seventeen, with the windows down, going the long way round for no reason he’d have admitted to.

The hall at home was dark. Rie was on the sofa under a blanket, half asleep, where she’d clearly been waiting. She sat up smiling.

“You took ages.” No edge to it, just tired. “Everything okay at Marcus’s?”

“Yeah. He passed out. I had to clear up.”

She nodded. Ten years. Why wouldn’t she believe him?

“Come here. Missed you.”

She patted the sofa and he sat, and she put her head on his chest, warm and heavy. Asleep inside two minutes.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He left it. Rie didn’t stir. It lit up again.

LOLA: I was beginning to believe you’d forgotten about a dear friend.

Daman looked at the dark window.

After that night something shifted, though neither of them said so.

The messages were harmless at first. A joke about a client. A moan about Marcus working too hard. One question that turned into a conversation, and the conversation went on past midnight. There was always a reason to carry on. He caught himself waiting for her name to come up, and whatever he was doing could wait when it did. He never asked himself why he answered. He just did.

At work events Marcus would vanish into some client’s conversation and leave the two of them standing among people who knew them both. Nobody wondered. A man being easy with his friend’s wife, three years married, the four of them at the same dinners. They joked, a little, close enough to the line that they could deny it. Some nights they said hardly anything at all.

Then one night a message came that he had no business answering.

LOLA: Alive, then?

DAMAN: Did someone miss me?

He looked at the screen after he’d sent it. Her reply came quick.

LOLA: Someone’s rather confident in himself.

DAMAN: You left me on read for eight and a half hours. I was practising my humility.

LOLA: That long? Were you counting?

DAMAN: I had plenty of time. Marcus kept talking about expansion.

LOLA: Poor you. I should have sent you Pringles.

DAMAN: Tell your husband I’m charging him for emotional damage.

LOLA: He’s in the shower right now.

He started typing something and deleted it.