Page 76 of Proof By Contradiction
He notices, of course, he notices. He strokes his thumb across my knuckle once and stays.
Neither of us speaks. The kitchen clock does the slow thing clocks do when the seconds are heavier than usual.
I am being seen.
I keep holding on.
Later—how much later I couldn’t say; the clock has given up on being useful—Laurence is making a fresh pot of coffee, and I’m still at the table with the notebook closed under my hand like a hot thing.
His flat breathes with background noise. Boiler tick, fridge hum. Rain deciding whether to come back.
He sets a cup in front of me. Sits down. Doesn’t reach for his own yet.
‘Who brought you up, Ewan?’
He asks it without embarrassment. With room in it for any answer at all.
I look at the notebook. Safer than looking at him.
‘Mum and Ron.’
‘Your mother and your brother.’
‘Mostly Ron.’ I rub my thumb along the edge of the notebook cover. ‘Mum was there. Mum’s always been there. But Mum’s the one who kept the house standing and the fridge full and the shouting away from the walls, and that’s a full-time job with my dad in it. She didn’t have a lot left over by the time she got to me.’
Laurence waits.
‘And my dad stopped having a lot to say to me when I was thirteen.’
Nothing moves in his face except his attention.
‘I came out. Thirteen. Dinner table, fish fingers and peas. Not even planned. It just came out of my face in the middle of an argument about a PE kit. My dad went very quiet and put his fork down and looked at his plate for a long time. Then he finished his food, got up, and went to watch the football in the front room, and that was about it.’
I pick at the corner of the cover.
‘He still talks to me. Work. Weather. Whether the boiler’s making that noise again. He just doesn’t talk to me the same way. Not anymore. He hasn’t looked at me the same way since. It’s like there’s a version of me he stopped being able to see, and he hasn’t bothered finding the new one.’
Laurence nods once. Doesn’t speak.
‘My mum cried that night. Then she opened the door to my room and came and sat on my bed. Said, I don’t know what I’mmeant to say here, but I love you and I’ll learn whatever I need to learn.’
My throat does something inconvenient.
‘My mum’s a good one. My dad’s not a bad one. He’s just a silent one.’
Laurence’s left hand is flat on the table between us. An inch from mine. The heat of him shifts at the boundary.
‘And your brother?’
‘Ron. Ronan. He’s eight years older than me.’
The maths arrives before I can soften it.
‘So when it happened, he was twenty-one. Doing his second year on site. Still living at ours because London rents are London rents. And when my dad pushed his fork away at the table, Ron stood up and said,right, I’m walking Ewan up the road.’
The cup steams between us.
‘He walked me round the block three times without saying anything. Then he said,you alright, and I said,yeah, and he said,good, and that was the conversation. That was the whole conversation.’
