And of course Melissa, bless her sunflower heart, couldn’t turn away from that. Her face lighting up: “Yes! Do. That would be wonderful. And tell Leon that. He’ll understand.”
“I will.” That was a good idea, actually. “I need to know what I did to him, though. If I did anything. Could you help me?”
That pulled her eyebrows together. “Me? How?”
“Could you ask Leon and Susanna what I was like, back then? It’s a natural enough question; it’s the same as you wanting to look at Hugo’s old photos. Obviously they’re going to tell you I was a great guy, but could you keep pushing? I’ll help things along; I just need you to do the actual asking.”
“Why can’t you? Like you said, if you did anything bad, they won’t want to tell me. You could ask when I’m not there. I’ll go to bed early.”
The truth was, of course, that if I started poking around asking questions Leon was bound to turn wary, and probably Susanna too, depending. “The thing is,” I said, taking a breath and meeting Melissa’s eyes in the mirror, “I’d rather they didn’t know how badly my memory’s messed up. I know that’s stupid. Obviously they probably have some idea that I’m not a hundred percent, but I’ve been working really hard to act at least halfway normal around them, and I’m hoping I’ve done OK. If I go in there like, ‘Uhhh, guys, just wondering, any chance you could refresh my memory of, like, our entire teens?’ then that’s down the tubes. And I just . . . I can’t stand the idea of them feeling sorry for me.”
She could hardly shoot that down. “I understand. I don’t think you’re badly messed up, Toby, I really don’t, but . . .” She saw my wince. “I’ll ask.”
I blew out a breath of relief. “God, that’s a load off my mind. I’ve spent the whole day going round in circles trying to figure out a way to do it myself—I mean, I bet there is one, but my head . . . If you can do it, that’s brilliant. And could you ask about Dominic, too? What he was like? If they won’t rat me out, they might say enough about him to give me some idea what was going on. And that won’t seem weird, either: God knows he’s a big enough part of our lives right now, there’s every reason why you’d want to get some idea of him.” It occurred to me, for the first time, to wonder why Melissa hadn’t in fact asked anything about Dominic at all.
She said, “Is this about what happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” I said frankly, turning around to face her. “Let’s be honest, there’s a chance it could turn out to be connected—I can’t see how, but who knows, at this stage. But that’s not the main point.”
For a moment I thought she was going to balk, but then she nodded. “OK. I can ask about him.”
“Leave it till after Hugo’s gone to bed. If they do come out with anything awful that I did, he doesn’t need to hear about it.” And, of course, it would take me a couple of hours to get Leon good and drunk. I’d been down to the offie that morning for impressive quantities of gin and tonic, and I was going to be doing the pouring.
“No, you’re right. I’ll do that.”
“And just . . . keep in mind that everything you’re asking about, that was ten years ago. OK? I was a stupid arsehole kid. And remember, Su and Leon both exaggerate. If they say I did something really horrific, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Whatever comes up, could you give me the benefit of the doubt?”
I meant this part, from the heart—there was, after all, a small but non-zero chance that Leon was going to try hinting that I was a murderer. It must have showed. Melissa came to me, put her hands on my arms and looked up into my face. “Of course I will,” she said, very seriously. “Always.”
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled her close for a one-armed hug. “Thank you so much, baby. It’ll all be fine. We’re a good team, you and me. Yeah?”
“We are,” Melissa said. “Now”—a quick breath, a small nod to herself—“let me go find those scissors.” She tiptoed to kiss me on the nose and left me to it, and I went back to my shaving and my Robbie