I had prepared for this by drinking an awful lot of coffee and I was kind of on a high, a precarious brittle one that felt like speed cut with something dodgy.
“You look like shite,” Leon said to me, anxiously, leaning forwards to examine my face. “Are you OK?”
“Thanks, dude.”
“No, seriously. Are you eating?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’ve got every right to be pretty ragged,” Susanna said. “You got the worst of this. And you’ve been a trouper, all through.”
“And here you guys were giving me shite about not being able to handle it,” I said. “Remember that?”
“I know. I take it back. I’m sorry.” She thumped down on the sofa and reached for a bobbled woolen throw. “If I’d known how things were going to go, I’m not sure I’d have asked you to move in here.”
“I wouldn’t have come. Believe me.”
“We owe you.”
“Yeah. You do.”
“Have some of these,” Leon said worriedly, pushing the sausage rolls towards me. “While they’re hot.”
“No thanks,” I said. The smell of them was turning my stomach. What I actually craved, weirdly, was the Mars bars; I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, but I wanted to cram them into my mouth three at a time. “Here.” I passed around wineglasses.
“To Hugo,” Susanna said, raising her glass.
“To Hugo,” Leon and I said.
We clinked glasses. “Ahhh,” Leon said. He settled on the hearthrug, leaning back against the armchair opposite mine, and kicked off his trainers and socks. “Excuse my feet, but I stood in a massive puddle and I’m squelching wet. I need to dry these.” He draped his socks over the hearth rail.
“Those had better be clean,” Susanna said.
“Don’t be giving me shite. You’re there in your socks—”
“Which don’t stink—”
“Neither do mine. Clean as a baby’s bum. Want to smell?” He waved a sock at Susanna, who mimed puking.
“You look good,” I said to Leon. He did. The pinched look had gone out of his face, his hair was gelled up and his stupid edgy wardrobe was back, which I didn’t personally consider a plus but it seemed to be an indicator that he was feeling better. “A lot less stressed.”
“I know,” he said, stretching out his feet to the fire and wiggling his toes happily. “I feel so much better. Is that awful? I can’t handle waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now that it’s actually dropped, I can deal with it.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked, through a Mars bar. “When are you heading back to Berlin? Or are you heading back to Berlin?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“What about your job?” Susanna asked, taking a sausage roll. “And Carsten?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided. Leave me alone.” To me: “What about you? When are you going back to work?”
“I don’t know either,” I said. The creamy rush of the chocolate was hitting me as overwhelmingly and rapturously as coke. I took another one. “Give me a break. It’s only been like a week.”
“You should go back,” Leon said. “It’s not good for your head, being stuck here on your own all day.”
“Speaking of which,” Susanna said. “How’s Melissa?”
“Fine.”
“Where did she go, after the church? Did she have to be somewhere?”
“Melissa’s moved back to her place,” I said.
After a fractional pause: “Is it her mum?” Leon asked, hopefully.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s dumped me. I haven’t heard from her since the funeral.”
“But,” Leon said. He had sat bolt upright. “She was here the last time we were over. That awful night, two days before Hugo had the—”
“Yeah, I know. And when I went up to bed that night, she wasn’t here any more.”
Susanna was picking crumbs off her jumper; I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Was it . . . ?” Leon asked. He had a sausage roll suspended in mid-air, halfway to his mouth. “The stuff we were talking about, that night. Was that what did it?”
“No shit, Sherlock. It’s kind of hard to blame her.”
Susanna said, “Does she think you killed Dominic?”
“I’m pretty sure she does,” I said. “Yeah.”
“Told you,” Susanna said, to Leon.
“Oh, no,” Leon said. He looked stricken. “I like Melissa.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So do I. A lot.”
“She was good for you. I thought you were going to marry her. I was hoping you would.”
“Right. Again, me too.”
Susanna asked, “Did Melissa ever actually say that she thinks you did it?”
“She didn’t need to.”
“So maybe she doesn’t,” Leon said. “Maybe that’s not why she left at all. I mean, all the stress, with Hugo, that