arrived with their first course at that inopportune moment. “This looks wonderful.”
Will managed to hold back his laugh until the waiter departed. Phoebe made a comically embarrassed face. “Well, that serves me right. Anyway, you didn’t want to hear me rattle on about Mother. How are you? What’s happened with the High-Low?”
Will lifted a hand, not dramatically, but enough that she stopped at once, eyes widening. “Oh. Is it hush-hush?”
“Well, you know. Kim business.”
She pressed her lips together, smiling. “Naturally. Talking of whom, where on earth is he? I haven’t heard from him in days.”
“Nor have I.” Will wasn’t sure if it helped that Kim hadn’t been chatting to Phoebe. It didn’t make things worse, but that was a pretty low bar. “He’s vanished again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is he being Kimmish?”
“Yes. Yes, he blasted well is.”
“Oh, darling. I did think—not that it’s my business.”
“Does he trust you, Fee?” The words spilled out without him quite meaning to speak them. “Sorry. That’s not my business.”
“It’s a fair question,” Phoebe said. “Does he? As far as it goes. He trusts me with some things, but not everything by a very long way. He loves me, but he doesn’t tell me about what matters most. He holds onto things that hurt as if it would be cheating to let anyone help.”
“He told me some things,” Will said, leaning forward a little as if the very mention was secret. “About what happened with his brother. I thought he was talking to me. And now he’s gone again, and I think he’s hiding something. Again.”
“Something he ought to share.” Phoebe was watching his face. “Personal or professional?”
“Professional, but—well, it is personal. If he asks me to do things and then slams the door in my face, it’s personal.”
“Yes,” Phoebe said. “It is. And he ought to know better, and he does know better, and he ought to do better. I couldn’t agree more.”
It was just words, just a bit of sympathy and understanding. There was no reason for Will to feel a hard lump in his throat. “Yes, he ought. Thanks, Phoebe. I’m sorry, I brought you here just to moan at you.”
“We clearly both needed a moan. It’s a very good thing you called or we’d have ruined two other people’s lunches instead. I am sorry, Will. I wish I could help.”
“You have,” Will said sincerely. “If I make you feel safe, you make me feel better.”
“I’m glad of that.” She forked up a bit of salad. “I suppose one needn’t consider that we’re the people Kim wants around him.”
“Or the people he pushes away.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “He does, doesn’t he.”
“He does something bad, one of those his-own-worst-enemy things, and he makes sure not to let anybody forgive him for it, still less tell him not to be such a, a—” He couldn’t think of a term fit for a lady’s ears.
“Prima donna,” Phoebe said. “Oooh, for once I knew what you meant, that’s new. And you’re quite right. He’s never happier than when he’s making himself miserable. Why now, though? I know you and he were getting on better. What changed?”
Their visit to the High-Low had changed things, but Will couldn’t talk about that. He gave an awkward shrug. She looked at him with uncomfortable shrewdness, then shook her head. “Honestly. The bloody man.”
Will blinked. Phoebe raised her wineglass with a wry smile, and he clinked it. “Bloody man.”
TIME WITH PHOEBE MADE him feel better for a while, as did a trip to the cinema so that he wasn’t sitting around waiting, but as Thursday passed without a word, it took the remnants of his patience with it. He went to the pub on Thursday night, threw his darts rather too hard for accuracy, and returned home around eleven to see electric light from upstairs illuminating the stairwell.
He couldn’t even be bothered with subtlety. “Get your arse down here so I can kick it!”
“Are you talking to a burglar, or to me?” Kim called down.
“Either,” Will snapped, and stamped up the stairs.
Kim was in his armchair again. He looked shocking.
“Jesus,” Will said. “Have you not slept?”
“Slept? Yes, I’m sure I did that.” He was grey, his eyes dark slits, like a bad black-and-white cartoon of himself. “Not for a while, but I’m sure I did at some point.”
“Feeling guilty, are we?”
“Oooh. Temper.”
“I bloody killed someone on Sunday, Kim. During the commission of a felony. A word would have been nice, along the lines of all hushed up, don’t worry about it.”
“That’s a