Tears glisten in her eyes.

He spits out the toothpaste hurriedly and wipes his mouth. He moves back into the bedroom, banging his hip off the corner of an open drawer. He hisses with the pain then searches for something to say to Bo, but nothing comes to mind, nothing appropriate, more a feeling of panic that this moment is here and after everything, does he want it to happen? No relief, just panic, dread. The awful feelings of having to confront, deal, not hide from it. The natural wonder of second-guessing that comes with being confronted by change.

‘Jack?’ he asks, clearing his throat, awkwardly.

‘No,’ she laughs lightly. ‘Just not you.’

He’s taken aback by the harshness of it.

‘Oh, come on, Sol, it’s hardly shocking to either of us.’

He rubs his hip absentmindedly.

‘You’re in love with her,’ she says quickly. She rubs a single tear away from her cheek. Bo never did crying very well.

Solomon’s eyes widen.

‘Whether you know it or not, you are. I’m never sure with you. What you know and pretend not to, or what you genuinely are blocking out… Sometimes you see everything so clearly and other times you can’t even see yourself, but then, isn’t that all of us?’ She smiles sadly.

Solomon goes to her and wraps his arms around her, tight. She drops the bag and returns it. He kisses her on the top of her head.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t better for you,’ he whispers.

‘Me too,’ she replies, and he pulls away and makes a face. She laughs and picks up her bag. ‘Well, it’s hardly my fault, is it?’

‘Never,’ he grins, shaking his head, feeling a little lost, like he’s losing a part of himself with her.

She stalls at the door, lowers her voice. ‘You were great. We had moments of greatness. Something happened to us when we met her. It’s what you said once: she holds a mirror up to everyone. I didn’t like what I saw of us, not when I saw what you could really be like.’

He feels his face burn.

‘She saved us, I think,’ she adds, eyes tearing up again but trying to stop them. ‘Whoever heard of a saviour that breaks people up? We must have been bad.’

‘We weren’t,’ he says defensively. Their relationship may not have been perfect but they had a lot of good times, or at least, mostly good, but not forever good. He won’t see it tarnished. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Not my parents.’ She makes a face, backing away.

‘Jack?’ he asks again.

‘You need to get over him,’ she says, annoyed.

‘So do you,’ he replies, and she rolls her eyes and turns away.

And despite the situation, Solomon hates Jack even more and wants to hit him even harder.

‘I’m helping StarrQuest with Laura’s final performance, you just need to get her to the studio tomorrow. I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff during the week. Stay away from my underwear drawer.’

‘I’ll try,’ he says, folding his arms and watching her. ‘It’s just the feel of the lace that gets me.’

She tries not to smile as she opens the door. ‘This is the weirdest break-up ever.’

‘It was the weirdest together ever.’

‘I can think of weirder,’ she says, looking over his shoulder.

He turns around, expecting to see Laura and is faced with the closed door of the spare bedroom. By the time he turns back to Bo she has left, and shut the door behind her. He only realises then that his body is trembling lightly, from the shock, from the loss. He looks at Laura’s closed door again and thinks of what Bo said.

In love with her.

Of course he is. He knew it the second he saw her.

He knows now the solution to his dilemma, whether it’s better to protect something precious and rare, or to share it. His love for her was precious, and the intensity of it was rare. His love for her was better not shared. She’d do better without him, he brought her to this point and he hadn’t done her any favours. He was no good for someone like her. Precious was better kept protected.

His role now is to fix the mess he got her into, the mess he made of her. He took her from her nest, fractured her life, left her. He’ll do everything he can to mend and rebuild. He closes his bedroom door and hears a sound from Laura that breaks his heart. Silence.

39

Close to five a.m. Solomon wakes to the sound of the television in the living room. Laura is still awake. He doesn’t hold out much hope for her performance that is technically tonight now that the sun is shining brightly and the morning has begun, and he’s not sure he cares. He weighs up the damage if she doesn’t show up at the studio; Laura doesn’t owe anything to the show, but she certainly owes it to herself. The public have got the wrong impression of her, and while nobody should care what people they don’t know think of them, when somebody has something so beautiful to show the world, when people can benefit from her just being, that’s when they should be understood. She owes it to herself to perform one final time, as herself, in the way that she wants to. He has no idea what Bo has up her sleeve, but he trusts her. The woman she has been for the past twenty-four hours has cemented in his mind her greatness, the reason why she’s won so many awards this year. She’s a champion in her own arena, she can capture hearts and minds through her storytelling.

He can’t go to sleep, and while he’s trying to stay away from Laura, especially in such intimate surroundings, he can’t lie here while she’s out there. He’s hardly going to jump on her without her permission, but he bloody well wants to. Best to stay away. Yet knowing that, he gets out of bed, doesn’t bother with his T-shirt. He opens his bedroom door. She is sitting on the couch, her back to him. She’s watching The Toolin Twins.

He watches her. Wearing one of his T-shirts, her long legs folded on the couch beside her, her hair falling lazily down, messy from her restless lie in her bed. His heart pounds. He’s about to say something, something comforting, something warm about her father and uncle, when she rewinds it for a few seconds and plays it again. He doesn’t want to disturb her hearing whatever she wanted to see or hear again. He waits, watching her. And then, when it’s finished, she rewinds it and plays it again, her back straightening. He looks at the TV, at the brothers on the mountain surveying their sheep. She rewinds and plays it again.

It’s not the right time for him. He was right about it probably never being the right time. He closes his door softly and falls asleep to the sound of Laura rewinding and replaying her father and uncle.

Laura keeps her eyes on the television as she hears the door behind her open. Her skin prickles, goosebumps rise on her skin. She sits there, frozen. Just him and her in the flat; she heard Bo leave, heard some of their conversation, tried not to listen as a mark of respect. She has felt so in the way of their relationship she should at least stay out of their goodbye, let them own that. So she’d lain in bed, eyes wide open, not at all tired despite the hour, the room smelling of Solomon, the same smell she’d smelled in the forest the first day they’d met.