A deep-pitched laugh ripples from his throat. ‘I know. Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself.’
There’s only one thing to do: stick out my tongue, in the childish gesture that was a favourite of mine when I was small and he was overbearing.
He mimics the gesture: a grown man sticking his tongue out in answer.
This is why we are special, because we still connect with one another as a brother and sister as though the years of pain growing up have not occurred. Perhaps because we had already grown up when we were still so young. Perhaps because he shares the same parents-shaped hole. The same journey of pain and isolation.
The moment takes me back through the years to the hours we spent in foster homes when we retired to the shared bedroom he insisted on, to the place where it was just us. The place where I was wholly understood and we clung to each other because there was never anyone else to rely on.
The bipolar medicine bottle is left on the bed as he stands.
I grasp his hand, holding it tight and saying nothing because we do not need to speak to say things.
His fingers squeeze mine, telling me the things I know about what he feels for me.
When his hand slips out of mine it is always a conscious decision on my part to let him go to Mim and the boys. I learned to let go of him a long time ago. But when I want him back, he always comes.
‘Goodnight.’ His baritone rings around the room.
‘Goodnight. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
6 weeks and 2 days after the fall.
Chiming bells ring close to my ear. My hand reaches out on autopilot to find my phone on the chest of drawers. My brain is heavy and clogged with the dulling interference of prescription drugs. The sound rings out again. I look at the clock on the bedside chest by my phone. The vivid green numbers tick over to 9:14. Simon and Mim will have left with the children. It will be a message from Chloe.
I pick up the phone, squinting through tired eyes. It’s not a message. It’s a Facebook notification telling me that Robert Dowling has accepted my friend request.
Life rushes into my brain, as though a switch has turned my body on.
I want to post a thank you on his wall, for making friends.
But if I do that I’ll stand out and perhaps he hasn’t realised he doesn’t know me.
I am a similar age to Louise – he might have assumed I was a friend of hers.
It makes more sense to be cautious, stay quiet and remain an observer of his life – of Louise’s old life.
My legs bend under the duvet. My arm embraces my knees as his Facebook page opens on the small screen of my phone. Picture after picture slides past under my thumb. Most of them are of the children, lots more than those on his public posts. The other pictures are dated before Louise’s death, and posted privately by her.
I scroll back through time, just over a year, then stop on something unusual. The children are with a blond man. The girl’s bottom is balancing on his forearm, her fingers clinging to the back of his neck in a way that says she is used to the position. The man’s other hand is on the boy’s head and that too looks like a frequent gesture that is well known by the boy.
I can’t see the man’s face. He’s looking away from the camera at a door that must lead out of the room. Only the girl is looking at the camera, waving with her free hand.
The text above the image says, ‘Louise Lovett, Alex has picked up the children and is on his way.’ The post is marked as just for friends, but it reads as a message that is just for Robert’s daughter.
Alex.
The man’s hair is a riot of messy curls like the boy’s. The same curls are looser in the girl’s longer hair. Louise did not have curly hair.
Was she married when she died?
It is obvious she married at some point because her surname was different from her parents’ but this is the first hint of a partner being involved in her life.
The man’s left hand is hidden. I can’t see if he’s wearing a ring. But even if she was married a year ago she might have been divorced or separated by the time she died.
I want to know more about this. Frustration grips at me, more a feeling in my stomach than my heart, a feeling that is my desire, not Louise’s.
I open Google on my phone and type, ‘Alexander Lovett’. Frustration switches to urgency that might be Louise’s.
The surname is worth a try.
Images of the children flood my head as the heart pulses faster.
The usual social media search links come up. But there’s something different amongst the links; the word photographer appears again and again. I click to the second page of links and ‘Alexander Lovett photographer’ appears in the text under nearly every link.
‘Alexander Lovett on The Perfect Image’, one of the links says in the heading. It is posted on a country-living magazine website. I click on that. The article is full of beautiful images of the city of Bath. The back arrow returns me to the search results. I want to find his business link.
www.AlexanderLovettPhotography.co.uk.
Click.
The website displays a clean-edged contemporary style. The Instagram link takes me to post after post of pictures of beautiful places, people and nature. There are no pictures of him or anything personal.
I go back and click the Facebook link to a business page that I Like before scanning through the same professional images. There’s nothing personal on here either.
I want a picture of him so I can tell if this photographer is the father of Louise’s children.
There is an About us tab on the website. Click.
The Team, it says at the top of the page, and beneath the heading, centre screen, there is a picture of Alex Lovett. He has tight curls in his blond hair.
He’s looking into the camera lens in a way that communicates with the person behind the camera. His eyes, which I imagine are blue in some lights but are pale ice-grey in this image, are bright and full of an expression that tells me a moment after the camera has clicked he’s spoken.
I feel as if Louise is staring at him through my eyes. The energy in my heartbeat has stalled as she stares, the pulse weakening.
He’s remarkable. The sort of man I would look at if I walked past him in the street. The sort of man any woman who liked men would look at if they walked past him in a street.
Very little is written beneath his image, just information about his professional capability and achievements.
Louise lived with this man. If not at the point she died, for years at least, because they had children.
There is a Contact us tab at the bottom of the webpage.
The studio address is in the city of Bath. By train, Bath is about half an hour further on from Swindon.
The business is a limited company; it will be registered with Companies House. The registration might record Alex’s home address.
The site shows a correspondence address in Bath that is different from the studio’s address.
The phone drops out of my hand onto the duvet. Instead I pick up the laptop. This needs a bigger screen and Google Earth. As the lid lifts the screen comes to life. I glance over to get the