with all the hazards that implied. He wasn’t scared of much: of his own mind, sometimes, which had concocted gruesome imaginary friends in his childhood, and the things that had happened to him after those apparitions.
‘I am,’ said James bleakly. ‘I’m frightened of me.’
Gabriel didn’t understand.
‘But I can help you with your missing persons thing, if you want that,’ James continued. ‘I’d like to, if you’re okay with it. With me. Helping.’
‘It’d be good to have some help, to be honest,’ said Gabriel. ‘Whatever’s going on is bad and getting worse. And, well,’ here he tried a lopsided smile, ‘If you’re a bit dangerous, that could be a good thing. To have some of the danger on my side, if you know what I mean.’
Hell, Gabriel didn’t even know what he meant, but the idea of having James helping him out with whatever this whole mess turned out to be made him feel, if not precisely confident, then less vulnerable. The idea of having someone at his back was novel and appealing. That someone being James made him feel he could take on anything.
You’re an idiot, Dare, he derided himself, He’s just told you that nothing’s ever happening between you. Besides. He dates women.
Yes, and he also said that you’re lovely. And he came home early from that one date. And so what if he’s a fuck-up. Aren’t we all?
Gabriel inhaled slowly, calming thoughts that were leaping way too far ahead.
‘We’d best get back to your questions, then,’ he said, in a commendably level tone. ‘I’m sure you’d like more background information.’
James tapped the edge of his empty tea cup. ‘You lived on the streets for a time, I gather. That’s how you know these folk. Maybe it’s why they trust you.’
Gabriel leaned back in his chair, displaying a studied, feigned nonchalance.
‘My father insisted that I study industrial chemistry, if I was going to study the sciences at all. He’d have preferred business studies, politics and international relations, and I couldn’t think of anything more repugnant. When I switched to a fine arts major in my second year, he said he’d disown me if I didn’t return to the career path he’d selected for me. I didn’t back down. When the money ran out not long after, I kept on with the arts degree with a chemistry minor – it proved handy when I was experimenting with all manner of art media – but things were very precarious. My brother Michael tried the same “play along and you won’t starve” bargaining. I told him where to stick it. I even sent him a helpful sketch in case he was confused about the process.’ Gabriel smiled tightly. ‘And after that I slept on dorm floors until people were sick of me. I sometimes managed to crash in the library for a few days. On and off I was on the street for the night. Or for several.’
Or several weeks or months at a time, but James didn’t need to know that.
‘That must have made it hard to study.’
‘Oh,’ said Gabriel airily, dismissing what had indeed been a very tough few years. ‘It’s marvellous how motivating it can be when you’re telling the old man and his heir to go fuck themselves. There are plenty of ways to survive if you plan. Showers on campus, the occasional boyfriend who’ll let you stay the night and eat jam sandwiches in exchange for a little light housekeeping.’ And things best not gone into now. ‘People waste a lot of food in the cafeteria. I managed. In my third year I ran into Helene again, and she gave me a hand. She was starting up the gallery then, so she let me sleep in the back room for a while until I found a room to rent. She began to represent my work. I got by.’
‘The university couldn’t help you with accommodation?’
‘According to them, I didn’t need help. I had a family with pots of cash. My father liked to remind them of it. He was very keen on me giving up my childish notions.’
‘Which only spurred them on,’ suggested James with a grin.
‘Of course.’ Gabriel decided to confess the worst of it, sure that James wouldn’t do anything as stupid as pity him. ‘The worst patch, over one semester break, had me living in a tunnel for a month during winter. Not an experience I’d care to repeat. My brother Michael said that I was playing at poverty, like I could just go home if...’
Damn. Too much.
‘Going home isn’t always an option,’ observed James gently. ‘People don’t always see that.’
‘No, they don’t,’ agreed Gabriel, ‘It wasn’t one for me. I don’t… I didn’t–’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said James. ‘Nobody chooses to spend a month of English winter in a tunnel if they think there’s an option.’
Gabriel was grateful for the understanding; for not having to explain why he couldn’t return to his father’s house, his father’s authority. ‘The closest they came to making me obedient was after that semester in the tunnel,’ he said. ‘I caught pneumonia and spent the next three weeks in hospital. That’s when Helene found me, found out what my father was playing at, and offered me her store room.’
Gabriel pushed away the wearisome memories. His father’s house – he never thought of it as home – had never been an option, once he’d escaped from it.
The one time he’d tried to make himself go back, he’d ended up hiding in a pub loo having a panic attack so severe it took hours for the shaking to subside. The days of being sent away to psych wards had long gone, replaced by the combined rigours of bullying, control and emotional neglect, but the fear of it remained. And then there were the other things in the house. The things that didn’t frighten him, really, but the consequences of them – hard beds and sedatives and restraints and worse – those things terrified him.
One way or another, he had meant to escape, and he’d managed it, with Helene’s help and without self-medication. It was a triumph of sorts.
‘It was while I was on the street that I began to help my… compatriots of the road. The police can be complete arses if they think they have an easy mark. Being homeless isn’t the same as being useless.’ Gabriel’s tone was scornful. ‘They targeted a homeless man I knew once, accusing him of an assault that he obviously hadn’t done. For a start, he’d been in the park with me for the night. For another, his Parkinson’s was too bad for him to have held a weapon. I persuaded the senior officer on the case to leave the poor bastard alone. A week later I got Detective Inspector Bakare to investigate an attack on Hannah, when nobody seemed to give a damn about a couple of public school boys being vile shits. It was as well I got there before they got their lighter to work. It turned out they’d already killed someone else.’
James, Gabriel noted, was both disgusted and unsurprised. Oh yes, here was a man who knew what the world could be like.
‘After that, people came to me for help with little things. Finding family members, sometimes. Difficulty with the police less often, but they did me the honour of trusting me, and they let me paint them. They live in a hard world, and they’re hard people, but they’re due as much respect as anyone else. A lot more respect than people like my father, who think they can buy and control and punish anyone who doesn’t agree with them.’
Gabriel let out a long, slow breath. He hadn’t meant to get that heated. ‘So, that’s my life story,
