sighed, stamped her foot a little. ‘Haven’t got a spare cigarette, have you?’
‘You can share mine. I don’t really smoke any more anyway. It’s just…that kind of night. And here you are on my doorstep, wanting to drag it all out.’
‘I don’t want to drag it out, I want to apologise.’ She toked on the cigarette he offered her, trying not to cough as she breathed out. ‘I want to explain.’
Lucas rubbed the back of his neck, stretching. ‘Meg, you think we could just ignore all that stuff tonight? Why don’t you just come in, have a cuppa, and tell me about your life?’
His house wasn’t what she’d expected. It was an adult abode. Sure there were music posters, but they were in posh frames, and everything had a very fitted look about it. He had sofa cushions, for Christ’s sake. She had to wonder if Estelle had it wrong, if there was a woman in his life to make this all look so…complete. Not that she cared, of course. It had been a long time. She’d expected him to move on, she wanted it. She just didn’t want to see it.
Megan picked at her nail varnish, hovering in the living room as he disappeared into the corner of the open-plan kitchen to put the kettle on.
‘This isn’t what I expected,’ she told him, unwinding her scarf.
‘Thinking more black walls and neon signs?’ he called back, grin in place.
‘Was thinking more bachelor pad. Technology and smooth lines, massive TV, all that bloke stuff.’
Lucas raised an eyebrow. ‘Was I ever your average bloke?’
She twitched her mouth in assent. ‘Nope.’
Lucas shrugged and got two mugs from the cupboard. ‘To be fair, a lot of this stuff’s Mum’s. She left it to me.’
‘Your mum’s…gone?’ Her chest contracted a little. This was what happened when you didn’t talk. His mum was good woman, always about with tea and cake, let them get away with murder up in his room, never complained about the music, came to every gig she could. Her life was a mess, but she was a good person…
‘Calm down, Meg, she’s gone to Spain. Living with this bloke out there who sells time shares or something. I’m sure she’ll come running back when it all falls apart.’
Meg shrugged, he wasn’t wrong. As lovely as Linda Bright was, things never seemed to stick for her.
‘How’s Clare?’
‘Really well.’ He smiled at the thought of his sister, as he pushed a bright blue ceramic mug over towards her. ‘She’s on a year studying abroad with university, she’s in Tanzania now, I think. Geographical something…something. She wants to save the world, anyway.’
‘Did she find a community at the university?’ Megan knew all too well just how brilliant deaf kids could become at interacting, but surely university was a different thing altogether.
‘God, I forgot you didn’t know.’ Lucas’ eyes lit up, smiling at the kitchen counter as he tapped his fingers. ‘Clare got a cochlear implant. She can hear a fairly decent amount now. Put her off her balance quite a bit at the beginning, but…’
‘That’s amazing, Luke! That’s…it’s just so great! ’ Megan thought back to the shy little girl with the reddish brown hair who always used to look up at her with those massive eyes, lipreading and gesturing.
‘I’m sad I couldn’t see her,’ Megan said, ‘I’ve missed her. And Skye’s an ace with sign language, she would have loved to have a proper conversation.’
‘Your daughter knows how to sign,’ Lucas said, ‘but you don’t have any deaf people in your family. Is your partner deaf?’
‘Partner?’
‘Jeremy? Isn’t that what Skye said? The guy who told her what making assumptions made you?’ His face was inscrutable, but there was such an air of nonchalance in his voice that she might have believed he cared.
‘Jeremy is a lodger who lives with us,’ Megan explained, ‘he’s been a good friend, and bad influence for years.’
‘So you’re not married then.’
‘Why would I be married?’
Lucas shrugged, not looking at her. ‘Dunno. Just what people do, isn’t it?’
‘You married?’
He looked around him at his flat. ‘Does it look like I’m married?’
She followed his gaze, taking in the throw cushions, the kaftan arranged on the edge of the sofa, the candles burning on the mantlepiece. ‘Well, kinda.’
‘I was. For a bit,’ he offered, blue eyes waiting for her to make a judgement.
‘What happened?’
‘We were young, we met on the road. Musicians aren’t meant to marry. At least not while you’re touring. We broke up. I wrote a song called “One Month Divorced”. She wrote a song called “My Bastard Guitarist Love”. She got a top twenty hit, and I moved back here. End of.’
Megan suspected there was more to it than that, but she wasn’t in any position to start digging for information. She picked up her mug and moved over to the sofa, relaxing into it. She felt the give as he sat down next to her, close enough to feel his warmth, but not close enough to touch. Her heart started rattling a little in her chest, and she tapped her fingertips together in a steady rhythm.
‘Am I making you nervous, Meg?’ Lucas asked with a smile in his voice.
‘No, why?’
‘Because you’re doing that fingertip thing you always used to do.’
She looked down at her hands, and balled them into fists.
‘Remember you did that before we had sex for the first time? It made me laugh.’
‘Well, you couldn’t stop your hands from shaking, so I wasn’t the only one who was scared,’ Megan huffed.
‘Very true.’ Lucas leaned back, surveyed his room, trying to see it through her eyes. Did he look successful, interesting? Lonely? Or did he look like a sad old git with his papers to mark, his guitars sitting in the corner as if screaming out to the world that he never really played in that same way any more?
‘So….you’re a music teacher,’ Megan stated, pointing at the papers on the coffee table.
‘I know, right? I spend years trying to get out of that place and now I’m walking the halls again.’
‘Do you like it?’ Megan pulled her legs up underneath her, curling into the sofa. She liked to watch him, soaking in every detail of this new, grown up Lucas. Did he still pre-roll all his cigarettes and have them sitting in a little case? Did he still wake up at six am no matter what, before mumbling and falling asleep again? His eyes seemed bluer, and his face seemed hardened, that stubble
