Laurence is at the hob.
The back. The shoulder. Black t-shirt, one of mine, two sizes too small on him, the sleeve clung to the bicep where he's reached. MANCHESTER PRIDE across the chest in pink block letters with a rainbow stripe under it — a freebie I picked up at the gate two summers ago, where Femi and I lost each other in ten minutes and I spent the afternoon dancing with strangers in the rain and getting handed paper flags by a man dressed as a peach. Laurence stayed home that year; three weeks after my boxes, too soon for crowds, and neither of us said it out loud. Last August he came with me. Linen, ironed, a pin he'd kept in a drawer for nine years. He cried at the vigil and has declined to discuss it since. Now he wears the souvenir of the one he missed at half ten on a Saturday morning like it's a plain black shirt. He pretends not to notice what's on it. I notice for both of us.
Hair wet at the nape from the shower. The beard's in its sixth week, dark coming in darker, a greying patch above the left jaw he doesn't know about and a clean line at the throat where I edged it for him last Tuesday because he can't see the line in the bathroom mirror without taking the glasses off, and the bathroom mirror won't take the glasses, and we go round and round on this every three days.
The forearm when he stirs.
The strip of skin when the t-shirt rides up at the back where he reaches for the salt. The dip above the hip. The waistband. The dark line below it I can't see from this angle but I know is there.
The way he stands — one hip into the counter, the weight off the bad knee.
Have I got time to suck him off before the train? Sod the eggs.
I have not made my brain fit for the next four hours yet. The eggs are going. The moka pot's done shuddering on the hob. My brother arrives at platform three in seventy-two minutes. I am supposed to be thinking about that. The back of his neck is what my eyes are doing.
Christ. Not today.
He calls the beard experimentation, like a verdict pending. Some mornings he runs a thumb along the jaw line as if he might shave it off after breakfast and never quite gets to the razor. I loved him without it. I love him with it. Six weeks of a slightly different shape and the slightly different shape has my attention. I call him bear when I'm being affectionate. Scratchy when he scrapes me at breakfast. Wookiee when I'm taking the piss. Hairy Maclary once, which made him laugh into the sink.
He's stood at the pan with the spatula and the radio low. The apron — navy cotton, the one I bought him last Christmas — has a coffee stain on the lower left I told him to soak twice and he didn't because he says the stain is load-bearing now, Ewan, let it stay. Saturday eggs. The kitchen smells of butter and the burnt edge of the toast that Laurence always burns because he can't time toast and a pan at once, and he won't admit it.
I drink the coffee he put on the table without asking. Three pulls and the brain comes online.
'Have you got the keys.'
'In the bowl.'
'You said that yesterday and they were in your jacket.'
He turns. Wooden spatula. The look over the rims. 'Did I.'
'Yes.'
'Bowl now.'
I check the bowl. The keys are in the bowl. The keyring is the one I bought from a charity shop on Beech Road that says LEGALLY FIT and I'm still not sure if it's aimed at me and Laurence laughs at it once a week.
'Eat,' he says.
'I'm not hungry.'
'Eat.'
I sit. He puts the plate in front of me. Eggs, two slices of toast (one burnt, one not), a thumb of brown sauce on the edge of the plate that he knows I'll wipe through. His thumb brushes the nape on the way past. Brief. Already done by the time I register it. He watches me lift the fork and only then turns back to his own plate.
'You're nervous.'
'I'm not nervous.'
'Your shoulders are at your ears.'
'I was thinking I'd like your legs at my ears.'
He sets the toast down. Picks it back up.
'Eat your eggs.'
'I'm making a point.'
'Eat them anyway.'
He sits across from me. Knee against mine under the table, found without looking. He doesn't comment on it. He never does. He just finds the knee and parks it there as if the knee's a thing he keeps in his pocket and remembered to take out. The light through the kitchen window's the colour Manchester does in January — like someone forgot to switch it fully on. The radio's playing a song from the nineties I don't recognise because I wasn't alive yet, technically, and Laurence is humming it like he used to know all the words and now only remembers the chorus.
I push the egg around.
'Look,' I say. 'I've driven exactly five people anywhere. You twice, Femi twice, two driving examiners — one of whom failed me — and a Tesco delivery driver who'd parked us in.'
'You drove him.'
'I moved his van six feet so we could leave. That counts.'
'It does.'
'Ron's not six feet.'
He bites the toast. Chews. Considers.
'You parallel parked six weeks ago,' he says, 'in the rain, in front of a man scribbling on a clipboard, on the second attempt. Ron is, with respect, easier.'
'Don't bring up the second attempt.'
'You passed the second attempt.'
'After mounting a kerb on the first.'
'It was a low kerb.'
'It was on the test.'
'It was on the test that you passed, eventually, with merit on observation.'
'There is no merit on observation in the driving test.'
'There should be. You have it. I'm awarding it retroactively.'
He's smiling into his toast. It's the smile he does in the morning before the world has taken anything from him — small, private, the corners of the eyes already in on the joke.
I let him have it.
'When I told Mum I'd got the licence,' I say, 'do you know what she said.'
'Tell me.'
'She said finally, and then she said don't tell your brother yet. And then she said actually do tell him, he could do with a laugh.'
'There you are then.'
'There I am then what.'
'He'll think Christmas has come back round. His brother behind the wheel, picking him up. He'll be insufferable.'
'He'll be wrecked.' I take a bite without meaning to. The egg's perfect. I'd never tell him that. 'Train from Euston, two bags, that thermos Mum gives everyone. He'll want a shower and a sit-down before he can speak.'
'Then drive him here for both before you drop him at the Airbnb.'
'That was my plan.'
'I know.' He looks up. Glasses on for the morning paper that's still folded under the salt. 'I'm just glad you'll let me feed him.'
I push my plate towards him with the toast intact. He pulls it back, takes the toast, eats it standing up because he's already standing again, going to put the moka pot back on the hob for the second round. The flat is twenty-eight square metres and he does eight thousand steps a day in it.
I get up to refill my mug. He's at the hob with his back to me. I press past him at the counter — chest to the back of his shoulder, hand low on his hip, longer than I need to. He doesn't move out of the way. He never does. He likes being passed. He turns his head a quarter and the beard catches my jaw.
'Ewan.'
'What.'
'Refill that.'
'I am.'
I'm not. I'm leaning into him, the way I will not be leaning into him in seventy minutes when there are other Carricks in the room. He laughs and elbows me off, mildly. I pour. I sit back down.
'You've still got yesterday's eyeliner on,' he says. From the hob.
'Have I.'
'On the left.'
I rub the lid. Half comes off on my thumb. Half stays.
'You could've told me.'
'I prefer it on you.'
He's said this twice before in two years, both times like he was reading the weather.
His mum likes me, which is a thing she said by writing Ewan on this year's Christmas card without a question mark — the way Ewan? would have read on last year's. Haldrey women don't have plenary speeches. They have ink choices.
'I'll drive carefully,' I say. To the empty chair more than to him.
'I know,' he says. From the hob. 'You always do everything carefully these days. It's terrifying.'
The car's parked round the corner because the residents' bay outside our door is reserved for a man called Geoff who doesn't drive but owns the space on principle. Polo, dark blue, 2009, dent on the driver door from a Beech Road wheelie bin the second week we had it. Two thousand and eight hundred pounds. Half Laurence's, half mine — bookshop wages counted out in twenties on the kitchen table, and I would not be talked down. The most adult purchase of my life.
I don't pay rent. It's his flat, his name on the tenancy, and I cover what I can of the bills, which isn't half and we both know it and neither of us has made it a conversation. The car's the thing I went halves on and meant it. Somewhere this year I stopped feeling like a boy with a key to a man's flat and started feeling like someone who lives here.
It replaced the Astra Laurence had driven down from Cambridge and kept running through three garages and a winter where the heater worked only on demist. Last November the garage on Mauldeth Road said Doctor Haldrey, this is two grand on a car worth maybe nine hundred, and Laurence said right, and that was the Astra.
The Polo found us via a man called Trevor in Stockport who explained the bin dent with the seriousness of a confession. Laurence drove it round the block once, came back saying the clutch was fine. We took it.
A parking ticket from 2019 was still in the glove box when we got it. Trevor's, maybe. We never asked.
I open the boot. Check it. Already checked it twice last night but I'm a man with a brother and an Airbnb to find. Blanket, jump pack, de-icer. The car is the cleanest thing I have ever owned.
Laurence comes out with the second coffee in a travel mug.
'For me?'
'For Ron.'
I take it. 'He'll be touched.'
'He won't.'
'No. But he'll drink it.'
'That's the same thing in our family.'
He stands by the driver door for a second, hands in his pockets, watching me look at the car.
'What.'
'I just—' He shakes his head. 'I'm going to admit something embarrassing.'
'Now?'
'It'll be quick.'
'Go on.'
'I love you driving.'
I stare at him.
He shrugs. 'I like watching you drive. That's the whole of the sentence. Don't ask me to explain it.'
'You said it like an academic.'
'I said it because my partner got his licence at twenty.'
'On the second attempt.'
'On the second attempt, with merit on observation.'
'There is no—'
'I know there isn't.'
'Remind me,' I say, 'who learned to drive in a stick-shift Audi when he was seventeen.'
'I did.'
'And drove it into a wall.'
'It was a low wall.'
'It was on a driving lesson.'
'The instructor was understanding.'
'How fast.'
'Reverse gear. I'd rather not revisit it.'
'Don't lecture me about the second attempt, then.'
'Different decade, Carrick. Different gearbox. Mostly different brain.'
'You're appalling.'
'I am.'
He kisses me on the side of the mouth before I can finish. Quick. Almost paternal except for the way his hand holds my nape for the half-second after. His finger catches the silver chain at my throat. Briefly. He's stopped explaining what he likes about it — the chain, the kohl I haven't washed off, the eyeliner when I bother. He said it once a year ago — I like that you don't look like the version of you my mother would prefer — and never said it again. Today I'm in the dark jeans because we're going to my brother. The chain stays. The rings stay. The silver one on the ring finger — right hand — that he put by the hob in October and didn't make a speech about. He runs a thumb over the chain link and steps back.
I have to go.
I have to go for several reasons, all of them honest, only one of which is my brother.
I get in. Start the engine. The Polo coughs once and then settles, which is what the Polo does. Laurence taps the roof twice and steps back.
The first traffic light on Beech Road is red. I sit there with the travel mug for my brother in the cup holder and my licence in the wallet under my phone and one of Laurence's hairs on the sleeve of my jumper, and I think: you are absurd, Ewan Carrick, and you are doing it anyway.
The light goes green. I drive.
Manchester at half eleven on a Saturday is one part traffic and three parts weather. The roads are wet. The sky is grey. The radio's doing the football phone-in and a man called John from Stockport is upset about a substitution that happened midweek. Laurence's voice in my head says change it, and I do, and the new station is playing the same nineties song from the kitchen, and I laugh on my own in the car like a knob.
Piccadilly approach. I've done this on foot a hundred times. I've never done it as the bloke in the lane filtering left towards the short stay. The lane discipline is terrifying. People are beeping before you've done anything. I get to the entrance and there's a barrier and a sign with prices that make me think the Polo might cost more parked than driven.
I take a ticket. The arm lifts. I find a space on level one because levels two and three are full of better cars than mine.
The phone says 11:38. Train at 11:42.
I sit there for a second. Engine off. The cold already coming through the windows.
I get out, lock the car, walk.
The escalator up to the concourse is one of those endless ones that you stand on and wait for your life to catch up. I stand. My life catches up.
The Piccadilly hall is the usual mess. Boards, announcements, people with rucksacks who don't know which platform is which, a busker doing a Beatles song badly. The 11:42 from Euston is arrived, platform three. I get there as the first wave of passengers comes through the gates. Suits. A school trip with three teachers and forty kids in matching hi-vis. A woman with a dog in a bag. A bloke who is not Ron.
Then Ron.
He's at the back of the wave, walking the way he walks — like he's already decided where he's going and isn't going to be hurried by the geography. Black puffer. Beanie. The holdall over the right shoulder. The rucksack on the left. The thermos sticking out of the side pocket because the thermos is the size of a small child and never fits in any bag properly.
He sees me. The face doesn't change and the walk doesn't change — he just keeps coming, like he was always coming.
When he gets to me he stops. Looks at me. Looks at the keyring hanging from my left hand where I'm fiddling with the Polo's key.
'You serious.'
'Hello to you too.'
'You drove.'
'I drove.'
'On the road.'
'Mostly.'
He looks at the keyring. LEGALLY FIT. His face does a thing. The corners of his mouth shift by half a millimetre.
'Right,' he says. 'Right.'
Then he hugs me. Quick, the Carrick way — one arm, a press, a release — and over his shoulder I get a noseful of cologne that's strong enough to disinfect a kitchen and underneath it a smell that is Ron. Soap, fabric softener, something underneath that has been in our family since the eighties. He smells like Mum's airing cupboard.
He steps back, hand on my shoulder, squeezes.
'Good to see you, mate.'
'Good to see you, bell.'
'You park nearby?'
'Level one.'
'Lead the way then, Ewe.'
I haven't been called Ewe in months. Ron started it when I was seven because Ewan had too many letters for the way he wanted to say it.
He hefts the holdall higher and follows me.
The concourse, the escalator, the car park door. I'm walking like I've just been told I'm responsible for something, which is exactly what's happened.
'Right one,' I say, at the row.
'You park between the lines.'
'You sound surprised.'
'I'm not. I'm impressed.'
'There's a difference?'
'Mate. There's an ocean.'
He gets to the Polo. Clocks the dent on the driver's door. Comes back to me.
'How much.'
'Two-eight.'
'Half on the dent.'
'Two-six then.'
'For this you got off easy.'
'I know.'
'You bought it together.'
'We did.'
He doesn't say anything to that. His eyes go back to the keyring, the slogan, my fingers on the key. Doesn't say it. Just files it. I can see him filing it.
'Open the boot.'
I open the boot. He puts the holdall in. The rucksack he keeps on the passenger seat between his feet, the thermos resting against the door pocket. He gets in. The Polo registers his weight by sinking visibly.
'There's a coffee for you,' I say. 'In the cup holder.'
He looks at it. Looks at me. Reaches for it and drinks, and the Adam's apple does the thing it does when he's swallowing something he wants. He puts the mug back without speaking.
'Laurence,' I say. Like a confession.
'Laurence,' he says. Like a verdict.
I reverse out of the space. He braces a palm against the dash even though I'm doing five miles an hour. We get to the barrier. He pays the parking on his card before I can reach for mine, which is a Carrick reflex he hasn't even noticed himself doing, and then we're out, on the wet road, indicator on, the lane unclear.
The silence stays.
We get onto the Mancunian Way before either of us speaks.
'How was the train.'
'Train was a train.'
'Useful.'
'Bloke opposite ate three Greggs in a row.'
'In a row?'
'Sausage roll, steak bake, a yum yum. The yum yum at quarter past ten. I had to look out the window.'
'Christ.'
'Yeah.'
'Mum send anything.'
'Shortbread. Some pickle. The thermos is full of soup.'
'It's eleven thirty.'
'I'll drink it later.'
'You'll drink it now.'
'I might.'
The thermos sits between his feet. He doesn't touch it. I take the Princess Parkway exit and the lanes get easier and I let the car settle into a speed I can manage with my hands at proper ten-and-two like a man taking his test.
'You hungry,' I say.
'Laurence is cooking, isn't he.'
'He's cooking.'
'Then I'm hungry.'
We do that for a bit. Small sentences, small spaces, the car eating the road. Ron's looking out of the window like a man cataloguing a city he's about to live in. He looks for a long time at a row of warehouses being converted, at the cranes, at a hoarding for a thing called Victoria North which he tells me, briefly, is his.
'Mine for two years,' he says. 'Block C. Twelve storeys. Residential.'
'Mum said.'
'She would've.'
'She's proud, you know.'
'She doesn't have to be.'
'She's allowed.'
He doesn't answer. He lets it pass over him like weather and goes back to looking at the city.
I take a longer way home. The Chorlton route via Withington, because it's prettier and because I want a few more minutes of him in the seat.
I don't say that. I just take the long way.
Past Withington Park the rain starts properly. Wipers up. He watches the wipers like they're entertainment.
'How long you got the car.'
'Six weeks.'
'Six weeks.'
'Why.'
'I just— You. With a car. I'm catching up.'
'You always said I should learn.'
'I always said it. Didn't mean I wanted you to do it. Bigger brother prerogative.'
'Now you've got someone to pick you up from Piccadilly.'
'I've never had that.'
'You do now.'
He looks at me. One of those Ron looks where the face doesn't move but the eyes catch on something and stop. I can feel it through the wipers and the rain and the radio.
'Yeah,' he says. Quiet. 'I do.'
The Polo finds a bus lane and I drop out of it before the camera can. He clocks that I clocked the camera.
'Ewan.'
'What.'
'You scan ahead.'
'I do.'
'When did that happen.'
'Around the time I started reading other things. Books with diagrams.'
'Maths.'
'Maths.'
'Right.'
A pause. He shifts in the seat. The rucksack tips against his shin and he steadies it with a knee.
'You alright,' he says.
'Yeah.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'Laurence alright.'
'Yeah. He's, he's good. He's been good. We've been—' I find the word that isn't fine, the word that isn't happy. 'Decent. We've been decent at it.'
'Decent.'
'It's a good word for it.'
He doesn't argue. He nods. He looks at the windscreen.
'And the—' He pauses. Carrick men have to pause before words like job, work, future. It's chemical. 'The MA.'
'Application's in. Hearing in March. Same department.'
'Same building?'
'Same corridor.'
'You don't want a fresh place?'
'I want the maths.'
'And the maths is there.'
'The maths is there.'
He thinks about this. He looks at me sidelong. He's quiet for a long second. Then —
'You'll be alright,' he says. Like he's giving me a ruling. Like he's the older brother whose job has always been to issue rulings.
But under the ruling there's another thing. The thing that came out of the way he watched me change lane, the way he clocked the keyring, the way he paid the parking.
'I know,' I say.
He's still looking.
I take the right turn onto Beech Road too tight. He grabs the dash again. We both pretend it didn't happen.
'You know what's mental,' I say.
'What.'
'I don't like driving.'
He starts laughing. Properly laughing, the head-back kind that makes a noise like he's surprised at himself. He laughs all the way to the door, by which point I've parallel parked between a Skoda and a builder's van in three moves and feel like I deserve a small prize.
Laurence opens the front door before we've got out of the car. Tea towel over his shoulder. Hands wet. He spots Ron through the windscreen and his face does the thing it does when he sees one of mine — softens, then re-sets. A doctor's face. A man pretending he wasn't waiting.
Ron unfolds himself out of the passenger side. The thermos comes with him. The rucksack. The holdall stays in the boot for later, like a thing being delayed.
Laurence raises a hand. 'Ronan.'
'Laurence.'
'Tea or coffee?'
'Tea. Cheers.'
They go in ahead of me. I sit in the car for a second with the engine off and the rain on the windscreen and the keyring on my thumb and I close my eyes and I let it land.
My brother is in our flat.
I get out. Lock the car. Go in.
Ron in our flat without anger is a bigger event than I'd planned for. He's been here once — the version where he stood in the doorway with his jaw set and ten months of suspicion ready to deploy. That visit ended in shouting, a kitchen-table negotiation, and the kind of silence that takes a year to soften. He's been back twice since. Both times for half an hour, both times with his coat on. This one — Saturday, lunch, the apron on Laurence — is the first proper one.
He fills the doorway. He fills the kitchen. He stands in the hall like he's checking the load-bearing walls and reaches a hand to the door frame and runs a finger along the join, casually, the way other men check a watch.
'This place isn't bad,' he says.
'I know.'
'Cold though.'
'Single glazing.'
'Yeah, I clocked it from the street. You getting it done?'
'Landlord won't.'
'Landlord's a prick.'
'Landlord's a prick.'
Laurence has gone back to the hob. The kitchen's a mess of three pans and a chopping board and the smell of garlic going gold. The apron's on. Ron sees it.
'An apron.'
'It's a gift.'
'Right.'
'From Ewan.'
Ron turns to me. The corner of his mouth shifts again. He turns back to Laurence. 'That's why you're wearing it,' he says.
'Yes,' Laurence says. Easy. 'He'd notice if I didn't.'
'You'd notice he'd notice.'
'I'd notice he'd noticed.'
Ron blinks. Looks at me. 'You two are doing a thing.'
'Sometimes,' I say. 'We've learned how.'
'Christ.'
He sits at the table. He sits at the corner seat I always think of as mine, which is fine — Ron at the corner seat is what corner seats are for. He puts both palms flat on the wood and studies the surface a beat too long.
'It's a nice table,' he says. Like the table's the easy thing to praise.
'It's the same table,' I say. Because it is. It's been here since the second week.
'I know it's the same table. I'm saying it's a nice one.'
'Thanks.'
'Where's it from.'
'Stretford Mall. Forty quid.'
'Mate.'
'I know.'
'Forty quid for that?'
'Some bloke's grandad.'
'Some bloke's grandad knew what he was doing.'
He runs a thumb along the edge. There's a knot in the wood that catches his nail. He notices it. He looks pleased that he noticed it.
Laurence puts a mug in front of him. Then one in front of me. Then a plate of bread and butter that he's done while we weren't looking because he's the kind of man who feeds you before you've sat down.
'I'm doing pasta,' he says. 'Twenty minutes.'
'You don't have to do pasta.'
'I'm doing pasta.'
'Christ.'
'I'm sorry?'
'I said Christ. Affectionately.'
Laurence smiles into his pan. Ron eats a slice of bread and butter folded in half. I sit across from him and try to remember what we were going to talk about. We weren't. The point is he's here. The point is the mug.
The conversation that follows is the conversation Carrick brothers have when there's a third person in the room who is not a Carrick. The pace is different. The pauses are shorter. We pretend less, because Laurence makes pretending awkward. Ron asks about my finals (April). I ask about his site (Wednesday). He asks where the nearest Tesco is (corner of Wilbraham). I tell him about the Christmas-tree man on the green who refuses to take his tree down till March because the dogs won't hear of it.
Ron laughs at that. Properly. He laughs so hard he stops eating the bread for a second. Laurence catches my eye over the pan. The face does the small recognition we have between us — he's laughing, your brother is laughing in our kitchen, file it.
Then Laurence comes to the table. Wipes his hands. Sits. Pasta's in. Sauce simmering. He's allowed to sit.
He puts a hand at the small of my back as he passes. He doesn't think about it. He's done it a thousand times. It's the most ordinary gesture in our flat and the least ordinary thing my brother has ever seen happen to me.
Ron sees it.
He looks at the bread. Picks up another slice. Folds it. Eats half.
'You alright with all this,' he says.
He's looking at the bread when he says it. Not at me. Not at Laurence.
'All what.'
'This.' He gestures at the kitchen, the pan, the hand-on-the-back that's already withdrawn. 'This. Living.'
'Yeah,' I say.
'Yeah?'
'Yeah.'
He finishes the bread. Reaches for another. Eats half of that.
'It's, it's nice,' he says.
'Don't.'
'What.'
'Don't make it a moment.'
'I'm not making it a moment.'
'You're making it a moment.'
'I'm eating bread.'
He's eating bread and making it a moment. He looks up. He takes in Laurence at the hob, his own hands on the bread, the apron, the chopping board with the garlic skins, the salt cellar Laurence's mother gave us at Christmas, the moka pot, the radio playing the same nineties song the world will not put down today.
Then he says: 'It's the kitchen, mostly.'
Laurence turns. Wooden spoon in hand. 'Sorry?'
'The kitchen. The way it's set up. The mugs are out, the chopping board's worn in. You're, you're in here all the time.'
'We are.'
'Yeah.' Ron nods at the salt. 'That. The Le Creuset thing. Two of them.'
'One was a present.'
'And one was a decision.'
'Yes.'
'Mum's never bought a Le Creuset in her life.'
'No.'
'She has the orange one her mum had.'
'I remember.'
'That's the same thing as a Le Creuset for our family.'
'It is.'
Ron stares at it a long time. The orange Le Creuset on the hob with the steam coming off it. His face does the Ron face, which is the absence of face. The wall.
He nods once. Like a man confirming a measurement.
'Right,' he says.
Then he picks up his mug and drinks his tea and the moment is closed, the way Carrick moments are closed, with a movement that absorbs the moment without naming it.
Laurence drains the pasta. The kitchen fills with steam.
'You staying long enough for pudding,' Laurence asks Ron.
'I'm staying long enough for two.'
'Right answer.'
After lunch — three plates, half a tiramisu Laurence had in the fridge, two pots of tea — Ron stands up and stretches and the joints in his shoulders crack like a man relocating his body.
'I should head,' he says.
'You don't have to.'
'I do. I want to put my stuff down. I want to have a shower. I want to lie on a bed.'
'Ewan'll drive you.'
He's standing at the sink with his hands in suds and the apron stained worse than when he put it on.
'Right,' I say. 'In the Polo, in the rain, on a Saturday in January.'
'Right,' Ron echoes, deadpan.
I put my coat on. Ron puts his coat on. Laurence wipes his hands and stands at the door and does the thing where he doesn't quite hug Ron but puts a hand on his elbow for a second, palm down, brief.
'It was good of you to come,' he says.
'It was good of you to feed me.'
'Anytime.'
'Don't say that, you'll regret it.'
'I won't.'
'You will.'
'I won't.'
Ron clocks him. Clocks me. His eyes find the apron one more time, like he's making sure he saw it. Then he nods and goes out.
I close the door.
Laurence is still at the door when I turn. Hand on the handle. He's not looking at me.
'You alright,' he says.
'Yeah.'
'Sure?'
'Yeah.' Then: 'Are you?'
He laughs. Soft. The kind he only does to me.
'I really like your brother,' he says.
'I know.'
'Get him to the Airbnb safely.'
'I will.'
'Drive carefully.'
'I always do.'
He kisses me at the door. Brief. The kind of kiss that's been earned. Then he goes back to the sink and I go down the stairs.
Ron is leaning against the Polo when I get out. Coat zipped to the chin. Beanie pulled lower. The light is the dim grey it gets in Manchester at two in the afternoon in January, when the day is debating whether to bother continuing.
I unlock the car. He gets in. I get in. The Polo, on cue, takes a moment to start, and then starts.
'How long's the drive to your Airbnb.'
'Fifteen.'
'In this traffic?'
'Twenty.'
'Alright then.'
I pull out. The wipers come back on. The radio's gone to a podcast about climbing a mountain.
He's quieter on the way back. Looking out of the window. He clocks a Co-op, a Sainsbury's, two takeaways, a tram stop. He doesn't tell me he's clocking these. I can see him doing it.
'What floor's the Airbnb on,' I say.
'Third. Above a barber's. Three flights, twelve steps each. Steeper than they look.' He's already counted.
'You'll get fit.'
'I'm already fit.'
'You'll get fitter.'
He smiles. Just at the windscreen.
We come up the back end of the Northern Quarter. The streets get narrower, the buildings get older, the graffiti's better. The barber's shop is what he told me it was — single shop, blue front, two chairs visible through the window, a stripe pole that's been broken for so long the pole has the same patina as the wall. The door to the flat above is set in next to the shop door, narrow, dark wood, one buzzer.
I stop on the kerb on the double yellow. Hazards on.
'Don't get out,' he says.
'I'm getting out.'
'Ewan.'
'I'm getting the bag from the boot.'
'It's a holdall. I can carry it.'
'I know you can carry it.'
I get out anyway. Open the boot. Lift the holdall. It's heavier than I'd expected — Ron packs like a man preparing for war, even for a two-year contract. He gets out the other side. Takes the holdall from me. The transfer is brief. His hand on the strap, mine off the strap, the swap done before either of us has to think about it.
He stands on the pavement with the bags slung. Looks at the barber's door. Looks at me.
'Cheers, mate.'
'Don't.'
'What.'
'Don't do the gratitude thing on a pavement in January.'
'I'm not doing the gratitude thing.'
'You're doing the gratitude thing.'
'I'm being polite.'
'Same difference.'
'Get in your car.'
'I will.'
'Get in.'
I get in. He stands on the pavement watching me get in like he's not going to leave until I'm safely behind the wheel.
I roll the window down.
'Ron.'
'What.'
'Ring me if you need anything.'
He stops. He has a hand on the door of the flat now. The key out. The other hand on the holdall strap. He stops with the key halfway to the lock.
Looks back at me through the open window.
'Yeah,' he says.
That's all. Just yeah.
Then he goes in. The dark wood door closes. I'm on the kerb with the hazards on and a traffic warden walking up the street with the wet hi-vis flapping. I switch the hazards off. Pull away.
I drive home with the radio off. The wipers do the work. The Polo does the work.
Laurence has done all the washing up by the time I get in. The flat smells of pasta and garlic and the small Yankee candle Femi gave us as a joke that we keep using. He's on the sofa, glasses on for the laptop, the apron still hung over the back of a chair where he abandoned it after lunch. He looks up.
'How was he.'
'Quiet.'
'Quiet quiet?'
'Ron quiet.'
He nods. Closes the laptop. Sets it on the coffee table without looking. Opens his arm against the cushion the way he does when he's waiting for me.
I cross the room and sit under it. He pulls me in. His palm at the back of my head. The beard against my forehead. The day comes off in layers.
'Eyeliner's still on,' he says, after a minute.
'Both lids?'
'Both lids.'
'Christ.'
'I prefer it on you.'
He kisses the side of my mouth. The beard scratches. I turn into it. The kiss goes from polite to not-polite in about three seconds. The cushions are old, the springs are questionable, the lamp is on low. The jumper goes. The belt. The beard against my stomach and then lower. He takes his time, because he always takes his time, and I stop worrying about the springs entirely.
By the time we surface, the candle is still going, the apron has migrated to the floor, my eyeliner is now somewhere it shouldn't be, and Laurence is mumbling something against my hair I cannot transcribe.
Some time after that, in the dark, with the moka pot cold for an hour:
'He'll ring you.'
'He will.'
'When.'
'Three weeks.'
'Why three.'
'Because he's stubborn and that's how long it'll take.'
'Mm.'
'Ewan.'
'Yeah.'
'I'm proud of you.'
'Stop.'
'No.'
He doesn't stop. The beard against my hair. Outside, the rain. Inside, the kind of quiet that holds two people without crowding them.
Three weeks and four days after the Polo and the Piccadilly and the hand on the bread.
The phone goes while I'm in the shower. I miss it. When I come out Laurence is holding it out to me with an expression that is doing its best to be neutral.
'Ron.'
'I know.'
'Voicemail?'
'No. Text.'
I take the phone. Towel round my waist. Standing in the doorway dripping onto the bathmat.
you free
That's it. Two words. No question mark. No emoji. Ron quiet.
I dry my hand on the towel and type back. what time
whenever
1 p.m. tib street?
yeah. flat 4. buzzer's broken, ring the phone. and eyre
?
bring the drill if you've got one
I look up at Laurence.
'Tib Street,' I say. 'He's moved out of the Airbnb. He wants the drill.'
'When did he move out?'
'A week ago, by the sound of it.'
'He didn't say?'
'He didn't say.'
'Mm.'
'Three weeks and four days.'
'I'm noting it.'
'I told you four was possible.'
'You did. It was three weeks four days. You called it within the tolerance.'
'Drill.'
'Drill.'
He goes to the cupboard under the stairs that we call the drill cupboard, even though there's no stairs, because there's a drill in it and one of us is from Lancashire and committed to the joke. Brings out the drill, the toolbox, a pencil he's sharpened with a knife because his father was a builder.
'Take the small one,' he says, 'the heavy one's mine.'
'They're both yours.'
'The drill's ours. The toolbox is mine.'
'Where's the box from?'
'Lancashire. My uncle's, my dad's. It's older than me. Don't drop it.'
'I won't drop it.'
He hands it to me. Heavy. The metal cold. There's a sticker on the lid that says DAVIES & SON in flaking letters and underneath it a phone number with an area code that hasn't existed for thirty years.
'And the box of stuff,' he says. 'In the hall.'
'What stuff.'
'Things your mother sent up last week that he hadn't picked up yet. Mug, tea towels, a packet of dishcloths. A small jar of pickle that she said he needed.'
'When did Mum send these to us.'
'When Ron didn't give her his address.'
'It's fine. It's a small box.'
I put on my jumper, the second-best one. I put on the coat that doesn't have the rip in the pocket. I take the drill, the toolbox, the box of Mum-things. Laurence stands in the kitchen with the apron not on for once and watches me lift the load.
'Be careful on the stairs,' he says.
'There aren't stairs.'
'There are always stairs.'
'Goodbye, Laurence.'
'Goodbye, Ewan.'
Tib Street is the kind of address that sounds like it'll be hard to find and then is exactly where you expect it. Second floor of a four-storey terraced thing, above a barber's, a blue door at street level with the number 4 stuck on with what looks like a child's plaster. There's a lamp on in the upstairs window that's too yellow for the daylight, the kind of lamp you put on when you can't quite work out what to do with the dark.
I ring the phone. He opens the door before the second ring.
He's wearing what he wore on Saturday three weeks ago. The same jumper, the same jeans, the same boots. He's got a shadow of stubble that says he hasn't shaved for two days, and he hasn't, because the strip light in his hallway is bright enough to confirm it.
'Ewan.'
'Hi.'
He looks at what I'm carrying. The drill. The toolbox. The cardboard box with RON on it in Mum's biro and a piece of brown paper covering up some of the stuff inside.
He looks at the box for a second too long.
'Mum sent it,' I say. 'She didn't have your address.'
'Right.'
'There's pickle.'
'Of course there's pickle.'
'And dishcloths.'
'Christ.'
'And a mug.'
'A mug?'
'It's the Silver Jubilee one. From '77.'
He stops on the threshold. He puts a hand on the door frame. He looks at the box. He looks at me. He doesn't say anything for a second.
Then: 'Come in, then.'
I come in.
The flat is small. Sofa, telly, kitchen counter against one wall, bedroom and bathroom off it. A window onto the back yard with a fire escape behind it. The ceiling's got the brown rings you get from upstairs neighbours boiling pasta.
He's got nothing on the walls. He's also got, in the middle of the living room, three flat-pack boxes that aren't flat anymore because two of them have been opened and the contents are leaning against the sofa.
'IKEA,' I say.
'IKEA.'
'When.'
'Wednesday. The delivery van came at the wrong time and they left it on the doorstep. The bloke from the shop downstairs helped me get it up.'
'You bought a bookshelf.'
'I bought a bookshelf and a wardrobe.'
'You don't have books.'
'I will have.'
'Right.'
'And a wardrobe because.' He waves a hand at the bedroom door. 'There's no wardrobe.'
'How was the assembly going.'
He looks at the boxes. There's a small pile of dowels on the floor that he's separated into types, like a man pretending to be in control. The instructions are open on the coffee table at a diagram I can already tell he's looking at upside down.
'I started,' he says.
'And.'
'And I am not, contrary to what Mum would have you believe, naturally good at all things involving wood.'
I laugh. It comes out before I can stop it. He looks at me. The face. The wall, for one beat — then it breaks, and he laughs too, the head-back surprised laugh, the same one from the Polo three weeks ago.
'You laughed at me,' he says.
'You laughed at me.'
'Different. You're twenty.'
'You're twenty-seven. With a wardrobe in a box.'
'Christ.'
'Right. Drill.'
I put the toolbox down on the coffee table. Open the drill case. Check the bit. Pick the right one. The drill bit clicks into the chuck. He watches me do it with the same attention he used to give me when I was nine and trying to tie my laces — patient, ready to step in if I made it complicated for myself.
'You done one of these before,' he says.
'Three. Two for us, one for Femi.'
'You did one for Femi.'
'I did one for Femi while Femi watched.'
'Femi watched.'
'Femi held the screws.'
'Christ.'
'He's not a builder, Ron.'
'He's not.'
'He's an economics graduate with a sense of pride.'
'Sounds about right.'
He sits on the floor next to me with his back against the sofa. Reaches up and gets two beers off the kitchen counter without quite looking. Cracks them both. Hands me one.
'It's noon.'
'I'm assembling a wardrobe.'
'Fair.'
He clinks his bottle against mine. We drink. Cold lager, the cheap stuff he buys in fours from the corner shop, the taste of every flat-pack assembly that has ever happened in this country.
We start with the bookshelf because the bookshelf is smaller and easier and we are both, separately, the kind of man who wants the win first.
The instructions are pictures, which is fine until the pictures show a dowel going into a hole that doesn't appear to exist on either of the panels we have. Ron turns the panel round. Looks at me.
'Did they send the right shelf.'
'They sent the right shelf.'
'How are you sure.'
'Because the bag of dowels matches the diagram, and the panels match the diagram, and the only thing that doesn't match the diagram is the way you've laid them out.'
He stares at me. At the diagram. At the panel. He moves the panel.
'Christ.'
'Yeah.'
'Ewan.'
'What.'
'You did one of these for Femi.'
'I did.'
'Right.'
We work. He does the carrying and the lining-up because he's bigger and the panels are heavier than my arms want to admit. I do the screws and the alignment because I'm patient with diagrams in a way he is not. The drill goes. The Allen key goes. The dowels go where they go. Cold beer between sips.
The first shelf goes up at half past one. We stand back from it. It's level. It's not perfect — there's a millimetre's wobble at the top right — but it's level enough that no books will end up on the floor.
He drinks. Looks at it.
'You did good,' he says. To the shelf, mostly.
'You held the bits.'
'Don't.'
'What.'
'Don't shrink yourself in front of me.'
I look at him.
He's not looking at me. He's still looking at the shelf.
I think about it. The shelf. The drill. The beer.
'Right,' I say.
'Right.'
He drinks. I drink. We go on.
The wardrobe takes longer. It's a more complex animal than the diagram lets on — six panels, two doors, a piece of rail, an arrangement of cam-locks I have to look up on his phone because the diagram is the kind that assumes you already know what's coming.
We work for an hour. Two beers each. The radio he found in a charity shop on Oldham Street is playing nineties songs because Manchester radio plays nineties songs on a loop and we are not going to escape them today.
He talks while we work. Not a lot. He tells me about Dave the gaffer, who he likes. About Gaz, who has a girlfriend in Stockport and shares clingfilm messages with her like they're love letters. About Dean, who doesn't talk, who he likes most of all. About a portacabin biscuit hierarchy where the custard creams go first and the Hobnobs are saved for crisis.
I tell him about Femi and Allan, who have a flat in Whalley Range now, who got Femi's mum to come up at Christmas and met her at Piccadilly with a sign that said MA ADEYEMI in glitter pen because Allan is a man committed to small public theatre. About my final year. About a paper I'm writing on degenerate ellipses that he, charitably, pretends to find interesting.
He laughs twice. Real laughs. The kind I haven't heard him do in three weeks.
'How's Mum,' he says. While I'm holding a panel up and he's trying to find a screw under the sofa.
'You'd know if you rang her.'
'I rang her.'
'When.'
'Sunday.'
'Last Sunday?'
'The Sunday before.'
'Ron.'
'I know.'
'She'll worry.'
'I know.'
'She won't say it.'
'I know.'
He finds the screw. Comes back. We do the next stage. He's quieter for a minute. The Allen key. The slot. The cam-lock. Then —
'And Dad,' he says.
'Same.'
'Same?'
'Same. He hasn't said anything since the thing at Christmas. He says hello on the phone when Mum gives him the phone.'
'He says hello.'
'He says hello and asks if I want to talk to Mum.'
'Christ.'
'I know.'
'Yeah.' He works the screw in. 'I know.'
We do another section in silence. Then he sets the screwdriver down. Looks at me.
'Ewe.'
'What.'
'Are you happy.'
The question stops me. I'm holding a panel. He's sat on the floor with three dowels in his hand and a wardrobe back two-thirds built. His face isn't doing the wall. His face is doing the thing it used to do when I was eight and he was sixteen and he was making sure of a thing without saying he was making sure of a thing.
'Yeah,' I say.
'Yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'You sure.'
'You don't ask me that. We don't ask each other that.'
'I'm asking.'
'Why now.'
'Because I sat at your table on a Saturday and watched him put a hand on your back and you didn't flinch.'
'I haven't flinched in months.'
'I haven't seen you in months. So.'
'So.'
I think about the answer. I think about it longer than I need to because the answer isn't difficult; the answer's the easiest thing I have in my head. It's the saying it that needs the second.
'Yeah,' I say. 'I'm happy.'
'Right.'
'And that's allowed.'
'I'm not arguing.'
'You're sat on the floor checking.'
'Yeah. Allowed.'
We don't speak for a minute. He picks the screwdriver back up. We finish the back panel and the side and the door without talking.
The wardrobe stands up at five past three. We close the doors. We open the doors. We close them again. They don't quite line up in the middle and we don't care. He puts a jumper inside it. The jumper hangs. He stares at it like it's the first jumper anyone has ever owned.
He turns to me.
'Ewan.'
'What.'
'I owe you a beer.'
'You've given me three.'
'I owe you another.'
'Alright.'
He gets two more from the fridge. Opens them. Hands me one. Sits on the sofa. I sit on the floor with my back against the sofa, because I want to be lower than him for the next bit, because I can feel a thing coming.
He drinks.
'I want to tell you something,' he says.
'Tell me, then.'
'I don't know how to tell you it.'
'Try.'
He thinks for a long time. The radio's playing a song from a girl band whose name I can't remember and the late-afternoon sun has made it through the curtains and is doing the thing with the dust where the dust becomes visible.
'There's a person I see at a bar,' he says.
I know about the person at the bar. Have done for over a year, a name said once into a coffee cup and never repeated, the pronoun doing the work on the phone ever since. This isn't information. This is Ron handing me the file himself, sober, out loud, looking at me. You don't interrupt a proof at the first line.
'Right.'
'Tuesday nights. Sometimes Thursday.'
'Right.'
'They sit in the corner. I sit at the counter. We haven't spoken.'
'Right.'
He drinks. The Adam's apple does the thing.
'I don't know what I'm telling you,' he says.
'You're telling me that.'
'Yeah.'
'That's enough.'
'Is it?'
'It is. Drink your beer.'
He drinks. The dust falls.
After a while he says: 'I don't, I haven't worked out what I am about it.'
'You don't have to.'
'I don't?'
'No. Not today. You can work it out as it goes.'
'How do you know.'
I look up at him. He's on the sofa with the bottle in his hand and his shoulders down for the first time today.
'Because nobody told me,' I say. 'And I worked it out.'
He looks at me.
He nods. Just once.
'Right,' he says.
That's all.
I drink my beer. The bottle's cold. The flat is warmer than it was. The wardrobe is up. The bookshelf is up. The Jubilee mug is on the kitchen counter where he put it twenty minutes ago, between two of his other mugs and one empty space where a fourth mug will go.
I look at the empty space.
He sees me looking.
He doesn't say anything about it.
Neither do I.
I leave at half five. The sky's already going. He walks me to the door, opens it, stands in the doorway with the strip light catching the side of his face and the bottle in his hand.
'Ewe.'
'What.'
'Drive carefully.'
'I always do.'
'I know.'
'Ron.'
'What.'
'Ring me.'
'I'll ring you.'
'You won't.'
'I might.'
'You won't.'
He looks at me. The face. The wall.
'I'll ring you when I have to,' he says.
That's better.
I get to the Polo. Lock the toolbox into the boot. Get in. Drive.
Tib Street to Chorlton, the long way again, because I want the long way again. The traffic is the Saturday-evening traffic, which is patient, which is full of headlamps and wet brake lights and people going home. I'm one of them. I'm going home.
I think about the fourth mug.
I think about the corner of a bar. Tuesday nights. Sometimes Thursday.
I think about how Ron's voice changed when he said they — the half-beat pause, like the word had weight he hadn't measured — and changed back into the person like he was testing something in a language he'd been handed without instructions. He's twenty-seven with a person at a bar he hasn't looked at directly yet. I know how that goes.
I drive.
Laurence is on the sofa when I get in. Glasses, laptop, a half-glass of wine that's been there for at least an hour because the level hasn't gone down. He glances up when I come through the door.
'Shelves go up?'
'Wardrobe.'
'A wardrobe?'
'And a bookshelf. He'd bought IKEA.'
'Christ.'
'I know.'
'Beer?'
'Two each.'
'Sensible.'
I take my coat off. Put it on the back of the chair. Sit on the sofa next to him. He puts the laptop on the floor. Pulls me into him in the way he does on Saturday evenings when the day has been too much and not enough at once.
'How was he,' he says.
'Quiet.'
'Quiet quiet, or—'
'Settled. Mum's word.'
'Mum's word is a good word.'
'It is.'
'And.'
I look at the ceiling. Our ceiling. No brown rings, but a hairline crack near the light fitting that we've been meaning to mention to the landlord for four months and won't.
'He's going to do something stupid,' I say.
'Stupid?'
'Or beautiful. Same thing in this family.'
He laughs. The laugh's not the kitchen laugh. It's the late-Saturday laugh. The one with the wine in it and the long week and the room warm. He puts a hand on the back of my neck.
'Carricks,' he says.
'Carricks.'
A long pause. The radio's off.
'You think he'll be alright,' he says.
'Yeah.'
'You sure?'
'I'm sure.'
'Why.'
'Because.' I think for a second. 'Because he asked me for a drill.'
He waits.
'Three words. Bring the drill. That's all he wrote. My brother doesn't ring. He doesn't write. He sent me three words and made me drive a toolbox across Manchester.'
'And.'
'And he didn't say I need you. He said bring the drill. Same sentence. Carrick syntax.'
He thinks about that. Tilts his head into mine.
'You should write that down,' he says.
'I don't write.'
'You will.'
'No.'
'Ewan.'
'Don't.'
'Ewan.'
'Stop.'
I'm laughing. He's holding me and laughing into the side of my head. The flat is warm. The Jubilee mug exists somewhere across the city, on a shelf above a sofa, waiting for a hand to lift it. The empty space exists next to it.
I close my eyes.
Outside, the rain.
Inside, the table that some bloke's grandad knew what he was doing. The man on the sofa who has, on and off all day, told me he is proud of me. The brother across the city. Bring the drill.
He asked.
I went.
I've never wanted to be wrong more than I do about this.
But I'm not wrong.
I know I'm not.
End.
Adjacent sits between Proof by Contradiction and Undefined Terms.
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