three

Magnolia

I run into our master bathroom to find a specific lip colour I’m after only to find BJ and the contractor both staring, hands on hips, at the giant marble mantelpiece that should hang over the bath all cracked and broken in the now also-broken bath.

“We’ve had an incident.” Beej grimaces.

“I see.” I nod as I peer in.

The contractor flashes me an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

“No—” I shake my head. “That’s quite alright. We’re actually not really a bath household—”

BJ suppresses a smile but the contractor’s gawping at me.

“You don’t like baths?”

My face falters and I flash him a quick smile.

I clear my throat. “You don’t read the papers?”

BJ leans in towards me and whispers, “I don’t think the papers have all the details.”

I flick him a look. “Lucky them.”

Beej breathes out—it’s weary, almost. Like he’s tired, or that it hurt him. Maybe I did? I shake my head quickly.

“I’m kidding!” I kiss him on the cheek. I kiss him again for good measure.

I’m not kidding.

I think in general I’m feeling better about all that—I don’t have this morbid fascination about them. I don’t scroll through Paili’s Instagram at nighttime and I don’t stare at old photos of us all, looking for clues. And I did, admittedly, do that for a while.

I don’t know that I’m an innately distrustful person, perhaps it’s because I’m not that what happened then happened. Maybe if I had been more suspicious or astute or I’d studied the way Paili stared at BJ with eyes that weren’t so wrapped up in loving him and believing in him at all costs, I’d have seen the potential for all the terrible before us, at least in her. He’s said so many times that it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t about her, it could have been anyone, she was just who followed him downstairs. And I think I believe him—but then when your sister’s dead and your friends are all in varying crises of their own and there’s no one really to unpack something that happened five years ago with because everyone’s tired of talking about it but it’s still the biggest deal in the world to you even though it isn’t and everything’s fine—sometimes the mind does wonder, you know?

Because of our history, BJ and I have an open-phone policy. I know his passcode, he knows mine, if I want to read his messages I can and I would. His DMs too. Honestly, his texts are fine, if not a bit beige, actually.

His DMs though—they’re wild. The incoming ones (to clarify). Girls are thirsty, insane, little cretins with a horrible disregard for the sacrality of a relationship.

“This is a funny kind of trusting him,” my sister would say every time I did it if she was still on the planet.

She’d be peering over my shoulder and down at my fiancé’s phone as I read as quickly as I could a thousand things people say to him that make me want to die a little bit.

They range from fairly mild like “,” to a touch more aggressive, like “Any time, any place, say the word and I’m down,” to girls he’s been with in the past messaging him “remember when”s, to downright insane things like “We belong together, I know we are meant to be.”

And to BJ’s credit, he never responds. They just sit in his requested.

“I do trust him,” I’d say, and she’d give me a look.

“I can tell.” She’d eyeball me, and there’s nothing I love more than proving my sister wrong so then eventually I stopped reading his phone and now I sort of just smack away my curiosity and paranoia with the baseball bat that lives in my mind that I use to keep safe what we have.

“It’ll be a couple of months’ wait on the marble.” The contractor grimaces in our bathroom.

“Months?” BJ sighs.

“Statuario marble—” The contractor shrugs. “In white? This size—” He gestures to the now-cracked piece of it laying in our unused, now-broken bath. “Months, easy.”

“That’s fine—” I swat my hand at him and give BJ a look, telling him to leave it. “What’s it matter? When are we going to use it anyway?”

Beej puts his hand on my waist and leads me out of the bathroom.

“How are you getting to dinner?” He gives me a patient smile.

I shrug. “Walking.”

His face pulls. “That’s about an hour’s walk.”

“So?” I shrug again.

“I’ll drive you.”

I shake my head.

He tries again. “Dani will drive you.”

“Happily—!” Daniela calls from the other room. I actually hadn’t really noticed she was there. Quiet and sneaky as a mouse.

“I’ll catch the tube with you?” Beej offers, and I give him a sharp look.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Harry Styles catches the tube,” he offers.

I shake my head as I grip my throat. “He also chokes people with a sea view.”

Beej shrugs and blows some air out of his mouth.

“Probably better than choking someone with a garden view—?”

I shoot him a look.

“Meu Deus!” Daniela sighs under her breath, appearing in the doorway. “I will drive.”

“Want me to come for the drive?” he offers again because he’s a bit perfect like that.

I think about saying yes because I hate cars and driving now and he makes bad things a little bit better, but I want him to think I’m more functional than I think I really am.

“I’ll be fine!” I tell him and flash him my most brilliant smile.

I’m silent with white knuckles the whole twelve-minute drive over to St James and Taura is waiting for me out front of the Sofitel. Dinner at Wild Honey, just me and her. I still see her a few times a week but it’s been harder lately.

Well, not harder—harder implies the wrong sentiment—it just takes a more conscious effort now to see her after everything that’s happened over the last few months with her and the boys. Before we were all always together—now, not so much.

Taura gives me a big smile as she tosses her arms around my neck.

“Love this.” She nods down at my outfit: pink and red houndstooth pattern miniskirt from Versace; white cropped embroidered ribbed stretch-cotton jersey tank from Loewe; the hooded belted shearling coat in Bottega green from them (obviously) and the ‘Brick Phone Text Me’ crystal-embellished silver-tone clutch from Judith Leiber Couture. “God, you look beautiful—Daniela!” She beams over at her. “Hi! Are you going to sit with u—”

“No,” Daniela says before leading us into the restaurant.

She does stick close, that Daniela, I will say that.

I thought it was odd at first, how she was just a bit of a shadow but then, she is handy I suppose—? Driving and smacking away photographers—and you know me, not one to bring someone new into the fold, but when she first started to work for me, out of sheer politeness and a fear of feeling paralysingly awkward otherwise, I’d invite her to sit with us and she just never would. Ever. Which then initially felt rude and confusing because—who wouldn’t want to sit with us?—but Christian told me not to think too much into it, and also that I can be annoying sometimes and if I gave him the choice not to sit with me sometimes, he’d probably take it too.

Daniela checks us in with the maître d’ and then sits at the bar where she looks around, eagle-eyed and observant.

She’s admittedly rather strange. I do like her though. Naturally blonde hair, petite features, quite tall, bright eyes.

Taura nods her head towards her.

“Loves a people watch, that one.”

“Yes—” My brow folds in the middle. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“Bit weird.”

“People bird watch . . . ?” I offer her with a shrug.

Taura shakes her head.

“I don’t think the two are necessarily connected,” she tells me, then orders a bottle of orange wine before she settles into her seat. “How’s Beej?”

“Good,” I give her a warm smile. “He’s got a rather big shoot tomorrow with Versace so he’s just having an early night.”

“And Christian?”

“Grumpy and a bit sullen and kind of annoying, so normal?” I shrug. “Fine—” I add as an afterthought. “Missing Daisy,” I say finally, which I suppose is the real answer and the only one that matters.

Taura nods along, eager to get to the question she really wants to ask. “And the boys?”

I stare over at my friend. Try my best not to sigh aloud. “They’re fine, Taurs.”

She breathes out, face tugging in anguish.

I hate this, it’s the worst. I smile uncomfortably.

“How is he?” she asks quickly, all laced with hope.

I do sigh now. “Taura—”

“Sorry—” She shakes her head quickly. “Sorry! I know, I know but he’s not talking to—”

“He’s not . . . not talking to you,” I interrupt her. “He’s just taking some—”

“Space,” she tells me, nodding quickly, and I think she’s trying not to cry.

I hate her being sad. And not just sad but stressed. You know the feeling? When you like someone and they liked you back and then something shifts for them but not for you and you’re left standing there wondering what happened and what changed?

That’s actually never happened to me. Sort of briefly that time that Julian dropped me off outside of my old flat because he didn’t like it when I asked him if he had PTSD, and if that’s what this is then I can confirm, it’s not the best feeling.

“It’s just so much space.” Taura covers her face with her hands. “God. Did I fuck it?”

“No . . .” I say weakly, tugging on my pink mushroom 14-karat gold, silk, enamel and diamond necklace by Marie Lichtenberg.

Her eyes tighten.

“You’re lying,” she tells me, and my mouth purses.

I am lying, I’m afraid. I don’t know whether that’s the official consensus but I’m quite sure it’ll be the ultimate outcome. Especially after that night—fuck—I shake my head at the memory of it. Such an unbelievable mess.

I pinch my bottom lip absentmindedly.

“Well, I just wonder if perhaps you all left it too long?”

She sort of scoffs and waves her hand at me. “You and Beej strung each other along for years—”

“Yes, but—” I shake my head. “Henry isn’t BJ. He’s far more pragmatic and, god, Taura—!” I roll my eyes at her. “Please, don’t ever look at us as a reference, it’s not the same—”

She shakes her head. “Why?”

“Because it’s literally not the same.” I reach over and squeeze her hand. “For far, far better and for worse, between you and Henry, you don’t have all the drama and the shit that bogged Beej and I down and tied us together—”

“Yeah, but—”

“And thank god you don’t, Tausie!” I add quickly. “Because those years were hell.”

“But you’re—”

“Taura.” I give her a long look. “BJ and I are not a relationship map. I’m grateful we are where we are and I love him and I wouldn’t change a thing—”

I stop myself short and we exchange looks, both knowing that there are, in fact, many, many things I would change.

I shake my head and regroup. “There’s no one on the planet I’d rather be with. And yes, for us, it worked out in the end, but you can’t use us as a guide—no one should—we barely made it out alive.”

She picks at her finger nervously.

“So, you’re saying you think it’s over?”

I sigh and I wish I could give her more than the shrug that I do.

“I don’t know,” I say, but I think I do know. I think so does she because they came to blows.

I’d never seen Henry and Jonah fight before—not each other. It was kind of scary. BJ and Christian, they fought often (whoops, sorry)—and I’d seen Hen and Jo get into fights with other people handfuls of times over the course of growing up, but never the two of them just against one another.

Henry’s usually so calm and Jonah’s so silly—most of the time—but he’s proud. Pride is quite dangerous, did you know? And this had been brewing for a while. Their collective relationship had become the wobbliest Jenga tower in the world, just all of us crouched around a table with bated breath, waiting for the wrong brick to be pulled before the imminent collapse.

We were at dinner at few weeks ago at Blacklock, the Soho one. BJ’s favourite Sunday roast is there besides the one Lily cooks, and it was he and I, Christian and Henry. And maybe it was my fault, because the last few months before Bridget, I’d been running defence. I always tried to find out where Taura was going to be so that the other one didn’t see it, but after Bridge, I suppose I got sloppy. Forgetful, or something—?

I should have asked. I knew it was ‘Jonah’s night’—I even thought to ask, but when we left the flat there were so many people downstairs waiting for us, yelling at me these terrible questions about my sister’s private life. It was around then that the boy she lost her virginity to at school sold the story to the red tops, so all the questions people were yelling at me, I don’t know—I just forgot.

Anyway, it was ‘Jonah’s night’—because even though she knew she picked Henry, and I knew she picked Henry, she didn’t know how to end it with Jonah when his mum was still in the hospital, so things between them kept sort of pottering along how they had been before she made a choice—anyway, we were at dinner just the four of us and then who should waltz down the stairs but the rest of our little Box Set. Both of them drunk, but Jonah worse than Taura.

I saw them first and kicked Christian under the table because honestly, I feel less weird about putting him between Jonah and Henry than I do BJ, but Beej caught it anyway.

He tilted his head, gave me a confused look, and I gestured with my eyebrows, keeping my head as still as I could—he clocked them, face pulling.

I turned to Henry quickly. “Come to the bathroom with me?”

“What?” His face scrunched up. “No.”

“But”—I swallowed—“I’m going to vomit.”

Christian was holding his breath.

“Right.” Henry nodded. “I’m going to stick with no—”

Henry flashed me a quick smile and I gave him pleading eyes. His head rolled back and he gestured to Beej.

“Your betrothed will take you.”

BJ scratched the back of his neck and shrugged.

“Nah—” he said, but it came out a bit high. “I’d rather not get sick.”

Henry stared over at his brother, annoyed. “I’d rather not get sick!”

I made a noise in the back of my throat. “Well, not absolutely everything is about you, Henr—” I started, but I was cut off by Tausie, who spotted us with her bleary eyes in the arms of the elder Hemmes.

“Oh, hi—” She froze up.

When I think back to that moment, the thing I remember, the part that sticks out the most in my mind, is the way Henry’s breath sucked in.

I heard it. This quick intake, two sharp, short breaths—then silence.

Jonah’s hands were really low on Taura’s body. Like, arse low and Henry’s eyes fell to their placement immediately.

His jaw went tight. He said nothing.

“Hey, Hen,” Jonah said blearily, kind of staring him down because he can be a bit belligerent when he’s legless.

“Hey.” Beej jumped to his feet, giving his best friend a disarming smile. He placed himself between Jonah and Henry’s line of sight and held Jonah’s eyes. “Why don’t you nick over to Bill’s? Bit of a weird vibe here—”

“Why’s it weird for?” Jonah asked him with his chin, and that was sort of when I had a feeling that the night was going to go sideways.

Jonah and BJ are each other’s horse whisperers. If anyone can de-escalate a situation, it’s one of them for the other. Except that Jonah didn’t want to be de-escalated, he wanted a place to point how hurt he was Taura still hadn’t made a call and how scared he was about his mum, and the place he chose was Henry.

“Erm—” Christian tossed a thumb in my direction. “Magnolia’s vomiting.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “So what else is new?”

I tensed up a little bit and told my hurt feelings he was just drunk and sad, which he was, I suppose. BJ tapped two fingers on his best friend’s chest.

“Nope.” He gave Jonah a stern look, but by then Henry was already on his feet.

“Oi, take that back and then piss off.” Henry nodded his head back towards the exit.

Jonah pointed to himself. “Are you talking to me?”

Taura went stiff.

“Who the fuck else would I be talking to?” Henry asked, an eyebrow up.

“It’s fine, Hen!” I stood up, smiling as sincerely as I could muster. “He’s just in a mood—”

“Yeah, Hen—” Jonah smiled, barely. “I’m just in a mood.”

And then he laughed and it was all drunk and hollow, and from behind, he buried himself in the curve of Taura’s neck, kissing her. She squirmed uncomfortably.

“Stop—” she said quietly.

“Stop?” Jonah said, pulling back. He looked angry but it was a very thin mask for hurt.

“Yeah, Jo—” Henry said, coolly. Not the good kind of cool, but the bad. “She wants you to stop.”

Jonah looked over at Henry and gave him a tight smile, a little sniff of a laugh—and then he lunged for him.

Tackled him to the floor and punched him.

They knocked over a poor server in the process and Taura rushed to their aid at the same time Henry took a swing. A big one in the eye right before he elbowed Jo in the lip.

BJ and Christian dove towards them, Christian dragged Henry away, Beej grabbed Jonah, who was thrashing in his arms, doing his best to kick Henry on the way out.

I was useless—sort of normal for me these days—I just stood there, looking between my two old friends and the girl they were fighting over.

Taura was still helping the server up, apologising profusely. She was teary—the whole restaurant was silent, a few phones out because it was us.

“What are you all fucking staring at?” Jonah yelled, eyeing them all down.

So naturally, more phones came out.

“Come on—” Beej said, shoving him towards the stairs. He caught my eye, gaze heavy. “I’m gonna take him back to his place.”

I nodded.

Beej nodded his head towards me.

“Take her home,” he told Christian.

Christian sighed, looking around, then gave BJ a quick yes with his eyes before he smacked someone’s phone out of their hand.

“Piss off,” he growled at the young guy, early twenties, grinning at the drama.

The guy looked both scolded and offended.

I grabbed some ice from the wine bucket and wrapped it in a napkin, and then dabbed it gently on the cut above Henry’s eye.

He shooed me off—he doesn’t like to be looked after. Never has. He took the napkin from my hand and held it himself.

“Are you okay?” Taura asked gingerly as she walked over.

Christian and I stood there uncomfortably, sort of stuck, not sure whether to leave or to stay, kind of just frozen like idiots. We looked like idiots too, when The Sun ran the story the next day, the photos of Christian and I standing there make us look like the twins from The Shining, so stiff and weird.

Henry stared over at Taura, eyes as heavy as I could tell his heart was.

“I can’t do this anymore, Taurs,” he told her.

She shook her head quickly.

There are a few flashes of cameras around us.

“Henry—” She reached for him but he recoiled from her touch.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this here—” I said gently, peering around at the entire silent room.

Henry shook his head. “I don’t care who sees, Parks. I’m done.”

Taura breathed out, barely holding it together. “Hen—”

“I said I’m done.” He raised his hands in surrender and his face looked like he meant it.

He did mean it.

Sort of.

The next day he was lying face down in our bed yelling that he made a huge mistake and that he’d cocked up. That lasted for about a day and a half and then we dragged him out to dinner, which proved to be a bit of a faux pas on our behalf, because then Henry got kind of sloshed and then made us go to a bar, where he proceeded to hook up with some girl.

It was really quite stressful. Not just because it made me feel like I was somehow cheating on Taura but because it was also just sort of out of character for Henry—

Even before Taura, Henry hooked up the least out of all the boys—which is not to say that he never did, nor that he couldn’t—he’s just not really like that.

But there he was—tongue down the throat of this honestly (fair play to her) really beautiful blonde girl, hands all over the place, up in her hair—and honestly, to be frank, he’s a good kisser. We’ve kissed twice because of stupid games, and firstly, yuck. But secondly, not yuck because he’s actually very good at it. Girls go puddly for him the same way they do for BJ, except Henry is less approachable somehow.

It might surprise you to know, but BJ is really rather approachable. He’s friendly to everyone, smiley. Warm, like picnic in the middle of the park on a sunny day. The sandwiches are out, the tea’s poured, everyone’s invited. He’s happy to chat, happy to see you.

Henry is a man reading on a park bench . . . you don’t really talk to him unless he’s talking to you.

BJ and I stood there, blinking at what was unfolding in front of us—Henry and that girl, and whatever was going to happen next.

“Oh.” I reached for his hand. “I feel like this might be a bit of a headache.”

“Yep.” Beej nodded, his brows all low with worry for his brother, then he nodded his head to the door. “Let’s leave him to it.”

And we did leave him to it. That night Henry did proceed to do it with that girl. Do you know how I know? Because he did it with her in our home! In our guest room—which, for one—disgusting!—and two—absolutely not and never again, thank you very much, Henry Austin. My eyes nearly fell out of my fucking head when she crept past us in the living room towards the front door the following morning.

Henry wandered out a few minutes later in only sweatpants, rubbing the back of his neck as though he pulled a muscle. He gave us a bleary smile and I stared at him in googly-eyed horror.

“Oi—” Beej nodded his chin towards the guest room. “Like, man to man . . . Never again.”

“Come off it.” Henry rolled his eyes. “How many people have you shagged at my place?”

I turn to BJ sharply, a finger up to silence him. “Do not answer that—” And then I turn back to his brother, pointing. “And you, that was very rude—” I glared at him. “In no world, Henry—” I shook my head. “You have a Coutts card and a giant inheritance. Get a fucking hotel room.”

Henry rolled his eyes at me.

“The nerve.” I eyeballed him before pointing towards the front door. “Go and buy me some new sheets immediately—”

He rolled his eyes again. “Magnoli—”

“IMMEDIATELY!” I yelled. “King size, Egyptian cotton, twelve hundred thread count, minimum. Somewhere in the colour-wheel between linen white and mother of pearl.”

Henry growled under his breath.

“And I will be telling your mother!” I call after him as he retreated back towards the guest room.

“No!” He spun around, looking at me with desperate eyes.

“Yes,” I told him, nose in the air all defiant.

In the restaurant, Taura blinks at me sadly before she throws back her wine.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

She nods quickly, eyes busy and unable to settle on a place in the room.

“Is he fucking around a lot?” She asks that without looking at me, afraid of the answer, I think. I stare over at her—or maybe I glare, if I’m being entirely truthful. I don’t like the position I’ve found myself in.

“Please?” she asks quietly.

I breathe out my nose and lick my bottom lip.

“He hasn’t gone full Beej.”

“Yeah but—” She shrugs. “No one goes full Beej like Beej.”

I give her a look.

“Sorry.” She stares down at her half-eaten plate.

“He’s dating,” I offer her.

“Oh.” Her face falls a bit.

“No one in particular—” I shake my head quickly, wanting to make her feel better. “He’s just going on dates.”

“Right.” She nods, thinking it through. “Does he ask about me?”

“Well, I mean—he’s very principled.” My face pulls as I see the answer hurting her again. “He’s trying his best not to.”

“Right,” she says again before she shakes it off and nods over at my full plate of food. “You don’t like it?”

“Hmm?” I blink, glancing down at it. “No, I love it. I just had a late lunch.” I flash her a quick smile.

I get home close to eleven p.m., and Daniela walks me inside and says she’s going to clean up a bit before she goes home. I thank her for driving me before I head to the comfiest, least angular room in the house.

And there he is, sitting in bed, shirtless, just how I like him, The Little Prince in hand. He lowers it when he sees me, smiling all tired and beautiful.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” I crawl over to him.

He touches my face. “How was dinner?”

“Good.”

“You have fun?”

I nod.

“What’d you have?”

“For dinner?” I blink and shrug. “The halibut.”

He pulls me in towards him and up onto his lap, kissing my shoulder.

I turn back to look at him.

“What are you up for? It’s supposed to be an early night.”

He shakes his head. “I never sleep til you’re home.”

“Ever?”

“Nope.”

“What about in our lost years?” I ask, turning around to face him.

“In our lost years”—he slips his arms around my waist—“we still shared locations—I’d just watch and wait til you got home.”

“Oh my god!” I laugh, straddling him now. “How exhausting—that’s practically a full-time job!”

“I fucking know, right!” He rolls his eyes. “Will you tell my dad that?”

I tilt my head as I touch his cheek. He meant it as a joke but there’s a heaviness to it.

“Is he giving you a hard time still?”

His head falls back a bit and he breathes out, shrugging like he doesn’t care except that he does.

“Just the usual ‘what are you doing with your life?’ shit.”

He stares up at me with this strange heaviness, pushes his hands through my hair, and I can feel a struggle in him that I don’t know how to pull to the surface. I don’t know what he’s doing with his life, if I’m completely honest. I think, before, I was the thing he was doing with his life. Getting me back was his raison d’être and now he has me and then what? I don’t think he knows.

He shakes his head.

“I’ll figure it out.” He gives me a quick but perfect smile. It does look a bit sad though.

I brush my lips over his. “I’m going to shower.”

“Want me to come?” he offers for old times’ sake.

I shake my head.

“You have an early morning.” I tell him before I kiss him again.

I take my time in the shower, and then ages to do my skin routine because I need him to be asleep before I get into bed.

I’ve had to add in like four extra steps to my bedtime routine so that he gets bored of waiting for me and gives up and goes to sleep—not because I’m avoiding sex with him—my god, don’t be insane! Look at him, he’s ever the vision. Always has been, always will be.

No, I need him to be asleep so my second nightly routine can begin.

I tiptoe back into our room and climb into our bed next to him.

At the motion of me, he shifts a little in his sleep, makes a tiny sound that’s so cute I want to die and through me surges this great wave of loving him. Loving him so much, it feels almost like I’m choking on it.

He moves again, rolling in towards me, and I stare at him, the great love of my life.

It was always him. I knew that, even at the time, even when I tried to fill the gap he left in me with other people, it was and always will be him.

I put my hand on his chest and swallow heavy.

I love this body.

I think I know it better than I know my own.

The two freckles he has just left to the centre of his chest.

The way his abdomen ripples down down down, like he’s been moulded—like he’s not really real. The curves of his chest carved into my memory the same way you won’t ever forget your best day. He is my best day.

I so vividly remember undressing him for the first time.

It was strange because I’d seen him fairly naked before—hard not to when you’ve grown up around each other—but not all the way naked.

It was at school, in my dorm room.

We’d only been together a month or two, depending on the undecided date of our togetherness. He says we were together since the holiday, but there was a week where he didn’t talk to me much (Christian told him to play it cool) and that week was an absolute torture. I don’t personally count us as together until he kissed me in front of my entire dorm.

We were quick-sticks after that, in a free-for-all for loving each other.

A month later, he was in my dorm room, me pressed up against a post of my bed, his hand up my uniform skirt for a second before I was unbuttoning his shirt.

I felt so grown-up. We were so small.

Back in our bed tonight, I trace the wave his biceps make and down his arm, tracing the veins to his wrist, where I let my fingers rest, feeling for a pulse.

I think death brushes up against nearly everyone at some point or another, but it’s properly danced with me. Grabbed me by the hand, spun me, dipped me . . . taught me to waltz. I knew life through the prism of loss, secretly at first, but now it’s coloured my world. It’s the summertime here at the minute, but I’m terrified of the autumn because then death is everywhere. And it masks itself in colours all bright, but it’s still a season of dying. And I’ll have to walk the streets under the sweet gum trees that line our street and death will rain on me all gold and orange, and it’ll be inescapable and unavoidable . . . All the ways I could die—or worse—all the ways he could and I’d lose him too.

65,000,000 people die every year, did you know?

Bridget is one of those statistics now. One of the 65 million that died this year.

And I guess, sure, statistically, 32,500,000 of those deaths are probably old age. But what about the other half of them?

If 65,000,000 people are dying every year, that means there’s 178,000 each day. Which is 7,425 each hour, and get this—that’s 120 people dying each minute. Two per second.

24,000 people annually die from lightning strikes. How do you think that’d be? I wonder, does it cook you a bit? From the inside out? Do you see light as it hits you?

At least 270 will die from a fire each day, which I think maybe is a bad way to go, don’t you? I think you know with a fire—that if you’re trapped with it, it’s going to get you. But then the way flames lick your skin and it’s not quite quick enough. I think you’d probably feel it all.

I caught on fire once, at a club. I was wearing a loose-fitting top, and it was too close to a candle. My back had a third-degree burn the size of my hand; BJ and I had to spend the night in hospital. I hated the smell. I wonder, could you smell your skin burning when you’re on fire?

It’s a similar number for drowning as well. About 100,000 a year. I’ve read that’s a nice way to die. After the initial shock passes, after your lungs stop trying to breathe, apparently this euphoria hits you, and it’s this dreamy, tired feeling, quite like falling to sleep.

More than 21,917 people will die every day from smoking and smoking-adjacent things, and part of me feels like “you know what, you invited death to the table by smoking, you idiots” but then actually, did you know that more than 10 percent of those 21,917 people (which is more than 2,190) who die every day because of cigarettes die because someone else smoked them? That’s not fair.

But I suppose not much about death is.

500,000 people are murdered every year—also not fair. Also horrible, and terrifying, and speaks to a darkness in our world that is so catastrophically unbearable and uncontainable and if there are 500,000 people being murdered, then it would be fair to infer that there are then too approximately 500,000 murderers, so then what’s to stop the random man on the street turning around and knifing you in the head because he felt like it? Heads are important.

More than 1,000 people every week will die from some sort of head injury, like falling. Pavements are uneven. There are curbs and walls and low ceilings—BJ’s tall, and he’s always talking or on his phone—there might be a low hanging pipe somewhere, and then what?

And then of course—the big C.

That kills a lot of people, doesn’t it? 4,342 every day. Does it ever surprise them, I wonder? Or do you think you always know you’re dying from cancer before it happens? I think surprise deaths are the worst.

Do you ever think about it? How you love a person who’s made of mostly bone? Because it’s all I think about now. That the thing protecting the heart I would do anything for—that I’d die for—all that’s protecting it is a ribby cage made from collagen, calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. That’s it.

And some muscle.

These are the things holding Baxter James Ballentine together. Bones and sinew.

And I’ve seen him break bones before. A million times over the course of our lives up til now. Fingers and toes and wrists. I’ve seen him snap his arm in a way where a tiny bit of the bone pierced through the skin. Bodies tear apart so easily.

And that mind of his. I love his brain. I love how he sees the world, like everyone is good and everything is fun and exciting and sweet; he has the most lovely, sunny disposition because his mind is good and pure, but do you know how easy it is to sustain a brain injury?

One bad whack in the temple and your brain can swell and then—poof!—you’re a goner.

BJ doesn’t chew his food very well either. He sort of swallows it whole. Always has . . . Did you know 3,000 grown-ups will die from choking on food every year? And I don’t know the Heimlich. What would I do if he were to start choking?

He just never chews properly. He’s always hungry so he always eats too fast, you’re meant to chew each bite thirty-five times or something, which like—come off it, as if! That’s absolute pure madness—but I don’t think he’d be doing three before a swallow, which means he’s doing like, an eleventh of the chews he’s meant to, and I don’t like those odds.

Plus, he’s so bad at seat belts. I don’t know whether he thinks he’s James fucking Dean but he never wears one, even though 3,287 people die every day from car accidents, which is more than you want because cars are so normal and people are in them all the time. Us less so now because I don’t like cars much these days after—well, you know what after—but because of that, I can say that I’m quite sure that a car accident is a bad way to die. Now that I’ve been in one and all. Because your skin is so thin, and underneath it there isn’t anything that can help you against a tonne of twisty, sharp metal that’s just trying to scrape the meat of you clean off your bones. The metal wraps around you and tries to make you one with it, like it’s an intimate moment between you, and maybe that’s because all death is.

An intimate moment that’s coming for you, and it’ll take you whether you’re ready or not. It asks no questions and it leaves no answers—

I need some answers.

I reach for my bedside table drawer and quietly remove a few items from it.

“This is peak dysfunction,” I think I hear Bridget whispering to me.

“Quiet,” I tell her, though I never want her to be.

The touchless forehead thermometer—“At least it’s touchless,” my sister would say—the little oximeter I clip onto his finger—“Oximetry, Magnolia? Really?”—and the little notebook I write his vitals down in to keep track.

“You know about vitals, then?” she’d say to me, and I stick my nose in the air to spite her like she’s still on the planet to watch me do so.

37.2 degrees Celsius today. 97—SpO2%; 63 bpm.

Hm. I purse my lips.

“He’s fine,” she’d tell me, but what would I even believe her for, the traitor?

Yesterday he was 98—SpO2%; 61 bpm. Those are numbers I like better.

Nevertheless, I write them down and then tuck all my secret doctor tools away and back in my drawer.

“Well, now he’ll never die, ever!” she’d tell me with an annoying look, and I feel cross at her for it even though she’s not here to say it in real life, and my heart lurches for her and it lands on an empty plot in Highgate because her ashes are here at the foot of our bed.

I wriggle in towards Beej, wrap his arms around me myself and then I lay my head down on his chest.

This is how I sleep now.

To the beat of his aliveness.