“That’s a strange question. Why do you ask?”
“It’s something Toni said when I showed her the snapshots. She says that in the later ones, when he’s probably in his mid to late teens, he has that smitten look about him. And when I studied them again, I noticed she was right. He has this knowing smile and bright, laughing eyes when he stares into the camera lens. She thinks he was in love.”
“With Howie?”
“I asked her that. She says it might have been, but she doesn’t think so. Said in all the shots they’re together, they don’t seem anything more than just friends. She said she thinks it’s a secret love.”
“Secret love, huh? Romantic much, this Toni?”
“Yeah,” chuckled Adrian. “But it would be nice to think Luke had someone to love, before he took his life.”
“Or maybe that’s why. Maybe the love wasn’t returned.”
“Unrequited love. Sounds very Shakespearean. But yeah, I never thought of that. And I guess it’s not something we’ll ever know.”
* * * *
That night, Adrian’s dream felt real. He sat in an open field of tall grass, knowing beyond any doubt that Lenny was with him, but never quite in his line of sight. Under a hot summer sun, a fantastic picnic had been set out with selections of cold meats, cheeses, Scotch eggs, pork pies, sausage rolls, pickles, with a basket of fresh fruit and loaves of fresh bread. Luke sat cross-legged opposite Adrian on a red and green tartan picnic blanket, with a young Freya and Pippa each side of him like bookends. He laughed at something Adrian had said while ripping a bread roll into smaller pieces. Pippa unscrewed a bottle of soda, a tube of paper cups in front of her, while Freya laid out the food, arranging the fare artfully onto a wooden cheese board with slices of green apple and dried apricots. Now and again Luke’s smile would blossom, at the rumble of a diesel engine running in a distant field, his eyes drawn to something or somebody over Adrian’s left shoulder. Still, whenever Adrian turned to look, he could not make out the image, the person or thing continually lost from view every time he tried.
Despite the sense of fun and innocence, Adrian felt an undercurrent of something evil, a danger lurking just out of sight of the long grass. Once again, he turned to try and find Lenny, but his lover was nowhere to be seen. When he turned back, Luke’s eyes had become serious, concerned, his gaze on the clouds. And in that moment, the skies darkened unnaturally and someone—Lenny?—was urging them to get up and run, forcibly shaking his shoulder, bringing him out of his reverie.
“Adrian, wake up. Wake up!”
Adrian wanted to protest, insisting the storm would pass, but the voice was unrelenting, the hand continuing to jostle him roughly. Something acrid and toxic assaulted sense of smell. Had somebody set light to the field?
“Ade. Seriously. Get up.”
Adrian surfaced blearily at Leonard’s urgent tone, and noticed him already up, hopping into his track bottoms and track shoes.
“Get some clothes on. I think the house is on fire.”
Chapter Seventeen
Woken
After sleeping soundly at first, Leonard had woken in the small hours. Rogue gusts of wind rustled trees in the back garden and battered the side of the house, making ghostly howling sounds down the chimney and rattling a loose windowpane. Intermittent moonlight, occasionally appearing past what he assumed to be racing clouds, shone through a crack in the curtains, projecting a silver sword across their bedcover. Adrian slept soundly lying on his side facing him, his chest rising and falling, the sound of his breathing even and oddly comforting.
Breathing life back into the old Welsh house had warmed Leonard, in the same way getting to know Adrian first as a friend and now as a lover had felt like a rebirth, a resuscitation even. After meeting a client, followed by the long day of driving and an unexpectedly enjoyable steak dinner, he had been ready to fall soundly into slumber. But Adrian had a way of waking his body, which in turn stimulated his mind better than a problem waiting to be solved. Now he lay there, awake and alert, thinking about the strange sequence of events since his father’s funeral.
A sudden rush of wind hitting the side of the house dwarfed the faint sound of breaking glass, agitating the trees again and making the whole window frame shudder. Maybe he had imagined the glass shattering, but something nagged him about the sound. When ghostly moans and wails came down the chimneystack and echoed from the fireplace, he lifted his head from the pillow.
He strained his ears to listen when the wind subsided, but a strange calm had filled the room. Until something else nudged at his senses. Leonard had been around enough building sites to know the distinctive smell of burning.
“Adrian, wake up. Wake up!”
By the time Adrian had woken, Leonard was ready to head down the stairs but Adrian, pulling on his sweatshirt and boots and only a fraction behind, insisted they go down together.
From the top of the stairs the orange flicker of fire already lit the stairwell. As they rounded the bottom of the stairs, tall flames burnt fiercely amid broken glass by the front window. Contained in one spot, the blaze already reached as tall as Leonard, feeding on a dust sheet discarded on the floor.
“This is not good. I’m sure that’s petrol I can smell,” said Adrian, who looked tired still, but had rallied from sleep remarkably. “Go outside and call the fire services. Let me handle this in here.”
“Sod that, Ade. I’m going to stay and help.”
“Fine, but please call emergency services first. In case this gets out of control.”
Leonard dialled the emergency number and gave details. He noticed Adrian’s eyes flicker around the room before he headed towards the kitchen area. As soon as Leonard ended the call, he went over to the fireplace and picked up the red bucket of sand. Unfortunately, over time, the sand granules had clogged together, and he had to tip the bucket upside down and thump the base to unstick the contents. By the time he had dislodged the sand and scooped some onto the fire with little effect, Adrian had returned carrying a large fire extinguisher and immediately started dowsing the flames with white powder.
Leonard stood back, amazed at how quickly the flames receded. Before long Adrian had extinguished the fire completely, and the room returned to its darkened state. Both of them stood unmoving, Leonard still stunned at what had happened. Moonlight shone in through the plastic sheeting at the back of the house.
