“Max, I didn’t know that. She told me that she’d had enough of me. She was really specific. I’m not a mind reader.” I sighed. “Listen, for all I know, shehasactually had enough of me. I’m not the most charismatic bloke. I’m quite a homebody, really. I like staying in, reading epic fantasy and being bossed about by my cat. Maybe she was bored? But I just really wanted to make sure she was okay.”
Silence filled the kitchen for a long moment before Yaz broke it.
“Verity loves you, Harry,” Yaz said.
“Yaz!” Heath snapped.
“You said it yourself, Heath. Harry makes Verity happy. He’s always made her happy. Even when they were teenagers. Well, before he ghosted her that is.” I opened my mouth to speak but Yaz was on a roll. “She bloody well deserves that, and I won’t have anyone, even if it’s Verity herself, sabotaging it.” She slid both her arms around Heath at this point and gave him a squeeze. “You Markhams can be a stubborn bunch, you know? And you, of all people, have to agree that you don’t always know what’s good for you. God knows it took you long enough to realiseIwas the perfect woman.”
“Yaz, Verity’s not an idiot like me. She copes better with all this stuff. She’s dealt with our baggage rather than ignoring it,” Heath said with absolute confidence.
Yaz closed her eyes slowly and let out a long breath, before taking a small step back from Heath and grabbing both his hands in hers. “I’m sorry, but that’s simply not the case. Yes, Verity is very strong. Yes, she dealt with the logistics of the funeral, and sheseemed tocope with everything else pretty well. But you’re lying to yourself if you think she’s put all of yourbaggagebehind her.” Yaz then dropped one of Heath’s hands and turned to me. “Harry, I know it’s not my story to tell, but when I was working onmyMarkham, I had some help and a bit of backstory from my parents to go on. I know Heath’s mentioned that his childhood wasn’t ideal, but I think you need to be armed with a bit more knowledge.”
“Yaz, I don’t think–”
“He deserves to have some insight, Heath. We can give him that. And from what you’ve told me, you haven’t exactly been honest with Harry, even now.”
Heath shifted on his feet and then ran both his hands down his face. “I’m not comfortable… you know, talking about it all.”
“Will you try?” Yaz said softly. “For Verity?”
Heath let out a huff of air and then pulled on Yaz’s hand to bring her right into his side under his arm. “Fine. Okay, the thing is… God, how do I explain this? That stuff I told you back then at school, about how Verity was just using you…” Colour crept into Heath’s cheeks, and he looked away from me with an ashamed expression.
“Go on,” I said in a tight voice, the atmosphere in the room growing thick with tension.
“Well, I’ve already explained that I was talking shit. But, you see, it wasn’t to protect Verity from you leaving like I said, although that was a part of it. It was so that you would leave her alone permanently. So that you wouldn’t contact her againat all. I just couldn’t risk it. Not with your dad sniffing around my family, asking questions. I was protecting myself as well. I was protecting our situation.”
“Your situation?” I pressed, my eyebrows going up in confusion.
Heath let out a huff of air and cleared his throat before continuing. “Your dad… he was a perceptive man and a good housemaster.”
“I already know this, Heath,”
“Well, he was a bittoogood. Nobody else ever really spotted anything wrong.”
I felt my whole body tense as I stared at Heath. “What was wrong?” I gritted out.
“Verity and I started at a boarding prep school at the age of seven. You know how most kids would be homesick if they were sent to school at that age?”
“Yes?” I asked slowly. My mind was whirring, and I could feel my stomach sink at what I thought might be coming.
“V and I… we just couldn’t understand that. School for us was paradise.” Heath took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Yaz’s arms slipped around his middle, and she gave him another squeeze which seemed to confer some sort of strength. “We didn’t know about pillowcases or duvet covers or clean towels until we got to school.”
“W–what?” I whispered as my heart sank down to my feet.
Heath shrugged. “We didn’t have them at home. No sheets either. Welovedthe feel of sheets. Loved the smell of them. It was all amazing. And the food – three hot meals a day, snacks whenever we wanted. The other kids were always whingeing about the food, which really confused us. Although I think what Verity liked the most was the warmth. So many of my memories of home are of this bone-chilling coldness. If you’re cold for long enough, it’s like it’s buried way under your skin and into your bones. Verity always hated the cold.”
I thought back to the library and how much she loved that huge radiator. It hadn’t seemed strange to me back then – just another of Verity’s quirks, but her love for that radiator was off the scale. And I thought of all her hats, gloves, hand-warmers, bulky scarves, thick coats. Yes, Verityhatedthe cold and clearly did everything she could to avoid it.
“But… your parents were rich,” I said in disbelief. “You lived in that huge house. You’ve got inherited titles. I– I don’t understand.”
“To be honest, I still don’t either, and I lived it, mate,” Heath said. “Dad was only into hunting and shooting. The pack of hounds he had for the local hunt were fed better than his own children.” Heath laughed. “He once put a heater in the dogs’ outhouse when the temperature dropped below freezing, but didn’t think to give one to his kids who lived in the shed next door.”
“You lived in a shed?” My voice was moving from confused to angry, and my ears were ringing with the strength of it.
“Trust me, it was better than living in the house. Especially when Mum and Dad were home. They threw these parties, see. I knew even at six years old that it wasn’t safe for Verity to be in the house. Not with the people they had over. It wasn’t just the booze and the drugs, there were people having sex on available surfaces, spilling upstairs into the bedrooms. One night we were woken up by some massive bloke falling into our room at four in the morning and grabbing Verity out of her bed. I got a hockey stick and smashed him in the balls. We moved into the shed the next day.”
Heath continued to recount the horrific details of neglect and abuse in an almost conversational tone. Calmly saying things like, “We only got the occasional backhanders and I managed to take the brunt of those,” as if suffering that physical violence was nothing compared with the prevailing torrent of abuse in which they were neglected, starved, assaulted, and generally treated worse than the fucking dogs.
