Lifesaving for Beginners

mean here.
    Faith picks up the chair that Adrian knocked over. Starts clearing the table.
    Dad says, ‘Your mother would be proud of you. Everything you’re doing.’ He nods towards me. ‘Come here, wee man. You’re not too old to give your dad a cuddle, are you?’ I am too old but I go over to him anyway. I feel a bit sorry for him. The way Adrian sort of hates him since he went to Scotland to live with Celia and the way Ant just kind of acts like he’s not here even when he is.
    I don’t think Adrian is right. I don’t think Mam hated him. She didn’t hate anyone as far as I know. She said hate was a tiring emotion and if you wanted to hate someone, you’d better get good and ready to put a lot of time and energy into it.
    Me and Faith walk Dad and Celia to their car. There’s no sign of Ant or Adrian, which is probably just as well. We wave and wave until they’re gone. That used to be Mam and Dad’s job. Waving and waving at visitors until they were gone. Once Ant and Adrian go back to the university in London, it’ll just be me and Faith. I hope nothing happens to Faith, I really do. Otherwise, it’ll just be me here, waving and waving until everybody is gone.

13 July 2011; Dublin
    I am being driven insane. Insanity fuelled by Thomas’s care. His consideration. His gentleness. It’s on a loop: the care, the consideration, the gentleness. Like supermarket music. It’s driving me crazy. The nicer he is, the crazier I feel.
    And since he’s living in my apartment, we’re way past the third-date stage. The date when I get to say, ‘It’s not you. It’s me.’ Even though it’s never me. Hardly ever.
    If I said that now, he’d ask, ‘What do you mean?’ and I’d have to have something to say, because if I didn’t, he’d say, ‘I’m entitled to an explanation at the very least.’ And he’s right. He’s right about everything. Except me. He said everybody is ready to settle down at some stage or another. But I’m not. I’m pretty sure I never will be. It’s not something I want.
    Everything was fine before. Before the accident. The bloody miracle. Now he keeps saying how lucky we are and how nothing should be taken for granted and how we need to appreciate everything we have and . . . Christ, it’s enough to drive me to drink only I’m practically most of the way there already.
    This evening takes the biscuit. Takes the biscuits, in fact. The lemon and ginger biscuits that Thomas has baked. From scratch. He has to buy most of the ingredients because there’s never any call for flour or baking powder or what have you in my apartment. He buys some weighing scales too. And a spatula and a mixing bowl. He doesn’t have to get a rolling pin. I have an empty wine bottle he can use.
    I say, ‘I thought we were going out?’ when I come down from my office. I’d said I was writing but what I was really doing was playing Angry Birds on the iPad.
    Thomas says, ‘We’re staying in!’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because we’re celebrating.’
    ‘What are we celebrating?’
    ‘The day we met.’
    ‘It’s not the anniversary. Is it?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then why are we celebrating it?’
    Thomas hands me a glass of champagne. ‘It’s the only excuse I could come up with for drinking bubbly on a week night.’
    I nod because that’s fair enough. We clink. Thomas says, ‘To Aer Lingus. Where romance takes off.’ And then he laughs because he happens to think that’s pretty funny.
    I only noticed Thomas after the pilot made the announcement. Something about the discovery of a ‘suspicious package’ in a cubicle of the mens’ toilets in Terminal Two. I was in the aisle seat. I always pick an aisle seat so I can get in and out without having to talk to anybody.
    We were sitting on the runway at Dublin airport. I lifted my head and looked out of the window for the first time since I’d boarded at Heathrow, and that’s when I saw him. In the window seat. I don’t know how I’d missed him before. The height of him. The top of his head nearly brushing against the call button. He was wearing a well-cut suit that suggested a banker or a broker but there were spatters of muck at the ends of the trousers. His tie had been yanked away from his neck, like it had been choking him. It was a sombre navy with tiny pink sheep dotted up and down it. His smile was superfluous, I felt, given our situation. His hair was long, curly ropes of grey, all different lengths, as if it had been cut with shears by