Lifesaving for Beginners

1972. I’ll take my chances.’
    ‘What did you have in 1972?’
    ‘Let me up and I’ll tell you.’
    I pressed the buzzer and, for the first time since I’d known him, I didn’t do my usual dash around the apartment, kicking plates under the couch and hiding my face under a ton of make-up. That was how sick I was. Instead, I leaned against the door and waited the sixty seconds.
    ‘What did you have in 1972?’ I asked when he arrived.
    ‘Anaphylactic shock.’
    ‘Impressive,’ I said. ‘What are you allergic to?’
    ‘Bee stings.’
    ‘That’s pretty serious,’ I couldn’t help saying.
    ‘You look worried,’ he said, chuffed with himself.
    ‘I’m not, it’s just . . .’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, even though I wasn’t worried. ‘I’ve an antidote in the car. Besides, bees sting only if they feel threatened.’
    He bent to examine my face. ‘So what’s wrong with you?’
    ‘Tummy bug.’ It sounded pretty lame when you compared it to anaphylactic shock.
    ‘You’ve got a temperature,’ he told me, clamping one of his massive hands across my forehead. The coolness of his skin was delicious. I allowed myself to sag a little, against the door.
    ‘Come here to me,’ he said, and before I could say, ‘Diarrhoea and vomit,’ he had me up in his arms, like I was a doll.
    He put me in bed and made me weak tea and dry toast. He even emptied the bucket beside my bed. He drew the curtains and checked on me every ten minutes or so.
    I said, ‘You don’t have to stay.’
    He said, ‘I know.’ But he stayed anyway.
    Later, I lay on the couch. I felt much better but I didn’t tell Thomas that. I was reluctant to relinquish the feeling I had. It felt like I’d spent the last twelve months running and running and then, just for that day, just because I was sick, I stopped. I surrendered. I was appalled at how good it felt.
    You’re not yourself when you’re sick.
    Thomas sat on the couch. He picked up one of my feet and began to knead it with his fingers. I tried to pull it out of his hands. ‘I haven’t had a shower today,’ I said.
    ‘I’ve been elbow-deep in ewes in the lambing season,’ he told me proudly. ‘I can handle smelly feet.’
    ‘I didn’t say they were smelly.’
    ‘You didn’t have to.’
    ‘Besides, you only have one ewe. You can hardly call that a lambing season.’
    ‘She’s a pretty fertile ewe – I can call it what I like.’
    ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ he asked later, when we were supposed to be watching the telly.
    I said, ‘There are nine planets in the Solar System.’
    He said, ‘Eight, actually. Pluto is only a dwarf planet now.’
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘Since 2006.’
    ‘That seems unfair.’
    Thomas said, ‘I meant tell me something I don’t know. About yourself.’
    I said, ‘Oh,’ even though I knew that’s what he’d meant.
    And then I told him. Up till then, I told him what I tell everybody who wants to know. I said I was a technical writer for a software company.
    I didn’t make a conscious decision to tell him. I just told him. Without really giving it any thought.
    I said, ‘I’m a writer.’
    He said, ‘I already know that.’
    ‘No, I mean a fiction writer. I write fiction.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘I have a pseudonym.’
    ‘Like John Banville?’
    ‘Sort of.’
    ‘What’s your pseudonym?’
    It was strange. Telling him. A bit like the first time I took off my clothes in front of him in the middle of the day so he could see everything, and I ran out of breath in the end and couldn’t suck my belly in anymore. He didn’t seem to notice. He said I was beautiful. Ha!
    ‘It’s . . . it’s Killian Kobain.’
    Thomas didn’t just read the Declan Darker books. He was friends with him on Facebook. He followed him on Twitter. He subscribed to Declan Darker’s blog. I’d seen all the Declan Darker books on his bookcase in Monaghan. The box set on top of his DVD player. Thomas happened to be a fan. He happened to be my fan.
    Thomas shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it.’
    I got my laptop. Showed him the files. The stories. All the various drafts of them.
    Still, he shook his head.
    In the end I had to bring him to my office, open the safe and drag out various documents that happened to have the names of the books written on the top of them.
    Eventually he believed me. He said, ‘You really are Killian Kobain?’
    I nodded.
    He grinned and said, ‘I knew there was something fierce womanly about that