Ollie Always (8 page)

Ollie wasn’t embarrassed.

He wasn’t the one who’d made a scene and stormed off.

He smiled politely and sidestepped. Skint moved the same way. Immediately, they both shifted the other way, and suddenly Ollie laughed. He couldn’t help it, but it was a genuine sound of amusement, not a defence mechanism, not thought about for a while before he tried it out, not selected from a repertoire of delighted noises each as equally fake as the other. This was a truth, and the other man appeared to hear it as such. He suddenly grabbed Ollie, knuckle-rubbed his hair as he had once before and then lightly punched him in the stomach. “I’m sorry. I told you I’m a total prick. Can I buy you a tea as a grovelling apology?”

Ollie agreed. He was still reeling from his slip with the laugh.

§§§

Skint came over to the table carrying two small cups of tea. Ollie peered hopefully at the display of cakes, but realised the other man had probably just recovered from the price of two tea bags and a slosh of boiled water.

They sipped the scalding liquid for a while, playing with teaspoons and sugar packets until Skint broke the ice by saying in a rush, “You just make me so mad. I’ve only known you for three days, but you seriously already rank as the most irritating person I’ve ever met, and I’ve had people try to kill me.”

“That actually doesn’t surprise me.”

“In Afghanistan.”

“You should choose your holiday destinations better then.”

“There you go! That’s what I mean!”

Ollie started to rise. He had enough criticism in his head; he didn’t need to listen to it as well. Skint caught at his hand, restraining him by the lightest of touches, and then he gave Ollie’s fingers a tiny squeeze. “Don’t go.”

Ollie sensed people were staring at them, at the odd scene, so he sat as the path of least resistance. Skint clenched his jaw, staring out over the lake then turned back and focused directly on Ollie, his eyes narrowed and determined. “I had a posting a couple of years ago to Headley Court in Leatherhead. Have you heard of it? I don’t suppose you have. It’s the army’s rehab unit. Can you imagine what it’s like relearning how to swim with no legs? How to run with no arms? Wanting to move in a straight line, but your brain, crushed, blown up, shot, isn’t working properly anymore? And what happens when those poor guys have finished rehab? They probably go home to their mums and dads in a tiny council house and live on measly benefits for the rest of their lives, turning out bravely for remembrance parades with their medals carefully polished. And then there’s you. No, don’t you dare leave.
You
Ollie-Always. You have everything. You’re wealthy. You’re young. You have an exceptional brain. You have a face that makes people turn in the street and stare after you. And what do you do with all these gifts? Yes,
gifts
. You bundle them up and try to throw them away. Jesus, watching you puking up your guts yesterday, too hung-over to drive, shaking…I bloody wanted to…” It must have been hard, Ollie reflected, to talk with a jaw so furiously rigid. Skint appeared to need to take a break, for he once more resumed his angry glaring at the sunlit water.

“You’ve known me approximately seventy-two hours. I think it’s a little early in our acquaintance for such intimate observations.” Maybe if Ollie pushed hard enough, he could find out exactly what Skint had wanted to do to him.

Skint didn’t rise to the provocation and merely said in a flat voice, “I’m a quick judge of character.”

Something in this last word made Ollie take in a sharp breath as though he’d been punched, and his bravado, which he cultivated so carefully, slewed sideward with an almost audible crump, just like the sand bank collapsing beneath him on their first meeting. The pain that shot through him was similarly intense. If he spoke, he knew his jaw would wobble, so he clenched it for a while and then said in a very quiet tone, “I’m
not
a character.”

“Hey, Ollie—Ollie? Breathe.” Skint pressed gently on the back of Ollie’s head, lowering his face to his knees. A thumb brushed lightly over the short hair at the back of his neck. A waitress came over to see if she could help, and Skint asked for some water. Ollie was too embarrassed to raise his head. What the hell would everyone think? What would Skint think? What a dumb thing for him to say. But how could this man ever understand what his life had been like?

An arm slid around his shoulders, so strong that it pulsed a little power into him, and he nodded and accepted the water, lifting up enough to drink it. When they were alone again, Skint tightened his hold, pulling Ollie’s head a little closer to his own. Planning to resist, afraid he’d break down even more if he heard one syllable more of disapprobation, Ollie felt lips pressed against his ear, and Skint murmured, “He’s sucking the life out of you.”

Ollie turned, his eyes wide with surprise. They were very close indeed. Ollie could see the individual dark eyelashes framing Skint’s brown eyes. It was an eye colour that could never be anything else but warm—the warmth and reassurance of the good strong earth beneath your feet. That maddening sense of familiarity came over him once more, and Ollie wondered for one incredible moment if he was aware of something not from his past, but from his future. He felt more than saw a movement and tore his gaze away from the beckoning sanctuary to find a hand had been extended. “Hello, I’m Tom Collins. Nice to meet you.”

Ollie blinked then smiled deeply and took the offered hand. “Ollie Fitzroy. Nice to meet you…Tom.”

They stood at the same time, and it seemed as if they hugged at the same time too, but it was Tom who drew him in and Ollie who relaxed into the friendship being offered.

§§§

They stepped out into the intense Queenstown sunlight and both donned sunglasses at the same moment, still smiling. Ollie felt physically lighter, as if he’d not only
not
eaten a large slice of cake, but as if he’d actually shed pounds of some kind of burden and left them behind him in that little café.

As if by mutual agreement, although they didn’t speak, they wandered down to the lakeshore, and Skint—or Tom—began to skim pebbles. Ollie bent down and picked one up himself, running his fingers over it thoughtlessly.

“It’s an impossible situation.” He glanced across and knew that Tom was listening intently, giving him the space to talk by keeping busy with the pebbles. “If he were a brother, a twin, he would be real. So even if he was better than me at everything, he’d have some tiny chink in his armour I could use to tell myself at least I’m not like
that
…But he’s not real. He can be anything she makes him. I get an A; he’s too bright to be graded. I swim for my house. He’s scouted for the Commonwealth Games. I go to Cambridge. He gets a double first. He’s brilliant at everything. If he goes abroad, he speaks the language fluently in a couple of weeks. He’s always tanned, summer or winter. He eats like a pig, does drugs, drinks to excess every night, but his skin is always flawless, his hair shines like fucking silk on every single page, he…”

“Why do you read them?”

“What?”

Tom turned and came over to Ollie, handing him a skimming stone, which was warm from his hand. “Why do you read them? I’m not sure I would. Do you know what Elvis Presley used to do all day before he died?”

“Eat deep-fried Mars Bars?”

Tom smiled sadly. “That too. No, he used to sit and watch his old films. How pathetic is that? I sometimes wonder whether we are the generation that will suffer from being in the digital age. My dad only had one picture of himself as a lad, which Gran took of him when he passed out of his training depot. Now, we all have thousands of pictures of ourselves doing everything and anything. What will it be like when we’re old and decrepit to look back and see a whole life gone? We could simply not look at them, of course, and live in the now. Maybe you could do that with him.”

Ollie tipped his head to one side, thinking about this. It frightened him, made his heart beat a little more rapidly and noticeably in his chest.

Tom suddenly laughed, a quiet, soft sound that made Ollie quirk his lip in response and ask, “What?”

Tom sat down on the gritty shore and patted the space next to him. Ollie complied but repeated his question.

“I’m a fitness instructor, Ollie, but physical strength and stamina start in the mind. It’s a mental challenge, and it’s tied up with all sorts of addictions that have to be overcome—food, alcohol, cigarettes, fear of failure, self-doubt. When I said give Oliver up, you looked exactly like a soldier who’s been told he can’t smoke—a tiny eye flick, an immediate calculation of how he can cheat and sneak one in. I’ll come home and find you reading secretly under the covers one day.”

Ollie thought this was an extraordinary thing to say, but whether it was the strange conjuring of a life where Tom Collins came home to him, or whether it was because he’d just been called an Oliver Fitzroy addict he wasn’t sure. He was already feeling a little shaky, so he knew he would make a fool of himself if he even joked about the first. He picked up on the second, instead. “So, how did you help them?”

Tom began to juggle his two little pieces of shingle. “It’s a journey. Like any journey, it starts with a single step.”

Ollie picked up another pebble to join the two he already had and began to flip them, far more competently than the other man could. Tom frowned, watching him. Ollie shrugged, stole one of Tom’s stones and juggled four. Tom nudged him hard in the ribs, and they all tumbled down. Chuckling, Ollie retaliated and elbowed Tom then he sighed and rested his forearms on his thighs, staring out over the sunlit water. “I need help.”

Tom rummaged around on the beach and relocated the lost stones, handing them back. “I need someone to help.”

Ollie turned sharply, and Tom mirrored his earlier shrug. “I’m a personal trainer. It’s all I know how to do. I need to start getting some clients or I’ll go down. Have to go home probably.”

“So…I could…hire you? To help me?”

Tom nodded. “It’s good to have someone with you on a hard journey.”

“To help carry.”

“Not at all. No one can carry anything for you. But they can give you the knowledge and strength to shoulder stuff yourself.”

“Huh. I’m not very strong.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m not sure I’m liking the hard bit.”

Tom quirked his lip. “There you go. Your first non-Oliver-Fitzroy declaration. From what I can gather, he likes
everything
hard.”

Ollie thumped Tom’s arm, but he was laughing. He held out his hand. “Deal?”

Tom lifted one eyebrow. “We haven’t discussed rates yet.”

Ollie merely shrugged and gestured with his hand once more. “Deal.” It was not a question.

Tom shook on it. “Deal.” Then, he added slyly, “Did I mention that every single soldier I’ve ever helped probably thought about shooting me at some point?”

Ollie raised his brows. Everyone who’d ever
known
him had wanted to kill him at one time or another.

CHAPTER TEN

Before very long, it occurred to Ollie that he might have been a little bit rash—that he’d agreed to something without reading the metaphorical small print. He’d assumed that this arrangement would be one of two things: a vague promise that would be fulfilled at a later date, if at all; or something that the mere agreeing to would see done—magic pill solutions. It hadn’t really occurred to him that Tom would now see himself as his trainer, lifestyle coach, nutritionist, doctor, therapist, and all-round fucking annoying git who stuck to him like glue and wouldn’t let him buy either his alcohol or his sugar fix. Ollie lived entirely on these two substances, interspersed occasionally, when he felt the need for some more dairy in his diet, with ice cream. He had fond memories of school hols in Devon, buying clotted cream ice cream from a van on Dartmoor and asking for extra cream on top.

But now he had this freak putting stuff in his trolley that squeaked with health. Things that needed cooking.

Tom was clearly under the impression that he was returning to the station with Ollie—that he would, in fact, move in with him.

This would have had some attractions (not those to do with anything healthy), but there was the small issue of the impending visit. There was the very large problem of his mother.

Under no circumstances would Ollie have his mother meet anyone he liked. Knew even. Had heard about. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

It had transpired in the past, of course. The occasional friend from school or, later, Cambridge had been invited for a weekend. They’d usually ended up needing therapy.

Ollie was confused about the boundaries between Oliver and himself. His mother wasn’t. His mother couldn’t be, as she usually didn’t acknowledge that there were two separate entities—her son and her book character. As far as she was concerned, she’d created Oliver in her mind and then made him real. That her actual son stubbornly refused to fulfil his role, his destiny, only made her more determined to force him into it. School friends had been bemused that in his shabby, ancient pile, with clearly more bedrooms even than draughty cracks, they’d been put into Ollie’s room with him. Bemusement had become almost mute silence when they’d discovered the room only had one bed.

Thinking all this was easy; doing anything about it, however, was much more challenging. Tom took no prisoners, and while he was whisked around the vegetable aisle, Ollie realised that if he tried to explain about his mother, he would only prove more that he needed exactly what Tom was giving him—hard road; help to negotiate it. He wouldn’t be surprised if motivational posters went up soon—kittens in wine glasses and captions that read,
If you can dream it, you can do it
. Clearly, people didn’t have the same dreams he did.

They were back at the house and unloading bags of suspiciously leafy green objects—green was on Ollie’s colours-I-do-not-eat list, too, but for different reasons than the pink, although if anyone ever offered him green cock it definitely wouldn’t go in his mouth either—before Ollie plucked up the courage to mention that Tom might not want to stay once he’d met…Mother. And was there any way to say that without wanting to put on a wig and a floral dress and make squeaking knife noises?