Read The Ties That Bind for Free Online Page B

– people who’ve achieved something great, whose stories would make an amazing biography. I mean, don’t you ever want to do something with a bit more merit, a bit of cachet?’
    Luke threw down his napkin. ‘Christ, Jem. I knew you were repressed but I honestly didn’t think you were a snob as well.’
    ‘Look, it’s my money paying for all this. Don’t you think I should have a say in it all?’
    His expression was brazen. No, worse: it was righteous. He didn’t even know he’d fucked up. Luke’s full belly hollowed itself out as it hit home that the person he thought knew him best in the world had never understood him at all.
    The rest of their food went untouched, and the cab ride home happened in silence, the gap between them on the back seat as wide as Luke could make it.
    He was glad when Jem fell asleep without him. If he had made a move, the previously considered unthinkable would have happened: Luke’s flesh would have flinched at his touch.
    In the following days, the old darkness descended again. Days rolled into weeks in which Luke did not write a word. Now that there was no work, he was forced to confront how strongly he identified with it. Everything interesting and worthwhile he had ever done had been in pursuit of a story. Without a project to pursue, he felt that he had nothing to offer. He felt that he was nothing. Without focus, he could not rouse himself to find something new to write about. It was a vicious cycle that tightened around him like a tourniquet.
    To inspire him, Jem brought home books about great men from engineers to electoral reformers, but Luke couldn’t get into any of them. Even if Jem was right and he was selling himself short, even if Maggie was right and these old cases from the sixties had been done to death, what else was there to write about? When he was alone in the flat, Luke obsessively re-read his notes, wondering how Earnshaw’s book was going, hoping that the editor who’d bought it was having a hellish time dealing with the truculent old git and that they’d have to hire a ghost-writer at punishing expense.
    ‘You’re a shite housewife,’ said Jem when he came home again to find that Luke was still in drawstring sweatpants, papers spread out on the desk before him. Luke looked up, unsure from Jem’s tone whether it would be delivered with a wink or a scowl, but his face had gone completely neutral, the way it often was now. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll order in.’ He ordered Japanese without checking whether Luke was in the mood for it. The meal cost forty-two pounds and when they took the lid off, it was nothing more than a few slivers of fish on rice, and four bottles of cold Asahi. Jem left the change in a pile on the sideboard. He was terrible with cash, leaving it strewn around the house as though the supply was infinite. When two days had gone by and he still hadn’t touched it, Luke put it in his own pocket, heart beating, telling himself that he wasn’t stealing, he was just not letting the cash go to waste.
    He started to think in terms of a rainy-day fund. He could not, at that stage, voice even to himself the word escape .
     
    ‘I thought I might go out tonight,’ ventured Luke. ‘It’s two years since the magazine folded. A bunch of us are going to get together to catch up and bitch about the industry.’
    It was the middle of September and he’d been preparing the ground for this since August, being good, staying in, not smoking, only seeing Viggo for lunch when Jem wouldn’t find out about it. Clearly it had been to no avail.
    ‘Who’s we ? Mostly men? Mostly gay?’
    ‘Well, Charlene’s gay, but obviously she’s female, and Alexa is up from London and she’s straight. Come on, Jem. It’s not much to ask.’
    ‘Luke, don’t put me in this position. If you go out tonight, it’ll really upset me.’
    ‘Are you forbidding me to go out?’
    ‘I’m asking you to stay with me. It’s different. We’ll download a film, get some