7. A Squeaky Trolley
The neon glare faded into the soporific glow of Victorian style park lights, the layout of which was as sporadic as the trees and bushes. Yarborough Park was asleep, for the night and for the winter. The remnants of fallen leaves rotted into mulch underfoot, while the dead branches evangelically twisted up towards the moonlight. Only the public toilets by the picnic tables showed any sign of life: harsh light pushed from the translucent windows, the sound of young women cackling.
Michael drifted along the pathway with a light buzzing at the back of his head. He couldn’t tell if the path was straight or not, he just kept walking, one foot in front of the other. Gabriel had removed his hand from his back pocket and his head from Michael’s shoulder, but stayed closer than before, contentedly looking at the surrounding scenery. Michael could still feel the sting of Gabriel’s cold fingers on his cheeks, and feel the soft, warm sliminess of Gabriel’s tongue in his mouth and on his bottom lip. His brain shuddered every time he relived it in his head - which he did quite a few times, remembering new details, new sensations with each replay - in an effort to preserve the memory of his first kiss.
And then the fuzzy feeling began to fade… Replaced by nothing, numbness, and the creeping beginnings of fear. His legs didn’t drift anymore, they wobbled and faltered. The path ahead curved right, but Michael kept walking straight on, towards the bench with a steel plaque dedicated to someone he could neither read nor care about. He collapsed onto the damp seat and hunched over, head in his hands.
Gabriel carried on walking for a few paces along the path until he noticed Michael wasn’t there any more. He sat down next to Michael, leaning forward, mirroring him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why did you do that?” Michael muttered, barely audible. He kept his gaze downwards, watching the shadow of a beetle scurry across bits of gravel.
“Do what? You mean, pretend to be your boyfriend?”
Michael could see Gabriel watching him out of the corner of his eye, but kept his head forward. He opened his mouth ready to say something, but no words would come, so he settled on a nod.
“What am I going to do at college? I can’t show my face there again. It’s gonna be a nightmare... What am I gonna do? They always take the piss out of me, but now… after that… Oh, God!”
Gabriel sat listening, nodding sympathetically to Michael’s ever increasing despair, before interrupting with: “Are you gay?”
Michael stopped mid-ramble, looked at Gabriel and for a second seemed about to say something, but then looked back down between the gaps in the seat. His eyes moved here and there in silent argument with himself.
“I mean,” Gabriel continued, watching Michael’s dark eyes flicker between invisible thoughts, “I just assumed you were, like when they were calling you names. And… I don’t know,” he shrugged easily, “I just, sort of, hoped you were. You are, aren’t you? I mean, you didn’t knock me unconscious when I slipped you the tongue, so I’m gonna take that as a sign of something…”
Michael glanced up to see Gabriel leaning forward and smiling encouragingly. “Maybe,” he murmured.
Gabriel chuckled. “Maybe? It’s fairly simple, you either like boys or you don’t! I like boys. I love boys! What about you?”
Michael kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to look at anyone while he said this, so he told it to metal plaque. “I think I might be…”
“You think?” Gabriel grinned, moving his head to follow Michael’s gaze.
“Alright,” Michael grumbled. He fixed his gaze on one spot without seeing what it was, took a deep breath, and stepped off into the abyss. “Yes, I’m gay.”
Before Michael could defend himself, Gabriel had pulled Michael’s hoodie off his head and proceeded to ruffle his hair. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” he grinned, while Michael tried to flatten his hair back down. Michael was about to pull the hood back up, when Gabriel pleaded “Aw, leave the hood down, I can see your face better.”
“Keeps my ears warm,” Michael protested weakly.
“Here, I’ll keep them warm.” And with that, Gabriel reached over and placed an icy hand over each of Michael’s ears.
“Ah! Cold!” Michael squirmed backwards, but Gabriel leaned towards him, hands clamped.
“Warmer now?” Gabriel laughed.
Michael launched a counterattack, sticking his own freezing fingers down the back of Gabriel’s collar, his palm grazing the short spiky hair at the back of his neck. “Warm enough for you?”
Gabriel gasped and arched his back away, his warm shoulder blades squeezing Michael’s fingers. “Aaaaaaaaaaaa….!”
Michael relented, and relaxed back onto the bench with his feet up, facing Gabriel. Gabriel did the same, and for a while both boys sat intermittently warming their hands, ears and necks, and playfully threatening to launch another cold hand attack.
Michael left his hood down.
When the mischievous smiles had faded into expressions of contentment, Gabriel asked, “Have you told anyone else?”
It took Michael a few seconds to understand what Gabriel meant, but then he twigged. “No. Just you.”
“No one else knows?”
“Just Grant and the other dick heads.”
“Those people back there?”
“Yeah…”
“Well…” Gabriel shifted slightly on the bench, his trainer knocked against Michael’s. “It takes guts to say it. I think you’re brave.”
Michael’s cheeks went pink, but this time he had no hood to hide in. “I’m not brave…”
Gabriel shrugged. “I remember how hard it was when I first came out, a lot of…” His voice trailed off, he seemed to have second thoughts about saying what he was halfway through saying.
Michael filled the silence. “Why did you do that, back there? I mean, why did you kiss me?” His heart skipped at beat at the word ‘kiss’, and a taste of Gabriel’s mouth pulsed across his tongue.
“Why?” Gabriel tilted his head coyly. “Didn’t you like it?”
“No! I mean, yes! I, uh, I did like it and everything... it was…,” Michael fidgeted with his sleeve, “…nice…I just mean, why did you do it?”
“Well it shut those idiots up, didn’t it?” Gabriel’s eyes flicked between Michael’s, as if looking for something.
“I don’t mean that… I mean… I could’ve been straight. How did you know I was…you know…?”
“A poof? I think the crowd of people calling you ‘queer boy’ was a bit of a clue.”
“They call everybody that. They think if you don’t act like a caveman, you must be gay…” Michael bit his lip. “Do I seem gay? I mean, can you tell?”
Gabriel considered, evaluating the person in front of him like an antiques dealer. “If you’re asking if you’re a flaming queen, the answer’s no. To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I thought you were a bit borderline, but I sort of hoped you were… Then I heard the names they were calling you. That clinched it.”
“Why did you hope I was?”
This time it was Gabriel’s turn to blush, but he covered it better than Michael, shifting nonchalantly. “Well, I thought you were cute…” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, you won’t need to worry about college any more.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not going back, are you? You don’t need to worry about anything anymore.”
“Oh…yeah.”
Gabriel got up off the bench, and gestured with his head for Michael to follow. “Come on, don’t wanna freeze out here.”
Michael was about to ask something else, but decided otherwise. It could wait. Instead, he hoisted himself back onto his feet and walked side by side with Gabriel, close for warmth, shoulders pressed against each like a pair of conspirators.
The pair ambled through the park and past the cemetery, through the housing estate on the other side, where lights flashed rhythmically and Christmas trees scratched against windows. The conversation became easier, the silences more comfortable. The boys chatted festively about: school bullies; how Gabriel came out when he was thirteen, how Rachel Fosbury asked everybody in the class if they were gay after learning about lesbianism from a girls’ magazine, how he said yes; Michael’s English class; dealing with idiots - “They used to say ‘Gabriel likes it up the bum!’ so I just said ‘Yeah, I do’. They got bored after a while.”; Michael’s love of art; Gabriel’s love of the area behind the bike sheds.
Eventually, the red lights of Tesco rose up from a half-deserted car park. Beyond the lights, countryside rolled into a sea of darkness, like the end of the world. Last minute shoppers, insomniacs and people with nothing better to do parked close to the entrance to avoid spending more time than necessary out in the cold. A teenage trolley attendant on the night shift rubbed his gloves together and stamped down the chilly breeze.
Michael and Gabriel strode across the parking bay, Michael trying to explain that the ‘crazy dude with one ear’ painted more than sunflowers. Light beamed out from the glass automatic doors as though the shop contained daylight, ready to spill out. The doors glided silently apart in front of Michael. The sound of a Christmas jingle wafted out. He felt the warm, dry air blow against the top of his head, across his numb ears. But Gabriel wasn’t there.
Gabriel was standing three feet behind, teetering on the spot. He looked hollow, as if someone had just reached into his navel and yanked out his guts. Michael followed his gaze off to the right, to the stacked line of shopping trolleys. A woman in her forties was tugging at a shallow-type cart in an attempt at disengaging it from the rest. She was wearing a beige cardigan that fitted too loosely, pumps that slipped from her heels. Her hair was pinned up, but strands had escaped and dangled in the breeze. She finally prized the trolley free, and swung it round in a wide circle, facing the boys. From the front she had the look of a woman who had once been smart-looking, but had let herself go.
She stopped. Her eyes, tired and bloodshot, were bored into Gabriel’s. What little colour had been in her face quickly faded away. Her lip trembled and her knuckles gripped the bar of the shopping cart, bloodless.
Next to him, Michael heard Gabriel’s voice, little above a whisper, expressionless.
“Janet.”
The name sounded like the echo of a shout, far away.
The woman’s mouth opened, then abruptly closed. She seemed to gather the pieces of herself up. Her eyes switched from Gabriel over to the automatic doors, and she pushed the trolley past Michael with the determination of a soldier. The trolley wheel squeaked. A puff of warm air. The doors slid shut.
Michael turned to Gabriel. Little clouds of warm breath shook from Gabriel’s mouth. But before Michael could ask what had just happened, Gabriel took off, running back through the car park, past the trolleys to the houses and lawns.
Michael went after him. His trainers slipped on the glittering tarmac, he gulped lungfuls of stinging cold air. Lights flashed disorientingly around him. Eventually he caught up to Gabriel, halfway along the same road they had come. Gabriel had slowed to a march.
“Wait!” Michael called between breaths.
Gabriel turned round, stood waiting grudgingly. As soon as Michael had caught up, the marching continued.
“Who was that?” Michael panted. “What did you do to her?”
“What did I do to her?!” Gabriel burst out. He shook his head, kept trudging forwards, eyes fixed straight ahead. “What makes you think I did anything to her?”
There was a crackle in Gabriel’s voice. Michael recognised the sound.
“Why don’t we sit down. Over there,” he pointed to the bench on the corner by St Jude’s. He quickly added, “My legs are killing me.”
The clock face on the church was floodlit: 11:24. Now it was Gabriel’s turn to stare straight ahead. “I hadn’t seen her in a long while…”
Michael saw Gabriel’s eyes glistening. He kept looking up and blinking rapidly in an effort not to cry.
“You alright?” Michael ventured.
Gabriel nodded, then swallowed hard. The nod turned horizontal, into a shake. A fat tear dripped onto his cheek and started to roll downwards, before Gabriel brushed it off impatiently.
Michael felt awkward. No one cried in his family, no matter what happened. The only reaction he had ever got from crying was being told to pull himself together, or stop being silly. So when he came across someone who was really upset, he didn’t really know what to do. What was the etiquette? What was he supposed to say?
He gingerly offered an arm around Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel accepted it gratefully, and leaned closer. Michael tightened his hold, and rested his head on top of Gabriel’s.
After a few minutes in silence, warm stillness, Michael heard Gabriel mutter, “You’re alright, you are.”
Michael fought back a grin and gave Gabriel‘s shoulder a little squeeze. “You okay now?”
Gabriel nodded and sniffed. “Yeah, sorry about-”
“It’s okay.” Michael looked down at Gabriel’s hands, which were buried in his lap for warmth.
“Yeah, okay. Your place?”
The bottom dropped out of Michael’s stomach. “No! I, er… I mean… isn’t there anywhere else?”
Gabriel frowned in thought. “Oh yeah, I know somewhere.” He stood up, and Michael followed suit. “It’s not far from where I live. It’s nice in there.”
Michael followed Gabriel back to the park gates, into the gulf of plants and darkness.
“Wait, have you got any money on you?” Gabriel asked as they passed the tourist map of the park.
Michael instinctively patted along his pockets, then shook his head.
“Bank card, anything?”
“No, sorry…”
“Bugger. Look, I’m gonna have to make a little detour first, okay?”
Michael shrugged. “That’s okay.”
Gabriel smiled back.
There was something Michael needed to ask now, while Gabriel wasn’t upset, now they were in the chasm of privacy that was Yarborough Park.
“Gabe…?”
“Yeah?”
“...Who was that woman?”
Gabriel stiffened, and for a moment Michael wanted to push the words back into his mouth.
“That was Janet. My mother.”
And with that, Gabriel went back to strolling along the contours of the path, leaving Michael to realise how little he knew about him.
The neon glare faded into the soporific glow of Victorian style park lights, the layout of which was as sporadic as the trees and bushes. Yarborough Park was asleep, for the night and for the winter. The remnants of fallen leaves rotted into mulch underfoot, while the dead branches evangelically twisted up towards the moonlight. Only the public toilets by the picnic tables showed any sign of life: harsh light pushed from the translucent windows, the sound of young women cackling.
Michael drifted along the pathway with a light buzzing at the back of his head. He couldn’t tell if the path was straight or not, he just kept walking, one foot in front of the other. Gabriel had removed his hand from his back pocket and his head from Michael’s shoulder, but stayed closer than before, contentedly looking at the surrounding scenery. Michael could still feel the sting of Gabriel’s cold fingers on his cheeks, and feel the soft, warm sliminess of Gabriel’s tongue in his mouth and on his bottom lip. His brain shuddered every time he relived it in his head - which he did quite a few times, remembering new details, new sensations with each replay - in an effort to preserve the memory of his first kiss.
And then the fuzzy feeling began to fade… Replaced by nothing, numbness, and the creeping beginnings of fear. His legs didn’t drift anymore, they wobbled and faltered. The path ahead curved right, but Michael kept walking straight on, towards the bench with a steel plaque dedicated to someone he could neither read nor care about. He collapsed onto the damp seat and hunched over, head in his hands.
Gabriel carried on walking for a few paces along the path until he noticed Michael wasn’t there any more. He sat down next to Michael, leaning forward, mirroring him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why did you do that?” Michael muttered, barely audible. He kept his gaze downwards, watching the shadow of a beetle scurry across bits of gravel.
“Do what? You mean, pretend to be your boyfriend?”
Michael could see Gabriel watching him out of the corner of his eye, but kept his head forward. He opened his mouth ready to say something, but no words would come, so he settled on a nod.
“What am I going to do at college? I can’t show my face there again. It’s gonna be a nightmare... What am I gonna do? They always take the piss out of me, but now… after that… Oh, God!”
Gabriel sat listening, nodding sympathetically to Michael’s ever increasing despair, before interrupting with: “Are you gay?”
Michael stopped mid-ramble, looked at Gabriel and for a second seemed about to say something, but then looked back down between the gaps in the seat. His eyes moved here and there in silent argument with himself.
“I mean,” Gabriel continued, watching Michael’s dark eyes flicker between invisible thoughts, “I just assumed you were, like when they were calling you names. And… I don’t know,” he shrugged easily, “I just, sort of, hoped you were. You are, aren’t you? I mean, you didn’t knock me unconscious when I slipped you the tongue, so I’m gonna take that as a sign of something…”
Michael glanced up to see Gabriel leaning forward and smiling encouragingly. “Maybe,” he murmured.
Gabriel chuckled. “Maybe? It’s fairly simple, you either like boys or you don’t! I like boys. I love boys! What about you?”
Michael kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to look at anyone while he said this, so he told it to metal plaque. “I think I might be…”
“You think?” Gabriel grinned, moving his head to follow Michael’s gaze.
“Alright,” Michael grumbled. He fixed his gaze on one spot without seeing what it was, took a deep breath, and stepped off into the abyss. “Yes, I’m gay.”
Before Michael could defend himself, Gabriel had pulled Michael’s hoodie off his head and proceeded to ruffle his hair. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” he grinned, while Michael tried to flatten his hair back down. Michael was about to pull the hood back up, when Gabriel pleaded “Aw, leave the hood down, I can see your face better.”
“Keeps my ears warm,” Michael protested weakly.
“Here, I’ll keep them warm.” And with that, Gabriel reached over and placed an icy hand over each of Michael’s ears.
“Ah! Cold!” Michael squirmed backwards, but Gabriel leaned towards him, hands clamped.
“Warmer now?” Gabriel laughed.
Michael launched a counterattack, sticking his own freezing fingers down the back of Gabriel’s collar, his palm grazing the short spiky hair at the back of his neck. “Warm enough for you?”
Gabriel gasped and arched his back away, his warm shoulder blades squeezing Michael’s fingers. “Aaaaaaaaaaaa….!”
Michael relented, and relaxed back onto the bench with his feet up, facing Gabriel. Gabriel did the same, and for a while both boys sat intermittently warming their hands, ears and necks, and playfully threatening to launch another cold hand attack.
Michael left his hood down.
When the mischievous smiles had faded into expressions of contentment, Gabriel asked, “Have you told anyone else?”
It took Michael a few seconds to understand what Gabriel meant, but then he twigged. “No. Just you.”
“No one else knows?”
“Just Grant and the other dick heads.”
“Those people back there?”
“Yeah…”
“Well…” Gabriel shifted slightly on the bench, his trainer knocked against Michael’s. “It takes guts to say it. I think you’re brave.”
Michael’s cheeks went pink, but this time he had no hood to hide in. “I’m not brave…”
Gabriel shrugged. “I remember how hard it was when I first came out, a lot of…” His voice trailed off, he seemed to have second thoughts about saying what he was halfway through saying.
Michael filled the silence. “Why did you do that, back there? I mean, why did you kiss me?” His heart skipped at beat at the word ‘kiss’, and a taste of Gabriel’s mouth pulsed across his tongue.
“Why?” Gabriel tilted his head coyly. “Didn’t you like it?”
“No! I mean, yes! I, uh, I did like it and everything... it was…,” Michael fidgeted with his sleeve, “…nice…I just mean, why did you do it?”
“Well it shut those idiots up, didn’t it?” Gabriel’s eyes flicked between Michael’s, as if looking for something.
“I don’t mean that… I mean… I could’ve been straight. How did you know I was…you know…?”
“A poof? I think the crowd of people calling you ‘queer boy’ was a bit of a clue.”
“They call everybody that. They think if you don’t act like a caveman, you must be gay…” Michael bit his lip. “Do I seem gay? I mean, can you tell?”
Gabriel considered, evaluating the person in front of him like an antiques dealer. “If you’re asking if you’re a flaming queen, the answer’s no. To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I thought you were a bit borderline, but I sort of hoped you were… Then I heard the names they were calling you. That clinched it.”
“Why did you hope I was?”
This time it was Gabriel’s turn to blush, but he covered it better than Michael, shifting nonchalantly. “Well, I thought you were cute…” He shrugged dismissively. “Anyway, you won’t need to worry about college any more.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not going back, are you? You don’t need to worry about anything anymore.”
“Oh…yeah.”
Gabriel got up off the bench, and gestured with his head for Michael to follow. “Come on, don’t wanna freeze out here.”
Michael was about to ask something else, but decided otherwise. It could wait. Instead, he hoisted himself back onto his feet and walked side by side with Gabriel, close for warmth, shoulders pressed against each like a pair of conspirators.
The pair ambled through the park and past the cemetery, through the housing estate on the other side, where lights flashed rhythmically and Christmas trees scratched against windows. The conversation became easier, the silences more comfortable. The boys chatted festively about: school bullies; how Gabriel came out when he was thirteen, how Rachel Fosbury asked everybody in the class if they were gay after learning about lesbianism from a girls’ magazine, how he said yes; Michael’s English class; dealing with idiots - “They used to say ‘Gabriel likes it up the bum!’ so I just said ‘Yeah, I do’. They got bored after a while.”; Michael’s love of art; Gabriel’s love of the area behind the bike sheds.
Eventually, the red lights of Tesco rose up from a half-deserted car park. Beyond the lights, countryside rolled into a sea of darkness, like the end of the world. Last minute shoppers, insomniacs and people with nothing better to do parked close to the entrance to avoid spending more time than necessary out in the cold. A teenage trolley attendant on the night shift rubbed his gloves together and stamped down the chilly breeze.
Michael and Gabriel strode across the parking bay, Michael trying to explain that the ‘crazy dude with one ear’ painted more than sunflowers. Light beamed out from the glass automatic doors as though the shop contained daylight, ready to spill out. The doors glided silently apart in front of Michael. The sound of a Christmas jingle wafted out. He felt the warm, dry air blow against the top of his head, across his numb ears. But Gabriel wasn’t there.
Gabriel was standing three feet behind, teetering on the spot. He looked hollow, as if someone had just reached into his navel and yanked out his guts. Michael followed his gaze off to the right, to the stacked line of shopping trolleys. A woman in her forties was tugging at a shallow-type cart in an attempt at disengaging it from the rest. She was wearing a beige cardigan that fitted too loosely, pumps that slipped from her heels. Her hair was pinned up, but strands had escaped and dangled in the breeze. She finally prized the trolley free, and swung it round in a wide circle, facing the boys. From the front she had the look of a woman who had once been smart-looking, but had let herself go.
She stopped. Her eyes, tired and bloodshot, were bored into Gabriel’s. What little colour had been in her face quickly faded away. Her lip trembled and her knuckles gripped the bar of the shopping cart, bloodless.
Next to him, Michael heard Gabriel’s voice, little above a whisper, expressionless.
“Janet.”
The name sounded like the echo of a shout, far away.
The woman’s mouth opened, then abruptly closed. She seemed to gather the pieces of herself up. Her eyes switched from Gabriel over to the automatic doors, and she pushed the trolley past Michael with the determination of a soldier. The trolley wheel squeaked. A puff of warm air. The doors slid shut.
Michael turned to Gabriel. Little clouds of warm breath shook from Gabriel’s mouth. But before Michael could ask what had just happened, Gabriel took off, running back through the car park, past the trolleys to the houses and lawns.
Michael went after him. His trainers slipped on the glittering tarmac, he gulped lungfuls of stinging cold air. Lights flashed disorientingly around him. Eventually he caught up to Gabriel, halfway along the same road they had come. Gabriel had slowed to a march.
“Wait!” Michael called between breaths.
Gabriel turned round, stood waiting grudgingly. As soon as Michael had caught up, the marching continued.
“Who was that?” Michael panted. “What did you do to her?”
“What did I do to her?!” Gabriel burst out. He shook his head, kept trudging forwards, eyes fixed straight ahead. “What makes you think I did anything to her?”
There was a crackle in Gabriel’s voice. Michael recognised the sound.
“Why don’t we sit down. Over there,” he pointed to the bench on the corner by St Jude’s. He quickly added, “My legs are killing me.”
The clock face on the church was floodlit: 11:24. Now it was Gabriel’s turn to stare straight ahead. “I hadn’t seen her in a long while…”
Michael saw Gabriel’s eyes glistening. He kept looking up and blinking rapidly in an effort not to cry.
“You alright?” Michael ventured.
Gabriel nodded, then swallowed hard. The nod turned horizontal, into a shake. A fat tear dripped onto his cheek and started to roll downwards, before Gabriel brushed it off impatiently.
Michael felt awkward. No one cried in his family, no matter what happened. The only reaction he had ever got from crying was being told to pull himself together, or stop being silly. So when he came across someone who was really upset, he didn’t really know what to do. What was the etiquette? What was he supposed to say?
He gingerly offered an arm around Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel accepted it gratefully, and leaned closer. Michael tightened his hold, and rested his head on top of Gabriel’s.
After a few minutes in silence, warm stillness, Michael heard Gabriel mutter, “You’re alright, you are.”
Michael fought back a grin and gave Gabriel‘s shoulder a little squeeze. “You okay now?”
Gabriel nodded and sniffed. “Yeah, sorry about-”
“It’s okay.” Michael looked down at Gabriel’s hands, which were buried in his lap for warmth.
“Wanna go inside somewhere? Get something to drink? I don‘t know about you, but I‘m freezing.”
“Yeah, okay. Your place?”
The bottom dropped out of Michael’s stomach. “No! I, er… I mean… isn’t there anywhere else?”
Gabriel frowned in thought. “Oh yeah, I know somewhere.” He stood up, and Michael followed suit. “It’s not far from where I live. It’s nice in there.”
Michael followed Gabriel back to the park gates, into the gulf of plants and darkness.
“Wait, have you got any money on you?” Gabriel asked as they passed the tourist map of the park.
Michael instinctively patted along his pockets, then shook his head.
“Bank card, anything?”
“No, sorry…”
“Bugger. Look, I’m gonna have to make a little detour first, okay?”
Michael shrugged. “That’s okay.”
Gabriel smiled back.
There was something Michael needed to ask now, while Gabriel wasn’t upset, now they were in the chasm of privacy that was Yarborough Park.
“Gabe…?”
“Yeah?”
“...Who was that woman?”
Gabriel stiffened, and for a moment Michael wanted to push the words back into his mouth.
“That was Janet. My mother.”
And with that, Gabriel went back to strolling along the contours of the path, leaving Michael to realise how little he knew about him.
