Chapter 2

“You bastard!” Richard spat out. “I didn’t have to move in here with you, you know! It was youwho asked me!”

“And now I’m asking you to move out.” Phil folded his arms. He was having trouble holding on to his composure. “I’ll ring Peter now and ask him if you can stay there tonight. He’s got a spare room.”

He moved out to the hallway and picked up the telephone. “You can pack some clothes while I do it.”

And that was that. Just over a year of unwedded bliss destroyed by another man’s underpants left in the bathroom. 2: Fraud

Going back to work on the Tuesday after Easter was hard. Peter had been stalwart. He’d come and helped Richard move all this things out the previous day while Phil went to visit his Aunt Mary as he usually did on bank holidays, and he’d said that Richard could stay with him while he sorted himself out.

Phil wished it was as easy as that. He felt dreadful. He’d gone out to dinner with Percy and Adrian when he got back from Aunt Mary’s and opened his heart to them. He’d known Adrian since school and he and Percy were a couple.

“That’s youngsters for you,” Percy said, glumly. “Can’t keep it in their trousers. Not like us old married chaps.”

Adrian threw a cube of sugar at him across the restaurant table. “I remember a time not all that long ago when youcouldn’t keep it in your trousers,” he said.

“Not after I hitched up with you!” Percy said, affronted. “I mean. I know people do. But it just seems like a good way for everyone to find out and for you to lose your job. I know they sayyou can’t get arrested any more…but I don’t want work to find out, thank you very much.”

Percy taught sciences at one of the local schools.

“It’s not that part that bothers me,” Phil said. “I’ve had my fair share of those sorts of encounters. It’s that I thought we were being faithful. And he brought people to the flat.” He knew the horror in his voice was evident. He loathed people who weren’t close friends in his space. It had been a mark of his infatuation with Richard that he had invited him to stay.

It had been a perfect storm for poor Richard a few weeks after they’d met. He’d to move out of his digs after some drama with his landlady and a miniature poodle that Phil hadn’t felt the need to fully investigate. He’d already been spending nearly every night at Phil’s Barbican place and it had seemed the right thing to do for Phil to offer to put him up until he got a new place. And Richard had just…never left.

“I feel such a fool,” he said, taking a mouthful of his cabernet sauvignon. “I’m looking back over it all now and wondering how often he was doing it. I’m away quite a bit. He’d have had the opportunity. And he didn’t seem to think it was a problem until I asked him to leave.”

Adrian patted his hand comfortably. “Don’t worry about it, old thing,” he said. “He’s a very plausible young chap. I don’t think you have anything to reproach yourself for. He seemed like he was really keen on you. I never saw him looking at any one else when we were with you. And even the once or twice he was there and you weren’t he didn’t make eyes at anyone.”

“Knew which side his bread was buttered,” Percy muttered and then flinched as Adrian indiscreetly kicked him under the table. “Sorry,” he said. “I never really liked him. He did come on to me once, sometime last Christmas. It wasn’t anything overt. Just a general feeling that I’d be welcome to…well. Welcome to whatever.”

Phil pulled a face. “Not that you’re not a very attractive bloke, Percy, but why would someone do that? To a friend of your boyfriend, I mean.”

“No idea. I could have been mistaken. He was quite subtle. Might just have been flirting and I misinterpreted. I was quite drunk.” He looked ruefully into his empty glass of wine. “Unlike now.”

“School tomorrow,” Adrian reminded him. “Coffee instead?”

“Yes, please.”

* * * *

Phil got through the next week with sheer grit and determination. He arrived as usual at six in the morning and stayed until his regular eight at night. He went out for drinks after work three times and on Saturday he cleaned the flat from top to bottom despite his cleaning lady already having been through it as thoroughly as she usually did. He found four of Richard’s ties mixed with his in the wardrobe and a book on party locations on the French coast that he took pleasure in putting in the bin.