Kane

I felt really, really good about myself for the whole of the remaining two hours it took to reach the house. I know it is perhaps smug and self-congratulatory but l had made someone happy, blissfully so and that, in turn, made me feel good. He'd set up the phone, tested out the settings, changed the font, wallpaper and god only knows what else umpteen times over. It was a miracle the left side of my face was still the same colour as the right side considering the number of photos of me he'd taken and shown me --- only after he'd twisted them maliciously in photoshop and snapchat! Add in the selfies and I was beginning to think l ought to have bought a phone with a bigger memory!

THE best was in the shitty motorway service station where we stopped for a break. I watched him standing in line, hunched over his screen, two thumbs texting away furiously. He looked totally indistinguishable from the two or three young guys in front of him in the queue for the checkout. At least until he looked up at me, grinning, and my phone went ping with the arrival of his text ... 'U have no idea what this means 2 me ' I don't think I'll ever delete that message.

His constant and infectious chat about his phone meant I had less time to dwell on my return to the home l had shared with Michael for almost ten years now. And that l was returning without him. Granted, I was looking forward to the space of Cornwall and its slower, gentler pace taking the place of frenetic, claustrophobic London. But, this house on the cliffs outside Padstow was way more part of Michael, and he part of it, than the London one. And that worried me. He'd searched out the location, harried the poor damn architect and then the poor damn builders until they'd got it exactly the way he had wanted it to be for us. He could be a total pain in the arse over even small, small details, as I used to sympathise continually to the architect especially. Occasionally I managed to win concessions from Michael but more often than not, l just let him do what he was good at. Getting it right!

I could easily have taken Kane into the house using one of the doors out of the double-garage. The one on the left of the garage opened into the utility room and then the pantry and then went into the kitchen area which opened up afterwards. If you took the other door, the one in front of the cars, you stepped into the corridor that separated the garage and utility room on the one side and the small gym and the not so small swimming pool on the other.

But entering that way would have meant losing the impact, the 'wow' factor that Michael had purposefully wanted to see on the face of first time visitors. Kane was no exception. He stepped into the house, wiped his feet and only then looked up to see the huge sweeping open space that ran out in front of him (and cost a fortune to heat). The open plan kitchen area on his immediate right; the dining area, its mirror, on his left and, directly ahead of him, past where the corridor axis that bisected the front-side of the house from the sea-side, the two steps down to the sunken lounge area with its soaring glass wall that gave spectacular views over the cliffs to the sea beyond, and eventually to the horizon.

'Bloody hell!'

He put the bags down and walked to the exact middle of the house.

'What's the opposite of claustrophobia again?'

'Agoraphobia.'

'Well, good job l don't suffer from that!'

'Ha ha! First time I've had that as a reaction but yes!'

'Wow!'

He turned to the left and looked down the corridor.

'What's that way?'

'Michael's study is the first left, then there's the house bathroom. The two doors opposite each other down the end are guest bedrooms and this first door on the right is our bedroom.'

'Good. I was wondering where I would sleep!', he replied, grinning and immediately turned 180° --- to give me no opportunity to correct him and say I'd meant Michael's and my bedroom. Clever was our Kane!

'What's on this side then?'

'On the right after the kitchen is the utility room ... there's also a shower which we used mainly for cleaning up Missy when she'd got filthy on the beach. And a toilet so you don't have to come all the way into the house if you're caught short working outside!'

'Then I suppose it's the garage? What's behind those massive curtains? Looks like something out of a theatre?'

'Watch!'

I walked past him, went down the two steps to the sunken lounge area and hunted around for a remote in a drawer next to one of the built in banks of sofas. I pressed a button and the curtain started to pull back on either side to reveal a glass wall with an indoor infinity pool behind.

'Fucking hell Ben! This place ... unfuckingbelievable ... that's what it is!'

'Ha! Ha! Yes, I suppose it is. Go explore if you want! I need a pee!'

He made for the swimming pool whilst I turned left and headed for our bedroom. I opened the door and froze the minute I saw Michael's stuff in our room, exactly where it'd been left. It became my turn to feel tears run down my cheeks. I was still standing there two minutes later when I felt a kiss on the back of my neck and two hands on my waist turn me around.

'It's ok to hurt, Ben. It's ok.'

Then, two minutes later, 'Go point Percy at the porcelain in a different bathroom, eh? We'll sleep in a guest room tonight and tackle this tomorrow, yeah?'

He pulled the bedroom door shut and that was that.