Kelly’s stomach sank. She was a bitch. She was the same schoolgirl who put down other girls because she had the guy and they didn’t. Fuck. She didn’t know what to say. Jude was looking over Kelly’s shoulder. And Kelly could see, reflected in those ludicrous sunglasses, a man stumbling towards them in the clothes he’d been wearing all weekend, looking like a hobo.

Jude said, ‘Speaking of mess. He’s all yours.’

VYVANSE

Vyvanse

Gordon had spent two days trying to outrun his own thinking. Saturday night had left a line of questions at the door of his brain like secured creditors. He and Kelly had done enough talking before, but when it counted, after, they had been too busy covering their tracks to discuss the consequences of their actions. Did the urgency about not letting anyone know mean that the event was only a one-off? He had no idea. Life with Kelly had always had an element of strategy, like a game to which he had come late and with a wobbly grasp of the rules. He had never quite got over the good fortune of having her fall in his lap, so when she fell out of it again, slipping down the shadowy side of memory lane with Dog, her behaviour had an aspect of the inevitable. But the other night she seemed to be saying that her world didn’t revolve around her and Dog, it was her and Gordon. Or just Gordon. Strange, that your wife putting you at the centre of your story was the most unexpected trick for her to pull.

He’d managed to avoid her all day yesterday, and they’d gone to their separate bedrooms last night as usual. He’d lain awake, wondering if Kelly was going to do something, or if he was. Nothing. Wherever his mind raced, he really couldn’t track what was happening. Himself and Kelly was just one fractal of an infinitely repeating pattern, a crowd of matters with common characteristics yet different particulars, about which he was equally ignorant. There was what Dog had told him about the real estate house of cards about to collapse all over them. There was the ongoing natural disaster of his parents. There was Lou’s recent evasiveness, probably connected with Carl’s imminent move. There was his constant sense of being pincered by Leonie’s plans. There was Frontal’s letter, which he had stupidly burnt. There was his problem with Sam. And then, back again like a dog to its sick, he thought of Kelly.