Late one night, while we were in bed, Edgar tossed my sweatpants at me, saying, “Come along.” Barely dressed, I followed him up three flights of stairs and into a darkened room. He pulled back the curtains, and a full moon illuminated furniture hidden beneath sheets. He uncovered a well-worn, chintz-upholstered sofa and beckoned for me to sit beside him.

“We’re here,” he said. “This is it.”

“Where are we?”

“The nursery. Where I’d have fun with Gerald and our parents.”

This was the place Edgar had told me about during our first dinner at IHOP. This was his sanctuary when the world became too much. When he needed to be alone.

“It’s—it feels like we’re floating,” I said, peering at the walls, which were painted with a mural of animals in striped vests and top hats playing musical instruments. “As if when we go outside, a hundred years might’ve passed. Or we’ll be on a mountaintop or a pirate ship.”

“Yes. Sometimes I’ve thought about tidying things up, but I haven’t. I’ve been waiting. To show it to you.”

He looked at me, to see if I could handle this. To see if he could become this open, and connected to his past, and free.

“I love it.”

Which wasn’t me saying “I love you,” but still an important step; we were trusting each other more and more.

“Look,” Edgar said, finding something behind a cushion. “He’s still here.”

He was manipulating a hand puppet of a threadbare lion.

“Hello, Carter,” said the lion. “Will you have sex with me?”

“Now I understand everything. You had a gay puppet.”

“You belong here,” said the lion.

CHAPTER 24

Holding it together?” asked Edgar, as we sat side by side having our hair and makeup tended to in a greenroom at BBC Studios. We were wearing similar but not identical blazers (his navy versus my gray Harris Tweed). We had tissues tucked into our collars to protect our crisply laundered shirts from the foundation that was being sponged onto our faces and set with powder. Our hair had been trimmed, slicked and sprayed, and we’d definitely trounce the poodles at the Westminster Dog Show.

“You resemble strange evangelical cousins,” said James. “The sort of people who come to the door with Bibles and won’t leave.”

“You look so handsome, Your Highness,” said Edgar’s stylist, an ultra-competent woman who wore very little makeup herself and kept her hair in a ponytail.

“As does Carter,” said Edgar, thanking my stylist, a great guy with a shaved head and multiple piercings, who said, “Next time I’ll give you matching Mohawks.”

“It’s a mite scary,” commented Ian to the security team. “They look like those twins in The Shining.”

“Or hired assassins,” said Terry.

“But in a good way,” Lucky assured us.