After dropping Jane home, Daniel stopped at the supermarket at the end of her road to pick up two copies of the newspaper. To his annoyance, she had remembered to ask for her own copy back in order to finish the crossword. It rather alarmed Daniel to think that a secondary school English teacher should take such pride in being able to complete a simple crossword in which the majority of answers stemmed from knowledge of celebrities and reality television. Still, he supposed he could empathize with Jane’s need to kill time with such an exercise on an otherwise uneventful Friday night, though he would never admit this, to her or to anyone. He rather liked the idea that she believed he was as active as he told her. Perhaps that said more about him than her, but so be it. Surely he wasn’t alone in wanting to be perceived as someone other than his true self.

At the kiosk behind a woman with a trolley full of ready meals labeled with gaudy ‘Buy One Get One Free’ labels, Daniel remembered why he so loathed supermarkets.

Primarily, it was because he couldn’t stand the way they tricked people into buying more than they needed. It was obscene, really. Even he’d fallen for their scams once or twice before, buying three bags of fruit for the price of two, only to end up throwing half away. He didn’t mind the waste as such, but couldn’t bear to be reminded that he’d made the wrong decision.

Two years ago he resigned from shopping at the supermarkets to shop locally on Falmouth high street, not least because he believed it better to support independent businesses, but also because it made shopping more of an even. In fact, it was a rather pleasant way to while away a Saturday, a day that would otherwise be void of activity. From eleven in the morning till three in the afternoon he wandered from the butchers to the bakers to the greengrocers. Once his food shopping was finished, he ambled among the many charity shops for books before stopping for an hour or two in a café to read the opening chapters. Because of this he had a bookshelf full of titles that he’d started and never finished, but at least when he lay his head on his pillow in the evening, he knew he’d done something with his time; he had food in the cupboards and books on his shelves to prove it.

Walking up the path to his house now, Daniel hoped that he’d be alone for the evening. After the day’s revelation that he could be in touch with Christopher once again, he wanted his own space, time to think about what this meant, about what he was going to do next. In his eyes, to rush a decision was as bad as making a wrong one.

As he opened the front door, the smell of cooking hit him immediately and he rolled his eyes. Why were they always home when he didn’t want them to be? he wondered, locking the door behind him as was his habit. Did they know when they weren’t welcome, or was it just coincidence?

In the kitchen he found Mario, his lodger, and Mario's girlfriend, Luana, preparing an elaborate dinner. There was a time when he positively hated Mario having people round like this. Though there was no contract between them, it was never part of the arrangement. They’d agreed that Mario would ask Daniel before inviting guests over, that he'd make sure it was convenient for Daniel, too. But over time he, Daniel, realised that for the most part he rather liked the company even though the majority of the time Luana was at the house, he was in his own room, as if it was he who was the lodger.

In fact, if someone were to come into the house and look around the front room, they would find no immediate trace of Daniel in the communal rooms. It was Mario's books that were on the coffee table, his bag beside the sofa, his shoes in front of the fireplace (something Daniel had repeatedly told him got on his nerves). Even the calendar that Daniel had bought was annotated with Mario’s shift patterns and weekend plans. Everywhere Daniel looked, there was someone else’s life looking back at him, reflecting the emptiness of his own.

Pitifully, he felt even more the outsider when Luana was around and she and Mario became one; when their arms and legs intertwined on the sofa; when they finished each other's English sentences in Italian; when they fed one another at the table. When they were like that, Daniel sometimes wondered what affect he had. Did he bring with him a chill? A sobering presence? Because whenever he walked in the room, he was aware of the atmosphere changing, just as it did in the staffroom. Though he supposed it used to bother him, both at home and at school, he was simply past caring nowadays. How can a person change such a thing as the affect that he has on other people?

'Daniel,' Mario called. 'You're just in time. We are making pizza. Do you want?'

'No, thank you,’ he replied in his usual clipped manner. ‘I'll make something later.’

‘You sure? We have lots here.’

‘Honestly,’ he said, adamant that he wouldn’t relent to Mario’s usual ‘You sure? Go on, there’s plenty,’ style of bullying. He knew that he and Luana meant well, but eating with them involved an obligation to make conversation and, more than ever, he was simply not in the mood. Over the years he’d learnt that there was nothing worse than staying silent when with something heavy on his mind.

'Good day, Daniel?' Luana asked.

A modestly pretty young woman in her mid-twenties, Luana had an interest in other people that Daniel would have despised in others, certainly in his moronic colleagues. But in Luana, it seemed natural. Not once did it feel false or feigned.

'The usual,’ he lied as he placed his shopping bags in the one patch of worktop that wasn’t cluttered with Mario’s dinner preparations. He’d unpack later, he thought. He couldn’t be bothered now. ‘Yet another day tying to teach children who don’t want to be taught. Children who would rather spend their days discussing celebrity cellulite and what’s happening in soap operas.’

Luana smiled, revealing the small chip in one of her front teeth, the only visible flaw in her otherwise perfect appearance.

‘I’m sure you’re a wonderful teacher,’ she said. ‘Maybe they were just tired.’

‘Of life already?’

She laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You’re so mean.’

'Daniel, I threw some ham out,' Mario interrupted, wrinkling his nose. 'It was in the fridge. It smelt bad, so I threw it out. I hope you didn't mind.'

'I don’t mind,’ Daniel said as opened the drawer next to the fridge and took out the corkscrew. He noticed a glance between Mario and Luana, a glance that he’d come to understand meant, ‘He's drinking again.’ He checked his watch and saw that it was six o'clock. That wasn't too early, he thought. Nothing after five was too early.

‘Are you working tonight?' he asked Mario.

Mario groaned and held his head in his hands, a typical grandiose gesture of his.

'Till close,' he said. 'I can't bear it. I am so tired.'
'He's been working too much,' Luana said. 'I tell him not to, but he works too much. He is-, how do you say in English?'

‘Stupid?’ Daniel offered, tongue in cheek.

Luana pursed her lips. ‘I mean, he’s a workaholic.’

'I need the money, baby,' Mario said, then in what Daniel assumed to be a New York accent, 'Education ain't cheap.'

While studying IT at Falmouth University, Mario worked as a waiter in the local Italian restaurant, Tarantellas, where Daniel believed him to be something of a novelty; a genuine Italian artifact amongst supermarket bought ingredients and Cornish chefs.

Daniel had only been to the restaurant once, last year when Mario and Luana had insisted on taking him out with them to celebrate Luana’s birthday (‘The more the merrier, isn’t that what you say?’) The food was excellent and the evening went surprisingly well, conversation flowing as steadily as the wine. When they returned home – Daniel a little tipsy – he swore to himself that he’d make more of an effort with the two of them, that he’d at least sometimes accept their invitations of dinners and weekend walks. But the following evening, when Mario suggested he join them for lasagna, he automatically declined and offered a transparent excuse; so had become his nature.

'If you're worried about money,' Daniel said now. 'I don't mind if you're a little late with the rent.'

Mario looked horrified, as if Daniel had just asked if he knew anyone in the Mafia.

He shook his head. 'No, no, no. I'm never late with the rent. Don't worry. The rent will be yours.'

'Well, thank you,' Daniel said, picking up his newspapers and walking through the living room to his bedroom.

'Daniel,' Mario called after him. 'Luana's flatmate is having a party tonight. She doesn't want to go. Can she stay here while I am at work?'

Luana looked at Daniel with the bottomless brown eyes that were wasted on him.

‘I will be very quiet,' she said. 'You won't know even that I am here.'

'That's fine.’ Daniel said, surprised at his relief that he wouldn’t be alone this evening. 'That's fine, Luana.'

It was last year when staff at St Bede’s were told there were going to be redundancies that Daniel took on a lodger. He'd never even thought about it before. After fifteen years of living alone, he wasn't even sure he could share his space again, but after eleven months he and Mario had found some sort of compromise. The fact that Mario was so busy no doubt helped matters since they weren't constantly thrown together, and while he sometimes wound Daniel up with his slow cooking and loud love-making, generally they got along just fine.

Because he needed the money more than the space, he advertised the double bedroom and, when Mario took it, moved into the single at the back of the house. He could have had a double bed, but then he wouldn’t have room for his bookcase or desk. Not that he used the desk as much as he’d like. He’d once fantasized about writing a novel. He had – rather, still had - the time and the determination, but was ashamed to say that he found no inspiration. And without that, what was there?

Having been made by his grandfather, the mahogany desk once belonged to Daniel’s father. When Daniel went to university, his father let him take it with him, not wishing his son luck, but instead ordering, ‘Don’t break that desk,’ as if that was something he’d planned all along.

Having outlasted the late Richard Stone, the desk sat beneath the window in Daniel’s room that looked out onto the small green patch of garden. He’d been meaning to plant things there for years, but it always seemed too much effort. Luana once said that she would go to the garden centre with him to choose plants if he needed her help, but it still seemed too much upheaval for something that would only flower once or twice a year.

With the newspaper in front of him now, Daniel read the story about Christopher again and for the first time he was able to do so with his heart beating a normal rhythm. Taking the scissors from his desk-tidy, he cut out the picture of Christopher from one copy and placed it on the foot of his bed, unsure yet of what to do with it, but knowing that it was something he wanted to keep.