Andrew's New Flame

The problem with questions is, they lead to answers. Sometimes the questions you are fearful to ask get nice fluffy answers that make you all warm and fuzzy inside. So of course there’s the flipside to this – sometimes nonchalant questions get unexpectedly complicated and disconcerting answers that tie your gut up in horrible knots.

I’ve found out who is currently making Andrew happy, although it’s certainly not an answer without its complexity, and I’m struggling to know how I ought to feel about it and I’m going through all the usual self-analysis as to whether I’m over-reacting and reading too much into things and predicting futures that are unlikely to come to fruition. I call it my WCS function – whatever parameters are available, I feed them into the WCS function and out pops the return value, rendered neatly as the Worse Case Scenario. In matters of the heart and mind I like to be prepared and to have considered as many possible outcomes as I can – but despite these preparations I always decide that the worse possible thing that may happen (within reason) will inevitably happen.

So I can look at what I learnt yesterday at many angles – but here are the two extremes:

Worse Case Scenario:

My eldest son has become embroiled in an extremely dangerous and inappropriate and illegal relationship with a man in his late twenties.

But also equally possible:

My eldest son has found the support, advice and understanding he uniquely requires as a recently-outed young homosexual male from a homosexual man who just happens to be in his late twenties – there is no relationship, least of all a carnal one.

And let’s throw a perturbing variable into the mix:

This man happens to be Andrew’s former maths teacher.

I learnt all this from a completely unexpected source: Annie, mother of former house-guest from homo-hell, Kevin.

She popped up on my doorstep last night around eight in the evening. We both seemed utterly stunned to see each other, which was surprising in her case as I’m not sure who’d she thought would be answering the door to my house. She smiled nervously at me (she does possess quite a bewitching smile) and asked if it was all right if she could come in. I nodded and we made our way through the lounge (past a couple of gaping looks from my younger pair) and into the kitchen.

Once armed with a cup of tea and we’d gotten the niceties of two people who knew each other barely at all but whose lives had become intertwined via the actions of others out of the way (and she’d made a fuss over the attention-seeking fluffball known as Ripley) she admitted she was here largely about Kevin.

She looked at me solidly and asked if we’d heard anything from Kevin. I said no. She then said please tell me you’re telling me the truth because if you’re lying it would be horribly unfair. I told her I was not lying. She went on if it was all right if she could ask the same question to Andrew, but I told her that he wasn’t in. Next question was if I knew if Andrew had had any contact with Kevin, and I said I’d asked him just that on Friday and he said he hadn’t heard anything for just under a month. Then it was did I believe Andrew was telling the truth and I said that I had no reason to believe he was lying to me.

I said as far as I was concerned Andrew and Kevin were over and I believed Andrew felt that way, especially as Andrew seems to have found someone else. Annie’s eyes widened at that news, and I was a little annoyed as I read her expression as meaning she thought Andrew had gotten over Kevin a little too easily, but as it later turned out it was for different reasons entirely.

I asked when was the last time she’d heard from Kevin, which was a little insensitive and stupid of me as her face cracked for just a moment, but she instantly recovered her composure, and said just a couple of days after Christmas. She then went on to reveal several things our her family life of late that it’s not my place to repeat here. In short, she was finding it hard to weigh her concern about Kevin’s whereabouts and safety against the lack of concern showed by the rest of her immediate family. They’ve just rubbed him out, she said.

She rose to leave, apologising for coming here but explaining that myself and Andrew were really her last hopes. I smiled – indeed I felt like giving her a hug but of course I didn’t. She asked if we heard anything at all from Kevin, would we let her know – it didn’t matter if he didn’t want to see her or her husband or his brothers, she would just like to know that he was okay. I said of course I would.

Brought it home to me then that I only lost a lodger. Annie lost a son out of the whole Kevin/Andrew experience.

I escorted her to the front door and it was there that she dropped her bombshell. She turned and said Bryn, you seem like a nice man, so you really ought to know this. There’s a rumour going around Robbie’s school that Andrew is having a relationship with Mr [Aldridge]. It might be rubbish and it might be people putting two and two together and getting seventeen, but I thought you ought to know. Then she left.

I’m not jumping to any conclusions, and I think I need to speak to Andrew, but he hasn’t been home since Friday night, and I have received one text, outlining he was staying the night at a friends, and that was last night. His phone has been on voicemail since then.

I really do not know – if anything – I ought to do.

And of top of this, I’ve felt pretty crappy all day, really bad stomach pains. I’ve not eaten a thing, which is most unlike me.