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Aaron finds it at the bottom of Robert’s suitcase while searching for a packet of disposable razors. It’s small, a little bigger than a tennis ball, and soft to the touch, save for the eyes, the plastic of which is cool against his palm. He takes it out of the bag and stares at it, trying to work out what it means in this context. So normal, yet so out of place.
A cuddly sheep, with a stuffing-swollen body and dangling legs, a threaded white smile stitched onto black felt.
At first, Aaron wonders if it might be a stowaway from another time, misplaced and packed away following a family holiday more than a decade ago. Seb had so many cuddly toys - bears and rabbits, farm animals and dragons, even a stuffed croissant with a vacant expression which Rebecca had spent an ungodly amount of money on - that it would have been easy for one to go missing. But then he sees the label; still attached, unfaded, £11.95 from a local toyshop here in Hereford, where they’d been staying for the past week and a half, the name of which Aaron doesn’t recognise.
He’s been trying his best to adjust to Robert’s new routine. Like he might with a newborn baby, he tries to sleep when he sleeps, be that ten o’clock at night or two in the afternoon, but in truth his schedule is no schedule at all, and more than once Aaron has awoken in the too-small bed of their holiday rental flat alone, arm outstretched across the empty half of the mattress, cradling the air. He’s a light sleeper, but not light enough to catch Robert as he slips away in the early hours of the morning, disappearing into the narrow streets of the medieval city centre, only to return hours later empty-handed and with nothing to say.
Robert never really has much to say these days, not since they left home and sped down the M6 to the cheapest Airbnb Aaron could find at such short notice, anyway. For the first time in all the years of their on-again, off-again romance, Aaron finds himself being the one to fill the silences. On their countless walks around the city, he offers a running commentary. He comments on the variety of wares at the Christmas market and the price of a pint in the Midlands compared to the North. He reads out the information boards inside the cathedral, the specials menu in the Italian restaurant they’ve been to twice, the labels of wine bottles in the off-licence. He remarks upon the unfamiliar accent of the woman behind the counter in Tesco Express and how the weather is ever so slightly warmer here. He talks. And talks. And talks, more than he can ever remember talking in his adult life, and Robert responds with single word answers, vague grunts and disinterested silence. And yet he keeps talking, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Because he fears that, if he allows silence to fall, that it might crush them both under its oppressive weight.
‘What are you looking for?’
Aaron startles so violently that he loses his balance, tumbling off his haunches onto his backside with a pained ‘oof’ of expelled breath. He looks over his shoulder to find Robert stood in the bedroom doorway, hands in his pocket, raindrops clinging to his eyelashes and darkening the shoulders of his jacket. Aaron hadn’t realised that it was raining. It’s barely half seven in the morning, and still so dark that he hasn’t bothered to open the curtains. And yet here Robert is, fully dressed and pink-cheeked from the winter air.
Why didn’t you wake me? He wants to say. I could have come with you.
Why don’t you want me with you?
Why won’t you talk to me?
‘Razor,’ is what he actually says, gesturing to his patchy, overgrown facial hair. ‘I need a shave and mine is blunt.’
Robert nods, then his gaze drops to Aaron’s left hand, which is currently propping him up on the cold wooden floor, and his mouth folds into a thin white line. Aaron’s throat tightens. In his chagrin at being caught digging through Robert’s belongings - something neither of them would have thought anything of when they were married - that he’d forgotten he was still holding the sheep. He shifts his weight and opens his hand. The toy is crumpled, limbs spread awkwardly, as if its just fallen from a great height, it’s once jolly round belly now dented and one of its eyes half-unstuck, giving it a lopsided look.
‘Sorry,’ he says, staring hopelessly down at the toy in his hands, as if he’s apologising to the sheep rather than Robert, who neither moves nor says anything.
There it is. The silence. The quiet that says more than any of the words either of them have exchanged since the drive to the hospital, Robert’s forehead pressed against the passenger window while Liam fretted to himself in the backseat. The air is thick with it, tarring the inside of Aaron’s mouth, weighing his tongue down and clamming up his windpipe.
‘It’s okay,’ Robert says after a beat, voice chillingly monotone. ‘It’s not like I can give it to him, anyway. And besides, he’s probably too old for something like that now.’
Aaron looks up and finds Robert still staring at the toy in his hands. His expression is stern, but his eyes are soft, like he can’t decide whether to throw the tiny sheep out of the window or cradle it to his chest.
Of course.
Aaron’s vision blurs with tears. He blinks hard, angry with himself, because what right does he have to be crying over this when Robert isn’t. It should be Robert who is in pieces at the foot of their bed, fighting to not double over at the ache in his ribcage as reality sets in. It should be Aaron maintaining his composure, while Robert falls apart.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, his voice catching, the sheep now pressed against his heart.
‘I said it’s okay.’
‘It’s not though. Is it?’
Robert’s Adam’s apple bobs as his hands curl into fists at his sides. Aaron scrambles up, almost stumbling over the pins and needles in his left foot. Without a word, he pulls Robert into a hug, pressing his face into the soft fabric of his jumper to hide his tears. Instead of leaning into Aaron’s arms, Robert tenses. It’s less a hug than it is Aaron clinging to Robert for dear life, trying to stop him from falling into the abyss of himself. To keep him here, so he doesn’t lose him all over again.
‘I never did get to spend Christmas with him,’ Robert says, his voice quiet and steady, with the tone of someone commenting on the weather forecast.
Aaron bites down hard on his tongue, a sob wedged firmly in his throat. He holds Robert tighter, but still Robert doesn’t hold him back. The sheep falls from his grasp onto the floor with a gentle thud. Neither of them move to pick it up.
They stand like that for a very long time, so close to one another as far from each other as they’ve ever been. And as the day breaks, the tide of silence they’ve been struggling against finally pulls them under.
And neither of them can even bring themselves to say his name.