Not that Foley was hard to please. She was easy to please. Now. That’d happened somewhere after she’d given up trying to evict him and before they’d worked out their version of friendship. Being friends meant he took on extra labouring work and hunted out clothes from Vinnies that fit better. It meant he was prepared to leave the area, be around her in front of other people with less fear he’d dirty her reputation. It was simple things like strolling past the old Beeton house she loved to check it wasn’t more tumbledown, catching the bus together, riding in her car, lying in the park in the sun with a book each. It meant they touched. A definition of friendship he knew they’d stretched but was unwilling to think too much about, because having Foley near, being able to lay his hands on her, was worth more to him than he was prepared to admit to. It was a fresh kind of sanity, a new way of balancing himself in the world. As long as Foley, his bright star, his fixed point, thought he was tolerable, he could tolerate himself.
