Back at home, we tried to interest Noel in the various goodies we’d bought. But he kept glancing at an empty cotton reel that Sam had given him a couple of days earlier.
“It’s just like Charlotte and her toys,” Mark said. “You buy them something new, and all they want to do is play with things that we’d normally throw away.”
As we weren’t expecting our visitors until later, I made us a round of sandwiches. We sat at the kitchen table and began eating.
“Simon?”
“Uh huh?” I asked after swallowing.
“When we make love, we’ve always used condoms.”
I nodded, not sure where he was going. When I’d met Mark, he’d been working on the streets, forced to sell his body for money to pay his pimp. Mark’s past was something we rarely discussed as it was a painful episode in his life.
“I’ve been th
