by Alexis Hall
Oh God. I had no hope of untangling that: layers of perception and interpretation and implication about people I hardly knew in a situation I only partially understood. “I left because we had an argument and I thought he didn’t want me here. But it was a moderately-sized misunderstanding and we’ve sorted it out now.”
She glared at me. “I had to ring him.”
“Ring who?”
“Caspian. I don’t like having to ring my brother. Because I couldn’t find you. He told me it was none of my business.”
Wow. That was a seriously dick move on Caspian’s part.
Which was when I got it. I’d hurt her. Or, rather, I’d acted like she was irrelevant to me, and that had allowed her own stupidhead brother to hurt her. It was a realization that helped banish a lot of my own frustration. “I’m so sorry. Of course it was your business.”
“We’ve only hung out once. I don’t care where you go or what you do.”
“You know, I’m not going to leave, Ellery.” Now I’d figured out what was happening, it was easy to ignore what she was actually saying and try to address what she meant. Or, at least, what I thought was bothering her.
“That’s what Nathaniel said.”
Nathaniel. Again. It was all I could do to keep myself gruntled. “Yeah, well. I’m not him.” I seemed to be saying that a lot these days.
“He promised he’d always be there for me.” Ellery drove her boot even more viciously at the poor, defenseless, very expensive wall.
I sat down on the edge of the bed in the hope that it might encourage her to stop and sit down too. It didn’t. “You got on with him, then?”
“He was okay.”
From Ellery this was practically a declaration of undying devotion. And, God, when was I going to stop getting all freaked out over Nathaniel? Every time I heard his name, I got skewered by this spike of bad feels. Sort of general dislike and, well, I guess it was some relation of jealousy. This nasty sense of always following in his footsteps.
I fully intended to be a mature grown-up about it. Unfortunately, what came out of my mouth was: “Did he go to many raves with you?”
Ellery glanced up—her eyes as sharp and bright as her sudden grin. Apparently, in being sullen and pathetic, I’d said the right thing, somehow. “No.” She finally stopped beating up the apartment. Slinking back into the room, she flumped onto the floor, knees pulled up to her chin so she was a grumpy knot of boots and legs and elbows. “We did other stuff. It was…I dunno. Like having a proper brother. But Caspian fucked it up.”
I didn’t want to argue with Ellery. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have been much of a friend if I’d twiddled my thumbs while she said unreasonable shit. “You wanted your brother to stay with a guy who didn’t make him happy?”
“Nathaniel was good for him.”
“By what metric?” She glared at me and I knew I was pushing my luck. But I continued anyway, “Look, it’s really hard to understand relationships from the outside. And, besides, you’re being super inconsistent right now.”
“Super inconsistent?” she repeated, with a sarcastic little lilt.
“Well, either you hate Caspian, in which case you wouldn’t care whether he’s with someone good for him, or maybe you do care about him at least a little bit. And either Nathaniel was your friend, in which case Caspian should have been irrelevant, or…or he wasn’t.” Okay, that hadn’t gone quite to plan. “Shit, sorry, that sounds bad.”
She was tugging at the buckles on her boots, making them catch and clink. “He said it was too complicated. And painful. Hanging out with me when he wasn’t—oh whatever. Doesn’t matter. Caspian takes everything. He always has.”
I couldn’t keep arguing with her about people I didn’t know and a past that wasn’t mine. So I changed tack. Gave her something I did understand. And could guarantee. “He won’t take me.”
“Yeah right.”
“It’s true. Chicks before dicks.”
She gave me a swift, sardonic look from beneath the tangles of her hair. “He’s definitely that.”
“And I’m really sorry I went running off to Scotland without telling you. I was just messed up and confused. I promise I won’t do it again. At least, I won’t if you give me your phone number so I can communicate with you instead of waiting for you to randomly turn up.”
“Whatever.” But she tossed her iPhone at me.
I added my name to her address book and sent myself a text before passing her mobile back.
There was a slightly awkward silence.
She fiddled with her phone a while. It had a gorgeous mother of pearl case that glinted with its own soft rainbows when it caught the light. Not very Ellery. Or maybe very Ellery. It was hard to tell sometimes.
“So.” She glanced up, at last. “Want to shoot some people?”
I made a gurgling noise.
She watched me for a little while, and then the corner of her mouth ticked up into a smirk. “I don’t like Mondays but not in the mass murder way. I meant on the PS4.”
The last time I’d fired up the epic flat-screen in the sitting area had been when Nik was staying. Because, the thing was, home cinema felt ridiculously fucking lonely if there was only you.
“Sure,” I said.
We got ourselves settled on the sofa and Ellery got everything set up, finally tossing the second controller into my lap. We played some kind of Call of Duty-alike (actually, it probably was Call of Duty) and I was basically terrible—dropping grenades on my own feet, banging into Ellery’s character, and wincing every time I had to shoot a person-shaped collection of pixels. By contrast, she was positively surgical, cutting through our enemies, headshot by headshot by headshot.
When she wasn’t laughing at me, anyway. She had a good laugh—throaty and uninhibited, just rarely seen in the wild. Strangely, it was when she most reminded me of Caspian.
I ordered a pizza at the point that a sensible-food-having time rolled round. It was Ellery’s choice, though she only ate a slice and then did coke off the box.
“Problem?” she asked, catching me staring.
“No. I mean…Um. Drugs are bad, aren’t they?”
“This isn’t bad. It’s some of the purest shit you can get.” She swung her legs up onto the sofa and sprawled out, lazy as an alley cat who had beaten up all the other cats and nicked the best spot in the sun. “Sure you don’t want some?”
I shook my head. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get addicted or your nose will fall off or something?”
“Nah. They’ll send me back to rehab before I go full Winehouse.”
“Good to know.”
We were quiet for a bit. It was probably the longest I’d ever seen Ellery sit still.
“Why do you do it?” I blurted out, sounding like Squarey McSquareson, the Squarest Square in Squaresville. The only place in the universe they still said square.
“Do what?”
“You know.”
“Ohhhh, you mean getting tweaked. Getting geeked. Blowing out. Making it snow. Hitting a bump. Chillin’ with mah white bitches.”
I pouted. “I feel mocked and derided.”
“You should. Because that’s what’s happening to you.”
“It’s not a completely unreasonable question,” I mumbled.
“It’s boring, which is worse. I do it because it feels good. Obviously.”
“But it’s not real.”
“Have you noticed nobody ever says that about the shitty stuff?”
“I…hadn’t thought of it like that.”
She gave one of her I’m-almost-too-apathetic-to-express-my-apathy shrugs. “Life is just another come down. Least this way I get to choose.”
“Steady on.” She’d managed to put me off the pizza. Apparently pepperoni didn’t go with ennui. “There must be something else that makes you happy.”
“Like what?”
“Um, a beautiful sunset?”
She shot me a look from beneath her half-closed ey
es: this sliver of greenish malice. “A beautiful sunset? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I panicked, okay?”
No reply.
Wow. In less than ten minutes, I’d achieved an almost one hundred percent fun to awkward conversation rate. Go me.
Ellery swung her boots off the sofa and stood up.
“I’m going now.”
A glance out the nearest window confirmed it was late and dark. And maybe cold. “You can crash here if you like. I promise not to keep saying stupid things.”
“Got somewhere to be.”
That could have meant anything from shooting up in the toilets of a twenty-four-hour McDonalds or floating down the Thames in a bag. Although probably she was just on her way to some kind of soul-crushingly trendy party.
Anyway, I wasn’t her keeper.
She had more than enough of those already.
“You can come if you like?” she offered.
Admittedly, One Hyde Park wasn’t the most homey of places. But at least I was allowed to hang out there in my underpants. “Once I’ve engaged pajama mode I’m kind of locked in.”
“I get it. Pajamas are dangerously cozy. Fuck pajamas.”
And with that, she was gone.
Since I’d fallen into that weird space where it was too early to go to bed and too late to do anything useful—like attempt to have a career—I decided to fix my toes. Marshalling my bottles of nail polish, I got rid of the remains of the Sally Bowles experiment, and repainted in alternating sparkly purple and silver. While I was glad Caspian couldn’t see me, hunched unattractively over my own feet like something from a National Geographic pull-out, I was hoping he’d appreciate the end result. After all, he’d told me in Kinlochbervie that he found my taste in self-decoration distracting. Which now I thought about it, didn’t sound all that flattering. But the way he’d said it…oh God the way he’d said it. Insta-melt.
Proud of my handiwork, but also conscious that Caspian might not be up for a barrage of needy selfies, I sent it to Nik.
Nothing.
Boo.
And here I thought Nik could always be depended upon to find me cute on demand. What time was it in Boston anyway? Eight? Nine? A quick social media stalk soon revealed he was in the on-campus pub with some of his MIT friends. They looked like they were having fun, huddled round a rickety table and drinking what was probably craft beer. It gave me a weird pang for my barely over university days, though it was mainly the sense of community I missed, not so much the whole being expected to get a degree in English thing.
At that moment my phone buzzed. It was Nik:
Sry, crap reception. Adorbs.
I sent him back a kissy face, feeling mildly bad for having interrupted his evening with my feet, and then went to bed. Lounged around on the edge of sleep, wanking idly, and thinking about Caspian. About Friday.
Which was foreverrrrrr away.
Though, actually, while I generally preferred my gratification undelayed, it wasn’t too bad—waiting for Caspian like this. Knowing I meant something to him and that he wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. There was no more nervy uncertainty, just a warm flutter of anticipation. Maybe we’d be able to spend the whole weekend together. A prospect so sweet it made my newly bright toes curl as I came.
Chapter 7
I spent the next day glued to my email. Just in case Milieu were all “we loved your article so much we got in touch with you straight away even though that literally never happens.”
It hadn’t happened.
So I dedicated myself to being moderately productive, which mainly involved restocking my food supplies and writing, and only fretting about Milieu/daydreaming about Caspian a little bit. Nik woke up hungover in the middle of my afternoon and we long-distance buddy-watched an episode of Supergirl, me curled on the sofa, Nik apparently still in bed and not consistently conscious.
I was back in the study and back at work—go me—when Ellery said, “Come on, we’re leaving.”
“Oh my God.” I finished having a minor heart attack. “Are you ever going to like knock or warn me before turning up?”
She thought about it for a moment. “No.”
“But what if you get here and I’m bonking your brother?”
“Then I’ll be psychologically traumatized and you should feel bad about yourself.”
I abandoned that line of argument as a dud and asked instead, “Where are we going?”
“I told you. Out.”
I glanced at the time on my phone, surprised at how quickly the day had passed. I’d damn near worked a nine to five, if you discounted the fact I’d gone shopping, watched TV, and not got up at nine. But, y’know, I was definitely getting there.
“Okay, okay.” I closed my laptop. “Let me get changed.”
Ellery’s own outfit—an off-the-shoulder jumper that simply said DEAD, a floral skirt, black tights, Docs, and a backpack with cat skeletons on it—didn’t offer much insight into possible destinations. It suggested something fairly casual but, knowing Ellery, that was probably how she’d dress for tea with the queen. I settled for jeans and my Boy George T-shirt. Another present from Nik, it was just a stylized eye, very blue, with the familiar slash of a brow, a touch of makeup, and a single colored tear sliding from the corner. I mean, the queen liked Boy George, right? She’d offered him an OBE once. Well, allegedly. I flung my velvet jacket over the top, grabbed my phone, and that was me: ready to go.
We headed out of the building and down into the street. It was actually shaping up to be a fairly nice evening. Not exactly warm because, y’know, England, but the sky was swirly blue and a pale silver orb was hanging in it. I’d seen pictures of such a thing on the internet and I think it was the sun. Ellery produced a pair of dark glasses and put them on. They were huge and round and covered her from brows to scowl.
Thus protected from the merest hint of summer, she led me into Hyde Park through the Albert gate. At least, I thought it was the Albert gate—it was sandwiched between a couple of embassies, wide enough to admit a carriage, and there were weird statues of animals on either side of it, which struck me as the sort of thing Victoria was liable to stick her husband’s name on. It led to a sandy avenue lined by hazy green trees, broken up every now and again by wrought-iron lampposts.
“Rotten Row,” I said, getting all excited.
Ellery turned her head slightly in my direction. “S’not that bad.”
“Are you seriously telling me there’s something I know about London that you don’t?” She didn’t answer so I took that as a grudging yes, and went on, “The name’s a corruption of Route du Roi, and it was the fashionable place for ladies and gentlemen to ride out during the Regency period.”
“I’m not into rich people shit.”
“Spoken like a true rich person.”
That earned me another head-turn, but her mouth wasn’t quite as sulky as usual. In fact, I would even have gone so far as to say her expression was amused. “How do you know this stuff?” she asked.
“Georgette Heyer. Obviously.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t see her eyes, but her tone suggested they were rolling. “Romances.”
“What’s wrong with romances? And don’t give me some line about them being trashy or patriarchal or always having the same plot because everything always has the same plot.”
“Nah. They’re just about people. Can’t be fucked with people.”
The righteous wind wheezed out of my sails. “Aren’t all books fundamentally about people?”
“Watership Down is about rabbits.”
“Allegorical people rabbits though.”
“No, it isn’t. They have their own language and faith and culture, and think about things totally differently.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d genuinely outraged her with my thoughts on Watership Down. So I did a conciliatory backpedal for the sake of social harmony. And also because I’d never heard her sound so passionate, and it was ki
nd of adorable. “I guess. And, anyway, that book is really fucked up.”
She grinned. “Isn’t it?”
We walked on in silence. Turned left at the tennis courts and ended up back on the Kensington Road, between the Albert Memorial and the Royal Albert Hall. This part of London was basically a noncon Albert sandwich whichever way you went.
“Come on.”
Ellery stomped off purposefully, looping round to the south side of the concert hall. I’d never actually been this close to it before. It was a tiered cake of a building in red brick and terracotta, wrapped up this decorative frieze about the advancements of Arts and Science and works of industry of all nations. I knew that because it was written right there in huge shiny letters. You had to love the Victorians. I mean, apart from the colonialism. And the bigotry. And the widespread social oppression. Okay, maybe the Victorians sucked.
Once we got to what, I guess, was the front it was clear something epic was going on. There were two lines of people running down each side of the Queen’s Steps and, from the general relaxed atmosphere—there were even little clumps of picnickers—it looked like everyone was in it for the long haul. It was probably the most British thing I’d ever seen. Because, say what you will about us as a nation, we sure as hell give good queue.
Up near the front on the right was a little group all playing cards. Though they stopped when Ellery approached and an older woman, with a cluster of white curls, got up from a fishing stool in order to—OMG—hug her. And Ellery didn’t flip out or bite anyone. It was super weird.
“This is Arden,” Ellery said, when she was finally released. “Arden, this is Flossie, Dick, Mikhail, Janet, and John.”
I waved a little awkwardly, since I had no idea what these people had to do with each other, or with Ellery. With the exception of Mikhail, they were all in their fifties at least. John, in his tweedy, elbow-patch-sporting jacket, looked like an academic. And Janet like the subject of that Jenny Joseph poem.
Dick peered up from the latest George RR Martin. “Where’ve you been, Ellery girl? We thought you’d forgotten us.”
“Just been busy.”
“You’ve missed out.”