by Alexis Hall
Talk about some Greek tragedy–level irony: Caspian had cast my heart away like a peach stone, and I’d never seen him so clearly or understood him so well. It left me full of hollow places—this useless knowledge, like my useless love. Probably that was why I said something, even though it wasn’t my business to.
“You do know that…that what happened with Lancaster Steyne wasn’t Caspian’s fault, right?”
Ellery curled her lip scornfully. “Yeah, I figured that out.”
“It’s just sometimes it almost seems as if you blame him? Maybe?”
“Well, I don’t. Adults shouldn’t fuck kids. And”—she hesitated, only for a second, which was extra startling because Ellery never hesitated—“I could have spoken up.”
More than once it had crossed my mind that if cats could talk, they’d talk like Ellery. She walked this impossible line between guarded and vulnerable, and woe betide anyone who couldn’t keep up. I kind of mostly kept up, and, for whatever reason, she liked me enough that when I didn’t, she chose not to claw my face off. But I wasn’t ready for this.
“Oh my God,” I blurted out. “That’s so not on you.”
She just shrugged. And suddenly, I was breaking up with Caspian all over again—helpless against his suffering and his terrible certainties. Thinking about it usually made me want to cry, as if I could somehow fix the universe by feeding it all the tears he couldn’t shed for himself. Today, though, I was really fucking angry. This huge rusty spike of rage for Lancaster Steyne, the man who had gouged this wound so deeply and into so many people. I hadn’t been able to do anything for Caspian, but I would fight the same fight for Ellery. A thousand times if I had to.
I nudged her very lightly, just enough to earn a listless glance. “Listen to me. Please. You aren’t the person who fucked up here and neither is Caspian. The person who fucked up is Lancaster Steyne. Who”—my voice lost some of its steadiness—“seems to be the only damn person who isn’t taking responsibility for it.”
Honestly, it messed with my mind. I’d met the man very briefly at Ellery’s birthday. Thought he was attractive, almost because there was something slightly intimidating about him. And yes, I did hate myself a little bit for that in retrospect. Occasionally, I’d remember his eyes on me like rust flecks on my soul. But what I just couldn’t…process was how normal he seemed. How untouched by shame. When everyone and everything around him was fucking poisoned.
Ellery tucked her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. “You don’t get it.”
“I get an eight-year-old shouldn’t—”
“For fuck’s sake,” she snapped. “I know that. It’s not the should, it’s the could. Like a fucking car alarm two streets over in my head all the time, knowing it could have easily gone differently.”
“But doesn’t that apply to everything? I mean, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all if your father hadn’t died.”
The warehouse was old and echoey, so the word died took a really long time to go away. I listened to it bouncing off the crossbeams—di-di-di-died-died-died—with my hands over my mouth, horrified by what I’d said.
Then Ellery gave a snort of laughter. “Your face.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“S’okay. People dying sucks, but it’s normal. People fucking your underage brother, not so much.”
“I know. And I’m sorry about that too.”
That just got another shrug. But then, very quietly, “It was just like everything was being taken away from me. Dad. Then his best friend. Then Caspian.”
I wasn’t sure I ought to be allowed words anymore. So I made what I hoped was an understanding noise.
“I just”—she waved a dismissive hand, but what she was dismissing, I wasn’t sure—“really needed him to be my big brother right then. But I guess it turned out okay in the end.”
“Um. How?”
She flashed me a rather feral grin. “I figured out early that needing people is bullshit.”
“I’m not super sure that’s the moral of the story here.”
“Well, it works for me.”
I really wanted to make a big speech about the power of love and how it didn’t have to be weakness to open yourself to others. But I’d believed all that stuff and now I was relationship roadkill. So probably I should have been listening to Ellery, not the other way round.
“Look,” I said instead, “for what it’s worth, I don’t think Caspian ever meant to make you feel like that.”
“But he did, so what does it matter?”
“I think it’s more that, after what happened with Lancaster, he’s sort of convinced himself he…doesn’t deserve to have a sister?” Like maybe he’d convinced himself he didn’t deserve to have me?
There was a long silence. Ellery’s face was turned away, her expression almost entirely concealed beneath the fall of her hair. When she finally spoke, it was in little more than a whisper. “You still don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“That it’s not”—her voice rose, then broke—“for him to decide.”
Before I could answer—though God knows what I would have said—she leapt off the sofa and grabbed her violin case from the table. “I’m going out. You coming?”
“Ellery, I—”
“Yes or no.”
“Of course I am.”
Her only response was an odd twist of a smile. Well, that and calling us a taxi. And ten minutes later we were off.
Chapter 9
Ellery was almost completely silent as we travelled and I knew better than to ask where we were going, so it was very much a sit back and enjoy the ride–type deal. Anyway, it wasn’t as if I’d had major evening plans. Not unless you counted masturbating and crying over Caspian—activities, let me make it very clear, I intended to pursue sequentially, not concurrently. But I was at least seventy percent certain Ellery wouldn’t abandon me in some derelict corner of London. I mean, she hadn’t so far.
We followed the curve of the river, through which mellow evening light had woven ribbons of silver and gold, heading west, then south, with London getting leafier and the houses getting fancier the farther we went. When we finally disembarked, it was on one of those time-frozen streets, a wide green common to the left, a march of sprawling Victorian homes on the right, all red brick, ornate windows, and balustrades that looked like they’d been iced on.
Ellery strode off without a second glance, leading me a short way down the road and then abruptly off it, down a narrow footpath and onto the common. As we pushed our way through some bushes, I found myself wondering—as I often did on my Ellery-related adventures—if I was going to be murdered or arrested or both. Concerns that were not entirely relieved when I suddenly found myself in a graveyard.
A really profoundly derelict graveyard, a maze of shattered stonework, half-drowned in trees and bracken, and watched over by headless angels. So absolute was the desolation, it was hard to believe we were only a few steps away from tennis courts and picnic benches, dog walkers and families and technophobic queers trying to discreetly cruise each other.
“Where are we?” I asked, my voice sinking into the silence as my feet sank into the undergrowth.
“Barnes Old Cemetery.” She shot me a speculative look. “It’s meant to be haunted.”
“Then the joke’s on Barnes Old Cemetery because I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Maybe they believe in you, Arden.”
I shivered, though mostly because it was chilly in the shade. The leaf cover was so thick it gave the light a heavy, greenish tint. Even the wintery sun dapple had a tarnished quality, speckling the stonework with circles the colour of old coins. “What are we doing here?”
“I like it.” She sat down on the steps of a monument, its crumbling cross casting misshapen shadows over her face.
“You would,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.
“It’s where the legend of Spring-heeled Jack began.”
&nb
sp; “You mean the guy who jumped on people? It’s not exactly up there with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is it?”
At that moment, something touched my shoulder. Which I handled with great poise by screaming the place down until I realised it had only been a leaf.
When I’d chilled the fuck out, and Ellery had finished laughing at me, she asked, “Do you want to hear a song about a man who murdered his wife?”
“What? Now? Isn’t it disrespectful or something?”
She gave me a look. “To dead people? Who are dead?”
I guess she had a point. “To their families?”
“Oh, come on. Does it look like anyone gives a fuck about what happens here?”
“But”—I shuffled awkwardly, the movement turning over several layers of leaf gunge and sending the scent of decay rushing up my nose—“that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t either.”
Ellery was already dragging her violin out of its case. “Who says I don’t. Are you listening or fucking off?”
“I’m listening. But why are these things always about men who murder their wives?”
“That’s not true. Sometimes they’re about men who murder their wives and their children.”
I looked around for somewhere to sit but it was dead people or bust. So I leaned against a tree instead.
“Okay so,” said Ellery, “out of respect for your feelings, this is about a man who murders his wife, but he does it with his wife’s sister because they’re banging.”
“His wife is banging her own sister? They lezed up hard-core in Victorian times.”
“No, he’s banging the sister. Hence the murder.”
“Oh.” My face fell. “That’s way less interesting.”
An Ellery shrug. “I’m not really into dating, but I hear it’s good to have interests in common.”
“Yeah, but ice-skating or playing board games. Not killing people.”
“But what if”—she gave me a flat stare—“you don’t like ice-skating or playing board games?”
“Stop being a creeper and play your damn music.”
She ducked her head to hide her expression, but I’m pretty sure she was smiling. “You have to help with the chorus. You know I’m not into singing.”
This was a trap. This was totally a trap. “What’s the chorus?”
“‘Oh, what thousands are approaching / Our unhappy fate to see / Elias Lucas, Mary Reeder / Die in Cambridge on a tree.’”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. And then said, “I’m not even going to ask about the verses.”
Putting the violin to her shoulder, Ellery launched into what could only be called a horrifically jolly air, the sharp, bright notes piercing the stillness of the cemetery in the eeriest possible way. The song, as I could have guessed and in fact did guess, was grim AF—but points to a random street balladeer for rhyming wife and me with adultery. When the band performed, Innisfree did most of the singing, apart from the occasional duet with Dave. She had one of those crystalline sopranos that could make damn near anything sound sweet. Ellery’s contralto, on the other hand, rough from lack of use, brought exactly zero sweetness. Just its rare and fragile heart.
It was the only song she sang that night. After that, she mainly idled, playing snatches of things I wasn’t anywhere near cultured enough to recognise, although she told me some of it—the most painfully frenetic—was Bartók worrying about fascism. And at some point the rest of the band turned up, Dave with his guitar flung across his back. I couldn’t imagine Ellery ever bothering to tell anyone where she was, or where she was going, so God knows how they’d found us. But I guess highly developed Ellery-tracking skills would be a requirement if you wanted to work with her. She looked neither surprised nor displeased to see them all. Which was basically the equivalent of glad.
“Cup of tea, Ardy?” Innisfree was waving an eco-friendly bamboo thermos at me and I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and I had no idea how long had gone by while I’d been graveyarding it up with Ellery.
“God. Yes. Please.” She passed me the lid and, blowing off the steam, I took a heedless gulp of the liquid within. Regretted it instantly but, sadly, had been raised with good manners when it came to spitting or swallowing. “Uhm. Uh. That’s an interesting flavour. What, um, is it? Actually?”
“Milk thistle and dandelion.”
“Oh. Uh. Wow. Yes, you can really taste the…um. Those things.”
“I know, right?” She smiled radiantly at me. “They’re both so good for the liver. And assist with the production of bile.”
I gazed disconsolately into the murky depths of my milk thistle and dandelion tea. “I believe you.”
Newcomers were starting to drift into the graveyard, finding places to sit or stand or sprawl amongst the thorns and fallen monuments. And in a little while, perhaps at Ellery’s instigation, the band began to play. I’d seen them before, several times actually, on account of me being an amazing, supportive friend, but not like this. Without the drums or the keyboard, the music had a raw, stripped-back quality—the sort of intimacy that Ellery usually went out of her way to resist.
I found myself thinking about her birthday party performance. She’d been this piece of wildness then, in her red dress, with her bare feet, and her bow flying across the strings. Tonight, there was just Ellery and the music that spilled from beneath her fingers. And when the last of the light faded, her fans took out their phones so that the darkness around her danced with electric fireflies.
Chapter 10
The week or so leading up to my interview with Caspian and Nathaniel was awful. Turned out, dreading something while simultaneously being desperate to get it over with was kind of a headfuck. But having spent three years at Oxford doing pretty much anything to avoid having to get a degree, I was a grand high master of distracting myself. And having a…a…whatever George was to me…lover…person-with-benefits…paramour (gosh, that sounded sexy) helped immensely too. I’d slept around plenty and even had a couple of boyfriends before Caspian, but I’d never actually been with someone I was banging regularly in an emotionally uncomplicated way.
Of course, the weirdest thing about it was that what I had with George now was probably exactly what Caspian had tried to set up with me at the beginning. What had he called it again? Sex on a short-term prearranged basis? It was so strange, remembering stuff like that. The scene was still vivid in my mind—the view of the Martyrs Memorial from the Randolph windows, the precise blue of Caspian’s eyes on that grey-golden morning, the restless tapping of his foot as he delivered his mildly indecent proposal—and yet felt so long ago. At the time, it had been confusing and actually a little bit humiliating, but thinking about it now filled me with a strange, sad tenderness. If nothing else, that lost boy and equally lost man were going to have an amazing summer together.
Of course, they’d have wasted less of it if they hadn’t agreed to such a fundamentally stupid plan in the first place. What was right for me and George could never have been right for me and Caspian. When it came to him, I had way too many emotions, complicated or otherwise. And as much as he’d struggled to admit it, so did he.
Of course, I had emotions for George too. I mean, let’s face it, I had emotions about bin liners. But these were nice, safe emotions—liking her, fancying her, knowing I could trust her. On top of which I was getting the kinky education of my dreams. One I would gladly have forgone to have stayed with Caspian, but as consolation prizes went, it was pretty damn consoling.
The night before the interview I mostly spent whining at Nik over Skype, failing to sleep, and fretting about failing to sleep, before dropping off at about five thirty only to have weird but oddly plausible dreams about the interview and then wake unrefreshed and slightly unsure what was real and what wasn’t. Except for the fact my phone had run out of battery during the night and therefore my alarm hadn’t gone off, so it very rapidly became apparent that what was real was that I was fucking late.
Argh! Just…arghhhhhhh! My whole strategy for surviving the day had revolved around being fabulous. Now even showering had gone out the window. And my hair, which had apparently decided to manifest my inner turmoil, just wouldn’t calm down. Even the clothes I’d painstakingly laid out last night suddenly looked wrong. But how could they ever look right? There was no dress code for interviewing your ex-boyfriend and the man he was engaged to about their engagement.
Fuck, fuck, oh fucking fuck.
I’d been out of bed for less than three minutes and everything was already disastrous. Also, I’d fallen into a dither-loop, which meant the more aware I was of wasting time, the less capable of action I became. Just standing there blankly in the middle of my bedroom in my tiniest rainbow pants—the one part of my outfit that, barring extreme disaster or good fortune, nobody was actually going to see. In the end I pulled on a pair of unnecessarily tight jeans and a shirt through which I knew you could—in the right light—see the faintest outline of my nipple rings, and threw my old plum velvet jacket on over the top. Yes, it wasn’t the most mature decision I could have made, and definitely wouldn’t have passed muster with Debrett’s (“Gentlemen are generally encouraged not to display their assets like a right Tarty McTartface”), and probably Caspian wouldn’t notice or care, but I don’t know, it made me feel more in control of the situation. Even though I wasn’t remotely in control of anything.
An hour or so later, sweaty and Tube-battered and still borked in the brain department over what was about to happen, I was sprinting across the marble atrium of Hart & Associates—a state of affairs that was practically, at this point in my life, a habit. Except when I tumbled out of the lift at Caspian’s floor, there was no immaculate and cool-eyed Bellerose to ignite my every match-spark of inadequacy into a forest fire of insecurity. Not something I ever thought I’d miss. And yet there was something deeply, profoundly wrong about seeing a stranger at his desk: one of those elegant middle-aged women who have coiffures instead of haircuts.