He had a lot of pictures—not just him and Darren, but of Mum and Dad, and Paul and Ethan (even though he wouldn’t tell them he had them, or he’d put them on display)—and he stuck them with Blu-Tac around the window frame in lieu of curtains. The blinds looked to be broken, so he hitched them halfway down and stuck pictures onto the slats too. The colours were better than the white blinds and black window frame, and the room instantly felt less lonely with them there.
For most of the afternoon, he sorted his things into the wardrobe and the desk drawers, to the background tune of other people moving into the rooms along the same landing and his phone buzzing every now and then when Darren texted him back with even worse English than usual. Jayden convinced himself he was taking loads of rest stops on the way home, even as he told him off for texting while driving (Darren was a terrible driver; Jayden had no idea how he’d passed his test) and set up his laptop to play some of their old study playlists while he tried to find his formal clothes in the bottom of his big case. Dinner had to be eaten in suits here.
“Knock, knock.”
He jumped and flushed. He had forgotten that Darren had left the door open when he’d left, and now a couple lounged in it: a girl so thin that ‘willowy’ would have been describing too much body fat, and a tall, blue-eyed boy with reddish-blond hair in a side parting twenty years older than he was. Good-looking, Jayden supposed, in a preppy sort of way.
“Hi.” The girl unfolded a long, skeletal arm for a handshake. “Ella Mays-Wright.”
Ella was a very thin, very beautiful girl (in that typical Vogue model kind of way) with long, blonde hair and eyes like an exaggerated doll: large, round, and very blue. Maybe it was the hair, or the black pencil skirt, or the no-frills blouse, or the folded arms, or the way she leaned, but she couldn’t have been a foot wide, and her long face was even more angular than Darren’s. Her smile was a little plastic—maybe the way it didn’t crease her skin, or the glossy colour of her lipstick—and her pose a little too considered against the doorframe, but she seemed harmless enough.
“Um, Jayden. Jayden Phillips,” he said and shook her hand.
“Jonathon Birch,” the boy said. He was tall, with a firm handshake that smacked of regular moisturiser. Up close, one eyebrow had a gap like an empty piercing. His hair was smoothly parted, and his face so clean-shaven that Jayden suspected he didn’t need to bother often. He had a strong jaw and wide mouth, but there was a kind softness around his eyes, and a gentle twist up at one side of his mouth. He seemed a little friendlier, a little less intimidating than Ella, and dressed more casually than her, in tight, fitted jeans and an obscure indie band T-shirt. “I’m reading economics, what about you?”
“English.”
“Wonderful,” Ella said and smiled a smile that didn’t so much as approach her eyes. “I’m reading law. I’m going into corporate law; my father works for Merrill Lynch.”
Jayden had no idea who that was; Jonathon rolled his eyes and offered a smile. “I’m just here for the escapism from my parents,” he confessed. “They’re both scientists, but I find it so dull.”
“Okay,” Jayden said. “Um…” Their parents were scientists and lawyers? Dad was a customer service provider in the meat products department, but that was just a fancy way of saying a butcher. And Mum was a shop girl. He suddenly wished he could lie and use Darren’s parents instead, but he’d never be able to keep up that facade for long.
“Are you nearly done?” Ella interrupted. “We’re going to explore and find some people before dinner. It’ll be less daunting if we can walk down all together, you know?”
“Um, well, I guess I can pick this up later, um…”
“Great!”
He barely had time to grab his phone and keys before Ella hauled him out into the narrow hall after her by the wrist, strong for such a skinny girl, and Jonathon trailed in their wake. Still, Jayden reflected even as he freed himself, if he let Ella do the hard social work, he could just get to know people like this, right? It’d be less daunting, anyway.
It was certainly…efficient. Ella breezed through the rest of the landing without pausing for breath. Most of the landing were girls, Jayden learned, but the floor below was the other way around. If Ella and Jonathon had come across as instantly more of Darren’s background than his, the rule didn’t hold entirely—one girl on their floor dressed in a faux-punk style that seemed to involve cutting her own hair, and a scrawny Welsh boy downstairs had red dreadlocks down to his arse. Jayden wanted to take a picture and send it to Darren, just to see what he said, but he would still be driving, and Jayden didn’t want to cause any accidents. Darren managed those on his own.
They ended up going down to dinner as a floor, Ella leading the charge in a red dress that took the two pounds of fat she possessed straight off her again. Jayden found himself next to Jonathon and opposite Ella herself, who opened the starter with an argument with the girl next to her (Dahlia? Daisy? Some kind of flower beginning with ‘D’ anyway) about the policies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In about half a second, Jonathon had waded in on his subject, and Jayden was left toying with his food and trying to remember who the Chancellor of the Exchequer even was. (He was fairly sure the man’s name couldn’t really be ‘Misogynistic Xenophobe’, whatever the flower-girl said.)
The other nearby conversations didn’t seem much better. The girl on his left (who was studying Norse, which Jayden hadn’t even realised was a real subject) was having a heated argument with a tiny Asian girl about queer theory and its relationship to women’s studies in general, and the boy opposite her, whose name Jayden had never caught in the first place, was telling someone all about his gap year in Uganda, which had been about saving orphans. Or elephants. Or maybe orphaned elephants.
He felt suddenly shy, as the queer-studies-hater turned on Jonathon and Ella’s conversation, and it dissolved into a huge melee of voices about current education policy. Jayden didn’t know the first thing about education policy, current or otherwise, and escaped back to the food counter to pick over the desserts and surreptitiously text Darren. It was just after six, so he’d be home by now, and sure enough, after a pause, he was told, don’t complain 2 me, its ur freaky uni ;) xxx
Gee, thanks Darren. Useless son of a…
“You look lost,” said a voice in his ear.
Jayden jumped; the girl smiled sympathetically. She was a squat, fat sort of girl in that overweight-but-solid manner, like an oddly shaped building. She wasn’t at all pretty, with spiky, dark hair that had too much gel in it, and a rubber wristband from a music festival that clashed horribly with her trouser suit, and with the rest of the atmosphere generally. But she was giving him a sympathetic look that seemed genuine, mixed in with a little humour and a little understanding, and Jayden suddenly warmed to her.
“Sorry, nosey,” she said. “I’m Leah.”
“Really?” he asked - without thinking - and pinked.
She grimaced. “Well. Ophelia Rutherford,” she admitted. “But I’ll punch you if you call me that. What’s your name?”
“Jayden.”
“And the lost expression is because…?”
“My table are all taking politics and I have no idea what they’re on about,” Jayden admitted.
“Join mine, then,” Leah said, taking a slab of diabetes-inducing cake and linking her chunky arm into Jayden’s. “Tim’s a drama enthusiast doing English because Mummy said so, so we’ve been basically winding him up for like half an hour. Tim!” she called, dragging Jayden straight to a new table; the redheaded, dreadlocked Welsh guy from downstairs looked up, and grinned crookedly.
“Save me,” he implored.
“Fuck no,” Leah said, dragging Jayden down onto the bench. “Tim’s mother actually sewed name labels into his underwear!”
The disjointed bubble burst; Jayden blurted out, “Seriously?!” and the ring of laughter from the table at large soothed his displaced nerves. This was okay. This wasn’t serious stuff. H
e had time for the serious stuff.
The talk at Leah’s table didn’t ever really transcend into conversation. Pictures were shared over the table on mobiles, and Jayden endured twenty minutes of ribbing for being half-ginger when he shared one of his parents. (Tim, being actually ginger, was no help.) This dissolved into rambling about nationality: Leah, it turned out, had a German mother, which resulted in a fair few off-colour jokes, and Jayden shyly offered that his boyfriend was quarter-Iranian, dropping the information tentatively, unsure of the reaction. He had no intention of going back in the closet, but still…
“Holy shit,” Tim said. “Is he a gay Muslim, then?”
The pressure was alleviated. Unfortunately, Tim’s remark meant that the entire table instantly accepted that he was, and a semi-serious blip of gay rights in the Middle East popped up for all of thirty seconds before Leah made a vulgar joke about whether his ‘meat’ was halal. Jayden informed Darren of the development by text, red-faced but secretly kind of enjoying the relaxed atmosphere, and received a picture of his middle finger in response.
“Tough guy!” Tim crowed when Jayden showed it to him, and then someone decided a gay Muslim would totally own a ginger Welsh Bob Marley in a fight, and things spiralled off from there.
“You miss him?” Leah asked lowly amongst the hubbub. “Your boyfriend. You’ve not stopped texting him all evening.”
“Darren,” Jayden murmured. “Yeah. Stupid, he only left this afternoon, but…you know. It’ll be the first time we’ve been apart since we got together.”
“How long?”
“Three years ago.”
“A school relationship? Those don’t really last…”
Jayden shrugged, rubbing his thumb over the phone screen. “We’re going to try,” he said lamely.
“Hey, don’t get me wrong, good luck to you,” Leah said. “Got a proper picture, then?”
Jayden thumbed through his phone and stopped on one taken last Christmas, of Darren outside a nameless cafe in his jacket, scarf, and red beanie, curls escaping under the rim. And his glasses. That was why Jayden had taken the picture in the first place, even if Darren hadn’t smiled when ordered to. The glasses were enough.
“Huh. Kinda cute,” Leah opined.
“Devastatingly attractive, thank you,” Jayden said loftily and clicked onto the next one. Darren didn’t know he had this one. It had been a Sunday morning, one of the rare ones when Mum hadn’t taken Darren home Saturday evening. She’d come back drunk with Dad, far too late, and had let Darren stay the night, “just this once!” only it hadn’t been just once but—anyway. “See?”
Darren had still been asleep. Although he didn’t smile much, his face was always expressive—except in sleep. All the lines had been smoothed out, and he’d looked ethereal, and Jayden had snapped a picture of that relaxed, stunning face, the curls headed for the pillows instead of hiding his high forehead, and it never failed to make his breath catch.
“Eh.” Leah shrugged. “I maintain that he’s kinda cute.”
Jayden flicked through a couple more pictures before he was interrupted by a text from the man himself. who the fuck is timothy cooper n y did he just frend me on fb?
Leah, reading over Jayden’s shoulder, shrieked, “Tim!” at the top of her lungs and attacked him with her napkin.
“Oh, come on, that Ella chick already friended everyone, it was easy!” Tim started protesting. “I wanna know a gay Muslim! That’s awesome!”
Jayden ignored them both, and replied, Don’t worry about it, ignore him :) xxx
Freaks. Ur all freaks!
He laughed, the knot unpicking in his chest, and before he could reply, he was offered more horrible English.
But ilu x
You are eighteen years old. I have seen your schoolwork. I know you can write. Stop being a retard and spell it out.
Bitchy, arent we? fine. I love you. Better?
“That’s so sweet I might puke,” Leah surmised, peering over his shoulder. “He’d better be way more gorgeous than those pictures.”
“He is,” Jayden said, replying ILU2 before taking the leftover cake she pushed at him. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Leah said and returned to baiting Tim.
Darren helpfully told him to piss off by text, and Jayden felt, between the banter and the presence of some people who seemed like real human beings, like maybe this Cambridge thing would be all right after all.
Chapter 3
Darren kicked the door shut, dropped his backpack on the rug, and flopped backwards onto the bed, arms out. He bounced once, his glasses flew off onto the pillow, and he groaned at the eased pressure off his heels. Work shoes absolutely sucked.
He was training as a crime scene examiner with the police. His first week had just finished, and they’d already progressed from desk safety (seriously?) to graphic descriptions of what happened to the human body when exposed to certain toxins. But it was interesting stuff, even if it was a lot of wandering around fake crime scenes. He’d figured in a few years, they’d all want degrees off their applicants, not just A-levels, so get in now before they started asking, and it had worked. Okay, so he’d had to move a fair way to do it, and rent wasn’t particularly cheap on the coast, but it was manageable. Pay in training sucked, but he’d get an automatic pay rise when he passed the course, and it wasn’t exactly rocket science, so…
It was good, but goddamn, being on your feet all day killed.
He eyed the ceiling dispassionately. It was dusty up in the eaves like this. He’d rented a studio flat on the top floor of a converted house, and it was tiny. He was also fairly sure the lettings agent had lied about the insulation. He lived in what used to be a loft, and last night had been about as warm as sleeping in the park. As had every night this week.
“Fucking hell!”
Aaaaand then there was the neighbour. She lived in the other loft room on the other side of the stairs. Darren hadn’t met her yet—he’d only been here six days, and five of them at work. Frankly, if she was anything like the weird old lady on the first floor, he didn’t want to know. Apparently he was responsible for the Nazis and the Israel-Palestine problem. Would’ve been nice if someone had told him.
“Hey!”
Darren groaned. She was banging on the door. “It’s open!” he yelled.
It banged off the wall, and Darren blinked, groped for his glasses, put them on, and squinted. Nope. Same vision.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
There was a girl. In his room. In a T-shirt and knickers. And socks, he noticed, but nothing between the knickers and the socks. Except these gangly bare legs that she hadn’t shaved in at least a week, that matched her general tall-and-gangly appearance, and the cropped dark hair, and the scowl. And the hands on hips pose. Not that she was very intimidating. She was…okay, she was tallish, for a girl, but she was scrawny. No boobs. Brown hair in one of those weird cuts that even pixies called short, so short it wasn’t even rumpled. Bony sort of a face. Kind of luminously white—even Jayden had more of a tan than she did. White T-shirt that didn’t help the skin tone, or do anything to hide those tiny boobs. Offensively pink knickers.
Pretty, he supposed, in a very rough and sketchy way.
“Stop leaving the landing door open when you come in,” she said. “It creates a draught!”
Darren stared at her. “The what?”
“The landing door!”
“…The door at the bottom of the stairs?”
“Yes!”
“Um, okay.”
She scowled harder, then folded her arms. “Okay.”
“Uh, yes,” Darren said. “Now, do you mind? At least put some trousers on.”
She scowled again and huffed. “Why do you think I felt the draught?”
“Fair enough,” Darren said and sat up. “Darren Peace.”
“Rachel Yates,” she said and shifted her knees. Darren didn’t blame her. It was chilly; he wasn’t paying for extra heating before win
ter hit. “You like omelettes?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on then,” she said imperiously and swept out. Darren eyed the door that she left open, showing the tiny landing and her own open flat door. He considered his sore heels, then figured if his neighbour had decided to show up in her knickers and offer him free food, who was he to turn it down?
He heaved himself off the bed and followed.
* * * *
Rachel Yates lived in an identical box across the tiny hall of the converted top floor, and in disarray. Her kitchenette was covered in yellow sticky notes with cryptic messages like ‘unsalted butter wtf?’ and ‘JODIE’S PENCIL’ in chicken-scratch handwriting. She had more pink knickers drying on the radiator under the window, threw a cherry tomato at Darren’s head, and imperiously demanded if he knew how to make an omelette.
“I’m crap,” she said. “You’d better know.”
“Do I get some of it if I do make it?”
“A quarter.”
“A third, or you and your tomatoes can go fu…”
“Fine, Jesus.”
She rummaged in the fridge; Darren complimented the knicker-clad arse, and got another tomato bounced off his cheek for his efforts.
“Perv,” she said.
“You’re the one who invited a total stranger into your flat to make you dinner. In your knickers. What am I meant to think?”
“I’m being nice!” Rachel defended herself.
“You’re being a massive flirt,” Darren said.
“Please, the landlady told me you’re gay.”
“Bi,” Darren corrected and Rachel flushed. “Yeah. Check your research next time.”
She snorted and dumped an eggbox in his hands. “Get on with it.”
Rachel, it turned out, was twenty-two and a teaching assistant at the nearby primary school. She was originally from ‘Pompey’—or Portsmouth—but had moved away to get away from her childhood, just like Darren. She had a disturbing fetish for yellow sticky notes (seriously, they were everywhere; there was one on the light switch about a frog) and went running every morning, and spent the entire cooking time for the omelette trying to persuade Darren to join her tomorrow morning.
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 2