“I did ask,” Darren grinned. “Apparently you get fed at college, but I don’t. She doesn’t trust me to be able to cook.”
“I don’t trust you to be able to cook.”
“Yeah but…”
“Hang on,” Jayden said as someone knocked on the wood. “Come in!” he yelled, and the door cracked open.
“Hi!” Ella said, beaming.
“Oh, um, hi,” Jayden blinked. “I’m on Skype, so…”
“Who with?”
“Darren.”
“Oh!” She flitted to the side of the bed and leaned over Jayden’s shoulder to wave. “Hi, Darren!”
Darren raised a hand. “Er. Hi.”
“Sorry, I’ll leave you alone in a minute,” Ella badly stage-whispered, “but I wanted to ask if you’re going to come with us—me and Jonathon, that is—to the pub opposite the railway station this evening? At eight? Apparently they’re having a history talk there and there’s a pool table too, so Jonathon wants to try it out, and I thought it’d be fun if the three of us went.”
Darren raised his eyebrows at Jayden, who felt flustered.
“Um,” he said. “Well, I was going to go to the basement bar with Leah…”
“Oh, forget her.” Ella waved a hand. “They only do these talks once a month, and we’ll be far too busy next month, you know, so it’ll be good!”
“Um, yeah, okay, whatever, sure,” Jayden babbled, just trying to get rid of her, because he was on Skype, and Darren was giving him that half-amused, half-incredulous face that meant something unflattering was going to come out of his mouth soon, and Jayden really didn’t want Ella to be cross with him because of something his boyfriend had said, so…
“Great!” She beamed, hugging him briefly—and alarmingly, because she’d never really even touched him before—and waving at Darren again. “Sorry, I’ll leave you to it now,” she said.
“Bye, Ella,” Darren said, half-laughing. When she clicked the door shut behind her, he said, “That was a bit weird.”
“She’s, um…direct.” Forward, maybe.
“Yeah, no shit,” Darren said. “Blowing off Rutherford, though? It’s all politics over there, isn’t it?”
“It feels like it,” Jayden agreed. “I dunno, I mean, Ella's really nice about helping me find things in the library and studying together and stuff, but she’s a bit…different, you know? She’s not really got anything in common with me.”
“Blondeness?”
“That doesn’t count, Darren, shut up.”
“Mhmm. Oh, I meant to ask,” Darren said, apparently changing the subject. “Get it across to that dreadlocked bloke, Tim? Get it across that I’m not Muslim. I think he seriously thinks I am, he sent me a link to a Muslim LGBT support network.”
Jayden laughed. “Oh, he’s just kidding.”
“It’s weird. I’m forwarding them to Paul now.”
“Black LGBT support?”
“Good idea.” Darren smirked. “Anyway, I’ll let you get to your history pub do. I need to eat and sleep, I’m dozing off here as it is.”
“Okay,” Jayden said and rolled his eyes at the door. “We’ll have a proper chat, without being interrupted, at the weekend.”
“Call you Saturday.”
“Yeah. Love you.”
Darren snorted, made a heart with his fingers, and logged out. Jayden stared at the blank screen for a long minute, before shifting the laptop aside and getting up to get ready.
He couldn’t help but feel…adrift.
Chapter 6
“Darren!”
“What?” Darren yelled. It was Saturday evening, two and a half months into his training, and the first full weekend off he’d had yet. There’d always been something to turn the week into five-and-a-half days or even the full six: lessons running over, practical sessions having to be done on weekends, administration and IT stuff the force didn’t want to take a proper weekday up with, teambuilding exercises…
And now Rachel was calling. This had better be good.
“You!” She wandered in, wearing tight-fitting jeans and a towel on her head. Darren eyed her bare chest.
“Do you have any sense of propriety?”
“No,” she said and flicked the wet towel at him. “Why bother? It’s not like you’re interested.”
“Girls,” Darren said flatly, “should have boobs. Those aren’t boobs.”
“Whatever,” she said. “What’s your plans for tonight?”
“Eat,” he gestured at the boiling pasta, “then watch the game and call Jayden.”
“Scrap it,” Rachel said. “Eat, call Jayden, and come out with us.”
Darren eyed her suspiciously. He’d been trying to call Jayden all day: three times he’d just rung out, the fourth had been cancelled and he’d received a sorry in the library :( x notice a little while later, and the last time, it had dropped straight to voicemail. And in the library? On a Saturday? Seriously, Darren was glad he’d not bothered with a degree.
“Who’s us?” he asked eventually.
“Me and Jodie and Tony and some others from school,” Rachel said. Primary school teachers, apparently, partied hard at the weekends, which Darren was vaguely disturbed to know. Although it did explain his Year Three teacher and her permanent horrible mood on Mondays. “Come on, you’ve blown me off for ages. They’re not scary. Well, Jodie’s scary, but you’re a copper in that Hazmat gear, man up.”
Darren suppressed a laugh. A copper in Hazmat? He’d have to pass that on. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m having difficulty actually getting through to Jayden at the minute.”
“Dodgy line?”
“Dodgy boyfriend,” he said, pressing the phone to his ear for another try. He eyed her. “Are you actually going to put a top on?”
“Why? Don’t you like my boobs?”
“You haven’t got any boobs.”
“So, yes?”
“So, no,” Darren said. “I might be bisexual, Rach, but I like girls to have proper knockers.”
“Bet Jayden doesn’t.”
“No, because Jayden’s not a girl.”
“You sure?”
Darren smirked. “Very sure.”
She pulled a face and pulled the towel off her head to wrap it around her chest. “Is he answering?”
“No, it’s ringing out again,” Darren grumbled, then sighed when it went to voicemail. “It’s me,” he told it. “I’ve been trying all day and I’m giving up now and getting dragged out by some teachers.”
“One of them’s hot!” Rachel shouted at the phone.
“One of them’s hot,” Darren added obediently. “Gimme a ring tomorrow afternoon or something. Love you.”
Rachel looked wistful as he hung up. “You’re lucky to have someone,” she said quietly.
“The number of times I’ve spoken to him in the last couple of months, I feel single now and then,” Darren muttered darkly, then tossed the phone onto the counter and switched off the burner. “Go away and get dressed or something. I have to eat.”
“And change.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she raised her voice over the sound of the pasta draining, “Jodie’ll be there and she wants to meet you and Jodie has this thing about hitting on gay guys and it’s really funny.”
Darren rolled his eyes and shooed her away.
* * * *
Darren had fallen into a little routine—work, boxing, Rachel, work, boxing, Rachel—occasionally punctured by half a weekend of doing more-or-less fuck all, and it didn’t generally include going to the pub. He wasn’t much of a drinker, because it was hard to get hammered for cheap down south, and if Rachel went out it tended to be tarted up with this Jodie bird down the clubs, and he wasn’t interested in tagging along.
So Darren was actually pleasantly surprised when the taxi pulled up outside a normal-looking pub instead of a gaudy nightclub with a queue of pissheads in the gutter.
“Didn’t take you for respectable,” he said a
s he paid the cabbie, and Rachel shoved him.
“Arsehole,” she said. “Hey guys!” She beamed as they passed into the pub, and made a beeline for a table in the corner populated by three women of varying chubby builds, and a couple of tall, lanky men with weak chins and heavy glasses. “Guys, this is Darren, he lives in the flat across from me. Darren, this is Tony…” A man with dark hair and a short beard smiled and offered a handshake. “…Gareth…” Gay. Very gay. And a weirdly deep tan for November. Sunbed gay. “…Ruth…” A hippie in a purple skirt. “…Hannah…” A human being, but one engrossed in texting someone, and who barely gave Darren a nod. “…Jodie.”
He’d been warned about Jodie several times, and when she clamped on to his hand and shook it like a dead sparrow, an alarm bell went off. She was a short (five foot nothing) woman with cropped, blonde hair and maybe about ten pounds excess around the thighs and arse. Her lipstick was a scary shade of blue.
“Darren!” she enthused. “Nice to finally meet you, Rachel’s been saying she’ll bring you along for ages. I’m the Year Three teacher, you know, the seven-to-eight-year-olds.”
“Okay,” Darren said. Rachel shoved him to sit down.
“Good luck,” she whispered in his ear. “Carlsberg?”
“Stella.”
“No worries,” said the bitch and abandoned him to Jodie’s enthusiastic smile.
“So Rachel tells us you’re gay?”
“Bi.”
“Close enough.” Jodie folded her fingers under her chin. “What do you think about teaching primary schoolchildren about same-sex relationships?”
“Right, look,” Darren said. “I’m not interviewing for a bloody job.”
The bearded bloke—Tony—guffawed. “Leave him alone, Jodie, he’s not the bloody minister for education.”
“I just want to hear a viewpoint from an actual LGBT person!” Jodie protested. Darren flicked his eyes to Gareth, but he was staring very determinedly at the wall TV showing the football, and bright red. Ah.
“Why, it doesn’t make his viewpoint any more or less valid,” Tony argued.
“Who’s your team, then?” Darren asked. Gareth jumped.
“Oh, I, er…” He flushed harder. “Well, I’m not…much of a football fan, really, but, um, it’s…you know.”
“More interesting than education policy on a Saturday night?”
“Yes,” Gareth said and smiled gratefully. “I’m, um. I like tennis.”
“I like it when we don’t suck,” Darren agreed genially. He didn’t, actually, tennis was fucking boring, but he felt a bit sorry for Gareth. He was obviously uncomfortable, probably closeted, and Jodie probably knew. His shoes had to suck.
“Was it difficult for you, to accept who you were?” Jodie prodded. Literally: she poked Darren in the arm.
“Not really,” Darren said.
“Really?” she pushed. “Rachel said you were mixed-race.”
“Technically,” Darren said, exasperated. Was this part of getting older and mixing with people with fluffy degrees? Jayden’s mates seemed to think he was Muslim (and according to the latest update from Ella, so brave for being out) and now this lot were obsessed with a grandfather he’d never met, from a country he’d never been to. Even Mother had never been to Iran, and she was the mixer. Maybe he needed to find a sports bar and some lads to just watch the game with already.
“Yes, but it must have been more challenging.”
“No,” Darren said. “I went to an all-boys private school and my parents’ idea of parenting is money every month. It’s not like they’re religious or something. I never got much hassle for it.” Except, ironically, from his best mates. But then Darren supposed that was how his world seemed to work, and anyway, Paul and Ethan’s hassle was apparently just how they expressed affection. Freaks.
“But to accept it yourself…”
“Jodie, leave him alone,” Tony repeated as Rachel returned—finally—with a couple of pints and set one in front of Darren. “Some people can just accept who they are. It’s a good thing.”
Rachel pinked a little, but said nothing.
“I’m the music teacher,” Tony continued genially. “Are you into music?”
“I was.”
“Oh? Did you play?”
“Piano and violin,” Darren said. “Quit the violin a few years ago. Still play the piano now and then, landlady has one on the ground floor.” A battered, clapped-out old thing that needed some love and care, but good enough for the odd ditty when getting his post. “Lot of queers in an orchestra,” he added to Jodie, who was resting her round chin on her hand and beaming at him in a disturbing sort of fashion.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she gushed. “You know, for you to be out and proud…” Well, he didn’t know about proud. “…and in the police, no less. Isn’t that a hostile environment?”
“Er, no.” He didn’t know, truth be told. Darren wasn’t out in the way Jodie meant, he suspected. He never really said to anyone ‘I’m bisexual’ very often. It tended to come up when he mentioned having a boyfriend. He was just honest. And nobody at work had asked if he had a partner, or really talked about girlfriends and boyfriends with him, so it hadn’t come up. They all knew his football team and where he was from, but nothing else really. But it probably wasn’t hostile. One of the girls was obviously a lesbian, as were a couple of the instructors. Most just didn’t seem to care about that kind of thing.
“It’s just, you know, I think militaristic or police environments are still very…”
“Oh, come on, Jodie, you’re not a bobby, you don’t know what…” Rachel began.
Darren’s phone went off. It was so unusual for someone to call that he jumped, nearly spilling his lager, and had to fumble it out of his pocket as he stood up. Rachel laughed, hauling his chair out the way for him, and he nodded a thanks as he stalked away.
Then the annoyance faded. “Hey, Jayden,” he answered as he reached the door and slipped out into sharply cold evening air.
“Hey.” Jayden’s voice was low and quiet and soothing. “Sorry I kept missing you, it’s just been awful today trying to get all my work done, but I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.” Darren felt the irritation easing. “I mean, if you’re busy or anything, I can call you tomorrow, that’s fine and everything, I just, um…”
“No, go ahead,” Darren said, leaning against the wall. “I’m glad you did. Feels like we’ve just been ships in the night lately.” Since September, in fact.
“Yeah,” Jayden sighed. “Well. Good news!”
“What?”
“I found out our Christmas timetable for coursework and stuff, and there’s a couple of days at the end of the semester when I won’t be too busy.”
“So…”
“So!” Jayden said. “You have to come and see me.”
“You’ll have to text me the dates. How close to Christmas?”
“Like, the twenty-second,” Jayden said. “I have a big exam on the twentieth, so that sucks, but after that I’m done. And Christmas is a weekend this year.”
“Yeah, I’ll have to get leave,” Darren said, but he was smiling anyway. The prospect of actually seeing Jayden… “Why do I have to come there?”
“Because I want to show you off,” Jayden said. “And I miss you and you get paid and I don’t so you can afford the train tickets easier than me and from what I’ve seen on Skype, my bed is more stable than yours.”
“Your bed is wrought-iron. Mine’s flat-pack furniture pretending to be solid wood. Of course yours is more stable.”
“Yeah, but we’ll need that.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Mhmm,” Jayden hummed lowly. “God, I miss you. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy all the time. Are you all right? Are you out with Rachel right now?”
“Yeah, and I feel doubly sorry for you. I’m being accosted by some bird called Jodie and asked for my opinion on teaching LGBT issues to kids. And whether it was hard being a pouft
er because I’m apparently mixed-race. How do you do this every day?”
“You’re not, you just have amazing hair,” Jayden said quietly and laughed a little. “Mm, I know the feeling. Every dinner they talk about politics here. I’m beginning to get the hang of it, but it’s so complicated!”
“Don’t change,” Darren blurted out.
“…What?”
There was a short pause, like a tidy silence between them that wasn’t planned, but fitted itself in and made itself at home. It wasn’t questioning, but it was prompting, like one of them had forgotten their lines.
“Don’t change,” Darren repeated slowly. “To fit in with them.”
“Um…”
“Because you’re perfect like you are.”
“…Oh my God, Darren, are you drunk?”
“No, I’m not bloody drunk,” he snapped, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. Sorry, I just feel like there’s been a bit of a drift lately.”
“That’s okay,” Jayden said lowly. “It’s just been busy and hard and everything. For both of us. Trust me, when I get hold of you…just book your tickets? Soon? My exam is the Monday and I have an essay due on the Wednesday, so try and get Thursday or Friday? It’s only four weeks away.”
“Four weeks,” Darren said and smiled. “Yeah, I think I can last another four weeks.”
“And tell that Josie…”
“Jodie.”
“Whatever she’s called, tell her to leave you alone.”
Darren raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Facebook,” Jayden said promptly. “You just got tagged. ‘With the usual suspects and a new hottie called Darren Peace. Yummy.’ Apparently. So tell her to go away.”
“Yessir.”
“I want a dislike button. And a—hang on. Hang on. What?”
Darren rolled his eyes as Jayden suddenly called to someone else who’d presumably come into his room. Ella, no doubt. Darren was getting mighty sick of Ella. Half the excuses of why he hadn’t called were Ella-related, and half the calls they had managed had been Ella-interrupted.
“Just go,” he said. “Ella’s calling you.”
“Darren…”
“And Rachel’s calling me,” he lied. “Go on. I’ll book tickets and see you just before Christmas. Four weeks.”
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 5