Strictly speaking, that was true. “Not really.”
“And not even a pulled face,” she grumbled. “Knew you were off. What’s up?”
Darren shrugged, and went for Trev’s helpfully provided excuse. “Think I might have caught a bug.”
“Another one,” she grunted. “Fit to drive?”
“Er. Yes.”
“Then drive. Go home,” she said. “You looked glazed-over for most of the morning, and if it’s not going in, there’s no point in you being here and infecting the rest of ‘em. This afternoon’s slides are going up on the system same as usual, you’ll be able to catch up fine there.”
Darren worked his jaw vaguely, unsure of quite what to do or say. He didn’t want to go home, really, because home had…at home, there’d be the temptation. In the kitchenette or the bathroom cabinet especially. He had a life, he had things in his life that everybody had, like painkillers and spare razor blades and knives, and those things would be…and Rachel would be at work, so there was no distraction there. Here, he was…guaranteed not to be able to do something.
But on the other hand, he didn’t want to be here. The last thing Darren wanted to do when he was so apathetic was be around people. It had taken him long enough to not hate being near Jayden when he felt off, and that was with someone who knew and who cared on a different level to his would-be colleagues. That was someone who’d loved him. He didn’t want to go to lunch and drag up a smile and try and hold conversation when he just kept…
“Wandering off, you see? That’s what I mean,” Forrester boomed. “You’re wandering off. Zoning out. You’re not in the room, and if you’re not in the room mentally, there’s no point you being here physically. Go home, go to bed, play it up into man-flu for your missus, whatever. Ring in tomorrow if you’re still under the weather.”
Which he would be, but not how Forrester meant it. He knew these moods. They settled. They settled hard, put down roots, and the only way he knew to lift them once they actually started sprouting leaves was…was dangerous. Terminal, in theory, though he’d failed before.
Darren jerked his thoughts off that morbid track and straightened. “Okay,” he said, and Forrester nodded. “I’ll…yeah. Go and rest up and…whatever.”
“Good,” she said. “Everything okay? In general?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm,” she said and squinted at him. “You’re a quiet one.”
Darren shrugged. “Always am,” he offered. Which was also technically true.
“Mm. G’wan. Get out of here before the rest of us have to suffer,” she said, though he was sure she wasn’t convinced. As he gathered his things and made for the door, he silently thanked whatever was up there that Jayden hadn’t come into the police too. If Jayden learned to scrutinise strangers like that, Darren would be fucked.
He made his way out of the training centre without encountering any of the other trainees, and texted Trev a vague goin home feelin crap. no t 4 me ta m8 before getting in the car. For a moment, he simply sat there, not even putting the key in the ignition, but shook off the creeping darkness enough to rev the engine and reverse. The wheel, he knew logically, was hot—he’d parked in the sun, and this car could generate heat in January, never mind actual spring. And yet his palms didn’t react to what was normally irritating and borderline painful.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, but there was no power in it. The barrier rose, and the officer waved. Darren didn’t wave back. Suddenly, fiercely, he wanted to go home, and he floored it without caring that the officer doubtless knew the car registration, the speed limit, and had an unknown temperament about speeding crime-scene-officers-in-training. It didn’t matter. None of it fucking mattered.
It was half twelve. The traffic was reasonably light, and Darren secured his speeding ticket from a camera that flashed as he rampaged around the ring road. He took the turning into the estate too sharply, the driver behind him honking indignantly at the lack of indicator, and Darren still didn’t bloody fucking care.
The house was quiet. The landlady was watching TV in her flat; her cat was sprawled across the mat and sat up with a meow when Darren unlocked the door. In pausing to pet her and offer her the way out, he felt his mobile phone buzz in the pocket of his uniform trousers, and sat on the bottom of the stairs to fish it out and toe off his boots. The cat rubbed herself around his calves, and jumped into the newly formed lap, oblivious to his mental shivering.
It was Jayden. Can’t wait to see you for our weekend :) I miss you and I love you and I will bring an appropriately bad gift like always xxx
Something cracked in the middle of Darren’s chest. He put the phone down on the carpet, buried a hand and most of his face into the neck of the purring cat, and tried to suppress a sob.
Tried.
Chapter 18
“Knock-knock!”
Jayden looked up from his essay. Ella was standing in his open doorway in a classic black dress, offering a little smile, one hand still raised to knock again.
“You’re working too hard,” she said.
Easter was early this year, so the exams were nearly over and the semester drawing to a close, but Jayden had too much to do. His own exams fell in early April, and then there were coursework deadlines looming in May, along with the start of the final semester. He didn’t have time to go away early, much as he wanted to. Much as he wanted to go to Southampton and shake Darren until he was…
Until he was normal again. Because he was being quiet now, and not nearly as aggressive when Ella interrupted them, and Jayden didn’t like that. A quiet Darren—properly quiet, not even the quietly sarcastic version—was only good if he was asleep. Otherwise…
He shook it off. “I have to,” he said to Ella. “I have a load of work due and I haven’t finished. And the stuff I’ve finished isn’t good enough, and…”
“And doing it stressed isn’t going to help,” Ella said evenly. “Come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to unwind,” she said, floating across the room and slipping a scrap of paper into his textbook before closing it. “Just an hour, I promise. Just an hour to relax and unwind a little bit, and then I’ll let you come back and finish your work.”
Jayden sighed, massaging his temples with one hand. She had a point, really, he couldn’t work well when he felt so wrung-out, and he was tired, to the point where nothing was getting done, and…
“Okay. One hour,” he said and put down his pen.
“Good,” she said and hugged him briefly. “Come with me, then?”
“Where?”
“The classical orchestra are practising,” she said. “I, um,” she pinked, “I had a little bit of a, um…well, kind of date thing with one of the cellists and he invited me to go and watch them practice. Want to come?”
“Well, not if you’re going to be all over this…”
“No, no.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, my God, the date was awful, but I like classical music and I thought I might go and watch them anyway, see if they’re any good. And I remembered Darren’s a musician, isn’t he? So maybe you can tell me if they’re any good.”
“I don’t know much about music,” Jayden confessed, shrugging out of his hoodie. Ella eyed it distastefully, and he pulled on a nicer jacket. “I mean, I know if a violinist is okay, but that’s about it. He never played much classical piano for me.”
“It’s a shame he had to stop,” she said mildly. Jayden was relieved; he’d had enough of why your boyfriend isn’t really quite perfect enough, and wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy. He was under too much pressure already for that. “Do you think he’ll ever play again?”
“No.” They fell into step as they left the wing and crossed the courtyard. It was finally beginning to warm from the savage winter. “His shoulder’s too badly damaged.”
“Was he really stabbed?”
“…Yes,” Jayden said.
“Mm,” she hummed, leading him through a narrow corrid
or on the north side of the college he’d ignored until now. “I think it’s…oh, yes.”
The orchestra were already playing, and they slipped into the small auditorium as quietly as possible. Thankfully, it was suitably dark that while a couple of the musicians glanced their way, they didn’t seem to really disturb anyone, and they slid into a couple of seats near the back, Ella folding her hands tidily on her lap and wordlessly pointing out the undateable cellist.
They were good, but Jayden was instantly restless. He didn’t recognise the piece, and he didn’t know the people, and there was a violinist who looked startlingly like Darren but also startlingly not: he had the wrong pose, the wrong posture, the wrong way of shifting into the swoops and peaks of the bow. Jayden felt sharply out of place, in a theatre watching an orchestra that were older, farther away, and distinctly Darren-free from the one he had watched shyly as a sixteen-year-old.
And he was startled to find he could judge them—or at least the strings section, of which there were very few. The Darren-esque violinist wasn’t as good with the sharper changes of pitch; the cellists were, he realised after a few minutes, fractionally out of time with the rest of the orchestra. All right, it was a practice session, but the moment he noticed, it grated on him. They were off, and it was only because of Darren that he noticed at all, but…
Slowly, he shifted back in his seat, propping a knee against the back of the seat in front, and slid his phone out of his pocket. Darren’s quietness was worrying him, niggling at the back of his mind. It was hard to tell by phone, because Darren wasn’t exactly chatty in person either, but he had the disturbing feeling that this had shifted from quiet-in-general to quiet-because, and the only because that Darren ever had for being quiet like this was a mood.
Jayden fervently hoped it wasn’t a mood, because he’d always broken moods in person and never by phone, so he sent a quick, Are you all right? You’re quiet. Miss you x in an interlude in which a string had to be changed when it squeaked shrilly on one of the higher notes.
Ok. miss u 2 came the brief reply a second later, and Jayden knew it was a lie. He’d not been called a worrier, not been told off for fussing, not anything. Darren never stuck to the point unless it was a the train comes in at five or a piss off I’m sleeping! kind of text.
I love you, he attempted, chewing on the corner of his lip.
Love u 2 x.
“Jayden,” Ella whispered, nudging him. He dimmed the light setting on the phone instead of switching it off as she obviously wanted. There was something wrong.
Seriously, Darren, are you all right? Do you want me to call you this evening?
With rach this evenin, goin out. call 2moro?
Which wasn’t a no, or a telling-off, or anything like it. This was wrong. There was something wrong, and Jayden was torn between acting normally (that had helped sometimes, but that had been in person) and pushing the issue (which had always been a bit hit-and-miss).
Okay, he decided on finally. I’ll call you tomorrow evening about eight? But if you need me, call me. Love you xxx.
“What’s going on?” Ella whispered as the cellos hit a booming crescendo, and Jayden shrugged awkwardly as he finished the text.
“Darren,” he whispered.
“What now?” Ella asked.
“I think…” he chewed on his lip. “I think, you know, um…look, can we talk outside?”
She shrugged and nodded, her hair shimmering in the gloom like it was almost white, and they slipped out through the back door into the rear courtyard instead of the main one. Jayden let the way to the basement bar, Ella trailing behind him silently, and his phone remained resolutely quiet. Darren had decided, it seemed, not to reply.
“A large glass of house red,” he told the bartender before sighing and finally pocketing his phone. “I’m worried about Darren,” he told Ella finally. “He’s…been off lately.”
“Off how?” she asked, calling for her usual rosé, and they headed for a quiet table in the corner. Exam season meant the bar’s usual hours inverted: it was busy in the day, every table occupied by study groups drinking water and revising, and in the evening, it was deserted, everyone retreating to their rooms to get their work done. It meant that for once, it was private enough to discuss this.
“Off…”
“Is he ill?” she asked, unusually bluntly.
“Um, sort of,” Jayden said. “Not…I mean…he suffers from depression.”
Ella’s perfect eyebrows rose slightly. “Ah,” she said.
“Yeah. And he’s been…really quiet lately, and…”
“Well, what’s the cause?” she asked.
Jayden blinked. “Cause?”
“Yes, why is he depressed?”
“Um…I don’t know, I mean…I presume there’s, I don’t know, his brain chemistry is a bit messed up or something, it’s…you know, it’s not like he’s being abused or something, you know. He just…he just is.”
“He didn’t seem the type,” she said, sipping daintily. “He was quite…bullish, I suppose. No offence meant, of course, that’s just my opinion.”
“Um, well, that’s…I mean, he doesn’t express his emotions a lot,” Jayden tried awkwardly. “He, um. Well, he bottles a lot up, you know, he keeps a lot to himself, so I guess that might be some of it, you know. He was under loads of pressure at home when we met, he’s gone against what his father wanted him to do, and he’s quite distant from them, and…”
“He’s like, what, eighteen, nineteen? He needs to get over his family issues,” Ella said dismissively.
Jayden stared at her. “Um, Ella, you don’t really know…”
“Oh, come on, Jayden, you told us he’d moved out and was working and everything. It’s not like his father’s living with him anymore, is it?”
“Well, no, but…”
“The thing is,” she carried on obliviously. “The thing is, people with mental illness and stuff, you know, depression and bipolar disorder and everything, a lot of it stems from a lack of structure and discipline of the mind. You should read The Paradox of Choice, it’s very interesting, about how an unstructured society leads to high mental illness rates in a population because…”
“Ella, it’s not…you can’t just pull yourself together,” Jayden interrupted. “I mean, when he gets in his moods…I mean, yeah, there’s no rational reason for it, but it happens, like he wakes up and he can’t think properly or do anything, there’s no drive, it’s…”
“Honestly, Jayden? I don’t want to cause offence or anything, but it sounds more like, well…you know, idleness? Perhaps he has a vitamin deficiency or something, maybe…”
“Nobody tries to kill themselves over a vitamin deficiency!”
“So he has tried?”
“Well, yeah,” Jayden said, even as his stomach twisted. Not in a long time, but he had. He’d said he had, he’d admitted it.
“Why isn’t he in a hospital, then?”
“What?” Jayden said blankly.
“If he’s a danger to himself, he needs to be in a hospital.”
“…You can’t just lock someone up because they’ve hurt themselves sometimes. It’s not like he’s a raving lunatic.”
“Honestly, Jayden, trying to kill yourself, that’s a pretty mad thing to do. What could possibly be that bad?”
“His depression. That’s what makes him want to…”
“He needs to get a bit of a grip,” she said ruthlessly. “I mean, it’s selfish, Jayden. The whole suicide thing, you know? Who does that to their friends and family? It’s an awful thing to do, I’m really against it.”
“It’s not a political position, Ella, you can’t be against suicide like that. I mean, nobody’s pro-random-suicides, it’s horrible, but imagine how someone must feel…”
“Nothing’s that bad,” she repeated insistently, still sipping at her wine and looking completely nonchalant and…and casual, like they weren’t discussing something so…so… “I mean, really, Jayden, from w
hat you’ve said, Darren’s had a nice life so far. His parents are nice, well-off people…”
“They’re not nice,” Jayden objected.
“Well, they don’t abuse him either.”
Jayden privately thought that that rather depended on whether emotional neglect counted as abuse, because they did ignore him, completely since Jayden had forced him out of the closet after he’d been attacked, and Jayden had never been able to imagine a mother who didn’t at least care what her son was up to. Mum was nothing like Alison Peace. Or whatever she was going to be called after the divorce.
“I’m just saying,” Ella continued blithely, “I think a lot of mental health issues are puffed up by people not wanting to accept responsibility for their own actions. I mean, if Darren feels no drive, he needs to make drive, just get out there and do it, you know? It’s not that hard.”
“It is hard when you…”
“And,” she continued, barrelling onwards without hearing a word Jayden said, “I think if he stepped back and really looked at his life, he’d see it’s a bit silly to be depressed about it, you know? He should be thankful, there’s people in way worse situations.”
Jayden stared at her, not quite able to compute it. He’d never really talked to anyone else about depression—it wasn’t really his story to tell, was it, it was Darren’s, and Darren didn’t like people knowing in the first place—and Ella’s blunt dismissal of the entire thing was…
She couldn’t have seen it, surely? She couldn’t have. She couldn’t have seen someone change the way Darren changed, from his dry, sarcastic, quietly loving okay days into…into the black moods, the dark lethargy, the way he’d just curl up into Jayden’s hold and sag, like he’d stopped existing, just stopped, when the moods took hold of him? The way he hated it, the way he broke in on himself like he was suffocating, the way he’d cling like he’d drown if Jayden let go, the way he rubbed his fingers and picked at his nails as if he was trying to force some kind of reaction, some kind of feeling through the onset of the entire horrible thing, the way he hated himself and all that quiet, easy confidence just bled out of him?
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 15