The Story of Us

by Barbara Elsborg

  When the foreman of the jury said the word guilty Zed wasn’t shocked yet it hurt just as much as if someone had suddenly thrust a knife into his chest. He’d wanted to stand up and yell out the truth, but he’d promised and though it killed something inside him, he kept his promise. Even if he had spoken out, then or earlier, would he have been believed? And if he was, and Caspian’s mother knew the truth, she and her husband could get sent to jail. What would happen to Caspian’s sisters then? Whichever way Zed looked at it, Caspian had been trapped from the moment Lachlan left him behind the wheel. Lachlan was…a despicable bastard. He’d left his brother injured in a car that could have caught fire. Zed wished him nothing but unhappiness for the rest of his life.

  But when he heard the words ten years, he’d felt as if he was falling from the top of a tall building.

  “What does ten years actually mean?” Zed whispered to Jonas.

  “He’ll only serve half of his sentence in prison, the rest he’ll be out on licence. So that would be five years. But he’s been on remand for a year so four more years inside.”

  That was longer than they’d known each other. By the time he was released Zed would be twenty-one and Caspian twenty-two.

  The journey back to Greenwich seemed endless. Day one of a week off school and Zed needed to revise for his AS exams, some of which he’d already done, but there was no way he could concentrate on his school books today.

  Caspian had tried to finish things a year ago when they’d been together for that short time in Woodbury, told him they were over, and Zed had chosen not to believe him.

  Did he now?

  Not one letter from Caspian in an entire year. No phone call even though Zed had given him his number. But for a brief moment in that courtroom cell, Caspian had returned the hug Zed had given him, even if he’d pushed him away a moment later.

  That small embrace proved nothing. Caspian didn’t want him anymore.

  Zed couldn’t think straight. His head ached. His body ached. He felt as if he had the flu. His face was wet with tears.

  When Jonas pulled up on the drive, Zed jerked back to reality. Jonas patted his knee.

  “I want to play my cello,” Zed blurted. Not talk. I can’t talk.

  “Okay. Can I sit with you?”

  Zed nodded.

  Back in the house, Zed went straight to the music room. He put his jacket aside and opened the cello case. Once he’d tuned up, he started with Shostakovich’s cello sonata, just mournful enough for his mood. Hunched over his instrument, he did little more than play the right notes at the right tempo before his head began to clear. His eyes fluttered closed and he and his cello melded into one. Emotion poured from the strings and from Zed’s heart, swirling around the room until his throat thickened and breathing became hard.

  Caspian didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore. Zed didn’t want to think. He could lose himself in music. It would happen. He’d keep going until it did.

  An hour of Shostakovich, Dvorak, Brahms, even the music from The Game of Thrones with thoughts of Caspian woven throughout before Zed finally gave up. The music had helped but not cured. Nothing could do that. He’d been asking for too much. He loosened his bow and put it away, unscrewed the end pin and returned the cello to its case.

  “Hungry?” Jonas asked.

  Zed shrugged but followed him out of the room. Jonas rarely pushed him, unlike Henry. Henry was the practical one, the stricter, stronger one who said no and meant it, when Jonas was more likely to say yes. Henry asked why and for what purpose, when Jonas encouraged without question. Zed liked them both more than he’d ever hoped he could. He needed Henry to rein him in, he needed Jonas to let him fly. The pair were balanced, one with his head in the clouds, the other with his feet on the ground. Zed was in the middle.

  Their harmony brought him comfort. He liked that they were okay about being gay and were openly affectionate in front of him, though cautious outside the house. Their friends and family all knew they were gay and were fine about it. Zed had met many of them and he liked them all, especially Henry’s parents. Jonas’s father was dead but his mother was lovely. Zed couldn’t have asked for a better place to live or better people to live with but every time he tried to say that, he choked up.

  Jonas put bowls of home-made gazpacho soup on the table along with a wooden board holding a walnut loaf from Tesco that they both loved, and a dish of butter. He brought over two glasses of water then sat next to Zed.

  “Did the cello do its work?” Jonas asked.

  “It tried.”

  “I wondered. You seemed distracted but not in the right way.”

  Jonas understood when Henry couldn’t, how music could soothe Zed’s soul, but this time it hadn’t worked.

  “Music can comfort but sometimes you need the human touch.” Jonas reached for Zed’s hand and held it.

  Zed leaned against him, let his face fall against Jonas’s shoulder. “It hurts.”

  “Then it hurts me too.” Jonas pressed his face against Zed’s hair.

  Zed sighed. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “You think you can live here for a year and us not be affected by things that upset you? We care about you.”

  “I know you do. You and Henry are so good to me. Every time I think of how lucky I am, I can’t breathe. Then I think of how unlucky Caspian is and it breaks my heart.”

  “Unlucky?”

  Zed tensed.

  “You can tell me whatever you like. It will go no further. Not even as far as Henry if that’s what you want.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. It’s not fair. Whatever I tell you, you can tell Henry.”

  Jonas squeezed his fingers and let him go.

  Zed sat up. Don’t say too much. “I met Caspian three years ago. He’s… He was the first real friend I’ve ever had. Someone I could have fun with. Someone to talk to. He was the first person I’d ever told about my father beating me. I liked him so much. He was the boy who could, I was the boy who couldn’t. But he changed me. He was fun and brave and adventurous, and he made me laugh.”

  “You don’t think you’re fun and brave and adventurous?” Jonas raised his eyebrows. “Take another look at yourself.”

  “I told you he changed me. Before Caspian, if I’d seen a sign saying—Don’t walk on the grass—I wouldn’t have. Caspian would have leapt over the sign and danced on the grass. I followed every rule. Caspian ignored them. He persuaded me to dye my hair, take risks, enjoy myself. He’s clever, brilliant at inventing things. He has sketch books full of his ideas, but he’s dyslexic and he struggled at school. He got expelled and sent to a really strict place in Scotland.”

  Zed sagged. “The day of the accident, we were planning to run away together. I didn’t want to leave until I was sixteen and couldn’t be made to go back. Caspian’s brother caught us together in the treehouse and went to tell his father. I waited all day and when he didn’t turn up by the time the last train pulled in, I had no choice but to go to London on my own. I thought Caspian must have changed his mind or been made to change it. I ended up with Fahid and you know that story.

  “I didn’t find out about what had happened that day for a long time. Jackson arranged that when I was remanded for safety reasons, I went to the same place as Caspian. I guess when Jackson investigated me, he found out about Caspian. Everything was perfect between Caspian and me in Woodbury until the day I was due to leave. Caspian said we were over, that it was better to finish it then. He told me to forget him, but I didn’t. I’ve been writing to him all year. I sent him pencils and drawing pads and an MP3 player. I saved up my allowance.”

  Zed glanced at Jonas. “But he never wrote back. Not even to thank me. I told myself it was because he hates writing, and he does, but today he said he’d thrown my letters away without reading them, that he’d sold the MP3 player for… that he was in a relationship with his cellmate and…” Zed gulped.

  “Pushing you away again.”

  “I miss…h
im,” Zed hiccupped.

  “Why didn’t he let his barrister speak on his behalf?”

  Zed shrugged.

  “I can’t understand why he didn’t plead guilty. He’d have gotten a lesser sentence.”

  “Yep.”

  “He wasn’t driving, was he? Someone else was.”

  Zed froze.

  “Was it you?”

  “No,” Zed gasped. “I was at the station all day. The guy in the ticket office saw me coming and going. I don’t know how to drive. I wasn’t in the car. How could you think I’d let Caspian go to jail if I was responsible?”

  Jonas took his hand and wouldn’t let Zed pull away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were, but I had to ask. Who was driving?”

  “I promised not to tell. I won’t tell.”

  “He really wasn’t driving?” Jonas gaped at him.

  “I promised. Please. Even if he doesn’t want me, I won’t break my promise.”

  Jonas sighed. “How far did things go with him?”

  “We did…things but not… We never… I love him… I loved him.… I love him.” He groaned. “Shit. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You’ve been hurt. You’re allowed to be confused and sad. Was he the first boy you were ever interested in?”

  Zed nodded.

  “What you had was special. A first is special to everyone. Eoin was my first. I met him on a school orchestra trip to Ireland. He played the violin like me, yet nothing like me. He made it up as he went along. The conductor used to roll his eyes when Eoin carried on playing when we were supposed to pause. I used to wonder if he was a faerie. His fingers moved so fast. Those fingers… Magic fingers.”

  Jonas smiled briefly. “When I was with him, it was as if I came alive. I knew I was gay but suddenly I was gay. Everything was brighter, clearer, shinier. My brain had never experienced anything like it before. He’d awakened something in me, triggered a rush of teenage hormones that overwhelmed everything. Being near him was a kind of agony, a kind of ecstasy. I caught fire in his vicinity. My cock was constantly hard. So was his. We were blind, deaf and dumb to anything but each other. Sound familiar?”

  “Yes.”

  “We wrote for a while but the distance between us meant it was a relationship destined to fail. The letters petered out and I was heartbroken. We’d spent every moment we could exploring each other’s body and I thought I’d never love anyone in the way I loved Eoin. But several years later, I met Henry and realised I was wrong.”

  “Several years?”

  “Five to be exact. And I had plenty of flings in between. Henry and I met at university. One look and that was it. You will find someone else. But I know it hurts now.”

  “What if Caspian doesn’t mean it? What if he’s pushing me away so I don’t feel trapped in a relationship with him?”

  “That might well be what he’s doing but he’s going to be behind bars for at least four years. I think you have to respect his wishes and let him go.”

  More tears fell from Zed’s eyes and Jonas gathered him into his arms. The feeling of being held by someone who truly cared was almost too much. Zed felt safe and secure, and for the first time in a long while he felt loved. Maybe Jonas was right. By the time Caspian was out, Zed would be graduating from university. All those letters and not one letter back. He’d be stupid to waste any more time thinking about him.

  Yeah, well he was stupid. He couldn’t just forget him. In a way, he was fortunate he had to spend the week revising. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to concentrate on his schoolwork, but the desire to do well combined with worry about letting Henry and Jonas down made him push thoughts of Caspian as deep into his mind as he could. He would never forget him, but Zed had a life too.

  Even so, he wrote another letter and sent it to Woodbury, figuring they’d pass it on if Caspian had been sent somewhere else.

  A reply came on the day of a maths exam. He wanted to open it before he went to school but Jonas convinced him to wait. He was glad he did because on the single sheet of paper inside, Caspian had written in ugly block capitals—STOP WRITING TO ME.

  The trial of Wasim, Parwez and the others was held behind closed doors. Jackson had come to talk to Zed and told him that the prosecution had successfully argued that if the media were allowed to publish details of the trial, national security would be threatened. He promised Zed his name wouldn’t be used.

  The papers and the TV were full of it. Olympic Bombers. 100 Metre Blast. Security Services Superb. Threat Level Still Severe. It made Zed feel ill thinking about what might have happened if he hadn’t overheard that discussion, if he’d not risked contacting the authorities.

  Reporters from all over the world had come to London to cover the trial even though what they could say was limited. Zed didn’t want to read about it or watch the news but it was impossible to ignore what was happening. He’d spoken with these guys. Eaten with them. Been to the mosque with them. Zed was guilty of nothing, but he felt ashamed just for knowing them.

  They were all found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. But Fahid was still out there.

  Zed had met up with Tamaz a couple of times and his brother had taken him out for a meal in Greenwich last week, but things weren’t right between them. Zed was constantly on alert for a question he didn’t want to answer or some comment that he didn’t want to hear. Tamaz seemed too careful in what he talked about. Maybe their relationship would always be broken.

  When the exams were over and school was finished until September, Jonas and Henry took Zed out for a meal at the top of the Shard. The view was spectacular, London was lit up in all directions. Zed was given a glass of wine but when he pulled a face after he’d sipped it, Henry laughed.

  “Have we wasted that on you?”

  “Tip it into my glass,” Jonas said. “What would you like instead?”

  “I’ll keep trying with the wine.”

  “I do need it more than you after today,” Jonas said.

  “I thought you were rehearsing?” Henry asked.

  “Yes, but an open rehearsal so there was an audience. Zed was there.”

  Zed knew the story Jonas was going to tell Henry and he laughed.

  “We didn’t get off to a good start,” Jonas said. “The conductor turned to the audience and said, “If you feel like it, you can clap between the movements.” Well that was what he meant to say. What he actually said was “If you feel like it, you can crap between the movements.” We cracked up. It was a wonder we managed to play anything.”

  Henry laughed. Jonas and Henry both made Zed laugh but Jonas was the one with the funny stories. Henry never spoke about work. Zed had no idea what he actually did, but he knew the answer to everything. Henry liked to spout obscure trivia and Zed thought it was cool and played along by doing the same.

  “How’s the lobster?” Henry asked him.

  “I like it. Did you know that lobsters communicate by peeing at each other?”

  Henry laughed. “Yep, they have bladders on either side of their head.”

  “Their brains are the size of the tip of a ball-point pen,” Zed countered.

  “The biggest lobster—”

  “Shut up the pair of you,” Jonas said.

  Henry looked at Zed and grinned. “Word fact, please?”

  “The fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.”

  “Well done,” Henry said. “Give me a word in English language with the letters in alphabetical order.”

  “Beefily.”

  “Excellent.”

  “You two are such show-offs.” Jonas said. He pulled a box from his pocket and offered it to Henry. “While I can get a word in edgeways, happy anniversary.”

  Zed was mortified. “Your anniversary! Why did you ask me to come? You should be eating on your own. I’ll go home.” He started to push to his feet.

  Henry tugged him down. “Sit still. You’re here because we wanted you here.”

  Zed sucked
in a breath. Henry took an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jonas. “Happy anniversary.”

  “What anniversary is it?” Zed asked. “The day you met?”

  “No,” Henry said.

  “The day one of you asked the other out?” Zed tried.

  “No.” Jonas grinned.

  “When Henry was at a Japanese rope bondage workshop and needed someone to tie up and you volunteered?”

  Henry barked out a laugh. “Try again.”

  “When you were bitten by a snake and Jonas sucked out the venom from somewhere interesting?”

  Both guys gaped at him.

  “How much wine have you drunk?” Jonas asked.

  “’Course you’re not supposed to suck venom out,” Zed said. “Did you know that in America only ten percent of snakes are venomous while in Australia, about sixty-six percent are? I’d worry if I was going on holiday there.”

  “Hmm. Open your present,” Jonas said to Henry.

  Henry flipped open the box and his eyes widened. “Are you crazy? You bought this?”

  “No, I borrowed it to show you. Of course I bought it. It’s the one you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. The exact one. Thank you. I’ll…thank you properly later.”

  Henry took off the watch he was wearing, put the new one on his wrist and showed Zed. “It’s a Tag Heuer.”

  “It’s lovely. Can it tell you how many feet you are above sea level?”

  “Why yes it can. And if aliens are invading.” Henry held out the other watch. “Would you like this one? It does feet below sea level and what’s on TV. No warning of alien invasion though.”

  Jonas laughed.

  “You mean you’ll give it to me?” Zed asked.

  “Most people use their phones to tell the time but I like wearing a watch.” Henry pulled up his cuff and admired his new one.

  “I’d love it, thank you.” Zed put it on, but the metal bracelet was too big.

  “I’ll take you into town and get it altered. Put it in your pocket.” Jonas smiled at him and turned to Henry. “Shall I open the envelope now?”