House of Windows

by Alexia Casale

  Tim sighed, pressing his knuckles into his eyes.

  ‘Come on. I don’t believe you’ve been betting on the horses and I haven’t noticed any brand-new Porsches in front of the house—’

  ‘My sister’s getting married.’

  ‘Yeah, you said the other day.’

  ‘In America. In eff-gee-and-aitch-ing Sedona, Arizona. Which seems to be the most expensive place to get to on the planet, and the hotel …’

  ‘How much could it possibly be?’

  ‘Enough,’ growled Tim. ‘Enough if you don’t have it. I’ve been saving for a year and even without rent I’m going to have to get a maximum overdraft on all my accounts.’ He sighed, throwing his pen against the wall and locking his hands behind his head as he turned away. ‘I know you’re trying to help and I appreciate the thought, Nick, but an audience for my tantrum is not going to improve my mood.’

  Nick ignored him, sifting through the papers to pick up Tim’s notepad. ‘This isn’t a lot. No, listen, Tim,’ he said, stepping back and raising the pad behind him when Tim moved to grab it. ‘I’ve got an account for birthday money that I never use. I can lend you what you need. Actually I can lend you more, then you don’t need to have overdraft fees.’

  ‘Nick, please—’

  ‘Why not, Tim? Really, why not? Because you’re embarrassed to borrow off me? Because you’re too proud?’

  ‘I thought I had it under control. I was working up to ask—’ Tim cut himself off.

  ‘You were going to ask Professor Gosswin,’ Nick said. ‘You were working up to ask her for a loan.’

  Tim clenched his jaw, the muscles working in his cheek.

  ‘Well, then you can ask me. Or rather you don’t even have to ask. I don’t need the money right now and you do.’

  ‘I know you think this is a good idea—’

  ‘It’s a brilliant idea. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it apart from your attitude.’ Nick’s face was flushed with frustration. ‘I know we’re not close or anything, but I thought we were sort of friends at least. You came to pick me up from the police station.’

  Tim blew out a breath. ‘That’s different, Nick.’

  The flush vanished from Nick’s face and his lips thinned. ‘Your deal with Dad is to be around and help with emergencies. But you didn’t have to be nice to me.’

  ‘I was nice, was I?’

  ‘Well, for two in the morning, you were. And you didn’t have to come to the hospital when Professor Gosswin … I know you did it more for her than me, but you still didn’t have to. I’m not going to hold the money over you, so just get over yourself, OK? Your angst is not that special.’

  And Tim laughed.

  ‘I’ll interpret that as a “Yes, Nick. Thank you so much, Nick. You’re a star among housemates, Nick,” even though your expression says “Let’s not get carried away.” Just leave me a note with the amount you need in order not to be in hock to anyone, and your bank details, and we don’t ever have to talk about it again.’

  ‘I won’t be able to pay you back for—’

  ‘You’ve got until I graduate or you move out. That long enough?’

  The area of Cambridge around Addenbrooke’s was nothing like the University: ordinary, unenchanted. There were lots of old trees, and different textures of hedge, but the houses were unexceptional: faux-stucco plasterwork and flat-roofed one-car garages. It was less than two miles from home, but the taxi journey seemed to take an hour, stop-start stop-start all the way up Hills Road.

  Nick let Tim lead the way through the hospital corridors, Michael following behind, eyes on his phone, reinforcing the message that he’d ‘need to go soon: can’t take the day off on the spur of the moment.’

  The nurses of the High Dependency Unit were expecting them, just as Gosswin’s lawyer had promised they would be when she’d called to let them know they could visit now. The duty nurse watched them carefully as they took it in turns to cleanse their hands with the stinging gel from the alcohol-rub dispenser, then led them down the ward to the far corner.

  ‘We don’t usually have more than two people round a bed at once in HDU, but we’ll make an exception,’ the nurse said, pulling the curtain closed between Gosswin’s bed and the next patient. ‘Just remember to use the hand sanitiser again when you leave.’

  In the week since the stroke, Professor Gosswin’s face had somehow become both swollen and lax: wrinkled, grey and unimpressive.

  ‘She looks like a normal person,’ Tim said. ‘I feel like she’s going to rear up from the bed like something out of a horror film and try to bite my nose off for even thinking that.’

  Nick didn’t say anything, just slid his hand into the curl of the Professor’s limp fingers.

  The figure in the bed shifted, grunted, opened one watery blue eye. The other stayed at half-mast, the lashes fluttering.

  ‘It’s Nick, Professor. Nick and Tim and Michael.’

  The Professor slurred a hoarse, unrecognisable word, her other hand lifting up from the bed before settling back on to the covers.

  Nick pressed the back of the hand he was holding. ‘I know you must be so bored right now, but they’re moving you to a recovery home soon and I’ll bring your chess set once you’re settled there.’

  One side of Professor Gosswin’s face lifted up into a leering smile. Tim took a step towards the door, but Nick just smiled back at her.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to wait to insult us, I’m afraid. It’ll be good motivation, stocking up all the shouting for later on.’

  When Professor Gosswin’s eyes slid shut and stayed shut, Nick sighed, placing her hand gently back on the bed. ‘I don’t suppose she’d want us to stick around and watch her sleep,’ he said quietly.

  There was a taxi waiting outside the hospital when they left. Michael started to shift about awkwardly, checking his phone, his watch, his phone again, the moment they climbed in.

  ‘Shall we drop you at the station, Dad?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Would you mind? It was good to see her, pay my respects after all she’s done for us, but, well, life goes on, right?’ He raised his hands helplessly.

  When they got home, Nick made tea while Tim got down the biscuit tin. They sat, staring into their mugs for an hour before Tim left for a meeting with his supervisor. When he had gone, Nick curled on to the window seat, zipped Professor Gosswin’s book into the front of his hoodie and fought his way through the week’s supervision problems, trying to ignore the odd way his heart seemed to be punching at his ribs rather than beating: the way his throat burned as if he’d drunk acid, making his vision swim with tears every time he swallowed.

  It was a relief to escape the glaring lights of the Cockcroft Lecture Theatre. He cut past the ugly round frontage of the Mond building, the crocodile design on the right-hand side of the door its only redeeming feature. In Free School Lane, he stopped for a minute to look at the quaint little courtyard of St Bene’t’s, then turned away on to KP.

  ‘Hey, Nick! Nick Derran!’

  Nick turned to find a stocky young man in a football uniform calling to him from the cobbled forecourt of King’s.

  ‘Sam Barton,’ the man said, jogging over. ‘From school.’

  ‘It’s only been a few months, Sam. You haven’t changed that much,’ Nick said. ‘Just wasn’t expecting to see you here. I thought you were at York.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I am. I’m here for a Varsity match. Look, I’ve been meaning to say something – apologise – if I ever saw you again.’

  ‘Why would you need to apologise? You were always perfectly nice. There was even that time when the lacrosse team—’

  ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ Sam said, making a face. ‘Not really my finest hour either. You tried to thank me and I said something charming like “Don’t think this makes us best friends or anything.”’

  Nick toed awkwardly at a loose pebble. ‘You were better than the others.’

  ‘That’s not a rousing endo
rsement, you know. But fair,’ he added. ‘Anyway, the thing is, you said this thing to me once. And I realised later, much later, that I said something really stupid in reply.’

  Nick frowned. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. It can’t have been a big deal, so don’t worry about it.’

  ‘It was the only time in forever you didn’t ask what the top mark was after a test. Everyone noticed and started pestering you about what you’d got, only you wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Well, everyone was always cross when I did ask: they said I was trying to make an excuse to tell everyone I came top, so I thought I’d just not say anything. But then everyone got shirked off about me being secretive. It’s not your fault I couldn’t win.’

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Not what I was going to say. The point was that big row in the locker room before PE.’

  ‘When I gave in and told everyone what I’d got and they were even more furious ’cos they’d figured I was hiding the fact I’d done badly, only I wasn’t?’ He shifted his bag to sit more comfortably on his shoulder, letting his eyes drift to a couple pedalling up KP on a tandem bike. ‘So what?’

  ‘That was the day Pete Simms stamped on your arm in his football boots during PE.’

  ‘Oh. I remember that,’ Nick said, finally dragging his eyes away from the tandem as it wobbled out of sight. ‘You went up to the San with me. You waited for me afterwards. That was pretty nice of you actually.’

  ‘Do you remember what I said? About not being such a show-off?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘Not really. I guess I was. I am. It’s my own fault I never listen.’

  ‘But you said this other thing. You said, “If everyone’s going to hate me, then it might as well be for something good, like being clever.”’

  ‘It sounds like me.’

  ‘And I said,’ Sam pressed on as if he hadn’t been interrupted, ‘“They might not hate you for being clever if you didn’t shove it down their throats so much.” I should have listened.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To the fact that you thought people were going to hate you no matter what.’

  Nick’s face went blank.

  ‘I don’t know why, but I just didn’t hear that bit of it. All I heard was the bit where you said you weren’t going to stop setting people off. Back then I didn’t get that you were doing it almost like an attack—’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘Of course you were, Nick. Maybe you still don’t see it, but sometimes you’re kind of aggressive about it. I know you think you’re just interested in how you’re doing for your own satisfaction, but it’s not that simple. Anyway, that’s not the important thing; if I’d had half a brain I’d have asked you why you thought everyone was going to hate you: why your only choice was to pick the how and why.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry for that, Nick. I should have known better. I should have understood enough not to ignore something like that.’

  Nick blinked, swallowed tightly. He raised a shoulder in a shrug. ‘It’s …’ He cleared his throat. ‘That’s a while ago now. Just some stupid comment I made in the school corridor.’

  ‘Was it?’ Sam asked. ‘Maybe it could have been important if I’d been listening.’

  Nick opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  ‘Look, I have to go but … good luck, OK? It’s great you’re here, in this place. If anyone should be, it’s you. I hope this is the start of something better.’

  ‘It is,’ Nick got out.

  Sam smiled. ‘Good. I always figured you were one of those people who’d get happier and happier as you got older. Not like stupid Pete Simms. The best’s already way behind him.’

  Nick laughed, though the sound was odd: thin and strained.

  He watched Sam hurry off with a final wave over his shoulder.

  Chapter 19

  (Lent Term × Week 5 [≈ third week of February])

  Nick stopped under the high ogee arch of the Old Cavendish Laboratory to tug his hood up against the rain.

  ‘Hey, Nick, wait up!’ Frank skidded to a halt next to him, shaking his head to stop his hair dripping down his forehead. ‘A bunch of us are going down to Clowns, sort of an informal study group thing: wondered if you wanted to tag along. Full disclosure and all, I want to pick your brains about some of this probability stuff.’

  ‘You know this isn’t my best course, right? Or have you blanked out our last supervision entirely?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘You can explain what three standard deviations above the norm means and beyond that I really don’t care. There’s a coffee in it for your pains.’ He held out a hand.

  Nick gave him a sceptical look but shook it anyway.

  The others were already shedding coats at one of the long tables when Nick and Frank squeezed through the coffee-shop doorway past the largest buggy in the world.

  ‘Bit cramped. You’re OK to sit on my lap, right, Susie?’ Frank said.

  Susie pulled a disgusted face. ‘You couldn’t just decide that not being a pillock might at least get you a smile, whereas this whole schoolboy “If I pull your pigtails, you’re bound to fancy me back” routine is practically an invitation to defenestrate you.’

  ‘What if I offered to buy you one of those huge hazelnut white-chocolate things?’

  Susie’s eyes brightened. ‘Oh Frank, you really know what a girl wants.’

  He grinned, elbowing Nick in the side.

  ‘An offer to trade a grope for the price of a drink that’ll get her fat. Why would I drink that many calories when I could have a nice cup of tea and a huge chocolate brownie? Both of which I’ll be buying for myself, thanks,’ she said, pushing up from the table. ‘If I come back and find you in my seat pretending to be a cushion, Frank, your day’s going to go from bad to worse.’

  ‘Um … couldn’t go and get our drinks, could you?’ Frank whispered to Nick as Susie marched off. ‘Next one’s on me, promise, but I think I’d better give her a bit of space.’

  ‘Nick!’

  Nick jumped as a small blue blur hurtled deftly between the tables and knocked him backwards into the wall.

  ‘Nick, Nick, Nick! You’re here! With peoplings! With human friendy peoplings!’

  ‘Hi, Ange.’

  ‘Why haven’t you come in before now to see me? I did say this was my coffee shop, right? Or Tim did? Didn’t you miss me? Of course you missed me. You’re a house full of boys. Do any of you ever hug? Of course not, useless things … Oh, you’re wearing your scarf.’ She patted it fondly.

  ‘Hell-o, pretty lady.’

  Ange looked up to find Frank grinning at her over Nick’s shoulder. ‘Oh no. Oh yuck. He isn’t yours, is he, Nick?’ she asked.

  ‘Do I look like the type of bloke who fancies little boys?’ Frank asked, pouting. ‘No offence, mate,’ he added to Nick.

  Ange surveyed Frank from head to foot. ‘You look like a Neanderthal. I don’t want to think about what you fancy. And it had better not be me,’ she added, brandishing a teaspoon in his face. ‘Don’t even think about it. You do not want to experience my experimentation with martial arts involving sugar tongs.’

  Frank blinked at her. ‘Maybe I don’t,’ he conceded, pulling a face at Nick as he squeezed around to the far side of the table.

  ‘Really, Nick?’ Ange asked him, aggrieved.

  Nick shrugged. ‘He’s the one who invited me here.’

  Ange heaved a sigh. ‘Well, that’s a point in his favour, but hopefully next time one of the other ones can do the inviting and you can leave him at the farm with the other things that go oink. Anyway, the rest look like an OK sort of crowd. Nerdy. Weird. Socially inept.’

  ‘It’s in the Cambridge admissions rules for Mathmos now, haven’t you heard? How come you ever got to like Tim, given he’s basically the opposite of all that?’

  Ange beamed at him and swooped in for a hug that pinned his arms to his sides. ‘Tim Brethan is just as inept as anyone here, only he hides it better than most. He is a bother and
a nuisance.’

  ‘And your best friend?’

  ‘Well, yes, and that, of course.’

  ‘Only that?’ Nick asked.

  Ange rolled her eyes. ‘Tim Brethan is a wonderful and amazing best friend, but he is a horrible boyfriend. If I went out with him, he would end up hurting me in ways I couldn’t bring myself to forgive and then I would hurt him by dumping him and never speaking to him again, and where would that get us? You can’t go out with someone in the hope that they’ll become their best self, Nick. Remember that, won’t you?’ she said earnestly, tugging on his scarf. ‘You can hope, but you can’t count on it. You’ve got to pick people for who they are already. And, yes, people change, but you never know how they’ll change. If you don’t start by thinking a person, as he or she is, is good enough already then … Well, you’ll spend your life looking to be with someone who isn’t the person you’re with.’ Ange set about settling Nick’s scarf more comfortably about his neck. ‘I’ve already got everything I want from this version of Tim Brethan. And that’s what I told him just before Christmas, when he asked me out mostly to get an invitation to Christmas dinner and only a little because he figured it was time we “gave it a go”.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nick. ‘Wow. That was a really thorough answer to a question I thought you’d just ignore.’

  ‘Be careful what you ask then, huh? People sometimes tell you the truth.’

  Nick grinned at her. ‘There aren’t other people like you, Ange. Most humans have boundaries instead of bounce.’

  Ange wrinkled up her nose. ‘Did you really not want me to tell you? Was it a bit TMI?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘It’s good to know why Tim was so cross and you were so sad. I mean, even I know it’s not really that easy to be so sensible about love.’

  For a moment, all the happiness went out of her face. Then she shook herself, bounced once on the balls of her feet and smiled. ‘Well, now you know everything you could possibly need to, so just you sit there and make nice with all these other weird peoplings and I’ll go and bring you something yummy. And something less so for the caveman.’ With that she skipped away to start crashing about behind the counter.