“I didn’t know how you’d take it,” Jayden said. “I mean…I didn’t know if you’d want your boyfriend at school with you.”
Darren hadn’t really thought about it in those terms. He supposed it had never crossed his mind that he’d ever have a boyfriend at St. John’s. He knew of a couple of other gay guys, but they weren’t his type. And no matter what Paul and Ethan said and did, they were straight, and any threesome would be tragically short-lived. But the reality was…
“We wouldn’t actually see that much more of each other,” Darren pointed out. “All different classes, and we finish at three because we only break for lunch. And I’ll never be allowed to quit the orchestra, so I wouldn’t even see you any earlier on practice days.”
Jayden smiled, ducking his head and wriggling his fingers until they slid between Darren’s. “I can’t persuade you to take drama?”
“Not a chance,” Darren said, squeezing his hand. “The day you take chemistry with me is the day I’ll sign up to drama with you.”
Which meant never in a thousand, thousand years.
* * * *
Darren left at nine, after a dinner with Jayden’s parents that veered between embarrassing (Mrs. Phillips) and hilarious (Mr. Phillips). His father was definitely in the know; his mother seemed to be operating under the illusion that they were living in the nineteenth century and Darren hadn’t so much as kissed Jayden on the mouth. Never mind anywhere else. Multiple times.
Still, it had been kind of fun, to watch Jayden squirm and watch his father weigh Darren up and brusquely declare him ‘all right’ when he admitted to his love of rugby. After that, Jayden had dared to take his hand on top of the table, and had left it there for the remainder of the meal.
Mrs. Phillips had offered to drive him home, but it was a nice night, and there was something calming about getting to kiss Jayden on the doorstep—a long and involved affair that ended with Mr. Phillips banging a hand on the front room window and yelling at them to keep it kiddie-friendly—and then walk back through Catterley Lane Park with the taste of him on his lips.
“Text me when you get back,” Jayden had murmured against his mouth before letting him go slowly, like he was being pulled backwards. It had been a heady feeling and pushed at the lingering traces of the darkness in Darren’s head. Maybe tomorrow would be a good day.
It was dark as he entered the park, and he pulled up his hood and hunched his shoulders. It cut half an hour off his walk home, but he didn’t like this park. Too close to the Carlton estate, and he’d been mugged twice in the last year already here. The problem was the length of it—a long strip of grassland bracketed by intense bushes so it couldn’t be observed from the road. He’d been searched twice by police at either gate for looking like a dodgy little scumbag too, but Darren was fine with looking like that if it meant the other dodgy little scumbags would leave him alone.
It was quiet tonight, though, the swings empty and the bins by the south gate not on fire, or hissing from the fire having just been put out. He stuck to the main path, slipping past the copse in the middle where the local whores plied their trade, and a fair few skanks would do it for free, and headed for the north gate: freedom, safety, and ten-minutes-until-home beckoned.
A shadow moved.
“Oi.”
He ducked away from the hand that grabbed for his shoulder, but then his hoodie was caught in a bony fist and he was shaken briefly.
“Gimme your fucking phone,” a voice slurred in the shadows, and a lean face leered at him in the faint glow from the streetlights ahead. Darren’s heart hiccupped, and he felt the warm wash of adrenalin in his veins.
“Fuck off!” he snarled and shoved. His hoodie ripped; he staggered free, and the other kid—a kid, no bigger than him, scrawny and lean and wild-eyed shouted out.
“I said gimme your fucking phone, you fucking nonce!”
He grabbed for Darren’s shoulder; Darren lashed out with a fist, feeling the break of a nose and the bubble of blood on his knuckles. Something metal flashed in the dark—and then…
Then he hurt.
Then everything hurt.
Chapter 28
“Jayden?”
Mum was shaking his shoulder; Jayden blinked blearily at her, and then at the curtains. There was no light creeping around them. “Wha’?” he mumbled.
“The phone, darling,” Mum pushed the kitchen cordless at him, and he stared at it stupidly. “It’s someone called Scott. He said he was Darren’s brother?”
Jayden blinked at the phone and lifted it to his ear. The clock on the DVD player said it was quarter to midnight. “Scott?” he mumbled.
“Hi, sorry, I know this is a bit weird,” replied a voice that was like Darren’s but…a little choppier, almost, not quite the smooth drawl that Darren had perfected. “I’m Scott Peace, Darren’s brother. Er, I know he spent the evening at yours—when did he leave?”
Jayden sat up, shaking off a bit of the lethargy. “About nine?” he guessed. “What’s going on?”
“Shit,” Scott muttered, and then he was calling aside to someone. “His mate says he left there about nine!”
“Scott, what’s going on?” Jayden pushed, beginning to feel anxious. Why did Scott need to know when Darren had left. Had he…?
“He’s not come home,” Scott said flatly. “I thought maybe he’d stayed with you, but…look.” He suddenly lowered his voice, and Jayden thought he heard a door closing. “Did he seem…was he okay?”
Jayden felt numb; Mum sat on the edge of his bed and took his hand, frowning anxiously at him. “I…yes,” he said. “He, um…he stayed for dinner, and he was…he was fine.” More than fine. He’d been flirty and funny in that dry manner again, much better than he’d been for several days. “He’s…I’m sorry, I can’t…what do you mean he didn’t come home?”
“Exactly that,” Scott snapped. “He’s not here. What’s your address? Mother’s called the police, and I’m going to…”
“We’ll look too,” Jayden blurted out, and Mum mouthed something at him. He rattled off the address, stumbling out of bed and rummaging for jeans. Darren was missing. Darren had never gone home. He had left three hours ago and he’d never gone home. He hung up after giving Scott his mobile number, and turned to Mum, feeling torn between the urge to just run out with a torch and search Darren’s route home, or cling to her and cry.
“What’s happened?” she demanded.
“Darren’s missing,” Jayden croaked, and she flinched.
“What?”
“He never went home,” Jayden said and forced a T-shirt over his head, breathing through the panic. “His brother said he never went home, and they’ve called the police, and…”
He swallowed. Mum nodded, sweeping out of the room and calling loudly for Dad. Jayden fumbled for his phone and called Darren’s number; the phone rang out on the other end, dropping to voicemail after nearly twenty rings. He sent a text, where are you?, before Dad was turning on the hall light and gripping him by the shoulder.
“Your mother’s staying here,” he said briskly. “We’ll take the car and go looking. I don’t want her out at this hour on a Friday night, not on her own.”
Jayden nodded, feeling flimsy and shaky. What if Darren had been attacked? He’d been mugged before; Jayden had seen the black eye. What if it had happened again, only it wasn’t just a black eye this time?
Or what if he hadn’t really been okay? What if he’d…what if he’d done something to himself? Hurt himself? Worse?
“Dad,” he said, following him downstairs and grabbing for his coat. “Darren’s…”
“Do you know the route he takes home?”
Jayden swallowed. Focus, he told himself. “Not exactly,” he said. “He either goes back into town and out to Beauchamp, or he cuts through the edge of the Carlton estate by the park.”
“Shit,” Dad muttered. “Stupid bloody kid’s probably gone and gotten himself into a fight.”
“Dad!”
“It’s true, Jayden,” Dad said briskly, slamming the car door and barely waiting until Jayden was in before revving the engine. “Your Aunt Lisa used to go out with a copper who worked the Carlton area; he saw more kids with holes in ‘em than I’ve seen dead pigs.”
“Please shut up,” Jayden begged, suddenly feeling very sick. Suddenly…suddenly, he almost wanted Darren to have slunk away to hurt himself. At least…he’d failed before. He’d tried and failed before, maybe…but if someone else had hurt him…
“Hey.” Dad squeezed his knee before turning out of the street. “They’ll find him, kiddo. It’s not a long route back if he’s cut through, and if he went through town, he’ll have popped up on the CCTV somewhere. The cops’ll find him. They must deal with missing kids all the time.”
It wasn’t much comfort, really, because…what if he had been hurt, and they didn’t find him soon enough? Or what if he had wandered off somewhere else, gone somewhere else, and they were looking in the wrong places? Or what if—Jayden’s mind seized on the possibility in a panic—what if someone had taken him somewhere? It usually happened to girls, but it must happen to boys too, sometimes?
“He’s depressed,” Jayden confessed suddenly.
“I know,” Dad said, taking him by surprise. “Livvy told me. Wanted me to talk to him, God knows why, I barely know the kid, and hell if I know what to say to a kid who wants to…” He cut himself off and winced. “Sorry, kid, I’m not thinking.”
Catterley Lane Park was bracketed by wide but empty residential roads; the houses were dark, the streets abandoned under the sickly pools of orange light from the lampposts. A cat shot across the street as Dad’s headlights picked out the featureless avenue at the north end of the park—and people-less. If Darren had been here, he wasn’t now. Police tape marked off the gate as usual, and Jayden’s stomach rolled. There was always tape at Catterley Lane Park. There was always something that had happened.
“What if he’s…?” Jayden began, and Dad interrupted him.
“None of that,” he said briskly. “You don’t know, and we’ll find out soon enough. He’s sixteen, he’ll probably turn up in an hour completely oblivious. He probably snuck off with some mates into town.”
He probably hasn’t, Jayden thought to himself privately. Paul lived out in the villages, and he couldn’t imagine Ethan being into sneaking off into town. He was too posh for that. He’d be more likely to sneak off on Saturday afternoon for a game of tennis or something.
Dad drove around Catterley Lane Park and the surrounding housing estate for nearly forty minutes, passing nobody. The place was deathly quiet; even the seedy off-license on the corner of Pearl Street had closed for the night, and the longer Jayden’s phone was silent and the streets were empty, the worse he felt.
“He didn’t text me,” he blurted out.
“Huh?”
“I told him to text me when he got back and he didn’t and I just shrugged it off. I mean, I could have tried to call him sooner, or called his house, or…”
“Or,” Dad interrupted again, “you could have thought nothing of it, because kids forget all the time. It’s not your fault, Jayden. And whatever’s happened, it probably happened hours ago. Darren’s not exactly a fat bastard; he should have been home before ten.”
“Should have,” Jayden said, and the tears were working their way to the surface now, burning under his skin and around his eyes. “He should have…Mum offered him a lift and he said no and I should have made him say yes, I should have…”
His phone buzzed, and kept buzzing, and kept buzzing. An unknown number was flashing on the screen as he fumbled it out of his pocket, and then Scott’s deep, choppy voice was echoing and strange in his ear.
“You out looking?”
“Yeah.”
“St. Anne’s General,” Scott said flatly. The nausea blossomed afresh in Jayden’s stomach. The hospital. Oh dear God, the hospital. “The police got him.”
“What happened?” Jayden breathed.
“We don’t know yet,” Scott said. “I’m there now; Mother and Jeff are coming. I can call you tomorrow, or…”
“No, I want to be there,” Jayden said. To hell with secrets, to hell with being polite, this was Darren and he was in the hospital.
Scott paused. For a moment, Jayden could hear some kind of announcement in the background. “Right,” Scott said. “Okay. A&E entrance. And if I were you, I’d get here before Mother does.”
* * * *
St. Anne’s General was a small hospital tucked into the east side of the town, inconveniently far from where anyone actually lived, and a bitch to get to by road. They ended up following a speeding ambulance into the A&E entrance, which was a poorly signposted, inexplicably wheelchair-inaccessible tunnel that broke out from the main hospital buildings around the back, and thus was kept completely invisible from the main road.
“Go,” Dad said, swinging up into the marked bays in front. “I’ll park and join you. Go and find Simon.”
“Scott.”
“Whatever.”
Jayden took it at a run, his trainers squeaking on the tiled floor of the lobby, and thank God for Christmas pictures and Iranian grandparents, because Scott’s—Darren’s, just like Darren’s—wild hair stuck out in the busy, Friday-night-emergencies cluster of people like a sore thumb.
“Scott?” Jayden tried tentatively.
He was struck with a sudden, stupid shyness. He’d never met Scott before, and it felt odd to notice when his boyfriend was somewhere in this hospital and Jayden had no idea what had happened, but he suddenly felt grubby and chaotic and shy, sticking his hands in his pockets and wishing with a kind of insanity that he’d paused long enough to style his hair properly.
“Jayden Phillips, I presume?” Scott joked weakly and gestured to the plastic chair opposite. He looked exhausted, deep rings ground in under vividly blue eyes, and in the flesh, he didn’t look quite so much like Darren. He was stockier, broader, heavier with muscle and shadowed with stubble across the neck and jaw. He was rolling a bottle of water between his hands—hands as massive and out of proportion as Darren’s—and his foot was jiggling anxiously.
“What happened?” Jayden pushed, sinking bonelessly into the chair. He felt wrung-out and shattered, all of a sudden, the news that Darren wasn’t missing anymore leeching some of his panicked energy.
Scott shrugged. “They’re not sure. The police put two and two together and made four. He’s been attacked; some patrol car found him at quarter past ten, but he had no ID and…” He swallowed. “I guess he couldn’t tell them who he was. When we called him in missing, someone called in a description and matched it up to ours. I mean, we think it’s him, anyway. The hair’s kind of a giveaway, but I can’t see him, he’s in surgery, and he didn’t have his phone or his wallet so I can’t ID those either.”
Jayden felt vaguely dizzy and curled up in the chair. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “He’s…he’s in surgery? But he’s…he’ll be all right, won’t he, he’ll…it’s not…”
But how could it not be major? It was surgery. And he couldn’t tell them who he was—had he been…unconscious, or did he have brain damage, or…
Scott was watching him intently. He and Darren had different eyes, but the same narrow, calculating stare. “What are you to him?” Scott demanded.
Jayden took a deep breath. Darren had always said he wasn’t in the closet deliberately, but…but it also wasn’t Jayden’s place to out him. “What do you mean?” he hedged.
“I’m not thick,” Scott said. “You’re not just a mate. And I know Darren’s gay or bi or whatever, he’s not exactly shy about why he watches half the telly he does, and no offense, but you’re definitely gay, so…?”
Jayden waited.
“Okay, fine, Jesus. Was he ‘at a mate’s’ this evening, or was he at his boyfriend’s?” Scott demanded.
He was worse than Darren for reading, Jayden decided. He sounded kind of pissed, but his body lan
guage wasn’t angry. He was anxious, but he wasn’t angry, and…and Darren had never said anything about being afraid to come out. He’d implied his parents wouldn’t be happy, but he’d never said anything about Scott, so…
So…
“Boyfriend’s,” Jayden said.
“Right,” Scott said and rolled his eyes. “Little shit just won’t talk to me,” he muttered, half to himself, and winced. “Sorry, man, I’m just stressed. This isn’t…he’s my little brother, you know?”
“…It’s on Facebook,” Jayden offered lamely.
“Yeah, and last year, he was ‘in a relationship’ with that Ethan kid at his school because it pissed off the kid’s family. I didn’t know whether I should take that seriously or not,” Scott said flatly.
Dad clumped over and sat wordlessly beside Jayden, not bothering to introduce himself, either not caring or not realising that Scott was, well, Scott.
“He doesn’t want his parents to know,” Jayden stated.
“Yeah, I get that.” Scott shrugged and went back to toying with the water bottle. “I just, you know. I need to know why you’re here. Why you care so much. Makes sense now, and…thanks. He’s needed someone to…give a shit.”
Scott’s fumbling with words was familiar, and the tension eased just a little in Jayden’s chest. It was a hospital. Scott was here and worried. Their parents were en route. Darren was at least for now in safe hands, even if…
He forced his brain away from the thought. “Do you…” He licked his lips. “Do you have any idea what…?”
“The police were calling it a robbery,” Scott said. “I got the impression he’s been stabbed or something, but I don’t know. They’re trying to get hold of one of the doctors who saw him when he came in for me.”
Jayden flinched, and Dad’s hand was firm on his shoulder all of a sudden. Stabbed. He’d been stabbed. Someone had robbed him and stabbed him and now he was in surgery and if he’d been brought in at quarter past ten then he’d been in surgery for hours and…
There was a commotion down the corridor, a man shouting at an orderly to get out of his way, and then Scott was standing, the weariness gone in the face of a steely, hard sort of expression that Jayden recognised from Darren’s encounters with Canning.
Vivaldi in the Dark Page 24