by Suki Fleet
The downstairs bathroom where he took his freezing showers and washed his filthy clothes was where he got his water supply from.
The kitchen’s old unglazed red tiles were cold against his feet as he padded near silently across them, avoiding the lake. At one end of the kitchen, double doors led out to a small patio and an acre of overgrown lawn. Nicky dared not get too close to the doors or the windows. He always felt so exposed in here, like a target in a shooting gallery. But at the same time, he had an uninterrupted view of the grounds at the back. From the wild sloping lawn, all the way down to the much neater fields of wheat that circumnavigated Lance’s land.
So, unless Cai had headed down into the copse at the far edge of the lawn, Nicky would surely see him. And no person in their right mind would venture willingly down to the copse.
The only time Nicky had been in the copse was with Lance, and even with Lance’s protective arm around him, the place made his skin crawl. Especially the pool in the centre. The thickly packed trees blocked out almost all the light even in day time, and the air was rank and stale. Nicky had been left with the distinct impression something or some things had died in there and were secretly rotting under the loamy ground.
Even though he knew he was shielded from view by the door between the scullery and the kitchen, Nicky shrank back as Cai suddenly appeared, striding through the long grasses that had over taken the back lawn. After summer upon summers’ growth, the grasses were thigh height, and when the wind rushed through them, they undulated like a sea.
Wearing worn jeans and a knitted grey jumper that had a fair few holes in it, Cai looked a little lost out there, as if a storm had washed him away and brought him to this wrecked place.
Nicky frowned and ducked down as Cai meandered towards the back of the house, tipping his head back as though taking in the size of the place. Suddenly Cai was on the patio. Altogether too close, too curious. And Nicky had known he would be curious. He’d peered into the study for ages yesterday. But if he hadn’t then Nicky wouldn’t have had the chance to put the money on Cai’s van. Still, as he crouched close to the floor, Nicky couldn’t remember why he’d thought employing Cai was a good idea.
Maybe you want him to be nosy, a little voice chided. Maybe you want him to find you. Maybe that’s why you chose him because he will look for you the hardest.
“Shut up. Shut up,” Nicky hissed, holding his hands over his ears.
Nicky had only chosen him because this guy hadn’t given up on the job immediately, nor had he been too scarily demanding—or too scary full stop. Perhaps Nicky hadn’t made the wisest choice, but what could he do about that now?
For a moment, Cai stood right by the back doors, glancing inside quickly, then seeming more interested in the pile of broken kitchen units slowly rotting on the patio. Now that Nicky could see his face clearly, he was surprised to see Cai was even younger than he’d first thought. He had a bit of scruff on his chin, but his broad shoulders and the purposeful way with which he moved—his confidence in his own skin—were the only things that made him seem any older than some school leaver.
Every so often Cai brushed an errant strand of wavy hair away from his face and smiled, which made Nicky frown even more. What was the guy doing? And why was he so happy about it? Taking a relaxing dawn stroll and having a poke around the fucking garden? This wasn’t an open house. Shouldn’t he be looking at what needed to be done and working out how to do it?
Nicky scowled and plucked at his socks. His big toe was poking through. He needed socks without holes—clothes that weren’t falling apart, food, everything. He took a deep breath. One thing at a time. Lance probably had a sewing kit up in his rooms—it was the sort of self-sufficient thing a self-sufficient guy, like Lance, had—but Nicky couldn’t face going upstairs to Lance’s rooms yet. He hadn’t been up there since he’d found Lance grey and still on the bed and called the ambulance.
When Nicky looked back up Cai was walking away, palms brushing the tops of the grasses like a kid, like a fucking nature-loving hippy—which he’d better not be. If the fucking vines clinging to this house had to be burned away, Nicky didn’t care. He just wanted them gone.
Messages, Cai. Whispers.
Cai closed the back door of his van and stared at the dozen or so small squares of paper now stuck on the mansion’s downstairs windows. They hadn’t been there a few minutes ago, he was pretty sure about that.
Unsurprisingly, curiosity got the better of him. He placed the antique-looking petrol hedge trimmer on the gravel and walked over to one of the windows.
The piece of paper sellotaped to the inside had a black wonky arrow drawn on it.
Cai stepped back and saw all the pieces of paper had arrows drawn on them, and all the arrows pointed in the same direction around the side of the house.
Shaking his head at how willing he was to embrace this increasingly bizarre situation, and knowing Soph would laugh when he told her about it later, Cai retrieved the hedge trimmer and followed the arrows.
It was still early and the morning sky glowed a spectacular shade of pink. All burning embers and candyfloss. It wasn’t particularly light yet, but the day was again untarnished by clouds and would hopefully stay that way. Clearing a garden in the rain with his already somewhat fragile tools would be asking for trouble.
Head bowed, Cai battled his way through the thick jungle of plants, his arms too full to stop the thorns from snagging on his skin even through his clothes.
He had a fair idea where he might find the next piece of paper, and so when he reached the small decrepit window he’d peered into yesterday and saw the note, he wasn’t at all surprised.
Cut plants off house.
No spying.
The note was written with the same messy scrawl as yesterday’s envelope.
No spying? Cai raised an eyebrow. Was there ever anything more likely to make someone do something than to keep telling them not to do it? It was almost as if whoever was in there wanted to be spied on.
Shielding his eyes with his hand, he looked past the note and into the room. Even though the light was low and his eyes were a little more adjusted to the gloom this morning, he still couldn’t see anything apart from a few lumpy chair shapes at the back.
It looked so dark in there. So dark and so quiet.
It was as if he were part of a weird game of hide and seek—except he’d been found before he even knew he was part of the game, and who he was seeking was someone he’d never seen, and whose existence was only apparent because of these bizarre notes.
Glancing around, Cai rubbed his arms, feeling suddenly cold. After the ceaseless activity of Greenhills’ whatever time of day it was, the quietness of the countryside dawn was a little disconcerting. Even the birds sounded far away, the sky empty.
The tall trees nearby shivered as the wind rippled through the leaves and branches, the sound growing into a low ghost like moan as the wind gusted harder. A static shudder ran up his spine and he had the same prickly sensation he’d had yesterday. The same feeling he was being watched. But from where and by whom? He swung around. His note leaver? Were they trying to scare him?
With a quick shake of his head, Cai shut down that thought. He was giving himself the creeps. Instead, he knelt on one knee and gave the hedge trimmer’s frayed cord a sharp tug. The engine roared to life immediately, shattering the eerie quiet and filling the air with fumes.
With inexpert clumsiness, Cai cut through vine after vine. By the time his hedge trimmer had run out of petrol around twelve, Cai had cleared about a fifth of the vegetation clinging to the side of the house, exposing half a dozen windows that had likely been hidden for decades.
Satisfied, he stopped and sat on the edge of the overgrown lawn to eat the Marmite sandwich he’d hurriedly put together while half asleep that morning. His gaze was drawn to a dark clump of monstrous trees a few hundred feet away. He had no idea how the hell he was going to get rid of them.
By three o’clock his
arms were on fire and a painful line of blisters had formed across the pad of his thumb from where he’d been gripping his useless scythe. When he looked up at how much he’d cleared in the afternoon and saw it was negligible compared to the part of the wall he’d cleared in the morning, he sighed and headed back to his van in search of plasters. Tomorrow he vowed to bring a few more cans of petrol for the trimmer—he’d have syphoned the petrol out of the van’s tank if he wasn’t worried that would leave him barely anything but vapours to make it home. He needed to be more organised.
The low growl of another vehicle interrupted the quiet. And as Cai emerged from the overgrowth, a large delivery van rolled up the drive. It pulled up next to his van, dwarfing it completely.
The harassed-looking driver nodded at Cai as he bounded out of the van. A small plastic package was tucked under his arm. Cai nodded in return, then pretended to be fiddling around with his phone as he wandered across the drive. Perfecting the art of watching, without it looking like he was watching.
Surely someone was going to open the door for a delivery.
The driver knocked and waited, then knocked again. Louder this time.
Perhaps no one ever answered this door.
“They in?”
Cai glanced up and found the driver giving him the once-over. “No idea.” He shrugged. “Maybe they just popped out.”
The driver sighed. “I’ve got a van full. I ain’t got time to be hangin’ round.” He flapped the lumpy package he was carrying. “Even if I could just post it in, this ain’t fittin’ in that tiny hole.” He pointed at the narrow letter box at the bottom of the door. “Get penalised for none deliveries, you know. This one has gotta be signed for, an’ there’s no neighbours out here to leave stuff with either… You work here?”
“I’m the gardener.” Cai let the awkward pause drag on. He glanced down at his phone. How much trouble could taking in a delivery cause? He chewed his lip. “Leave it with me,” he said eventually.
Looking all manner of relieved, the driver tossed the package at Cai and pulled out his little electronic pad. The package was lighter than it looked. Whatever was inside felt hard and squareish—a book, or a box perhaps.
As he signed for it, Cai wondered if he’d made a huge mistake. He ran his fingers over the plastic, staring at the address label while the driver hopped in his van, started the engine and drove off. There was no name, just The Occupier. From the crest of the London solicitors printed on the top of the package, it looked important.
Since there was little point leaving the package by the front door that never opened, Cai walked around the side of the house again. Using one of the thick vines he’d felled as a prop, he hung the package against the note leaver’s window. He guessed they would be more likely to see it here. Taking one last look at the bare patch of wall he’d managed to expose, Cai headed off to pick up Soph.
When Cai pulled over at the bus stop, he wished he’d been later. Soph was leaning against the graffitied Perspex as Loz chatted to her animatedly. The sight of Loz pulling out all the stops to try and put Soph at ease released a tightness in Cai’s chest that he hadn’t even realised was there. As soon as Soph became aware of Cai, a deep blush stained her cheeks. She gave Loz a small smile and darted towards the van. And just as they had yesterday, Loz stared longingly after the van as Cai drove away.
“You should invite Loz around. I can make myself scarce you know… unless you’d want me to stay. We could do dinner.”
Soph hung her head, her blush deepening.
Cai frowned. Was Soph embarrassed to bring anyone back to the flat? It was nothing like the nice house she had grown up in. The walls were damp-stained, the furniture tatty. Cai had scavenged much of what they had. The lumpy sofa had been dumped outside a derelict house a couple of streets away. The mattresses were from a local charity place. They didn’t even have any matching cutlery, and the only plates they had to eat off were plastic.
Soph’s reluctance really shouldn’t have surprised him.
“Do they live nearby?” he asked.
“Other side of town…,” Soph replied, sounding distracted. She picked at the cracked black rubber sole of her shoe.
Soph had grown up on the other side of town with Katy. There were some nice posh houses there. A few council estates too, but even so it was doubtful Loz lived anywhere quite as shitty as they did.
This sort of stuff had never bothered Cai before now. He couldn’t remember living anywhere that wasn’t some sort of institution, and some of the care homes he’d lived in had been kitted out with worse furniture than the YOI. He’d never bought furniture or had new things, but Soph had (even though Katy fallen down some black hole of debt to afford it), and now Soph was stuck with him and his whole lot of nothing.
Sometimes he wondered if Katy had been wrong to give him custody of Soph. In the months after Katy’s death before he was released from the YOI, Soph hadn’t been in a care home—she’d been living with a nice foster family. She still talked about them sometimes. Perhaps if Cai hadn’t agreed to taking custody of her, they would have asked her to stay permanently. But Soph being with him had been Katy’s wish, and despite the lack of money, Cai loved her being in his life. Having someone to care for filled his world in a way he’d never imagined. He didn’t want to lose that.
He thought about the four thousand he’d tucked in his sock drawer—it was rent, food and clothes for the next few months or it would buy a few nice things that weren’t as essential but were things that they needed, like Soph’s shoes. That money gave them choices and options that they hadn’t had before yesterday. Cai told himself things were getting better, that they were going to be better. He would make sure of it.
“You really don’t feel any different that Loz is… not a boy?”
The question snapped Cai back into the moment, and he realised with dawning wonderment that perhaps the issue of Loz coming around wasn’t to do with the flat at all, it was to do with him.
He blinked.
“Uh… no… not at all… I um… I mean, I’ve… I’m not—” Cai felt his skin heating and took a deep breath. “I’m not straight… I mean, I am attracted to women, but not just women. I was about your age the first time I had a crush on another boy. I was kind of shocked at the time… and I never told him. Wish I had, though, now.”
He winced, wanting to bite his tongue in half. This was one of those important questions he needed to answer right and he’d fucked it up. He’d made it about him.
“Oh!” Soph’s blue eyes widened. “So how do you identify? Are you bisexual? Or Pan? Or….”
Cai gazed at her blankly. He desperately wanted to give her the right answers.
“I mean, you don’t have to… I… I know that even though you’ve had relationships with people of the opposite sex you could still identify as gay, or, or, vice versa… it’s all really personal….”
Cai could feel himself blushing hotter and hotter. Calling what he’d had relationships was pushing it.
“I don’t know how I identify. I never really felt like I wanted to give myself a label….” In the YOI labels had been thrown around like shit spray, and you ducked or you were stuck with one, and guys in there had been fucked over too many times because they hadn’t been able to get rid of a label that had stuck to them. Yeah, life was different on the outside, but the YOI wasn’t the only reason Cai had never labelled himself. He’d never found the right words.
“Oh you don’t have to identify as anything… I… I just…,” Soph stammered.
“Soph, it’s okay.”
It was just that he’d never talked about this stuff, not with anyone. There had never been anyone to talk about it with when he was growing up. Approaching a staff member in one of the kid’s homes would have been too daunting, and he’d felt too unsure to discuss his sexuality with school friends.
Inside the YOI, he’d let no one close enough to even be a friend. He’d kept such a low profile, partly because things had
a tendency to fuck up in a big way when people got close to one another in there, and fucking up and being in the YOI any longer than absolutely necessary would have broken him. But perhaps Soph had never had anyone to talk to about this stuff either. Perhaps that was another reason she found it hard to talk to Loz, even though she liked them. Perhaps he wasn’t getting it wrong talking about how it was for him; after all, his own sexuality was the only one he was comfortable enough with to talk about.
“When I like someone, their gender isn’t the first thing I think about. It’s not that it’s not important, it’s just… it wouldn’t make any difference to how attractive I find them or… anything.” Did that even make any sense?
Soph remained quiet as though she was taking this knowledge deep inside herself and she needed a few moments to process it fully. But she was smiling, her eyes shining.
“It’s so easy to assume stuff, Soph. I’m sorry. I should have known better. And we should have talked. I should have said something.”
The rest of the journey home they didn’t speak, but out the corner of his eye, Cai could see a glowy happiness in Soph’s expression.
She was still beaming as they pulled up outside the bookies. “I wasn’t sure you’d be okay about it…. I mean, you’re okay about most things, like you’re okay about me being here and I guess I just didn’t want to make you regret it.”
Regret having Soph live with him?
The divide between their seats was not an ocean and yet when Cai pulled Soph into a crushing hug, it felt as though they’d closed a huge distance between them.
“Who you love is your business. No one else’s. All I want is for them to be good to you. We’re looking after one another, right?” he whispered into her sunshiney hair.
Nicky is a ghost
The study window didn’t open. And that had never been a problem. Until now.
Chewing his lip, Nicky flopped down on his favourite chair and stared at it. Outside, the wind was picking up. Standing in the kitchen, he’d watched the sky darkening and filling with steely grey storm clouds that reminded him of the colour of Lance’s eyes.