“If you say so. But you can’t wallow in it, Lou. You need something to do. Something to take your mind off of everything. You’re thinking too much.”
“Thinking too much?! There are ninety-three thousand cases of the virus confirmed in the country today!”
“But only a hundred sixty-seven of those are based here, Lou.” I knew the statistics; I kept an eye on the rolling data like the rest of us did. “And only twenty-seven deaths so far. It’s the lowest in the country.”
“And one of those twenty-seven could easily be one of us! I have asthma, you’re immunocompromised, and Pete is half-dead already. Haven’t you fucking heard him coughing every night?”
She was working herself up to a panic attack. What she needed now was calm reassurance, and a distraction.
What she got instead was Tom.
“Put a sock in it, Lou,” he said, stretching and yawning. “I’m tired of how fucking miserable you are all the time.”
There was a shocked moment of silence as Lou processed what had just been said. The rest of us froze, blinking in disbelief.
“What did you say?” She replied, face white.
I put my book down and got ready to intervene.
Tom took a deep breath. A fighting breath.
“I said: put a fucking sock in it, you miserable cow,” he repeated, looking relieved as he spoke the words, as if he’d been biting his tongue for a long, long time.
“Hey!” I felt anger rise up inside me and tried to swallow it down. I could not afford to lose my cool, not cooped up like this. Tom was a friend, and he was stressed and worried like the rest of us. Lou was not at fault, but I knew how grating her moods could be.
“Don’t speak to her like that,” I said, as calmly as I knew how.
“Or what?” Tom stood up. He topped me by five or six inches. I’d never appreciated how freakishly tall he was until he squared up to me in that small room.
Friends, I told myself. We’re all friends here.
“Or nothing, Tom,” I said, refusing to be drawn. I clenched my fists, regardless.
He erupted.
“Oh, come off it, mate, she’s a fucking nightmare! We all think so! All she does is mope around criticizing everything and everyone and crying when we get annoyed at her. Why you didn’t dump her properly years ago, I’ll never understand. She makes you look like a right fucking doormat, sometimes. And let’s not even get started on the eggs!”
I swallowed again, my anger still rising. “Eggs?” I muttered. “What eggs?”
Tom swiped a hand in the direction of the kitchen. “Who do you think finished all the fucking eggs off this morning? She did. Fuck knows when our next food delivery will arrive, or even if they have any eggs. She knows I’m on a high-protein diet! She didn’t even ask me!”
“They’re communal eggs,” Lou hissed, eyes ablaze.
“That’s enough!” I said, my anger building, building. I refused to fight over eggs. It was fucking ridiculous, so I tried to keep a lid on my temper, but both Tom and Lou were making it difficult.
Tom had the bit between his teeth now, and wouldn’t be silenced.
“She should lay off them anyway, if you ask me. Getting a bit chubby.” He blew out his cheeks to mimic Lou’s weight gain.
My mouth dropped open. Had he really just said that? Had he really just fucking said that??
“I fucking hate you!” Lou shrieked, throwing her phone at Tom. He ducked and it slammed into the wall behind him, knocking a picture free of its hook.
This sent Tom into an apoplexy. “How is that fucking helpful?” He roared, picking up the phone and throwing it back at Lou with all the force he could muster. “How, you psychotic bitch?”
The device glanced off her cheek, and she hissed in surprise and pain. I saw a small welt reddening there. Not a big injury, but enough to hurt.
All the fight went out of Lou, and she sank her head between her knees, sobbing.
I snapped.
“Not another fucking word, Tom!” I yelled. It killed me to see Lou, my Lou, in such a state. I had a fleeting memory of the night we’d first met, her smile, the glint in her eyes. She’d ridden me like a rodeo horse that night, her on top and me underneath looking up at her as she shuddered her way through what I thought, at the time, was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
She didn’t look so sexy now. Greasy hair stuck to her face, snot and tears pasted across her cheeks, lips raw from worry, and a long red weal on her cheekbone. She looked twenty years older than her age, and my heart ached for her.
“I miss women,” she whispered then, to nobody in particular. “I just want to talk to someone sympathetic. I just want a hug.”
“Boo hoo, cry me a fucking river!” Tom yelled, and Chris and Adam got to their feet, too.
“Pack it in, Tom,” Adam said. Tom was perhaps closer to him than anyone, and usually deferred to him.
“Apologize,” I demanded, my voice like ice.
“You’re being an arsehole, Tom. Sort it out,” Chris said, also cold.
Tom looked at the three of us, his chest heaving, then at Lou, who sat like a limp rag on the couch.
He relented.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m sorry, Louise. You just get on my nerves, that’s all.”
As apologies went, it was a shitty one. Lou leapt up as if someone had placed a rocket under her.
“You’re a piece of shit, Tom Ward,” she snapped. “Always have been, always will be!”
She stormed out of the room, kicking at the skirting board by the door as she went. A section of the board, already loose, clattered wearily to the floor in defeat.
“Great,” Tom muttered, crouching down to pick it up and hammer it back in place with his fists.
“That was your fault,” Chris said, shaking his head. “That was totally uncalled-for.”
I said nothing. I didn’t trust myself yet. I wanted to go after Lou, but also knew that the best thing for her was some space so she could cool down. So I stayed with the others, trying to get ahold of myself, watching as Tom grabbed the skirting board and then paused in the act of refitting it, frowning at the hole in the wall behind the board.
“Huh. There’s something... in the wall down here,” he said, grunting as he got onto his knees. He shoved his face closer to the hole, arse sticking up in the air like he was praying.
“What? What sort of thing?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know,” Tom said, and I was amazed at how quickly he’d moved on from the argument, as if it hadn’t happened at all. As if removing Lou from the room had reset the mood, somehow.
“Let me see,” Adam said, going over to where Tom was inspecting the wall. He also got to his knees, shoving Tom out of the way for a better view. He extricated his phone from his back pocket and turned the flashlight app on, shining the bright little beam into the hole for better visibility.
“Fuck me, you’re right!” Adam said. He put his hand into the wall, and it disappeared up to his wrist.
“I think there is something,” he said, pulling his arm out, “But I can’t reach it, not with these big old guns in the way.” He flexed his arms, and his gym-bred biceps popped. He grinned a shit-eating grin and winked at me. “Needs a skinny fucker like Mike to reach in there.”
I glared, still raw about the argument that everyone seemed so keen to forget. Adam smiled back, and I could see what he was trying to do: move us all on with a welcome distraction.
“Fine,” I said, at last. Then, I dropped to my knees and pushed my arm into the hole in the wall.
To begin with, I couldn’t feel anything except for rough masonry, so I pushed further until I found myself cheek-to-paintwork, my arm gone right up to the shoulder.
“Christ,” Tom said, peering at me. “How big is the fucking cavity between these walls?”
“Shouldn’t really be a cavity at all,” Chris said. “This is a Victorian house, cavity walls weren’t that common back then.”
&n
bsp; Adam yawned to show how uninteresting he found this. “Hurry up, Mike,” he said. “Before Chris bores me to death.”
I stretched further, gritting my teeth, and, finally, the very tips of my fingers brushed against something. Something cold, metallic, shaped like a loop. A handle of some sort? I used my last tiny bit of momentum to strain further forward, curling the tips of my fingers over the handle like a grab-claw, and then slowly pulling the thing out of the cavity in the wall.
A hush descended the object emerged into the light of day.
It was a box.
It was made of tin, like an old biscuit tin with handles at each end. There was a metal clasp on the front, with a padlock that was small and red with rust.
Adam went to fetch our toolbox. When he came back, he looked worried.
“Pete sounds pretty bad,” he said, and we could all hear him, then, coughing through the walls. He did sound bad. He sounded like he couldn’t catch his breath.
“Maybe we should call the doctor again,” Chris said.
Tom shrugged. “They said it would take a while for him to get better.” He rooted around in the toolbox for some pliers, disinterested in Pete’s plight. For the second time that day, I felt an intense flash of dislike. Tom had always been selfish, but quarantine was bringing out the worst in him.
I held onto the box, frowning at Tom but speaking to Adam. “I’ll call them again in a bit,” I said, and Adam nodded.
Tom, armed with some pliers with a sharp cutting edge on the inside of the jaws, set to work on the padlock while I held the box steady. It didn’t take much to snip through the slim shackle of the lock, which fell to the floor with a clatter.
Tom nodded in satisfaction, and Adam rubbed his hands together. “Hope it’s vintage porn,” he said, grinning like a teenager. “It’s got to be, else why would it have been stuffed way back in the wall so far? Bring on the Victorian muff!”
With clumsy fingers, I undid the clasp. The lid squeaked up.
We all peered in.
Inside the box was another box, like an engagement ring box. It was made of velvet, with an ornate catch on the top.
I carefully opened the catch.
And revealed a beautifully-cut blood-red stone, the size of my thumbnail, sitting on a bed of white satin.
“Well, fuck me,” Chris said, whistling. As I stared at the thing, my heart thumping in my ears, I realized I couldn’t have put it better myself. I shivered. It was as if someone were standing behind me, breathing on the back of my neck. My arms came up in gooseflesh, and I shuddered again.
And the diamond watched me from its pristine bed.
The jewel sent us into a frenzy of internet activity.
“It has to be worth something,” Tom said, snatching the jewel and holding it up to the window so that the light shone through it. Inside the stone, tiny flaws hung suspended, like motes of dust in a bloody sunbeam.
I held my hand out for it, feeling twitchy, and Tom reluctantly gave it back. “Let’s keep it safe in the box, shall we?” I said, snapping the catch shut over the gemstone as quickly as I could. I felt uncomfortable letting it out of my control, and realized I’d been holding my breath as Tom had played with it. Once it was back in its case, I met Tom’s eyes.
I saw something ugly there.
Whatever it was, it was gone in seconds, smoothed over with practiced ease.
Watch him, I told myself, lowering my gaze. He’ll steal it without a second thought.
I blinked, surprised. Where had that thought come from?
I set the gem box on our dining table, and we all stood around it. Then, we pulled out our phones and started searching for information on red jewels.
I was so engrossed, I didn’t hear Lou coming into the room behind me.
“What are you all doing?” She said, voice thick and phlegmy from crying.
We all jumped, startled.
“Christ, Lou, what’s wrong with you? A bit of warning next time!” I said, more harshly than I intended to.
She came and stood next to me, frowning. “What’s that?” She reached for the box.
“Hey, hands off!” I yelped, moving to block her. The others all did the same, forming a protective ring around the jewel.
Lou reared back, looking hurt. “What? What is it?”
I shook my head. Why is she always interfering? The thought surprised me. It was as if a meaner, sharper version of me was starting to take over my internal dialogue. Feeling like a horrible person, I forced myself to climb down a little.
I opened the box and showed her the red stone sitting inside.
“What is that?” She breathed, eyes wide.
“We found it. We’re trying to figure out if it’s worth anything.”
For the first time in weeks, Lou smiled.
“I think it’s a red diamond,” she said, unable to stop looking at it.
“How can you possibly know that?” I asked. I didn’t like the way Lou was looking at our discovery. Her knowing about it implied some sort of shared ownership, and it already felt as if too many of us had a claim on it.
Tom snorted in derision, but I saw him type ‘red diamond’ into the search engine on his phone.
“I used to be a mineral and gemstone nerd when I was a kid,” Lou continued, and I could tell she was itching to reach out and touch it. “It’s like a normal diamond, only the red color is due to a rare occurrence in the atomic structure.”
I raised my eyebrows. So did Chris and Adam. Tom peered into the screen of his phone as if he was about to fall headlong into the device.
In the background, we heard Pete coughing again. This time, it sounded far worse than we’d ever heard him sound before. I was pretty sure I could hear him groaning, too, only for some reason, it didn’t bother me like it should have.
“Shall we go to him?” Adam said, dreamily, and the others yawned.
“Nah,” Chris said. “He’ll live.” Tom nodded in agreement.
Lou didn’t even appear to have heard us. She just stared at the red diamond. “We have to try and figure out if it’s real,” she murmured, and it was an echo of a thought I’d had myself not long before she’d come into the room. Figure out whether or not the diamond was a fake, and then decide what I was going to do with it.
You mean ‘we,’ my internal voice said. What ‘we’ are going to do with it.
The thought made me feel ill. And jealous.
According to the internet, there are a number of ways to tell whether or not a diamond is real.
“Number one,” Adam intoned, reading aloud from an article he’d found. “Place the diamond in front of your mouth and fog it up with your breath. A real diamond won’t allow condensation to stick to the surface.”
I winced as Chris reached out and gripped the diamond. Every time someone else touched the thing, it was like a punch in the stomach. I kept my arms to myself with difficulty, desperate to snatch the jewel back.
Get a grip, Mike, I said, silently. Don’t give anything away.
We watched as Chris breathed on the diamond, and I tried not to think about the virus, about any germs Chris had sticking to something so beautiful.
His breath made the surface of the gemstone opaque for a split second; then it cleared. No moisture remained.
“Next test?” Tom snapped. I noticed he was shifting from foot to foot, as if warming up, getting ready to run. I studied his face as covertly as I could. The fucker was planning, I could see he was. He was turning things over in his mind, mapping out escape routes.
Over my dead body, I thought, and my eyes went back to the red stone.
“Number two. Drop it in a glass of water,” Adam said. “Real diamonds sink because of their density.”
Lou went to fetch a glass, and we heard the kitchen tap run. She came back, eyes fixed on the jewelry box before she’d even come fully into the room.
We dropped the diamond into the glass. It sank to the bottom. Lou let out a small gasp of satisfaction, li
fting the glass to her face. For a split second, I thought she might swallow the water down, diamond and all, in one gulp. Her hands trembled slightly around the tumbler.
I retrieved it quickly, upending the glass and pouring water everywhere in my haste to put the diamond back in its box. I heard Adam and Chris exhale behind me.
“Now what?” Tom said, shifting on the spot again. A powerful urge was growing in me. It was the urge to punch Tom square in the mouth.
I shook my head, feeling drunk.
What is the matter with me?
It was then that we heard Pete, calling for us.
“Help!”
It was a weak rasp, but we heard it as we stood there.
“Help... me!” Followed by a series of wet, thick choking noises.
We roused slowly, as if waking from a deep and bitter sleep. We looked at each other.
“You go check on him,” Tom said to me, reaching out for the jewelry box. “I’ll look after this.”
“In your dreams!” I hissed, holding it away from him.
Adam intervened. “We’ll all go together,” he said, more calmly than he felt, if the sweat pouring down his temples was anything to go by. “I’ll hold onto it, for now. It’s my turn anyway.”
“Since when do we take turns?” Chris said.
“Since now,” Adam said, and he took the box from me, gently but firmly. As he did so, I felt an overwhelming wave of sadness and loss wash over me, as if my heart had been broken from the inside out and was now swimming around inside my veins, little sharp splinters working their way into my extremities.
“Just for a little while,” he said, patting my shoulder. I flinched, not wanting to be touched by him. At that moment, I hated him.
He had something that belonged to me.
Before anyone could argue further, he turned and made his way to Pete’s room. Silently, we all followed. Not because we were worried about Pete.
We followed so that we didn’t lose sight of the diamond.
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