Fifteen

As I walked out of last period on Tuesday I checked my phone to see a message had come through at 2:46p.m.

It said:

Caspien:

I’m going back to La Troyeux today. Don’t bother coming over.

I’d stopped still in the middle of the corridor and read it over and over.

He was leaving. Leaving Deveraux. Leaving the island? I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, a rush of loss and a swell of something like panic.

A body nudged into me from behind.

“No watching porn on the school grounds, Judey,” Alfie snickered.

Georgia was leaning into him with her head on his shoulder. When I’d been getting off with Caspien, Alfie had somehow found the balls to ask her out. Had gone to her house with flowers and everything – I’d been seriously impressed. Now they were a thing.

Now I knew we would be expected to do things as a couple, something which had begun to hang over me like a fat rain cloud since I heard about it on Saturday night.

But right now, none of that mattered. Right now, Caspien was leaving.

“I have to go.” I shoved my phone in my pocket and legged it down the stairs and out of the building.

Ellie was waiting for me outside and she turned to smile.

“Sorry, Ellie. Emergency at home. I’ll call you later.”

She stood with a wide-eyed look on her face as I rushed past her towards the school gate where Luke’s van was parked in its usual spot.

I threw myself inside. He turned to me looking worried.

“What’s—”

“Is Cas going back to Switzerland?” I asked as I pulled on my seatbelt.

He shook his head, then shrugged. “I’ve no idea; was out at St. Helier today.”

“But you were there yesterday. What did he say?”

“Never saw him, Jude, what’s the matter?” He looked worried about me.

“I just need to speak to him before he goes. It’s really important.”

I could feel Luke’s eyes on me as I pulled my phone out and texted him back. I’d planned to be cool. I’d thought of nothing else but seeing him for two and a half days. How I’d act when I saw him tonight, what I would say, what I wouldn’t. Now I cared about none of that. Now I only cared about stopping him from leaving.

Me:

I’m on my way home. Can you wait for me? Please.

He never responded, and when Luke drove me up the long drive to the back door of Deveraux I already knew I was too late.

I found Gideon in one of the downstairs sitting rooms. He was sipping a glass of whiskey and writing something in what looked like a journal. He glanced up as I came into the room.

“Jude, there you are,” he said as though he’d been expecting me and I hadn’t come bursting unexpectedly into his house.

“Is he gone?” My voice was twisted tight like a knot.

Gideon gave me a sad little smile. “He left this morning. His flight into Zurich landed...” He looked at his Rolex. “Oh, about twenty minutes or so ago.”

Of course, he’d sent me the text after landing then.

I felt the strength leave me. Impotent fury curling my fists. This was my fault. I shouldn’t have run away on Saturday. If I’d stayed. If I’d called or texted or come to see him on Sunday...maybe he wouldn’t have left.

I sank down onto the closest couch and put my head in my hands, exhausted suddenly.

“Why…?” I breathed out. I hadn’t meant for Gideon to hear, but he had, and he got up from the desk and came to sit next to me. He put a comforting hand on the back of my head, ruffling my hair gently.

“Why do you think?”

I lifted my head to look at him and his hand fell away.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head.

Gideon had the strangest expression on his face as he said, “Oh, Jude, I think you do.”

I shook my head. “I don’t. You said he hated it there. Why would he go back?”

“Cas is a bit of a masochist at heart.” Gideon seemed almost amused by this. “He likes to prove to himself he can do anything, stick out anything. But, well, I do know that he would have stayed had he thought there was something worth staying here for.” He levelled at me the most calculated look I’d ever seen on a human. It chilled me to the bone. “Did something happen between you two? Did you have a fight?”

I shrugged miserably. “We always fight. But I wanted...” I trailed off. “I hoped I’d get here before he left...to tell him...” I couldn’t order a single thought in my head so that I might explain it. Though truly, I had no idea what I was trying to tell Gideon. Or what I’d have told Caspien had I got there in time.

Of course, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I know that now. But I was stupid then. Na?ve. I was Sisyphus and Cas the mountain.

Gideon said nothing for a long time, but then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and handed it to me. I was embarrassed to find I’d been crying.

The handkerchief was pale grey and had the initials G.L.D monogrammed in darker grey. For Gideon Lorcan Deveraux, I would learn later.

“I was in love once, too,” he said.

I started with shock.

I shook my head again. “I’m not. That’s not what I—.”

“Not even with your girlfriend?” He cut in easily. “Lovely young lady by all accounts. Pretty, too.” His mouth twitched with something resembling distaste, but I was distracted as his sharp stare left mine and drifted across the room. I followed his eyes to where a portrait of his sister, Caspien’s mother, hung. She wore a yellow dress, the neckline hanging off her shoulders to show off a long, elegant neck. She had his eyes, a crystalline stare that pierced through skin and bone, but her mouth was softer. A hint of a smile pulled at the corner. I could imagine her laugh.

“Love is often painful. I think it’s rather the very nature of it.”

“What happened to her?” I heard myself asking. I’d meant to ask something else. Something about love and pain and why he was so sure the nature of one was the other.

But I suddenly wanted to know about Seraphina Deveraux. I’d heard stories. Everyone who lived on this island had. Some stories had her locked in the attic of this house still. Some had her alive in a hospital in London, feral and unhinged. But most believed she’d died by suicide because the husband she gave up her name and her inheritance for left her for another woman. I wasn’t sure which one I believed or hoped was true; all of them were equally as tragic.

“She fell in love too,” he said obliquely before turning from her image and looking back at me. “You could write to him,” Gideon said, standing. He was walking back to his desk.

“Write?”

Until then, I’d written exactly one letter in all of my fifteen years. To a boy in 1942. For a history project a few years ago, they’d made us write to our imaginary counterparts in occupied Jersey to ask them how they felt about the Nazis and tell them what lessons had been learned from the second world war. Jacob – the name I’d invented – had not written back.

“Caspien has such an old soul; I think he’d appreciate a letter rather than a text or an email.”

“A letter,” I repeated stupidly.

A few minutes later, he came back from his desk with a sheet of headed notepaper with what I assumed to be Caspien’s dorm number and address in La Troyeux written on it.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to hear from me.” I was folding the piece of paper anyway. Once and then again into a small cream square.

“Of course he does,” Gideon said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You’re his only friend in this world.”

“Cas hates me, Gideon.”

At this, Gideon threw his head back and laughed. “He said that?”

“Not in as many words, but he’s made it pretty clear, yeah.”

“Well, then he definitely cares about you, that’s certain.”

I frowned at that. “I don’t understand.”

Gideon seemed a little disbelieving that I was being so slow about this. “If Caspien didn’t care, then you’d know, trust me.” Gideon smiled. “His ambivalence is much crueller than his animosity. If he acts as though he hates you, then it’s very likely he feels the opposite.”

There was a gleam in Gideon’s eye that day that I took to be a sort of shared joy. Something well-meant and benevolent. Like he was imparting some kind and helpful wisdom that would help me navigate what was to come.

But, of course, nothing could have been further from the truth.

After dinner and a shower, I went to my room and dug around in a box until I found a notepad. Then I sat at my desk to write a letter to Caspien. Gideon knew him best of all, so if he thought he’d respond to a letter – he’d completely ignored my text earlier – then I would try.

Dear Cas,

I’m writing this because you left. Why did you leave? I thought you hated that school?

I tore the page out and crumpled it up. If I was going to write to him, then it had to at least hold his bloody attention. I’d been writing for years, squirrelling away on a fantasy story set in a small island town I never wanted anyone to read. But still, I knew I could write better than what I’d just written down.

I had no clue what to say. How honest to be. I decided to write it as though he’d never read it, the way I wrote my fantasy story.

Dear Cas.

You left.

I can’t believe you left.

I went to the house today to try and catch you before you did, but I was too late. It felt different without you inside it. I think that’s how my life is going to feel now. Sometimes, it feels as though you’ve always been here; I can’t remember what my life was like before this summer. Before you.

I’m guessing you left because you didn’t want to look at me after what happened, and I suppose I get it. I’ve been scared for days about looking at you, too, scared about what I might do when I did. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

You’re everywhere: in my head and my dreams, and I’m not sure what it all means.

I meant it when I said I’d break up with Ellie. I would have. If you wanted me to, then I would have. I shouldn’t be with Ellie. Not when I feel the things I do about you. Things that scare me. I’m not scared that I might be gay or anything; I don’t think I care about that.

I’m only scared of you not feeling the same way and what that might make me do.

I’m sure you don’t feel the same way. I’m still pretty sure you hate me – though when I said that to Gideon, he said that’s the proof that you don’t. That you have to care to have said anything at all about your feelings.

But you’ve gone back to a place you hate because it’s preferable to being here, with me. So, I don’t know what to think about that.

What if I’d promised never to kiss you again? Never to touch you again? Would you have stayed then?

I think that would almost be worse. To see you and be close to you and have the memory of what it felt like to...to be with you like that and not be allowed to do it again.

But really, I just want you to come back.

I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you come back.

Please,

Jude.

I almost tore the page out again. More than once. But in the end, I didn’t. I slid it under my mattress and decided to sleep on it – literally. I’d read it and see how I felt about it then.

Except that didn’t happen. The following night, as we were setting the table and Beth was standing by the stove cooking chicken stir fry, she’d let out a horrible scream before doubling over in pain.

Those minutes after were sharp with alarm as Luke rushed in from the living room and wrapped her in his arms.

And then I saw the blood. Blood where even I knew there shouldn’t be.

It was the most terrified I’d ever seen my sister. The most hysterical. She was saying ‘no, no, no, no’ over and over as tears streamed out of her eyes.

Shaking and pale, Luke was trying very hard to sound calm as he told me to fetch a bunch of towels from the upstairs press. Next, I was to take the key to Beth’s car from the hook and lay the towels out on the passenger seat.

When I’d done that and come back to the kitchen, he had Beth up and standing, though she was still doubled over and holding her stomach while crying silently into Luke’s chest. I’ve never forgotten the look he gave me over her head, desperate, lost, and already grieving. Because he knew. I think maybe he knew everything that was to follow. The dreadful chain of events that would happen after that awful December night.