Nineteen

”My first exam was at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. History. It was the one I was dreading most.

But a strange kind of focus came over me the second I sat down. I spent the next two and a half hours weaving a convincing argument about the three sources they’d given us, and their usefulness to a historian studying responses to religious change in the reign of Mary I. The Tudors were my least favourite monarchs. I preferred the Angevin kings; I’d always been drawn to Richard the Lionheart more than Henry VIII.

A couple of hours later, I walked out of the exam hall feeling dazed, as though coming out of a trance, relieved it was over. Ellie was waiting for me by the main entrance; her own chemistry exam had begun at the same time but finished fifteen minutes earlier. She kissed me quickly on the lips and slipped her arms around my waist.

“How’d it go?”

“Good, I think.”

“Told you. I think you could have taken my chem one for me too. Oh, to be naturally brainy like you,” she sighed.

“I’m really not.”

“You are, though. You’re hot and smart. I’m super lucky.”

I shifted, awkward under the praise. “Is your mum picking you up?”

“Dad. I think he’s outside now,” she groaned. “Only two weeks to go. I feel like a bloody prisoner.”

“Yeah, two weeks will fly.”

She leaned up on her tiptoes.

“I can’t wait to be alone with you.”

I knew Ellie wanted to have sex again. She’d mentioned as much in our text chats while she was in France – on Christmas morning, she’d even sent a topless photo. ‘Merry Christmas, Jude x’ it had said. It had done its job. I was a 16-year-old boy, and I quickly learned that I didn’t have much control over these things. No matter where my heart and mind lay.

The first time she’d asked for a photo back, I’d made an excuse about not being at home and then pretending to forget. The second time, though, I gave in. And though I’d been embarrassed and nervous, I’d still pulled it out and photographed my semi-hard cock and sent it to her. I’d felt it was the decent thing to do.

“Yeah, me too,” I muttered.

“How can you still be shy?” She gave me the face she did sometimes, like I was a small, adorable puppy. “God, you’re so cute.”

When she kissed me again, a little deeper this time, I tasted cherries and apples. A few people in the corridor whistled.

Every night that week, I cycled up to Deveraux, sat in Gideon’s library, and stared at the painting. Every night, I thought about calling him. Even if it was just to thank him. But the longing in my chest was a constant thing, the absence of him almost as all-consuming as his presence. I knew if I called him, I’d only embarrass myself again by begging him to come home.

He’d long ago begun to feel like a ghost, some figment I’d conjured out of loneliness. I’d have been convinced he wasn’t real if it wasn’t for Gideon.

Gideon would swoop into the library like a moth to remind me of him, as if I were in danger of forgetting.

“Gosh, it is a wonderful likeness,” he’d said about the painting that first night. He’d come in to offer me a cup of hot chocolate, which he’d made himself. After that, he would bring me one every night at the same time. “I think he captured your heart in every stroke.”

“He said you were quite angry with him that day,” he said the following night.

I’d been about to deny it because I only recalled the fervid, burning moments on the floor. The white exquisite pleasure after. But then I remembered how I’d arrived, how angry I’d been with him and his threats to tell Ellie everything.

The night before my English Lit mock, he set the hot chocolate down next to Dracula; I’d chosen it for tomorrow’s exam. It was the same battered copy Caspien had taken to the beach that day. “I say, did you ever write him the letter we spoke of?” He sat down and gave me an encouraging smile.

I shook my head. “I tried. I just...I couldn’t think of anything I thought he’d like to hear about.” I remembered the letter I’d written and stuffed under my mattress. I’d forgotten all about it.

“I don’t think that is the purpose of letters, Jude.” He took a sip of his hot chocolate.

I frowned at this. “What’s the purpose of letters then?”

Another of his encouraging smiles. “Well, to say things we might not be brave enough to say face to face.”

I looked down at the page of Dracula in front of me. The passage that stood out was so apt that I felt a shiver run down my spine: I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.

“I say this only as I’m going to see him tomorrow,” Gideon was saying. “I fly out early, and I could take it to him personally. If that’s something you’d want me to do.”

He was going to see him. Envy pulsed through me. Christ, what I’d have given to see him.

But I forced myself to think about the letter. Perhaps I could thank him for the painting and apologise for my drunken call. I could ask when he’d be home and make those promises I’d made in the letter under my mattress – I’ll do whatever you want me to, please just come back.

Perhaps I could even tell him about the strange things I dare not confess to my own soul.

Gideon let me use his desk in the corner of the blue sitting room. There was the Deveraux letterhead on rich white embossed paper, envelopes, and an array of pens in the small narrow drawer under the large desk. He patted me on the shoulder, gave me a proud smile, and went whistling out of the room.

I began it like I always did:

Dear Cas,

You left.

Maybe it was the paper, the pen, the desk, or the room, but after that, the words flowed easily and came out with less despair than all the other times I’d tried to write to him. This time, they were shot through with quiet rage. I hated him for leaving – I’d meant most of what I’d said on that call.

I hated him for not answering my calls and for disappearing from my life. But most of all, I hated him, loathed him, for infecting me like he had. For slipping under my skin and into my blood and finding his way to my heart. I blamed him for the guilt, shame, and remorse I carried around about Ellie because I knew all the things I was supposed to feel about her; I felt for him instead. That was his fault.

I hated the tall, dark-haired pervert who haunted my dreams and whose face was always just turned away from me, identity forever concealed. I wrote that I knew he’d lied that day, that I knew it wasn’t his tutor, but that I wouldn’t stop until I found out. I told him that some days, I felt as though I’d never take a full deep breath again until I knew his name.

If not for him, I told myself, then Caspien would be mine.

I only needed to know his name. Then the power would shift, as though knowing it and uttering it would destroy him completely.

I froze.

Epiphany swept over me as I took in the whole of Gideon’s desk. There were a couple of leather journals stacked to one side next to the tray containing the Deveraux stationary. A small wooden box of business cards with ‘Lord Gideon Deveraux III, Deveraux House, La Neuve Route, Jersey, St. Ouen, JE8 6BL’ written in neat gold font. A few letterheaded notepads. I ran my eye along the leather-bound books. One was smaller than the others, and my heart jumped as I spied the worn lettering on the spine that read: Address Book.

As I slid it from its spot between the tray and the other books, I sent a wish up that Gideon was both diligent and methodical about his contacts and put all of them in here. I took a guess that X was his first initial and so flicked immediately to the back of the book, paging forward until I reached the X’s.

My heart stuttered. Surely it couldn’t be this easy.

There was only one name written here.

Xavier Blackwell. Blackwell, Havisham, and Pryce.

There were two numbers and an email address.

Trembling with adrenaline, I copied them out quickly onto a piece of paper, folded it, and put it in my pocket along with the letter I’d written. Then I slid the address book back, making sure it was facing the same way I’d found it.

On a new piece of letter paper I wrote;

Dear Cas,

You left. I’m sorry if it was something I did. I really hope to see you soon. Actually, I think I might.

P.S. Thanks for the painting.

Jude.

I folded the piece of paper, stuffed it into one of the envelopes, and sealed it.

When I walked out of the sitting room, Gideon was across the hall in the red parlour, reading again. He stood and came to meet me.

“Ah, a lad who knows what he wants to say! I like that.”

I smiled and held out the envelope to him. He took it, holding it between his long fingers as though it were something precious.

I shrugged. “Thanks. I’m not sure he’ll even read it.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure he does, don’t worry.”

I gave him a grateful smile. “I think I’ll head off. Kinda tired.” I faked a yawn that I wasn’t entirely sure was convincing.

He tilted his head, mouth turning down. “Of course. Will you be okay on the bike? I can always take you back in the car.”

“Nah, I’ll be good. Thanks though. And thanks for letting me come again, and the letter, and well, everything.”

Gideon’s smile was tender. But ever since Caspien’s words that day about how I knew nothing about Gideon, and since that night when I’d found him here alone and acting strangely, I’d never quite taken Gideon’s smiles to mean exactly what he wanted me to think they did.

“Do not mention it, young Jude. Anything you need, anything at all.”

I wasn’t sure what made me ask it, but I said, “If he wanted to come home, would you let him?”

A strange look passed over his face, darkening his already dark eyes. “Let him?”

“I just mean, I wondered if maybe you’d sent him away or something. If maybe he’d done something he shouldn’t have. I don’t know. And he won’t answer my calls so...”

Gideon shook his head as he came towards me.

“He simply woke up and declared he was going back to La Troyeux. No explanation, no discussion. I rather thought it was something to do with you, in fact.”

I wasn’t going to answer that, though I could tell he wanted me to.

“So then if he wanted to come back, if he told you when you saw him that he’d changed his mind and wanted to come back, he could?”

“I’d have him on a flight that very day. Jude, Deveraux is Caspien’s home, and he will always be welcome here. I miss him terribly. Elspeth does too. And I’m sure you do.”

I gave him a guileless smile. “I have a feeling he’ll be back soon.”

Gideon’s expression sharpened ever so slightly and I was glad I’d put nothing in the letter that might have condemned me.

The moment I got home, I opened my laptop and typed ‘Xavier Blackwell’ into the search engine.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Could hardly believe it had been so easy.

There was page after page after page of him. Caspien’s pervert was some kind of celebrity lawyer. He was thirty-two, though he’d started his own firm at twenty-six. There was a picture of him with a famous actress who had sued a British film studio for equal pay, pictures of him with footballers and politicians, even one with a prince.

I wanted to laugh. It was almost too bloody good.

But suddenly, I understood that Caspien’s fear hadn’t solely been about himself being found out; he was afraid for Xavier Blackwell’s career—a career that would most definitely be ruined by the fact that he’d been messing about with a fifteen-year-old boy.

A career, as it turned out, I cared nothing about.

I pulled out my phone, typed two words into a text, and hit send.

This time, I only had to wait four minutes for him to call me back.