Seventeen

After Nathan returned to New York, I returned home. Luke and I spent a few days fishing, as I’d promised, but the strain of being under the same roof as Beth came to a head about a week later.

It was a Sunday afternoon when Daniel turned up at the door to pick her up. She was in the garden hanging up washing, and Luke was out, so I opened the door to him, still half asleep and vaguely hungover.

Daniel was about as different from Luke as it was possible to be. He was lanky and tall with short red hair and the complexion of a bottle of milk.

“Uh, hi. You must be Jude. I’m Daniel,” he said awkwardly before shoving out his hand. I stared at it. He dropped it back to his side while I continued to stare at him in bewilderment. “Is Beth home?”

I could only blink, astonished. This was who my sister was leaving Luke for? After staring at him too long, I left him standing there as I went to the back door.

“Your less good-looking bit on the side is here,” I said. “Seriously, that’s what you broke Luke’s heart over? No accounting for taste, I suppose.”

She looked mortified for a minute, then furious as she charged toward me.

“How bloody dare you.”

“How dare I? How dare you? Inviting him to the fucking house?”

“Don’t bloody swear at me, and this is my fucking house!”

I glowered. “Actually, it’s Gideon’s house, Beth, and we live here by virtue of Luke working for Gideon, so I think it’s about time you pissed off out of here and left us in it in peace.”

I saw the rage (and hurt) trembling under her skin, and I thought for a moment she might hit me. I probably deserved it too. But she just pushed past me and went inside.

I sat outside and flicked through my phone resolutely refusing to step foot inside until she was gone. There was an email from Gideon that I hadn’t read properly when I’d seen it come in last night. There’d been no mention of Cas – I always scanned the content for this first. He was still in Italy, due home to London in a couple of weeks. Did I want to visit? The altercation with Beth had made the idea appealing suddenly. While I hated the idea of leaving Luke alone, I needed to get out of there before my sister and I came to blows. Before I said or did something that would likely result in us never speaking again.

I emailed him back and said I’d come to London before heading back to Uni, and asked him to tell me when he’d be home, and I’d book a flight. I told him in very vague terms about what was happening at home, Beth and Luke’s separation, and how hard it was at home right now. It was later that night before he replied.

He was sorry about Luke and Beth. I skipped most of the diatribe about love and heartache – I already knew what he’d say about this – and skipped to the last paragraph: his house in London was empty, and I could go whenever I wanted. I just needed to let him know, and he’d let the concierge know to have the place stocked for me.

I told him I just needed a key and an address. The key, he said, was with the concierge. The address he’d put at the bottom of the email along with a link to a map url. I clicked on it to see his house in London was a flat in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The street was one of those Georgian rows, all white and blonde brick fa?ades with a large green park in the middle. I’d have that to myself for a few weeks before Gideon arrived?

I closed the email and immediately pulled up flights to London.

I did not pack light. I wasn’t planning on returning to Jersey before I went back to Oxford for the start of term. Luke was dejected when I told him I was going, and I felt guilty about that, but my mind was made up. He understood. Luke always did.

I suggested he take a break, a long weekend off if he couldn’t spare a full week, and come to London and hang out with me there. I gave him all the details and told him I’d already suggested it to Gideon, who’d said he’d love to see him, too. I even said I’d go to Kew Gardens with him. He dropped me off at the airport looking sad but smiling through it, hugged me tight, told me to have a good time, and said he’d think about coming over for a few days.

I didn’t hold out much hope.

London was a hotpot. Stifling, bubbling hot, with too many people.

I took a taxi to the address from Gideon’s email, fumbling with my money in sweaty hands, only to find the taxi accepted debit cards. The driver helped me out with my bag and suitcase by dumping them unceremoniously on the pavement of Wilton Place and drove off.

I stood trying to find number 128 for a moment before a tall black man in a long smart coat came out of a door and down the gleaming white steps to ask if he could help.

“Um, yeah, is this 128? Wilton Place?”

“It sure is, sir.”

“I’m staying here. I mean, at a friend’s place. He lives here, but he’s not here right now. He said there’d be a key?”

His eyes twinkled with delight as his mouth stretched into a grin. “You must be Jude. Gideon told me to look after you. Come on.”

His name was Kuende, but I was to call him Ken.

The building was a long row of individual townhouses which had been split into flats. Number 124 was the concierge station, where absent owners (Russian Oligarchs and English Lords) could leave keys and have deliveries accepted, visitors granted access, and keep a general eye on the place while they were out of town.

Gideon’s property was a large duplex which was accessed on the ground floor. Ken carried my suitcase to the front door, unlocked it, and led me inside to the entrance hall, where he set it down.

“There is one key for the front door, and for the bi-folds in the kitchen. One is for the mailbox in the concierge station.” He held up a small one. “But when Lord Gideon is not here, I collect the mail and leave it here for him.” He pointed at a neat pile on a console table.

“Oh, okay, well, I can do that then. No worries.”

Ken told me there was a black phone in the kitchen and sitting room that connected to the station, which I could use whenever I needed something. I wasn’t sure if that meant first aid or takeout food, and I didn’t want to ask, so I just nodded. Then he left me alone.

The place was impressive. Huge doorways, high ceilings, and wide open rooms, large windows that looked out on the leafy streets of Chelsea. The kitchen was on the basement level, and stretched the length of the house, front to back. Beyond the wall of folding doors was a garden, and dominating the space was a pool. Even I knew a pool in central London was a rare extravagance. The pool wasn’t overly large, but it wasn’t small either. Feeling bold, I slipped off my trainers and ran at it fully clothed, plunging into the cooling depths. As I emerged, I realised I had a huge stupid smile on my face.

After stripping out of my wet clothes, I hobbled around the house, dripping wet, until I found a bedroom at the back of the house that I liked and which I was certain wasn’t Gideon’s. Then I went for a shower in the ensuite and changed into something light. The house had air con, but I hadn’t figured out how to work it yet.

Gideon had instructed someone to fill the fridge, and I found continental meats and cheeses, bags of salad, orange juice, milk, eggs, and an assortment of vegetables. I made a salad and poured a glass of wine I found in a separate wine fridge. I sat at the kitchen table and watched an episode of Taskmaster on my laptop while I ate.

I felt strangely content. At ease. Almost, but not quite, happy.

The next few days were similar. Lazy and warm. I woke late, ate, read, and floated in the pool. I turned pink and then brown. It was as close to near bliss as I could imagine. I wondered why Gideon ever left London. Imagined the sort of life I would lead if I were him. I missed Nathan and wished I’d known about this place before he’d left because maybe we could have come here together. I’d seen a few gay couples roaming around London when I’d ventured out for supplies, and put myself and Nathan in their places.

And then, because I was still me, I imagined me with Cas instead. Holding hands while we wandered the Waitrose food aisle, sitting eating a sandwich together on a blanket in the park, walking an excitable dog down the street. And the dark cloud would roll over me again.

I could barely stand thinking about the night in Oxford when he’d come to me. I’d just about convinced myself it hadn’t happened, that it was just a dream I’d had. One that had left me with a yearning so deep that not even Nathan hadn’t been able to touch it.

Cas was so offensively loud in my mind one night that I drunk two bottles of red wine and passed out on the sofa in Gideon’s living room. When I woke up briefly in the middle of the night, groggy and dry-mouthed, I saw him standing over me. He had such a soft, tender look on his face as he looked down at me, that I went back to sleep with a smile on my face.

“There you are,” I muttered before passing out again.

I woke up the morning after, sore everywhere on my body. Bright, brash, sunlight streamed in through the windows.

I wasn’t sure where I was, or what day it was, but I was very, very sure I was going to be sick. I made it to my bedroom, then to the ensuite, where I threw up lungfuls of bilious red liquid in loud, terrible gushes. It was the worst hangover I’d ever had. And to this day, I’ve never had worse. I can’t even look at red wine without wanting to heave, even now.

I blamed this on Caspien, too.

I’d dreamt about him, I remembered as I sat miserable on the bathroom floor. Of him standing over me, of him talking quietly, of his voice and the sound of him breathing.

I threw up again.

Then I went to lie down on my bed and passed out.

When I woke up, it was 3 p.m. I’d lost almost a full day. I’d make up for it by going for a walk, flush out my lungs and body with fresh air. My stomach protested with hunger, but I wasn’t confident anything I put in my body would stay there. I got out of bed and showered, dressing comfortably and loosely, and went to get a bottle of water for the walk.

I came down the stairs into the kitchen and froze. My entire body felt made of liquid – liquid I was going to throw up all over Gideon’s marble floor.

Cas sat at the breakfast nook, his laptop open in front of him and a tall glass of something luridly green next to him. He turned, giving me that very same, very uncharacteristic softness he’d had in the dream I’d had last night.

Except it hadn’t been a dream. It had been real. He was here.