Five

Though it had only one small window and smelled of old wood, my room at the cottage was more than twice the size of my room in Gorey. An old fireplace in the corner ran up from the kitchen, which meant I could smell dinner before I was called down for it.

In early winter, that fireplace would blow cold air into the room, but in early September, it was so warm and stuffy that I was grateful for it.

Another positive about the move to St. Ouen was that I didn’t have to take the bus to school anymore. Despite being closer, the Deveraux estate wasn’t on a bus route – there’d been talk of me cycling the three miles to pick one up – but finally, Luke said it was easier and safer to just drive me there in the morning, which meant I got to sleep in a little longer.

But my favourite thing about the cottage was the garden and the view from my bedroom window out onto the shiny surface of the lake at the end of it. The lake was more of a glorified duck pond, but it was deep enough to swim in and big enough for a rowboat I could lie in and stare up at the sky for hours – which I’d done yesterday.

We’d been living there a week, and I hadn’t run into Caspien once. I also hadn’t taken Gideon up on the offer to use the library, mainly because my new laptop was living up to its promise and keeping me more than entertained. However, I had pulled together a list of books which I’d give to him when I was helping Luke out on Saturday. Being back at school meant I only needed to help out on the weekends now.

So, despite my Caspien-shaped misgivings, the first week in the cottage was good, and I thought I might actually like living there after all.

I was in second period on the first day back when Alfie – my best friend – slid in next to me and said, eyes wide with disbelief: “Mum said you moved into Deveraux House!”

I’d forgotten Beth went to the same hairdresser as Alfie’s mum.

I snorted, pulling my stuff out of my bag. “Not the house, you twat, the cottage. Luke’s the groundsman now. Comes with the job.” I shrugged like it was no big deal. Which to Alfie, it clearly was.

“Have you met him then? Everyone says he’s an old pervert. And his nephew lives there with him, just the two of them.” He made a face. “Weirdoooooooo.”

I kept my voice level, but felt something hot rise in my chest. “He’s not old or a pervert. And Caspien goes to boarding school. He’s barely ever there.” I wasn’t sure why I told the lie.

“Oh, Caspien, is it?” Alfie laughed. “Caspien, the friendly ghost.”

“That’s Casper, you tool.”

He ignored that. “Anyway, when can I come round? Always wanted to see inside.”

“See inside where?” Georgia flounced down at the desk in front, a plume of something sweet and fruity drifting over us.

“Guess who’s got a new gaff?” Alfie tossed a thumb in my direction. “Alcott’s moved into a mansion.”

“Shut up, Alfred.”

Georgia stared at me, and then Ellie came towards us, smiling wide but distinctly not meeting my eye. We hadn’t spoken since the night at the beach when I’d kissed her, for reasons that seemed very valid at the time, but I was struggling to remember now.

“Hey, children,” she said, sinking down next to Georgia. “I cannot be pissed with this class today.”

“You’ve been back exactly one period, Els.” Georgia pointed out. “Apparently, Jude’s living in a mansion.”

Ellie turned to me. “What?”

“Not just any mansion either,” said Alfie. “The Deveraux Mansion.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m not living in the mansion.”

“You moved?” Ellie looked hurt.

“Yeah, kinda.” I smiled.

“Right, class, I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m ready to teach you everything I know about inheritance, variation, and evolution. Books open at chapter twelve, page thirty-six, please.” Mr. Simon’s eager voice cut short my friends’ questions about my new living situation. Until lunchtime, at least.

”So tell us about the nephew?” Georgia said, blue eyes glittering with interest. “He’s our age, right?”

We were sitting at one of the benches outside. Josh was there, too, and less interested in my new address than the rest of them. I took a bite of my sandwich and washed it down with some water, delaying the inevitable – talking about Caspien Deveraux to my friends. The shrug wasn’t enough, as Georgia fluttered her hand impatiently.

“Well? Is he?”

I shrugged. “I think so, yeah. Maybe a year younger?”

“He good-looking?” she asked.

Josh and Alfie laughed, but I could see the slight unease on Alfie’s face. He’d been in love with Georgia since Year Nine. Had done nothing about it, of course, except whine to Josh and me whenever we’d listen about her perfect tits and hair and eyes.

“How the hell should I know?” I say.

“Ew, homophobic much?” Georgia scowled. “A man can appreciate another good-looking man without being gay, jeez, Jude. Thought you were a grown-up.”

“Yeah, Jude, I happen to think you’re really fucking hot,” Josh said before making a kissing face at me.

Beside me, Ellie laughed. Georgia applauded him, and I tried to decide if Caspien Deveraux was good-looking.

“I’m not homophobic, George. I just don’t look at guys like that.” I wasn’t sure why it felt like a lie. Maybe because I’d already admitted that Caspien was beautiful on some objective level, even if I hadn’t said it aloud.

She nodded, more understanding.

“What’s he like, though?” This was Ellie. The boys seemed less interested.

“He’s stuck up and a bit of a dick,” I said honestly. He did potentially stop you from having toxic plant poisoning, though.

“Oh, wonder if he’s on Instagram,” Georgia said, pulling out her phone.

“I wanna know about the uncle,” Josh said.

Alfie hit him playfully on the shoulder. “That’s exactly what I said! He gives major Saville vibes, man. Old dude with a big house and all that money. My dad says he’s a weirdo.”

“He isn’t fucking old,” I half snapped. I wasn’t sure why it annoyed me so much, them talking about Gideon like he was an old creeper. I didn’t understand why a single guy living alone with his nephew was such a big deal to everyone. Like Luke said, would it be weird for us to live together if Beth died?

“And he’s not a weirdo. He’s cool, okay? He’s been good to Luke and saved us from having to move to God knows where, so just...stop talking about him like that.”

There was a heavy silence for a few moments until George said, “Oh my god! I think I found him.”

She shoved her phone at Ellie first, then squealed and stamped her feet like an excited toddler. “Oh, no way! He’s gorgeous. He looks like a model; is he a model? Is this him, Jude?” She turned the phone around and held it under my nose. My mouth went bone dry at the sight of the picture. It was him.

He was topless in the snow, hair frozen wet and his nose and cheeks bright pink. His nipples were the same colour, but obviously, I wasn’t looking at those.

“Yeah, that’s him,” I confirmed.

Georgia squealed again. “Oh my god, okay, we need a plan. I need a plan. I want to marry this man.”

Josh and I glanced at Alfie, who had forgotten about my outburst and was focused on Georgia, who was scrolling through Caspien’s Instagram thirstily. When she said the words “Georgia Deveraux” in a dreamy tone, he stood up from the bench.

“Forgot I need to see Mr. Kinnell about the game on Saturday,” he announced and then stormed off in the direction of the sports complex.

Ellie and Georgia didn’t look up from the screen as he went.

We were walking to fourth when Ellie caught up to me. “Hey, you.”

It was the first time we’d been alone the entire day. I appreciated her waiting until we were to do this.

“Hey,” I said as I kept walking.

“Soooo, thought I might have heard from you over the summer,” she said, looking ahead and unbothered. “But I didn’t. Not a single text. Rude.”

“Shit, sorry.” I smiled, knowing that it was the sort of thing my smile would make sound less pathetic.

She stopped walking and turned to me. I did the same.

“Properly,” she said.

“What?”

“Apologise properly.” Her dark eyes glittered not with hurt but humour, and I suddenly remembered why I kissed her that night. She was gorgeous, yes, but mainly, it was because she wasn’t like the other girls in our year. She didn’t get upset over silly things.

“Sorry, Ellie. Summer was crazy...I was helping Luke out and moving house. Oh, and I found out I’m gonna be an uncle. It was a lot. I barely even saw Josh or Alfie, either.”

She watched me, dark eyes and dark hair shining in the sunlight.

“And what about the night at the beach?” Her voice was soft and quiet, fragile. “Are you sorry about that, too? Cause when you never texted, I thought maybe...you regretted it.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling like a terrible person. “That was shitty of me. No. I didn’t. I don’t regret it.”

She let out a soft breath of laughter and hit me lightly on the chest. “God, I’m kidding. You look like I just told you your dog died.”

I laughed, relieved.

“Look, I was in Italy basically the entire summer; I hardly even thought about you. And I think, actually, it was me who kissed you. So maybe I was the one who should have texted.” She was smiling wide now, and it was contagious. Yes, this was why I liked her.

I grinned. “Equal rights for women and all that.”

“You know I’m all about it.”

“I do.”

She smiled and said nothing, silence swelling between us. I knew what I was supposed to say now. I was fifteen, and Ellie Walsh was one of the most beautiful girls at school, and she liked me. She had kissed me on the beach and called me out about not getting in touch afterwards. She’d put herself out there. I admired it.

What did it mean then that my thoughts were not about Ellie but about a half-naked Caspien Deveraux, pink and cold from the snow?

Truly, I didn’t want to explore what it meant. Or why I had memorised his Instagram username, or why I was wondering why I hadn’t seen him once since I moved into the groundsman’s cottage. So, I pushed all those thoughts aside and forced out what I was supposed to say.

“So, do you wanna come over at some point this week and see my new mansion?” I asked Ellie with a playful grin. “We could study for that Biology exam?”

Ellie’s face broke out into a wide, pretty smile.

“Yeah. I would.”

Ellie came over on Friday that week. Her dad drove her to mine, Beth going outside to introduce herself, while I waited at the door. Ellie came bounding out of his range rover with her hair down and her lips glossed as her dad shouted he’d be back to pick her up at 9:30p.m.

Beth hadn’t been against it when I’d asked if Ellie could come over to study. As long as we kept the door open and she was gone by ten then it was fine. Luke had given me an encouraging kind of smile.

Had I wanted Beth to put up more of a fight? To say no outright?

Maybe.

But it gave me the start of a headache when I tried to understand why.

“Oh, it’s cute,” Ellie said as she dumped her backpack down on my bed and peered out the little window. “There’s a boat in your pond.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I go out on it and think sometimes.”

“Dangerous.” She laughed, flopping down on the bed and giving me a mischievous look. “Thinking, I mean. Not boating.”

I cleared my throat. “Let me put some music on.” I went to the laptop, connected to my Bluetooth speaker, and selected a Taylor Swift playlist from YouTube, who I knew both Ellie and Georgia loved. I didn’t think she’d like what I’d been listening to lately, which had been a lot of instrumental piano.

Which I’d found to be great for studying and writing.

“Ah, this is your new laptop,” Ellie said, sitting up. She came from the bed to where I sat at my desk and studied it. She was close, the clean floral scent of her hair brushing my cheek as she leaned in. “You got it then. Niiiiice. How is it?”

“Fast. So much faster than the old one.”

“No clicking on dodgy links now; that’s how you ruin it. And no porn.” She gave me a knowing smile.

I laughed and turned the volume up a little. When I turned to stand, her head was close, her lips glittering pink. She smelled of strawberry ice cream and I felt a faint stirring between my legs.

It was a relief, honestly.

It meant I was normal. That I still fancied her. I’d fancied her the night on the beach and I still fancied her now.

It didn’t matter that I’d scrolled Caspien’s Instagram last night and had a wank in the shower after. It didn’t mean anything if I was still turned on by Ellie Walsh.

The door was open slightly, but a creaky stair outside alerted the whole cottage that someone was coming up them, so I wasn’t worried.

I took a deep breath and leaned in, and kissed her.

No tongue at first, but then she slid her own between my lips, and I pushed mine against it. Her hand pressed down against my thigh, far from my cock but close enough for it to suggest something else. It took no time at all for me to be hard. Ellie’s mouth was hot and wet and tasted lovely. She was lovely.

So bloody lovely.

Before she left that night, she asked if I wanted to go out with her.

I said yes because there was no single reason on earth not to. Before she was home, she updated her Facebook status to ‘in a relationship’.

I went to bed and checked Caspien’s profile to see if there had been any new posts.

There hadn’t been. I had no idea where he was. Perhaps he had returned to Switzerland after all? Maybe he’d had a fall on his horse? I didn’t particularly care. It was unsettling, was all. I hated not knowing when he’d appear, sniping or hissing like a snake in the grass.

Since I had his notifications turned on, I got an alert while I read an article about the new Arctic Monkeys album.

It was a photo looking out across the estate from what I assumed was his bedroom window. Not in Switzerland, then.

Tonight, the moon was high, full, and bright, so the picture was well-lit. The grass was rich green velvet, and the shining surface of the lake was like liquid silver.

And in the fainter distance was the bright orange glow from a window of a small, thatched cottage.

A window I knew well. My bedroom window.