Then Jack told a story about a boy at his school who had tattooed himself while locked up in borstal. He had wanted the tattoo to honour his girlfriend Nadia and had done it himself with a pin, a pot of ink and a mirror. The mirror had been the root of the later problem. Now on his forearm, inside a big red heart, there was inked not the name Nadia but Aidan.
They laughed and drank and Dee said she didn’t believe a word of it, Jackie-oh, but it was a good enough story in any case.
Emilia stretched her arms and yawned.
‘Oh no, it’s infectious,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve caught his disease, Markolepsy,’ he said pointing. ‘This is serious, Emilia, you’re turning into a Markoleptic.’
Emilia tried hard not to smile. ‘No, I’m just bored,’ she said. ‘Oh, only a little,’ she added, ‘nothing to do with any of you. I just feel a bit trapped here.’
‘Then let’s finish these and go to my room,’ said Jolyon.
‘It’s not the bar,’ said Emilia. ‘We don’t do anything any more, just the stupid game all the time.’
Chad was about to protest but then Mark blinked hard and rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. ‘I’ve just had a brilliant idea,’ he said. ‘You want a change of scene, Emilia? Then you all have to come down to London Friday night for my birthday. I don’t know why I was planning on spending it in this place. We can stay the whole weekend at my mother’s house. I can’t believe I only just thought of it. Look, my sister’s living with my dad for a bit, small family falling-out, so her bedroom’s free. And then there’s the study, which you can take, Dee. You’ll love my mother’s study, it’s full of old books by dead people. And I’ll find sleeping bags for you two.’ Mark pointed at Jack and Chad. ‘There’s plenty of room in my bedroom.’
‘Then what about Emilia and Jolyon?’ said Jack.
‘I just told you,’ said Mark, speaking slowly in a monotone as if to the village idiot. ‘My . . . sister’s . . . away.’ It sounded to Chad like the slow toll of church bells at a funeral. ‘Her . . . bedroom’s . . . free.’ Mark picked up the pace again. ‘So Em and Jolyon can take her bed.’
Chad’s head began to swarm and he felt the space between the six of them fog over, the sense of displacement thicker than the bar-room smoke.
Jack was squealing, demanding to know why he hadn’t been told about this new relationship, his outraged pitch carrying vaguely over the haze.
Chad looked at Jolyon’s face. Their eyes met. Jolyon’s eyes fell.
Jack’s fist began to pound the table with mock fury, the fullest pints overrunning their lips.
Emilia’s face, Dee’s face, Jack’s face . . . All eyes on Chad now. And then Mark’s fingers were clicking in front of his eyes, snap snap snap.
‘Snap out of it, Chad.’
‘I said you must have known about this, Chad,’ said Jack.
A trickle of beer ran over the table’s edge and splashed near his toes. ‘No, no, I didn’t,’ said Chad. He swallowed, trying to hold his stomach down, trying to loosen the knot in his gut. They were all looking at him, so he pretended to appear amused or happy and maybe it worked. Soon everyone was looking at Jolyon and Emilia.
They locked fingers, their hands resting between them on the seat of the bench.
XXVI(iv) When Chad walked back home to the house beneath the river that night he tried to hide his tears from passers-by. He had a Mets cap he kept in his pocket for rain emergencies. He didn’t like to look too American in this city but he wore the cap now, its peak pulled down low.
His thoughts were like a moth trapped in a lampshade, a furious beating and burning of wings, the singed creature finally falling away exhausted. And then, after a moment’s calm away from the blaze, another bout of furious activity. And then another and another, each more feeble and futile than the last.
He cleared his eyes and his thoughts for long enough to ask himself a question. What would have been worse, rejection or this?
What would have been worse, rejection or this?
The house was empty. When he closed the door to his room he picked up the chair by his desk and smashed it against the wall. He grabbed objects from his desk one by one – the ring binders, the desk tidy, the coffee cup with its pool of dark dregs – and pitched them at the framed print of an English rural idyll hanging on the wall. The glass over the picture smashed spectacularly.
It seemed a good time to stop.
What would have been worse, rejection or this?
What would have been worse, rejection or this?
Chad pulled out the drawers beneath his wardrobe and threw them to the floor so they would land upside down. He stamped and stamped and the wood split and then splintered. And when he finished, he looked around quickly for something else to destroy.
XXVI(v) He was awoken by a pressing of fingers against his shoulder, the sound of his name. When Chad opened his eyes, Jolyon took several steps back from the bed. ‘One of your housemates let me in,’ he said.
‘Which one?’ said Chad.
‘She had way too much energy.’
‘Mitzy,’ said Chad.
‘Brunette,’ said Jolyon.
‘No, that’s Jenna. You think that’s energy you should meet Mitzy.’
Jolyon looked around the room. ‘What happened in here?’
‘You ever hear of a twister?’
‘Like in The Wizard of Oz? I thought they only occurred outdoors.’
‘Shows you how much you understand about extreme weather conditions in this frickin country then.’
Jolyon looked down at his feet and then quickly back at Chad. ‘That’s actually really unfair of you,’ he said. ‘It once rained for nearly two whole days in Tunbridge Wells.’
Chad snorted and Jolyon smiled. It was enough.
‘I meant to tell you first, Chad.’
‘Sure you did.’
‘Mark only knew . . . Usually Emilia would remember to lock the door whenever we were alone. But then one time . . . So Mark walked into the room and . . . That’s the only reason he found out before anyone else. Before you I mean.’
‘Why so secretive? Everyone’s blissfully happy for you.’
‘You are?’
‘Sure I am.’
Jolyon was looking down at his feet again. ‘Emilia thought that you . . . She said sometimes she sees you and . . . I don’t know.’
‘Then Emilia’s crazy, all right?’
‘You’re right,’ said Jolyon, ‘she is.’ He nodded. ‘Come on then, we’re going for a pint. We’ll head off to London tomorrow – I’m sure the others can amuse themselves for a day. Get your clothes on, I’m buying.’
Chad lifted the covers high enough to peer at himself underneath. ‘I seem to have all my clothes . . .’
XXVI(vi) I’m sorry, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to interrupt the past with the present. But I had to stop writing. I had to get up from my work. Rewind.
XXVI(vii) The intercom lets out a long, sour buzz. Someone outside at the door to the building.
I decide to ignore them. Probably just a neighbour who has forgotten their keys, it happens all the time. But I am writing and the scene is important, my old diary is hazy on the exact words we exchanged that morning. And then frustratingly another buzz and another. I try to ignore the fat-fly sound. I close my eyes to recall how things ended in Chad’s room, whether we said anything more that might be important. I feel tantalisingly close to the end of the chapter. And then another buzz and another and again and again.