The Devil's Trill Sonata (32 page)

“You,” Paul said, jabbing a forefinger into Darren’s arm, “are a fucking ‘tard. You leave your brains at your mother’s house, boy?”

“He left them in the basket,” Ethan chipped in. “Hence
basket
case, Paul. Duh.”

Darren caught Jayden’s eye across the room and smiled again. This time, it felt a little easier and a little more like it might be real; Jayden’s answering one
was
real, without the pinching anxiety either side, and he even managed a little laugh when Darren held out the empty mug and slowly turned it upside-down.

* * * *

Jayden left them to it. He suspected he’d never quite grasp the dynamic of Paul-and-Darren-and-Ethan, the weird ease and friction between the three of them, and he left them to work their magic. They’d always managed to make Darren feel stabilised, if not
better
, so Jayden took the empty mug, kissed the top of Darren’s head as he passed behind the sofa, and disappeared into the kitchen to leave them alone.

Mum was washing up, barely able to reach the sink over the bump, and Jayden stared while the kettle boiled. “It’s perfectly natural, darling,” she said tartly, and he shrugged.

“It’s not…it’s just, you know, I figured…you know, you’ve been married years. Why now?”

“We couldn’t really afford another baby until now,” Mum said simply. “Dad’s always wanted one. Of his own, I mean—not that you’re not important to him, darling, and you know how much he…”

“Mum, I get it, it’s fine,” Jayden said, and it was. He wasn’t Dad’s kid, it was obvious just to look at them. It was fair enough if Dad wanted one of his own, really, it was just…Jayden hadn’t ever figured he
did
. “Is it…um…?”

“A baby, darling,” Mum said and laughed. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet. We didn’t want to. It’ll be a lovely surprise.”

“What do you want?” Jayden asked, thumbing through his contacts absently. He should call someone at university, to collect his assignment scores from the professors, and box up his room.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Mum said. “But between you and me,” she smiled, “I think maybe I’d
just about
prefer a girl. I’ve already got a boy, haven’t I?”

A nineteen-year-old ‘boy’, Jayden wanted to point out, but he didn’t. She seemed stupidly happy about the whole thing, more than he’d ever seen her, and if Mum and Dad wanted to have another baby then Jayden didn’t really care, it was just…a bit odd, to think of Dad as being
broody
, and Mum as being…

Well, she was acting a little bit like a newly-wed.

“How’s he doing?” she asked, nodding her head towards the hall.

“He’s okay, I think,” Jayden said honestly. “They…help, Paul and Ethan. I mean, you know, they know he’s ill, and they were there even before me, so…you know, they don’t
actively
help, he doesn’t really talk to them about it, but, you know, he feels better when they’re around doing their thing.”

“Good,” she said and squeezed his arm with one soapy hand. “He’ll be all right, sweetheart. I know it’s hard, but he does love you, and I think being around you a little more will help him out of this.”

Jayden bit his lip. “I…” He should tell her now that he was thinking about dropping out of Cambridge. Because he
knew
Darren was better with him, and he was better with Darren too, and they didn’t do well apart but together they were amazing, and…

“Everything will work out,” Mum promised and flicked a tea towel at him. “Make yourself useful and dry up, darling. I’m going upstairs for a lie down. Boy or girl, your little sibling here is wearing me out before he or she even arrives!”

Jayden fingered the tea towel as she shuffled out and put it down before hitting dial on his phone. It was half twelve; she’d be at lunch, or just out of it, because she had a religious routine, and…

“Jayden!” Ella’s voice rang loud and clear down the line. “Jayden, where
are
you? You just wandered out of breakfast and didn’t come back, and Becky in my criminal justice study group says she saw you leave with a bag in Ophelia’s car, and…”

“Leah,” Jayden corrected automatically and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Um, something came up and I had to go, Ella. I’m actually calling to…”

“What kind of a something? Is it your family?”

“Um, it’s, it’s Darren, actually, he, um…”

“
Oh
.” And her tone abruptly changed. “Really, Jayden? We have exams in like four weeks, and I know you haven’t finished your paper for that American literature class you were taking with Sophia, and…”

“Look, Ella, none of that matters right now. Darren’s…”

“It
does
matter, Jayden, you can’t prioritise visiting your boyfriend over your
degree
, this is
Cambridge
, it’s…”

“It’s not a
visit
, Ella!” Jayden raised his voice. “He tried to…Ella, for God’s sake, he tried to
kill
himself!” he hissed, abruptly lowering it again and hoping they hadn’t heard him in the living room.

“He
what
?”

“He took an overdose,” Jayden croaked and swallowed. “So I need you to do me a favour, and get…”

“Oh, Jayden,” her voice dropped into a low soothing tone, but her next words belied any sense of impending understanding. “Jayden, I know this must be hard for you, but you can’t just drop everything because he’s done something silly.”

Jayden froze, his blood turning to ice in his veins. He felt cold, and yet his face felt hot; he was flushing hard, but with something quite different to embarrassment.

“He obviously needs serious help, and you can’t be dealing with that alongside your degree. Maybe it’s time you broke up?”

“I…” he started, cleared his throat, and found his voice. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“I just think you’d be better off.”

“And what about
him
?”

“What
about
him, Jayden?” she asked crossly. “He’s obviously only thinking about himself! It’s
selfish
, Jayden!”

“You have no fucking idea,” Jayden hissed, his voice shaking. “You have no
fucking
idea, Ella. He’s
ill
, it’s an
illness
, he doesn’t decide to…to
do
that to get back at me or get my fucking attention! What’s
wrong
with you that you think people
do
that?!”

“Jayden…”

“No, just…just shut up, shut up,” Jayden retorted. He was physically shaking, and he grasped on to the counter with a trembling hand. “You just don’t get it, Ella, it’s all perfect for you and nobody ever has illnesses that make them think they’re worthless and life’s not worth living and that they’d be better off
dead
, it doesn’t
work
like that for you, and you know what,
you’re
the selfish one because you just put yourself first and nobody else, and it doesn’t occur to you that maybe I’ve gone because I
love
him, I really really
love
him and it
destroyed
me to get that call and
fuck
my degree when my
boyfriend
is in hospital after taking a bottle of codeine!”

She was still talking, trying to talk over him, and then there was a large, warm hand on his shoulder and the phone was being removed from his shaking grasp. He let Paul take it, the white case glowing against his dark fingers, and gripped the counter with both hands.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said politely into the phone, “but Jayden has more important things to do right now, like re-boil a kettle. Fuck you, and have a nice day.” He hung up, and nodded towards the aforementioned kettle, scrolling through a menu.

“
Bitch
,” Jayden whispered fiercely, flicking the kettle back on. It was lukewarm. “Did you hear…”

“All of your side,” Paul said. “Ethan wants hot chocolate too, says it’s not fair the jerk’s getting it all. Here,” he offered the mobile back, “deleted. Who’s Ella?”

“A stupid girl from college,” Jayden muttered, scrolling back down the amended contacts list. “Can you…?” he gestured at the kettle. “I need to call Leah. I was going to ask Ella to pack up my stuff for me, but
Jesus
.”

“Jesus won’t do it, he’s dead,” Paul returned flippantly. “And high-five me, man,” he added, holding up a plate of a hand. “You finally grew a pair. Darren’s been complaining about your mates ever since you started there.”

Jayden obediently slapped his hand, then turned away with the ringing cut out and Leah’s monotone filtered down the line. “Leah? Leah, I need a favour…”

Jayden was woken early the next morning by Dad. He stuck his unshaven face around the door and beckoned, disappearing back into the hall the minute Jayden touched a foot to the floor.

It was half past six, and the car was running. Mum was nowhere to be seen, and Jayden padded downstairs to find Dad hefting a bag off the sofa. “Livvy’s gone into labour,” he said briskly. “We’re off. I might be back this evening, or might wait it out, see how it goes. You know where the food is. You can use my account with Habib’s to order tonight
only
, and don’t go overboard.”

“‘Kay,” Jayden said, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes and peering through the curtain. Mum was sitting in the car, looking perfectly calm—much calmer than Dad, anyway. “Good luck,” he added as a bit of an afterthought, and Dad grimaced.

“Cheers,” he grumbled, and then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him and the automatic lock sliding into secure place. As the car pulled away, the silence rushed in to claim it, and Jayden hunched his shoulders against it. It felt wrong, like it was waiting for something, and he felt edgy when it was too quiet now. Like he’d go back upstairs to find Darren…

Rachel said he’d been playing the violin all night before he…
his inner voice reminded him, but it didn’t make any more sense than the first time, and he pushed the thought away, heading back upstairs before his imagination could go into further detail.

The noise hadn’t disturbed Darren in the slightest, and Jayden crept back into bed gingerly. But that hadn’t changed: Darren slept on, oblivious, and Jayden curled around him like if he only held on hard enough, he could keep the illness at bay, keep out all the clouds and the rain.

This had never happened before, not since they’d met three and a half years ago, and Jayden was painfully aware of that. He clutched and buried his face in Darren’s wild hair, and considered just out-and-out
praying
for the first time in his life.
Rachel said he’d been playing the violin all night…

Jayden only realised he’d dozed off again when a shrill buzzing interrupted his shadowed, dozing thoughts, and Darren shifted suddenly, the mattress curving under his weight. The buzzing stopped; Jayden blinked the haze out of his eyes, and realised it had been the alarm on his phone.

Darren sat up, swimming in a shirt Scott had brought him yesterday evening, and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’d been near-mute after the visits yesterday. Paul and Ethan had worn him out, and then Scott had come round for tea and been…still
angry
, somehow, still prickly. Darren had disappeared into himself after that, and now Jayden watched, chewing on his lip and searching for something to say, before finally whispering, “Breakfast?”

Darren dropped one hand and rested his forehead in the other. His fingers curled limply on the sheets, before he looked over his shoulder at Jayden, and there was a storm in the tropical seas of his eyes. The offer died on Jayden’s tongue and he pushed himself up to simply wrap his arms around those broad shoulders, fingers rubbing down the bone-deep scar on the left, and pushed his head into the space between neck and nicked, pitted clavicle.

“Rachel said,” Jayden whispered there, “that you were playing the violin all night.”

The second half, the
but you can’t have been
, drifted into the room like a far-off echo. Darren stared at the foot of the bed, and breathed rather than said, “Recording.”

“Your laptop?”

“Yes.”

Jayden opened his mouth and closed it. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted to ask. But he didn’t know how: for the first time in his life, language failed him and left him with a boiling sea of
everything—
hurt, anger, guilt, gut-wrenching horror,
love
—that he couldn’t hope to express. And so what came out was a single, cracked syllable, barely audible for the break in the middle, and followed by a rush of heat behind his eyes and in his throat.

“
Why
?”

Darren’s chest paused, and Jayden sat up to watch, as that perfect mouth—sore and chapped from endless biting now—pursed, slackened, twitched, and finally shivered, the bottom lip flickering out of time with the rest of that still, blank face, and Jayden’s heart
twisted
.

“I just…” Darren croaked, and his face froze like he was trying not to move, half-seized and half-stilled. “I…” He turned that tropical storm on Jayden and lost the fight. “I just wanted to stop
drifting
,” he whispered, and his face
crumpled
.

The first sob broke onto Jayden’s shoulder; he gathered Darren in, at a loss of what to do but hang on to the very thing he’d nearly lost, and he clung all the harder when the second sob rattled them both and clawed at his chest when Darren’s rocked. The tears were sudden and explosive, violent and ugly, Darren’s breaths turned into harsh shrieks of air in a constricted throat, and what remained of his tired voice destroyed by the upswell of the storm in his head. And Jayden clung on, tears leaking in silence down his own face, and tried to block out the memory of Vivaldi’s seasons on a small-town theatre stage three years ago.