The Devil's Trill Sonata (6 page)

“Leah?”

“Rutherford.”

“Oh, right. The hockey girl.”

“Yeah. Well, she doesn’t like Ella, or Ella doesn’t like her. Or both. They had a really frosty introduction at dinner today.”

“Ella the blonde one who tried to chat me up?”

“She didn’t try and chat you up.”

“Jayden, she actually said it’s a shame I’m taken.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Darren leaned forward and tapped around for a couple of minutes, then sat back. “I quote: ‘
Hi Darren! I’m Ella, I go to Cambridge with Jayden!’
And a couple of emotes I haven’t figured out yet.
‘He’s told us loooads about you, he’s raving. Can’t blame him though, I looked through your pics. Shame you’re taken, eh? Love Ella.’
And a couple of kisses.”

“Delete it.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, yeah. Only I send kisses.”

“Paul and Ethan both send me kisses.”

“They’re joking manly kisses, they don’t count.”

“Paul
has
kissed me.”

“That was a dare,” Jayden said hotly. It hadn’t been a funny dare either. It had been last Christmas, and Ethan had produced mistletoe and caught Paul and Darren under it, and then when Darren had tried to escape, Paul had said he was afraid, so Darren had planted one on him. With tongue and everything. Jayden had
not
been impressed. “He doesn’t do it again. Like, ever, and if you even
think
about it…”

“Chill,” Darren said, grinning. “He’s not as good as you.”

“Damn right,” Jayden muttered and bent his legs to tip the laptop a bit closer. “Anyway. How’re you?”

“Tired.”

“What kind of tired?”

“Normal tired,” Darren said. “Got up at six o’clock this morning.”

“Why?” Jayden demanded.

“Car alarm went off,” Darren said. “God knows why, think I might have a big moth in there or something. The internal alarm wouldn’t shut up, I had to disable it and get Trev to look at it.”

“Trev?”

“Guy on my course. Used to work with VOSA, checking out if cars were fit for the road and stuff,” Darren said. “It’s all right for the minute, but I’m whacked.”

Jayden stroked a finger down the edge of the screen. “Go to bed if you want,” he said.

“Nah.” Darren offered a crooked smile. “Rather get a bit of time in with you. Never seem to anymore.”

Jayden huffed. “This sucks.”

“Should have applied to Southampton.”

“The thing about Cambridge University is that it’s in
Cambridge
,” Jayden said tartly.

“Yeah, yeah. Relax.” Darren rolled his eyes. The image stuttered for a second, and Jayden suppressed a snigger. “Your mum rang me today.”

“Yeah? About what?”

“Checking up on me, apparently,” Darren said. “Seeing if I’d starved to death.”

“She doesn’t check up on
me
.”

“I did ask,” Darren grinned. “Apparently you get fed at college, but I don’t. She doesn’t trust me to be able to cook.”

“
I
don’t trust you to be able to cook.”

“Yeah but…”

“Hang on,” Jayden said as someone knocked on the wood. “Come in!” he yelled, and the door cracked open.

“Hi!” Ella said, beaming.

“Oh, um, hi,” Jayden blinked. “I’m on Skype, so…”

“Who with?”

“Darren.”

“Oh!” She flitted to the side of the bed and leaned over Jayden’s shoulder to wave. “Hi, Darren!”

Darren raised a hand. “Er. Hi.”

“Sorry, I’ll leave you alone in a minute,” Ella badly stage-whispered, “but I wanted to ask if you’re going to come with us—me and Jonathon, that is—to the pub opposite the railway station this evening? At eight? Apparently they’re having a history talk there and there’s a pool table too, so Jonathon wants to try it out, and I thought it’d be fun if the three of us went.”

Darren raised his eyebrows at Jayden, who felt flustered.

“Um,” he said. “Well, I was going to go to the basement bar with Leah…”

“Oh, forget her.” Ella waved a hand. “They only do these talks once a month, and we’ll be
far
too busy next month, you know, so it’ll be good!”

“Um, yeah, okay, whatever, sure,” Jayden babbled, just trying to get
rid
of her, because he was on
Skype
, and Darren was giving him that half-amused, half-incredulous face that meant something unflattering was going to come out of his mouth soon, and Jayden really didn’t want Ella to be cross with him because of something his boyfriend had said, so…

“Great!” She beamed, hugging him briefly—and alarmingly, because she’d never really even touched him before—and waving at Darren again. “Sorry, I’ll leave you to it now,” she said.

“Bye, Ella,” Darren said, half-laughing. When she clicked the door shut behind her, he said, “That was a bit weird.”

“She’s, um…direct.” Forward, maybe.

“Yeah, no shit,” Darren said. “Blowing off Rutherford, though? It’s all politics over there, isn’t it?”

“It feels like it,” Jayden agreed. “I dunno, I mean, Ella's really nice about helping me find things in the library and studying together and stuff, but she’s a bit…different, you know? She’s not really got anything in common with me.”

“Blondeness?”

“That doesn’t count, Darren, shut up.”

“Mhmm. Oh, I meant to ask,” Darren said, apparently changing the subject. “Get it across to that dreadlocked bloke, Tim? Get it across that I’m not Muslim. I think he seriously thinks I am, he sent me a link to a Muslim LGBT support network.”

Jayden laughed. “Oh, he’s just kidding.”

“It’s weird. I’m forwarding them to Paul now.”

“Black LGBT support?”

“Good idea.” Darren smirked. “Anyway, I’ll let you get to your history pub do. I need to eat and sleep, I’m dozing off here as it is.”

“Okay,” Jayden said and rolled his eyes at the door. “We’ll have a
proper
chat, without being interrupted, at the weekend.”

“Call you Saturday.”

“Yeah. Love you.”

Darren snorted, made a heart with his fingers, and logged out. Jayden stared at the blank screen for a long minute, before shifting the laptop aside and getting up to get ready.

He couldn’t help but feel…adrift.

“Darren!”

“What?” Darren yelled. It was Saturday evening, two and a half months into his training, and the first full weekend off he’d had yet. There’d always been
something
to turn the week into five-and-a-half days or even the full six: lessons running over, practical sessions having to be done on weekends, administration and IT stuff the force didn’t want to take a proper weekday up with, teambuilding exercises…

And now Rachel was calling. This had better be good.

“You!” She wandered in, wearing tight-fitting jeans and a towel on her head. Darren eyed her bare chest.

“Do you have
any
sense of propriety?”

“No,” she said and flicked the wet towel at him. “Why bother? It’s not like you’re interested.”

“Girls,” Darren said flatly, “should have boobs. Those aren’t boobs.”

“Whatever,” she said. “What’s your plans for tonight?”

“Eat,” he gestured at the boiling pasta, “then watch the game and call Jayden.”

“Scrap it,” Rachel said. “Eat, call Jayden, and come out with us.”

Darren eyed her suspiciously. He’d been trying to call Jayden all day: three times he’d just rung out, the fourth had been cancelled and he’d received a
sorry in the library :( x
notice a little while later, and the last time, it had dropped straight to voicemail. And in the library? On a Saturday? Seriously, Darren was glad he’d not bothered with a degree.

“Who’s us?” he asked eventually.

“Me and Jodie and Tony and some others from school,” Rachel said. Primary school teachers, apparently, partied hard at the weekends, which Darren was vaguely disturbed to know. Although it did explain his Year Three teacher and her permanent horrible mood on Mondays. “Come on, you’ve blown me off for ages. They’re not scary. Well, Jodie’s scary, but you’re a copper in that Hazmat gear, man up.”

Darren suppressed a laugh. A copper in Hazmat? He’d have to pass that on. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m having difficulty actually getting through to Jayden at the minute.”

“Dodgy line?”

“Dodgy boyfriend,” he said, pressing the phone to his ear for another try. He eyed her. “Are you actually going to put a top on?”

“Why? Don’t you like my boobs?”

“You haven’t got any boobs.”

“So, yes?”

“So, no,” Darren said. “I might be bisexual, Rach, but I like girls to have proper knockers.”

“Bet Jayden doesn’t.”

“No, because Jayden’s not a girl.”

“You sure?”

Darren smirked. “Very sure.”

She pulled a face and pulled the towel off her head to wrap it around her chest. “Is he answering?”

“No, it’s ringing out again,” Darren grumbled, then sighed when it went to voicemail. “It’s me,” he told it. “I’ve been trying all day and I’m giving up now and getting dragged out by some teachers.”

“One of them’s hot!” Rachel shouted at the phone.

“One of them’s hot,” Darren added obediently. “Gimme a ring tomorrow afternoon or something. Love you.”

Rachel looked wistful as he hung up. “You’re lucky to
have
someone,” she said quietly.

“The number of times I’ve spoken to him in the last couple of months, I
feel
single now and then,” Darren muttered darkly, then tossed the phone onto the counter and switched off the burner. “Go away and get dressed or something. I have to eat.”

“And change.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she raised her voice over the sound of the pasta draining, “Jodie’ll be there and she wants to meet you and Jodie has this thing about hitting on gay guys and it’s really funny.”

Darren rolled his eyes and shooed her away.

* * * *

Darren had fallen into a little routine—work, boxing, Rachel, work, boxing, Rachel—occasionally punctured by half a weekend of doing more-or-less fuck all, and it didn’t generally include going to the pub. He wasn’t much of a drinker, because it was hard to get hammered for cheap down south, and if Rachel went out it tended to be tarted up with this Jodie bird down the clubs, and he wasn’t interested in tagging along.

So Darren was actually pleasantly surprised when the taxi pulled up outside a normal-looking pub instead of a gaudy nightclub with a queue of pissheads in the gutter.

“Didn’t take you for respectable,” he said as he paid the cabbie, and Rachel shoved him.

“Arsehole,” she said. “Hey guys!” She beamed as they passed into the pub, and made a beeline for a table in the corner populated by three women of varying chubby builds, and a couple of tall, lanky men with weak chins and heavy glasses. “Guys, this is Darren, he lives in the flat across from me. Darren, this is Tony…” A man with dark hair and a short beard smiled and offered a handshake. “…Gareth…” Gay. Very gay. And a weirdly deep tan for November.
Sunbed
gay. “…Ruth…” A hippie in a purple skirt. “…Hannah…” A human being, but one engrossed in texting someone, and who barely gave Darren a nod. “…Jodie.”

He’d been warned about Jodie several times, and when she clamped on to his hand and shook it like a dead sparrow, an alarm bell went off. She was a short (five foot nothing) woman with cropped, blonde hair and maybe about ten pounds excess around the thighs and arse. Her lipstick was a scary shade of blue.

“Darren!” she enthused. “Nice to finally meet you, Rachel’s been saying she’ll bring you along for
ages
. I’m the Year Three teacher, you know, the seven-to-eight-year-olds.”

“Okay,” Darren said. Rachel shoved him to sit down.

“Good luck,” she whispered in his ear. “Carlsberg?”

“Stella.”

“No worries,” said the bitch and abandoned him to Jodie’s enthusiastic smile.

“So Rachel tells us you’re gay?”

“Bi.”

“Close enough.” Jodie folded her fingers under her chin. “What do you think about teaching primary schoolchildren about same-sex relationships?”

“Right, look,” Darren said. “I’m not interviewing for a bloody job.”

The bearded bloke—Tony—guffawed. “Leave him alone, Jodie, he’s not the bloody minister for education.”

“I just want to hear a viewpoint from an
actual
LGBT person!” Jodie protested. Darren flicked his eyes to Gareth, but he was staring very determinedly at the wall TV showing the football, and bright red. Ah.

“Why, it doesn’t make his viewpoint any more or less valid,” Tony argued.

“Who’s your team, then?” Darren asked. Gareth jumped.

“Oh, I, er…” He flushed harder. “Well, I’m not…much of a football fan, really, but, um, it’s…you know.”

“More interesting than education policy on a Saturday night?”

“Yes,” Gareth said and smiled gratefully. “I’m, um. I like tennis.”

“I like it when we don’t suck,” Darren agreed genially. He didn’t, actually, tennis was fucking boring, but he felt a bit sorry for Gareth. He was obviously uncomfortable, probably closeted, and Jodie probably knew. His shoes had to suck.

“Was it difficult for you, to accept who you were?” Jodie prodded. Literally: she poked Darren in the arm.

“Not really,” Darren said.

“Really?” she pushed. “Rachel said you were mixed-race.”

“
Technically
,” Darren said, exasperated. Was this part of getting older and mixing with people with fluffy degrees? Jayden’s mates seemed to think he was Muslim (and according to the latest update from Ella,
so brave
for being out) and now this lot were obsessed with a grandfather he’d never met, from a country he’d never been to. Even Mother had never been to Iran, and
she
was the mixer. Maybe he needed to find a sports bar and some lads to just watch the game with already.

“Yes, but it must have been more
challenging
.”

“No,” Darren said. “I went to an all-boys private school and my parents’ idea of parenting is money every month. It’s not like they’re religious or something. I never got much hassle for it.” Except, ironically, from his best mates. But then Darren supposed that was how his world seemed to work, and anyway, Paul and Ethan’s hassle was apparently just how they expressed affection. Freaks.