‘Bully,’ Nick whispered, though he was biting his lip to stop himself from grinning.
‘Right, well I’ll consider that settled then,’ said Bill. ‘Now, Tim and I need some coffee so why don’t you have a kip and we’ll see you in a bit?’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘Oh but we’re looking forward to watching the nurses torment you,’ Tim cut in. ‘I am going to store up so many embarrassing stories. Like the outfit. I was thinking I could get one of those disposable cameras from the gift shop and … click-click.’ Tim mimed taking a picture.
‘Pick on me while I’m lying in a hospital bed, why don’t you?’
‘Well, now that I have permission …’
Nick moved to kick him but Tim had fled to the door by the time he got his legs untangled from the blankets.
‘Think now is the perfect time for that coffee, Bill. See you down there.’
‘Your bedside manner sucks!’ Nick called after him, prompting a fresh round of coughing.
Bill stepped forward to rub his back, wincing at the way Nick’s shoulder blades shuddered beneath his hand. ‘Enough talking for you,’ he said fondly. ‘Lie back now.’ He drew the covers up as Nick settled against the pillows. ‘See you in a bit.’
‘Bill,’ Nick said, as he reached the door. ‘Thanks.’
Chapter 25
(Easter Term × Week 2 [≈ end of April])
‘So since my X-rays were good, can I stay up to watch the film?’ Nick coaxed as they climbed into Bill’s car in the hospital car park.
Bill smiled as he started the engine. ‘They were and I’m very glad about it, but your bedtime is still going to be ten o’clock sharp for at least another week, just like I said.’
Nick pulled a face. ‘I can’t remember a time in my life when I had a bedtime.’
‘Even with your mum?’ Bill asked, trying to keep his tone nonchalant.
Nick looked away out of the window. ‘She wasn’t all that different from Dad, really,’ he said softly.
‘Nick, one of the things I want to do when you’re feeling better is talk about your mum.’
Nick glanced his way, then down at his hands, picking at a broken nail. ‘That’s going to be a fun conversation.’
‘That’s your father speaking.’
Nick turned in his seat to look at Bill, frowning but tilting his head as if trying to work something out.
‘I’ve always assumed that the two of you had some sort of conversation about Yvette and then it was just too painful to keep raking it all over, but am I wrong about that, Nick? Did you ever have that conversation?’ From out of the corner of his eye, he could tell Nick was leaning towards him, still and intent. ‘Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have any answers. No one has ever really understood what went wrong: why she got ill the way she did.’
The car ahead swerved suddenly away from the kerb and Bill’s attention went to the road. He slowed but the other car seemed fine again.
‘I mean,’ he said, eyes on the other driver, ‘I mean, we all did our best to figure it out after her first breakdown – your grandmother and your dad took her to all the best doctors …’ The other car slowed, indicated left, then right, then left again. ‘They really did all they could.’
The driver ahead flicked the windscreen wash on, the spray arcing back so that Bill had to put on his own wipers.
‘But everyone was nonplussed that it didn’t happen before Finals, but after she got her First—’
Next to him, Nick jerked suddenly, a full-body shock of motion.
‘You did know she’d had a breakdown just after we did our Cambridge Finals?’ But he knew the answer even as the words crossed his lips: knew that instead of ‘gently broaching the subject’ his distraction had landed him in the deep end in the stupidest place possible for this conversation. He clicked on the indicator, pulled into a bus layby.
Nick’s face was as open as he had ever seen it: full of questions and fear and hope.
Bill turned to face him, bracing an arm on the steering wheel against the pull of his seatbelt. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I never meant to get into it now … And it’s not like I have a lot I can tell you. All I really wanted to say is that, whatever went wrong for your mum, you can’t read anything into what she did afterwards. I know it must have been … awful when you couldn’t see her or even talk to her on the phone.’
Nick’s face went blank, his eyes empty.
Bill clicked off his seatbelt to face him properly. ‘I mean, maybe she thought it was better if you didn’t see her while she was so sick. Or maybe there’s nothing to understand about why she did what she did. Maybe there isn’t any explanation, however hard that is to accept. But whatever the case – no matter how it feels – you have to know that what she did was about her. It wasn’t about you.’
Nick turned away to the window, looking out at a beautiful house half-hidden behind a screen of trees and hedges. It bowed out into two storeys of bay windows, ending in a flat roof standing as a balcony for the third-storey rooms. A smart guard rail of crenellations, tipped with burgundy tiles, made the house look like it should have been part of a castle.
‘Nick, listen to me. Yvette was sick before you were even born. Whatever the reason for the second breakdown, it was not because of you.’
‘You don’t know that!’ Nick whispered, refusing to look around. ‘You can’t know that.’
Bill hunched awkwardly over the gearshift, but Nick shrugged away from his touch. ‘I do know that, Nick.’
Nick shook his head, took an unsteady breath. ‘You don’t understand. You weren’t there. It was my fault the fish tank broke. Roger and I were fighting and it broke and she just kept screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming …’ He flinched away when Bill reached out to grasp his shoulder. ‘Don’t! Please, Bill, just don’t.’
‘Nick. Nick, look at me.’ He tried to get an arm about Nick’s shoulders, but he shuddered violently away, pressing himself into the corner of the seat against the doorframe. ‘Whatever happened with this blasted fish tank was not what made your mum ill. If something that small could trigger it, then the breakdown was inevitable. It would have happened sooner or later—’
Nick shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he choked out, curling his forearm in front of his face as he took a shuddering breath.
‘Then explain it to me, Nick. Explain it to me. Or if you can’t talk to me, maybe you could talk to someone who doesn’t know you, doesn’t know Mike or Yvette: a professional who can—’
Nick’s head snapped round, his eyes filled with horror. ‘I’m not like her. I’m not crazy!’
‘I know you’re not,’ Bill said, gripping Nick’s shoulder. ‘That’s not what I meant—’
‘I got sick because of that car knocking me into the Cam. I’m not going crazy. I don’t need to see a shrink. I’m not going to live in one of those places!’ he gasped, face feverish with despair.
‘I never said anything of the sort, Nick. It’s absolutely the furthest thing from my mind. The way you’ve handled everything that’s happened, there’s not a chance you’re like Yvette. Not a chance. I just meant that maybe I’m not who you want to talk to, but it might help to talk to someone. Even normal people need a good listener now and then. Someone to help them get things straight in their own head—’
A shattering horn blast sounded behind them, making them both jump. Bill craned round to see a bus indicating to get into the layby. When he turned back to Nick, he found him slumped limply in his seat, staring dazedly through the windscreen, pale and wrung out.
‘Nick …’
‘Please, Bill,’ Nick whispered. ‘Not here. Not now.’
The bus beeped its horn again, then a third time. With a growl, Bill slammed his hand down on the button for the hazard lights. ‘I know this isn’t the best place for this conversation, but maybe now is as good a time as any. I don’t know what part of this I’m not understanding, Nick, so I need you to tell me. I
can’t help if you don’t tell me how.’
But Nick just shook his head, rocking it back and forth against the headrest, eyes squeezed shut.
His forehead was hot when Bill reached out to push the damp hair out of his eyes. This time, Nick didn’t pull away, just sighed: a little sob of breath.
‘Nick, I promise you there is nothing you can tell me that will make me think what happened to your mum was your fault.’
Nick gasped a breath as he looked up at him, searching his face. He opened his mouth to speak, then doubled over as a coughing fit overtook him.
With a long blast of the horn, the bus swerved around them.
When Bill turned back to Nick, he was rubbing wearily at his chest, expression shuttered. ‘Can we go home now?’ he croaked. ‘Please, Bill, can we just go home?’
Bill let his head drop for a moment, let his breath out in a sigh. ‘When you’re ready, I promise I will help you fix whatever it is that’s wrong. I promise.’
Chapter 26
(Easter Term × Week 3 [≈ start of May])
‘So … I have the best, most amazing plan for how you can spend your summer,’ Tim said as he and Nick sprawled in the deckchairs on the back lawn, listening to the distant sounds of Bill and Michael clearing up lunch in the kitchen.
Nick squinted across at Tim. ‘Did I do something horrid to you in a previous life?’
Tim growled. ‘You’re horrid to me in this life. Here I am, being such a good housemate, like the world has never seen before,’ a snort from Nick, ‘and you … you mock me! I should just refuse to tell you.’
‘My luck this year says you’re unlikely to remain silent.’
Tim threw up his hands, but lazily, as if it were too much effort with the sun soothing them both into a sleepy daze. ‘Here, you ungrateful wretch,’ he said, reaching under his chair to extract a glossy brochure. He tossed it on to Nick’s stomach.
‘Year 12 Summer School,’ Nick read. He sucked in a sharp breath. ‘You think I need to go on a summer-school course in case I flunk my exams.’ He bit the words out carefully, as if chewing ice.
Tim sat up with a groan. ‘Seriously, Nick? The thing you take from the brochure is that I expect you to fail your exams?’
‘Why else would you think I need to go to a summer school?’
‘Why am I going to a summer school?’
‘You’re not going: you’re teaching.’
‘And … Oh for God’s sake, Nick. Put the pieces together.’
Tim almost laughed at the expression on Nick’s face as his head shot round, his expression stunned but pleased and … There it was: the disappointment. The blinds coming down.
‘And we can skip the bit where you start up with the old “You don’t have to involve me just ’cos you feel sorry for me” spiel. Truth is we’re a helper down. Plus, as low man on the totem pole, we’ll be able to get you to do all the scut work, so don’t think you’ll get to spend the whole time panting after pretty girls or pretty boys or both, as you fancy. Anyway, while this might be a good opportunity to find out, mostly there’ll be a load of prep with the miserable bunch of miscreants I call my friends and—’
‘Is Ange going?’
Tim rolled his eyes. ‘Yup. It doesn’t pay much—’
‘We get paid?’
‘Well, I imagine you’ll get paid even less than we do, but yeah: we get paid, even though the courses are free to the students. It’s for people from state schools who’re the first in their family to look at university or who’re in care or … You know, people who might not even have the opportunity to come and see Cambridge otherwise. I had a word and they could really do with an extra pair of hands on the Physics course, the Maths one and the STEP maths-entrance-exam-thingie one: they always have a current Maths student for that and they haven’t found anyone yet, so they’re being … receptive to your age. Anyway, it’s a bit of prep and then three sets of four days. None of the courses overlap so you won’t be overworked and since it kicks off in July, it won’t interfere with your exams. So what do you think?’
‘OK.’
‘Just OK? Just OK to my sheer brilliance?’
‘Everyone has their moments.’
‘When you are least expecting it,’ said Tim, ‘I will get you for that snerk.’
‘Snerk is not a word.’
‘Of course it is! You knew exactly what I meant by it.’
‘It’s still not a word. It’s certainly not a noun.’
‘No, it’s usually a verb. I snerk, you snerk, he/she/it snerketh.’
‘Of course it’s not going to be simple,’ Tim found himself muttering at the coffee machine an hour later. ‘It involves Derrans: why would I think it’d be simple?’
‘It is very kind of you, Tim,’ Michael was saying. ‘And I’ve got nothing against the idea in principle but … Well, it doesn’t seem quite fair that you should have to spend so much of your summer keeping an eye on Nick when you’re working—’
‘I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it would be fun for everyone,’ Tim said, trying to keep his tone calm and even. ‘Ask Nick. He’ll tell you my best friend already likes him more than me: Ange treats him like her favourite stuffed toy whenever she’s here.’
‘That’s kindly put, Tim—’
Nick turned away to start loading the dishwasher.
‘I’m getting to know Tim quite well, Mike,’ Bill cut in, ‘and mostly he says what he means.’
Michael sighed, throwing up his hands. ‘Well, I can see I’m being outmanoeuvred. But this thing about Nick getting paid—’
‘We all get paid,’ Tim interrupted, trying to keep his voice level.
‘Well of course you do, Tim.’ Michael heaved a sigh. ‘I suppose I could always make a donation to the programme to even things out.’
‘Great,’ Tim hissed at Bill, letting the spluttering of the coffee machine cover the sound of his voice. ‘Now Nick’ll think I’ve invited him to get the money or that it’s basically a way for me to babysit him. That’ll do wonders for his self-esteem.’
‘What’s that?’ called Michael, turning from the sink. ‘Tim, I know Nick’s muttering bug is contagious, but try to hold firm against it.’
‘Bill and I are just plotting.’
‘What are you plotting?’ Nick asked. ‘Why are you plotting together?’
‘That’s for us to know and you to find out,’ Tim said, reaching out to flick his nose. Nick slapped his hand away with a growl. He gave Bill a suspicious look.
His godfather smiled. ‘Tim and I are united in our plans to keep you out of trouble. We were just saying maybe your dad’s donation should be contingent on you coming up with a really good idea for how to use the money. Then you can get some extra CV points and feel you’ve actually done something to bring that money in for the programme.’
‘Ah, Bill,’ moaned Tim. ‘You’re such a spoilsport. I could have strung the reveal out for days.’
‘Lovely as this series of in-jokes to which I’m not party is, I don’t see why I’m playing odd man out in my own home,’ Michael said testily. ‘Have it your way, Bill, and on your head be it. I give my blessing if Nick promises,’ he added, raising a hand in warning, ‘that when he tags along with Tim, he won’t be any trouble.’
‘You can’t make him promise that,’ Tim said, casting an infuriated look in Bill’s direction. ‘I might start to feel unloved if Nick wasn’t tormenting me.’
Chapter 27
(Easter Term × Week 8 [≈ second week of June])
Senate House Lawn was awash with students sitting in loose clusters, all waiting for their exam results. The sun was out, the grass lush and cool, but there was nothing relaxed about the atmosphere. No one sprawled, sunbathing. Instead, they sat or reclined awkwardly on their elbows, pulling at the grass and snapping at each other, searching for things to talk about to distract themselves from the wait.
‘So two weeks from now, while I’m here fetching coffee and photocopying
my backside off like all the other good little unpaid interns trying to make their CVs decent, you’re going to be lazing on the deck of a yacht and getting drunk? You’re such a waste of space, Frank,’ Susie said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
‘Didn’t you want to work in London for the summer?’ Nick asked around a yawn.
‘That would have been great … apart from the fact that none of the internships covered travel expenses. Bad enough to have to work for six weeks and not get paid a penny, let alone spend over thirty quid a day on travel.’ She lifted her arms above her head in a languorous stretch. ‘We should go punting one day.’
‘Count me in for punting,’ Frank said, raising his hand.
‘I was talking to Nick. You won’t be here.’
‘I can arrange to be here for anything that might involve you in hotpants and a bikini top.’
‘How do you lurch between fancying me and just being incredibly vile and sexist in half a heartbeat?’ She flopped back on to the grass, draping an arm across her eyes. ‘I can’t believe the exams are over. I keep having nightmares about them. God, that Analysis I paper.’ She shuddered.
‘At least you were in the Corn Exchange with everyone else, rather than in our supervision room in College,’ Nick grumbled. ‘So many shades of weird and disconcerting.’
Frank laughed. ‘Seriously? That’ll teach you to get pneumonia instead of revising. Were they just keeping an eye to make sure you didn’t expire or is it ’cos of your age?’
‘In case of death,’ Nick said, while Susie extended her foot to kick Frank in the thigh.
‘Nice sympathy, Frank,’ she said.
‘Can’t you stop kicking me and go down to the Faculty Office for an update on our results?’ Frank asked. ‘You’re our Year Rep—’
‘Which is why I’ve already been down twice today, and why I went twice yesterday, and twice the day before,’ Susie snapped. ‘Just sit there and brood in life-threatening boredom like everyone else.’
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