by Suki Fleet
He’d never thought of Cai as incapable of understanding anything. Naïve, yeah. Innocently honest and sometimes in possession of an unfathomable willingness to only see the good side of stuff. But they weren’t bad qualities; Nicky just found them hard to understand, because Nicky himself was none of those things any more.
You have a bad habit of trusting people. Even if you try to hide it. Are you sure you’re not naïve, Nicky?
No, he’d not been naïve about anything. He’d been fucking tricked and deceived. There was a difference.
He watched nosily as Cai text Soph—told her not to come back to the house and to wait in the library in town with Loz, where he’d pick her up as soon as he could. Then Cai slipped his phone back in his pocket and reached for the door handle. Nicky eyed him warily. I’m not ready, he thought. I need more time.
He’d never be ready.
Cai wasn’t waiting. “Come on. We’re going to get our things, and then we’re leaving.”
He didn’t even wait to see if Nicky was following until he reached the corner of the house. Then he stopped and leaned against the wall until Nicky caught up.
Thin, miserable rain had soaked through everything Nicky was wearing, and he had zero desire to go back inside the house. Nowhere in there felt safe any longer; all of it was tainted with the truth. Every step Nicky took was heavier and more difficult than the last.
“Tell me again you weren’t running from the house because you saw someone?”
Cai’s hair was plastered to his head, rain dripping in his eyes. It was a surprisingly attractive look on his rawly honest face. By comparison, Nicky knew he had to look a mess—his hair was matted with leaves and mud, his clothes dirty. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. They weren’t anything to one another, and after all this, Nicky doubted they ever would be. “I heard something. In the cellar. I saw a shoe. It was Fox Mask’s.” He blinked hard. “I mean, the woman with the —”
Cai smiled, just a tiny quirk of his lips, but the unspoken meaning was writ large—he didn’t need Nicky to explain himself and the messed-up way his brain worked. This tiny realisation stopped Nicky in his tracks and sudden, stupid, desperation flared in his chest. It would have felt a lot like hope, if hope hadn’t deserted him a long, long time ago.
“Carry on,” Cai said gently.
But Nicky didn’t carry on. Instead, as if to prove how fucked his decision-making was, he took a step too close to Cai—so close the world seemed to tremble in time with his heart—and, standing on his tiptoes, he gently pressed his lips to Cai’s. It was a rainwater kiss, so full of almostness it was near unbearable.
Too fast, Cai’s arms came around Nicky’s back and he leaned forwards, opening his mouth searchingly, even as Nicky shook his head and stepped back. Wrong time, wrong place, but fuck, at that moment Cai felt very much like the right person. Nicky ran his fingers across his mouth. It had been a lot longer than two years since he’d kissed someone. He’d forgotten what it was like. Had it ever been like that?
“Okay…. Okay.” Cai was looking at the ground. His breathing was audible. Nicky had no idea if what had just happened was good or bad, or if Cai felt good or bad about it. Cai seemed intent on ploughing forwards whatever. “Are we doing this together? Or do you want to go sort your stuff out while I keep watch?”
Nicky blinked raindrops off his lashes. “We do this together.”
While Cai’s strong solid form faded into the dark beyond the kitchen, Nicky waited in the nearest doorway, trying to distance himself, one breath after another. In reality, Cai was less than five metres away, but the possibility he could fall into Nicky’s nightmare seemed too great. Cai was right, though: the cellar door needed to be closed.
His voice coming out of the dark made Nicky jump. “There’s some rope in my tool bag on the floor. Can you throw it to me?”
The tool bag was tucked away beneath the now fixed leaky pipe. The rope was old and dirty grey. Some of it was knotted, the rest tangled around a cracked box of nails and a thick metal clip. Nicky untangled it, then went back to the doorway and threw it into the dark.
When Cai reappeared a few minutes later, he was solid and whole and not at all tainted. He ran a hand through his wet hair. “I’ve tied the door handle to the other door back there. It’s not a locked but it’s better than nothing, I guess. Where now?”
Where indeed. Nicky stared past Cai and into the darkness. Collecting the money would take the longest—there were wads of notes hidden in so many different walls. Maybe if they stripped the wallpaper off, they’d discover the whole house was stuffed like a bank vault. But who cared? Money was just bits of paper; it wasn’t going to make any of this go away. Nicky was suddenly so tired he felt a hundred years old, his bones so heavy inside him he thought he could perhaps sink to the centre of the world if he lay down. And if he lay down, he wasn’t getting back up.
“It was a swimming pool once. Down there. In the cellar,” he said. The words came out of nowhere. It was as though he was speaking them in a dream. “Lance said his father had had it dug out. Every architect he spoke to said it would ruin the foundations. Lance had photographs and paintings of it. From the 1920s. It looked beautiful. The tiles were turquoise and gold, and there were books kept in tall glass cases all around the outside to protect them from the humidity. Of course, it was a ridiculous idea and when the novelty wore off it was forgotten and left to fall apart. I only wanted to see.” He needed to give away this secret. It felt right, as though perhaps it would set something inside him free. “I wasn’t supposed to leave Lance’s quarters when he was out. I was always so tired, and I wasn’t very steady on my feet.”
Nicky had never understood that inescapable tiredness. Why sometimes it was hard for him to move at all, even the energy it took to breathe could seem enormous. From the day he’d woken up here after Lance had rescued him, he’d never fully recovered. He’d thought he never would. And yet, these past few weeks he’d felt so different. Yes, he was still tired but for two years it had been a dull endless fog, and now it was more the exhaustion of trying to stay afloat on a stormy emotional sea. Nicky’s strength was no longer the problem—it was the relentlessness of the waves that kept threatening to drag him under.
“He told me he was scared I would fall on the stairs and hurt myself. But I wanted to see it so badly. It was all I thought about for weeks. One morning, Lance left in a hurry and he forgot to take all of his keys. Every room had a key. Most doors were locked. I didn’t want to explore, I just wanted to see the swimming pool, the books. When I was a kid I loved swimming, being underwater. My backup plan if I wasn’t a dancer was living in some hot place and diving for pearls.”
It was funny how the words coming out of your mouth could take you so far away. He could see Cai watching him closely, utterly still and statuesque, but he could also see the tatty poster that’d been on the wall of his bedroom growing up—a beautiful dark-skinned boy diving into a blue green sea, a leather pouch slung around his naked hips. Nicky wasn’t even sure he was breathing any more.
“I found the narrow staircase that leads from the first floor to this corridor.” He pointed into the dark. “It was easy to work out which key belonged to the cellar. The padlock on the door was newer, the key was the smallest of the lot. The electricity worked back then—everything wasn’t so dark and I didn’t need a torch. When I got to the bottom of the cellar steps, I was surprised at how huge the room was. The ceiling was low but the walls seemed to go on forever. And in the middle, the water in the pool was so deep and clear and blue it made everything glitter. The place was still beautiful but not like in the photographs—all the books had swelled in their cases and some had spilled out, pushing the glass doors open, some were floating in the pool. The size and shape of it was like an echo of the pool in the copse, only this one made you want to get in. I didn’t, though.
“Something about the water made the room too hot. There was another door at the back that I thought
probably led to some changing rooms. I was thirsty and thought there might be a tap so I could get a drink. I couldn’t walk far. I was so tired and weak all the time, I could hardly walk more than a few steps without needing to rest and catch my breath.”
Nicky moved away from the doorway and out into the kitchen. Outside the sky was growing darker, and the rain had begun falling with more serious intent. Yes, he felt very different now—he didn’t get breathless or feel like he would fall after a few steps. He could run. He was going to run. Even if his mind didn’t believe it, his body did.
“The room beyond was just a tiled empty space and with a door at the far end of it. It smelled really bad. I thought at first it must be the sewer or the cesspit or whatever big old houses have to take away their shit.”
Nicky turned. Cai had followed him, but he wasn’t standing too close. Arm’s length. Within reach. And Nicky wanted to reach, longed to, but he stopped himself. He needed to finish this story.
“I was always scared of him. Lance. I just… I buried it so I didn’t go crazy, except maybe I did, a bit.” Nicky frowned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said so many words. It was a year’s full. A lifetime’s maybe. “When I opened the door to the other room, I had to put my hand over my mouth and nose, the smell was so bad. It was tiled like the first room but it seemed smaller because it was so full of things, clothes and bags… I can’t—I can’t remember them now… all I can remember is there was a cast iron bath in the corner, and it was full of some dark liquid, all thick and congealed. I didn’t know what it was at first. But then I touched it. It was blood. Not just a little bit of blood—it was more blood than a body contains, more blood than two maybe. It smelled so bad. Black red and rotting. I didn’t know what to do. So I did nothing.
“I don’t remember how I got back to Lance’s rooms. He asked me later if I’d been down to the cellar and I said no. But I think he knew. Maybe I didn’t lock the padlock or I left a light on. I was just….” Nicky looked up but he had the weird sensation he was watching himself from above. “I convinced myself I’d imagined it, that it wasn’t true. But I didn’t. The smell is still down there. It’s worse. I should have got away from here and told someone.
“I don’t blame you if you want to go down there and see it. I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. I don’t want to see it.” Cai’s voice sounded strained and his posture looked tense. His arms were hung stiffly by his sides, and it seemed to be taking a great effort for him to keep them there.
Do it. Hold me, Nicky thought, though he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t push Cai away if he tried. God, he was so fucked up.
But Cai looked as though he was struggling with something else. “Why were you here, in this house, Nicky? Why was Lance keeping you like this? Why did you let him? He treated you like he… owned you.”
No, if Cai tried to hold him, he wouldn’t just push him away, he’d fucking punch him. “Fuck. You.”
“What? Why are you angry at me? I hate that he did that to you. Tell me I’m wrong about him. Explain. I want to understand!”
“I’m no one’s fucking pet, okay? Lance didn’t keep me here, he kept me safe.”
“Yet you couldn’t leave,” Cai said, but Nicky was gone, storming towards the study, then past it and out into the echoey entrance hall. There was probably close to fifty thousand pounds hidden in a hole above the skirting board under the staircase.
Nicky had been so careful about leaving the hiding places he’d found as untouched-looking as possible, but now he ripped off the dark old wallpaper in great sheets, throwing the strips behind him. It came off so easily, leaving behind a mess of cracked blown plaster.
The hole where the money was hidden was small, so Nicky lifted his foot and kicked a bigger one. Crouching down, he dug his fingers into the dusty space behind the Lathe and pulled out wad after wad of twenty-pound notes in their sealed plastic bags. Each bundle contained two and a half thousand pounds. Not even checking Cai had followed him, Nicky tossed the money onto the marble floor and shouted, “There, take it and then get in your van and fuck off.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he wanted to take them back.
Obviously, he didn’t mean it.
Obviously, Cai knew that. Didn’t he?
Nicky turned. Cai stood at the bottom of the stairs, his arms folded, a stormy look on his face. Perhaps he’d finally found Cai’s limit, he thought darkly. Perhaps this is what would make him snap. Nicky tensed, waiting to see what this loss of control might look like.
“Stop it,” Cai said. The words were so low they were almost a growl. “I’m not going anywhere.” He held Nicky’s gaze, even though Nicky didn’t try to hide any of his anger, any of his pain. Whatever Cai’s limit was it didn’t seem as though he could be pushed to it by someone else’s emotional explosion. Cai’s expression changed, softened, his eyebrows furrowed. “You kissed me,” he said. It was both an accusation and a plea.
All the fire went out of Nicky. For a few quiet moments, he could hear himself breathing. Unbidden, the memory of his lips against Cai’s played through his head.
It was as though something inside him was waking up. Something he thought he’d lost for good. Hope. Possibility.
He just needed to believe it.
The sensitive skin at the back of his neck tingled horribly. Nicky’s eyes widened.
They weren’t alone. The staircase far above them creaked. He tried to warn Cai someone was coming but his brain was too slow.
The shot rang out shocking and loud before he could even process it was a sound.
Terror made his blood roar, and he ducked without thinking, hands covering his head, his ears.
Cai crumpled to the floor in front of him, and the world around Nicky fractured.
No. Nonononono.
He couldn’t stop the low whine that erupted from his throat. Shoving his hand over his mouth, he bit into his palm. Cai wasn’t moving. Blood so dark it looked black seeped into his hair. Nicky couldn’t breathe. The shot was still ringing in his ears.
Frantic gasping came from above him. Nicky glanced up just in time to see Fox Mask sway against the bannister. She didn’t have the shotgun. Whoever was standing beside her held the shotgun, but all Nicky could see was a mess of wiry grey hair and one gnarled pale hand. Fox Mask looked like she was going to throw up.
They must have known Nicky was there, down by the side of the staircase. He’d been making enough noise a moment ago, but they paid no attention to him—they stood on the stairs and stared down at Cai’s unmoving form.
Cai’s unmoving form? This couldn’t be happening.
It should have been him. Fuck, it should have been him. He wanted it to be him and not Cai. Nicky was the one Fox Mask had been here for. Cai had been caught in the crossfire. His throat felt tight—he wanted to scream. This had to be undone. He couldn’t accept it. Please let this be undone.
The gun clattered through the bannisters to the floor near his feet. Nicky jumped backwards, splaying his hands against the wall. Someone had dropped the weapon, or Fox Mask had snatched it and chucked it. She was crouching on one of the steps, her hands in her hair. If she hadn’t pointed a gun at his head twice now, Nicky would have thought she wasn’t dealing very well with someone having been shot in front of her.
She rocked back and forth as she spoke. “You fucking hit him. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He was barely more than a kid! Call an ambulance. Call a fucking ambulance!”
From this position, Nicky could see it was an old woman beside her. Her wiry grey hair stuck up like tufts on a dandelion clock. She looked like a ghost. Nicky hated her.
“An ambulance? Don’t be stupid, girl. They were stealing. The boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His bad luck.”
“No. No no no no.” At first Nicky didn’t realise he was speaking aloud. The words were everywhere, filling his head. He couldn’t accept what had happened. He wouldn’t. Cai had been standing in front of
him less than a minute ago—they had to take it back. All of it. They had to unfuckingdo what they’d done.
He wasn’t even aware he’d picked up the gun until the metal registered as cold in his hands. Lance had shown him how to fire a gun once. After the five-minute lesson, Lance had shot through the spine of a book on one of the high shelves in the east-wing library, showing off his aim (and succeeding in frightening Nicky into silence for hours). He’d known Nicky hadn’t been interested and that he’d never pick up a gun willingly. Guns were for killing. Nicky had never had any desire to kill or wound anything before.
Before now. Because now, all Nicky could see was death. The feelings he was experiencing as he looked at Cai’s slumped body on the ground didn’t seem to be his own.
This is your limit, Nicky, a little voice whispered. You’ve never reached it before. Always so worried about everyone else’s limits and never your own. This is how far you’ll go for someone you care for.
Nicky lifted the gun in his hands, testing its weight. Then he turned on his heel and took aim.
The Losers Club
Loz took one look at the big grey saloon parked outside the main school gate, turned around and walked in the opposite direction.
Soph would be coming from the science block over the other side of the school. They were supposed to be meeting by the main gate.
Well, change of Plan.
Meet me on the playing field, Loz hurriedly texted her.
Standing out in the cold rain on the playing field was grim, but talking to Detective Michaels in his big grey saloon would have been grimmer. Loz had managed to avoid him for a week. He wasn’t going to be happy.
Barely a minute after Loz had squelched along the edge of the muddy football pitch, Soph appeared, out of breath and smiling, her hair a wild and brilliant mess. Loz loved how she walked so calmly around the corner, pretending she hadn’t been running.
“So what’s with the mystery?” she asked, her eyes full of something nameless and addicting. No one in Loz’s entire life had been this happy to see Loz before.
