Putting the violin to her shoulder, Ellery launched into what could only be called a horrifically jolly air, the sharp, bright notes piercing the stillness of the cemetery in the eeriest possible way. The song, as I could have guessed and in fact did guess, was grim AF—but points to a random street balladeer for rhymingwife and mewithadultery. When the band performed, Innisfree did most of the singing, apart from the occasional duet with Dave. She had one of those crystalline sopranos that could make damn near anything sound sweet. Ellery’s contralto, on the other hand, rough from lack of use, brought exactly zero sweetness. Just its rare and fragile heart.
It was the only song she sang that night. After that, she mainly idled, playing snatches of things I wasn’t anywhere near cultured enough to recognise, although she told me some of it—the most painfully frenetic—was Bartók worrying about fascism. And at some point the rest of the band turned up, Dave with his guitar flung across his back. I couldn’t imagine Ellery ever bothering to tell anyone where she was, or where she was going, so God knows how they’d found us. But I guess highly developed Ellery-tracking skills would be a requirement if you wanted to work with her. She looked neither surprised nor displeased to see them all. Which was basically the equivalent of glad.
“Cup of tea, Ardy?” Innisfree was waving an eco-friendly bamboo thermos at me and I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and I had no idea how long had gone by while I’d been graveyarding it up with Ellery.
“God. Yes. Please.” She passed me the lid and, blowing off the steam, I took a heedless gulp of the liquid within. Regretted it instantly but, sadly, had been raised with good manners when it came to spitting or swallowing. “Uhm. Uh. That’s an interesting flavour. What, um, is it? Actually?”
“Milk thistle and dandelion.”
“Oh. Uh. Wow. Yes, you can really taste the…um. Those things.”
“I know, right?” She smiled radiantly at me. “They’re both so good for the liver. And assist with the production of bile.”
I gazed disconsolately into the murky depths of my milk thistle and dandelion tea. “I believe you.”
Newcomers were starting to drift into the graveyard, finding places to sit or stand or sprawl amongst the thorns and fallen monuments. And in a little while, perhaps at Ellery’s instigation, the band began to play. I’d seen them before, several times actually, on account of me being an amazing, supportive friend, but not like this. Without the drums or the keyboard, the music had a raw, stripped-back quality—the sort of intimacy that Ellery usually went out of her way to resist.
I found myself thinking about her birthday party performance. She’d been this piece of wildness then, in her red dress, with her bare feet, and her bow flying across the strings. Tonight, there was just Ellery and the music that spilled from beneath her fingers. And when the last of the light faded, her fans took out their phones so that the darkness around her danced with electric fireflies.
Chapter 10
The week or so leading up to my interview with Caspian and Nathaniel was awful. Turned out, dreading something while simultaneously being desperate to get it over with was kind of a headfuck. But having spent three years at Oxford doing pretty much anything to avoid having to get a degree, I was a grand high master of distracting myself. And having a…a…whatever George was to me…lover…person-with-benefits…paramour(gosh, that sounded sexy) helped immensely too. I’d slept around plenty and even had a couple of boyfriends before Caspian, but I’d never actually been with someone I was banging regularly in an emotionally uncomplicated way.
Of course, the weirdest thing about it was that what I had with George now was probably exactly what Caspian had tried to set up with me at the beginning. What had he called it again? Sex on a short-term prearranged basis? It was so strange, remembering stuff like that. The scene was still vivid in my mind—the view of the Martyrs Memorial from the Randolph windows, the precise blue of Caspian’s eyes on that grey-golden morning, the restless tapping of his foot as he delivered his mildly indecent proposal—and yet felt so long ago. At the time, it had been confusing and actually a little bit humiliating, but thinking about it now filled me with a strange, sad tenderness. If nothing else, that lost boy and equally lost man were going to have an amazing summer together.
Of course, they’d have wasted less of it if they hadn’t agreed to such a fundamentally stupid plan in the first place. What was right for me and George could never have been right for me and Caspian. When it came to him, I had way too many emotions, complicated or otherwise. And as much as he’d struggled to admit it, so did he.
Of course, I had emotions for George too. I mean, let’s face it, I had emotions about bin liners. But these were nice, safe emotions—liking her, fancying her, knowing I could trust her. On top of which I was getting the kinky education of my dreams. One I would gladly have forgone to have stayed with Caspian, but as consolation prizes went, it was pretty damn consoling.
The night before the interview I mostly spent whining at Nik over Skype, failing to sleep, and fretting about failing to sleep, before dropping off at about five thirty only to have weird but oddly plausible dreams about the interview and then wake unrefreshed and slightly unsure what was real and what wasn’t. Except for the fact my phone had run out of battery during the night and therefore my alarm hadn’t gone off, so it very rapidly became apparent that what was real was that I was fucking late.
Argh!Just…arghhhhhhh!My whole strategy for surviving the day had revolved around being fabulous. Now even showering had gone out the window. And my hair, which had apparently decided to manifest my inner turmoil, just wouldn’t calm down. Even the clothes I’d painstakingly laid out last night suddenly looked wrong. But how could they ever look right? There was no dress code for interviewing your ex-boyfriend and the man he was engaged to about their engagement.
Fuck, fuck, oh fucking fuck.
I’d been out of bed for less than three minutes and everything was already disastrous. Also, I’d fallen into a dither-loop, which meant the more aware I was of wasting time, the less capable of action I became. Just standing there blankly in the middle of my bedroom in my tiniest rainbow pants—the one part of my outfit that, barring extreme disaster or good fortune, nobody was actually going to see. In the end I pulled on a pair of unnecessarily tight jeans and a shirt through which I knew you could—in the right light—see the faintest outline of my nipple rings, and threw my old plum velvet jacket on over the top. Yes, it wasn’t the most mature decision I could have made, and definitely wouldn’t have passed muster withDebrett’s(“Gentlemen are generally encouragednotto display their assets like a right Tarty McTartface”), and probably Caspian wouldn’t notice or care, but I don’t know, it made me feel more in control of the situation. Even though I wasn’t remotely in control of anything.
An hour or so later, sweaty and Tube-battered and still borked in the brain department over what was about to happen, I was sprinting across the marble atrium of Hart & Associates—a state of affairs that was practically, at this point in my life, a habit. Except when I tumbled out of the lift at Caspian’s floor, there was no immaculate and cool-eyed Bellerose to ignite my every match-spark of inadequacy into a forest fire of insecurity. Not something I ever thought I’d miss. And yet there was something deeply, profoundly wrong about seeing a stranger at his desk: one of those elegant middle-aged women who have coiffures instead of haircuts.
Having managed to get less of my breath back than I might have hoped on the ascent, I made a wheezy sound.
“Arden St. Ives?” She had powerful eyebrows and clearly wasn’t afraid to use them, lofting them into enquiring domes. “FromMilieu?”
“Yes. Sorry I’m late. Circle line was carnage.”
She was way too professional to acknowledge this transparent lie. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
“Thank you.” I found myself weaving from foot to foot like a small child who has forgotten to use the bathroom. “Should I just, like, go in?”
Bellerose would have said something cutting that would have, in some perverse way, made me feel better. The newcomer just gave me a meaningless smile. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. St. Ives.”
Welp. I guess this was it. And it didn’t help that the last time I’d been in the conference room, I’d gate-crashed a meeting of Important People TM in order to confront Caspian with my feelings. Of course, it had ended with an arse-twitcher of a kiss against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Caspian’s office. But that probably wasn’t on the cards today—or ever again—unless Caspian and Nathaniel had way less conservative ideas about matrimony than I’d imagined.
Taking a deep breath, I made my wayextremely carefullyto the conference room. Frankly, I’d already pratfallen enough around both of them. And as God was my witness, I would pratfall no more. I was going to conduct myself like a motherfucking professional.
Except the door wouldn’t open. I pressed harder. Then nudged it with my shoulder, probably looking like a really bad mime—Arden trapped in a glass box—to the people inside.
Not-Bellerose cleared her throat. “Next one along.”
