Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Boy meets billionaire. Billionaire offers boy short-term prearranged sex contract. Boy runs away from billionaire. Billionaire comes after boy. Boy and billionaire get back together. Billionaire sends boy to America on account of boy’s best friend having been in horrendous car accident. Boy comes home again. Billionaire freaks out because of abusive history he never fucking told boy about. Boy blows it with billionaire.
Boy gets on with life.
And, you know something? Boy’s life wasn’t too bad.
I’d moved in with Ellery—into what I’d thought was going to be a converted warehouse for Spratt’s Patent pet foods, but turned out was a warehouse she blatantly had no intention of converting into anything. Looking back, I wasn’t sure why I’d expected otherwise. But I had the loft, and we mostly had electricity and running water, so it was actually pretty romantic in a writing poetry and fucking Kerouac kind of way. Well, except when I came home drunk and walked into a girder, and Ellery had to take me to A&E. But that was one time.
As for Ellery, she came and went at all hours, shamelessly ate my food, and sometimes crawled into my bed to sleep curled up next to me. It was like having a cat, if the cat also took a lot of drugs and threw wild parties. Not that I think Ellery meant to throw wild parties—they just sort of happened around her, especially now that her band, Murder Ballad, was taking off, or at any rate accruing a devoted cult following. I had no idea how because they didn’t seem to advertise their gigs or hold them at, y’know, venues (the last one had been in a derelict church) but, somehow, the word got out.
Because apparently songs about child murder, sororicide, and accidentally cheating on your husband with the devil performed in abandoned buildings were less nichey than the elevator pitch suggested. Or maybe it was Ellery. She was electric on stage. As far as I knew, she arranged most of the music herself and she was in every swoop of the soprano, every cry of the violin, every beat of the drums: savage and mournful and free.
I was still at Milieu, though it would have been damning if I hadn’t been. An ouchie in the heart region made time drag itself along like a dying cowboy in a western, but it had been a mere handful of months since Caspian had left me. The longest autumn of my life. The coldest winter.
Or else that was non-metaphorical cold because the heating had gone off again. I pushed my sleep mask onto my forehead and poked my nose out from under the quilt Mum had made. Immediately regretted it and vanished back under my pile of blankets. This was a major disadvantage of being a proper grown-up: you had to get out of bed. Not that I had a bed. I couldn’t afford a bed. I had a mattress on the ground. But it was probably really good for my back. And at least I wasn’t living on Coco Pops in a hovel by myself, which was all I could have managed on my salary without Ellery.
I would have done it, though. Because deep down I knew that no matter how sharp and real and inescapable my pain felt right now it would fade. My life was more than Caspian. Weird as it seemed, he’d shown me that.
Shown me how to fly, then pushed me through a window.
Some days, I was epically pissed about it. Others I was just sad. But, occasionally, I’d wake up in the rose and silver haze of a London dawn. Sit there on my mattress, wrapped in the quilt that still smelled of home, watching the light gleaming on the mist that coiled off the canal and be…almost okay.
Living in a warehouse intermittently full of musicians wasn’t the most convenient arrangement I’d ever experienced but, damn, the views were spectacular. Especially from my loft with its huge, semi-circular window, like the apex of an industrial cathedral.
This morning, however, I wasn’t feeling so appreciative. In fact, I was all for sticking my head under the pillow and pretending I didn’t exist.
Except then I’d be late for work.
I got out of bed and, whimpering softly, peeled off the two pairs of socks I was wearing. The floor was hideously cold against my bare feet, but it was better than slipping on twisty little stairs that led to the main level, and ending up in A&E.
As I’d discovered a couple of weeks ago.
The bathroom was this a long corridor that had been partitioned off, with a shower over a drain at the far end. Ellery, with the air of someone defiantly uninterested in interior decor, described it as Shawshank chic. And, truth be told, it was a bit of a shock to the system after the pristine marble palace that was One Hyde Park. But I adapted. I’d washed in way worse places when I was student.
Morning ablutions complete, I spent some time picking out clothes and making my hair super cute. Life as a junior editor wasn’t actually that glamorous—mainly I made tea, wrote the boring sort of copy, proofed other people’s more interesting copy, and did what was called “gathering assets,” which really meant googling shit—but you still had to turn it out. Basically you had to look like the type of person who worked at a high society lifestyle magazine. Not posh, exactly, but as if you knew what you were doing fashion-wise.
Thankfully I’d emerged from the womb serving manic pixie dream queer.
I went for some skinny leg, windows check trousers and a chunky cable-knit jumper, also courtesy of Mum, and my very pointiest shoes. And then hurried downstairs to see if Ellery had eaten all the Coco Pops.
Which, apparently, she had. Or rather was about to, as she tipped the last of the packet directly into her mouth. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, which simply said “BASTARDS and some stripy thigh highs, and sitting cross-legged in the corner of the vast L-shaped sofa that was pretty much our only item of furniture. I mean, unless you counted the table I’d made out of wine crates. And the taxidermy walrus that…actually, I still had no idea about the walrus. Ellery said he was called Broderick.
The rest of the band were scattered about in various states of consciousness. The drummer—Osian Ap Glyn—was facedown in the middle of the floor in a tumble of red hair. For a moment, I thought he might be dead, but then he twitched and I heaved a sigh of relief. Innisfree, who did keyboard and soulful vocals and was essentially the anti-Ellery, was sitting in the lotus position with her face turned ecstatically toward the sunrise. And Dave, the guitarist, was, as ever, just kind of there, looking as if he’d blundered into Ellery’s life by mistake and couldn’t think of a way to politely excuse himself.
“Innis made you a packed lunch.” Ellery smirked as I edged carefully round Osian.
“Oh wow.” My heart sank. “She shouldn’t have.”
Innis turned briefly in my direction, like a more serene version of that scene in The Exorcist. “It’s my pleasure, Ardy. Healthy body, healthy soul. And compassion in every bite.”
“There’s a quinoa salad,” Ellery told me sadistically. “With kale and avocado.”
“Yum.”
“And dried beetroot crisps.”
“Whoopee.”
Innis smiled, showing her perfect, shining teeth. “And, as a special treat, some of my handmade protein balls.”
“Thank you.” I squirmed miserably.
“Don’t forget your tea.”
I was so very doomed. “You made tea too?”
“Nettle and fennel.”
“Ardy’s favorite,” exclaimed Ellery.
Very much earning the betrayed look I cast in her direction. And receiving absolutely no repentance in return.
I gave her the middle finger, picked up the eco-friendly silicon storage container Innis had left me, along with the bamboo fiber travel cup, and made for the door. Closing it firmly on both Ellery’s laughter and Innis reminding me to buy a coat.
Because, as it happened, I had a coat. A really fabulous one. But it had been a gift from Caspian. And while I was sure one day it would be a welcome reminder of a man I’d loved once, right now it just hurt too fucking much to wear it.
Besides, I grew up in Scotland. Southerners knew nothing about cold.