Chapter Thirty-Six
ELLIOT GOT three essays finished on the Monday and was at his Tuesday morning lecture ten minutes early. He wasn’t letting himself think about Farlden or deal with what had happened. He just couldn’t.
There must have been something forbidding in his expression as Callie hadn’t asked him any questions when she arrived at the lecture and later walked beside him to the canteen in silence. They helped themselves to snacks and joined Farlden, Lila and Barve.
Farlden glanced up at him, gaze intense but unsmiling, and Elliot took the chair next to Lila and opposite Barve, ignoring him.
“... Both my mum and sister said they couldn’t stand him,” Lila was saying to Barve, “so I don’t know why they couldn’t have warned me about his reputation.”
Barve was looking more cheerful than Elliot had seen him in a while. “Because you wouldn’t listen?”
She laughed. “Probably.”
“What are you talking about?” Elliot asked.
“I got dumped by my boyfriend at the weekend,” Lila said, the vulnerable look in her eyes showing that she wasn’t as unaffected by it as she wanted everyone to think.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, taking in the fact that she and Farlden had clearly never been involved and also that she had reason to feel as miserable as he did at the moment.
She shrugged. “It turned out that he was sleeping with someone else for months, so I’m better off without him.”
That was what he needed to tell himself, but he couldn’t. He didn’t believe it.
Elliot opened his drink and held the bottle to his lips, sipping the sweet liquid. When he lowered it, he caught Farlden watching him. He glanced away and his eyes fell on Nolan, who was standing at Eva’s table, speaking to her. They were too far away for Elliot to hear what was said but Nolan looked a wreck: dark circles under his eyes; hair that hadn’t been combed any time today, mismatched clothes. He looked the way Elliot felt.
Eva was doing her best to pretend he wasn’t there, clearly not relenting on her decision to break up with him at the start of the previous week.
Nolan put a hand on her arm and then it looked as if he was trying to pull her out of her chair. She pushed ineffectively against him and one of the boys at the table got up and spoke to Nolan, looking angry. Nolan let go of Eva – it looked as if he was pleading with her – and then he yelled her name.
Everyone in the canteen fell silent and stared at them and Eva looked on the verge of tears. Nolan seemed to notice for the first time that they were in a room full of people and, with one last look at Eva who was hunched down staring at the table, he moved away.
Elliot watched as he left the canteen. Nolan had never revealed a violent side before and Elliot had even liked him but, for a second with Eva, he had looked out of control. Elliot’s group hadn’t managed to do anything to improve things for either of them and their interference had probably made things even worse. Eva and Nolan would have been better off without their so-called help.
Suddenly he just couldn’t be here any longer. He pushed back his chair, grabbed his briefcase and books and got up, leaving his untouched food and open drink on the table.
“Where are you going?” It was Farlden’s voice and Elliot continued to walk away, ignoring him. If Farlden was heartless enough to think his earlier words wouldn’t have devastated Elliot and messed up their friendship, then he was a moron.
It was Callie who came and found him standing outside the front entrance in the cold, leaning against the rough texture of the wall. “What’s going on with you and Farlden?”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
She fell silent, following his gaze to the street beyond with people hurrying from one place to another. “You don’t have any lectures this afternoon either, do you?”
“No.” He didn’t know what he would do with the time – he didn’t want to just sit about feeling wretched.
“Let’s go to the cinema,” Callie said in a bright tone. “There’s a historical drama I’ve been wanting to see.”
He turned his head and stared at her, wide-eyed. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
He thought about it and, despite how decadent the idea was, he couldn’t come up with a good reason not to do it. He was up-to-date with his essays and he would rather be as far away from Farlden as possible. “Okay.”
“I’ll drive,” she said and unlocked a tiny blue car of no make that he recognised.
They got in and she turned the ignition and pulled out of the car park. As they drove out of the town, Elliot felt a bit less wretched. A break from everything would be good. As if contradicting this thought, he found himself asking, “Do you think we’re right in this whole investigation into Nolan? It seems as if we’re getting nowhere and just making a painful situation more difficult.”
She paused the car at traffic lights. “We’re trying to help. He’s clearly got into some kind of mess that’s probably illegal. Eva asked us to find out more because she was worried about him, not to cause him trouble and I should think she needs to know what the problem is before she’s able to get over the break-up.”
“I suppose, if he’s cheating at university somehow, we wouldn’t necessarily have to report him.” It seemed as if Nolan was unravelling completely and Elliot didn’t want them to be the ones to push him over the edge. “We could just convince him to stop.”
“Maybe,” Callie said as the lights turned green and the car sped forward again. “We could decide what to do together when we knew all the facts.”
That sounded reasonable and Elliot relaxed, the subject slipping from his mind.
“I think whatever’s gone wrong between you and Farlden this time might be partly my fault,” she said, glancing sideways at him. “I swear I didn’t have any idea that Barve had feelings for you. Are the two of you dating?”
“No. I like Farlden.”
“That’s what I thought.” She turned the steering wheel and the car turned into a side road. “I said that if you both liked each other you should get together. I’m really sorry if it caused an argument.”
Her worry for them made him grateful he had her in his life. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s better that I found out now that he couldn’t ever love me rather than hoping for something that won’t happen. I’ll just have to accept it.” He didn’t know if he could handle the situation as well as Barve had, but he would try. “So what’s this film we’re going to see?”