27. Rare Quality
Rare Quality
Desdemona
The bathroom door slams open. A clutch of ministers’ wives start, champagne sloshing in their glasses, splashing over their rings and bracelets. They throw me a startled, annoyed glance as I stride past them, but I don’t bother apologising.
I scan the ballroom without stopping, eyes skimming over the tables, the photographs, the champagne towers. All I care about is Elias, finding him, grabbing him, getting him away from this cursed fucking place.
Weaving past the tables, I finally spot him being dragged away by the Pearsons.
He’s holding a glass of water, which makes my heart lurch; the Pearsons’ assistant plucks it from him and sets it aside without looking.
Two other assistants are talking in his ears, checking things off clipboards.
He stiffens imperceptibly but nods mildly.
To the naked eye he appears relaxed, at ease, a little amused.
But all I can think about right now is the sight of him when he asked me to come to the gala.
Crouching against the wall of the tennis court, his head slumped back, his long limbs folded boyishly, like he was trying desperately to make himself look as small as possible.
Around me, the ballroom swells with applause and I feel like a ship cresting a gargantuan, unsteady wave. But the sound is a distant rush, all but drowned out by the steady, speedy hammering of my own pulse.
Then—
“Hey, Dess!” The sound of self-satisfied laughter. “Come have a look at this!”
I turn. I feel cold and hard, entirely made of metal, machinery ticking inside me, clean wires and a frosty electrical current.
Sitting at one of the tables with his elbow resting on the back of his chair is Julian Langford. His bow tie is a little crooked and his cheeks are flushed—he’s drunk with champagne and his own self-importance, the way he always is around the band of guffawing yes men he calls friends.
Julian hates galas, and normally, does everything he can to avoid accompanying his influential parents to them. But not this time. This time, he seems to be having the most fun in his life. He’s holding up his phone: a video is playing on it, grainy black and white.
“I’m good, thanks,” I tell him. “I’m not interested.”
Julian’s drunken eyes have a thick, oily gleam to them. “Don’t you want to see what your little boyfriend’s been hiding?”
I slow my steps and snatch the phone from his hand, heart still, tight as a closed fist. I don’t want to look and give Julian the satisfaction. But I do, eyes dropping to the screen.
For a second, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Grainy CCTV. A plastic cafeteria. Bookshelf in one corner, cartoons flickering in another, children who all look like they’re from different families.
My eyes widen. Care-home footage—how much did Julian spend on acquiring something like this? An unpleasant shiver runs through me when I spot a familiar face.
Elias.
He’s thin, wiry—maybe twelve. He stands dead centre, shouting at someone off-camera. Behind him, three smaller kids in ill-fitting pyjamas huddle together, crying.
I look up from the phone. Julian is grinning, eyes pinned hungrily on me.
“What’s this?” My voice comes out hoarse.
“This is the person you want to allow into your bed,” he sneers. “Keep watching.”
I glance back down at the screen: two older boys bursting into frame.
One shoves Elias down, the other grabs a child.
Before I can blink, Elias is up again—slamming the first boy into the wall.
The children scatter. Then it’s just them: Elias and the two boys falling on him like wolves, three bodies thrashing.
Elias jumps on top of one of the boys and punches and punches.
Dark splatters cover his skin, his clothes, the floor.
Then the screen shakes as adults rush in.
When they drag Elias away, he’s still screaming.
I look up. The nausea that’s been clinging to my stomach ever since I arrived at the gala has dissipated, as if blown away by a glacial wind. There’s a sudden sense of crystal clarity settling over me.
“Where did you get this?” I snap.
“Who cares?” Julian shrugs with a carelessness he clearly doesn’t remotely feel; his friends laugh dutifully. “Don’t let his school uniform and good grades fool you. That’s what he really is. And you wanna let this guy put his dirty hands on you?”
He reaches for his phone, but I hold it out of his reach.
Julian acquired this footage, and watched it, and saw there what he wanted to see: a worthless thug, doing what people like him do.
But all I saw in that footage was a young, underfed boy, cornered and on edge. His fierce dark eyes grim and unflinching. No help is coming, those eyes seemed to say. So I’ll do what I can.
I’ll do what I have to.
The words that define Elias. I’ll do what I have to—no matter how dirty it means my hands are going to get. I’ll do it because nobody else will do it for me. No help is coming—it never has. It never will.
Julian, oblivious to my thoughts, oblivious to anything that’s not his own existence and pleasure, frowns, eyes following the motion of my hand as I raise it—
And dash his phone to the ground.
It lands on the marble floor with a hard, dry crack, but I’m not done.
Standing next to it, I raise one knee and drive my heel into the phone, hard.
A lifetime of training and tennis—and I use every ounce of strength that’s coiled up in my muscles.
My heel stabs clean through the screen. I kick it off, and it clatters away, disappearing under a table.
“I’m not going to let him put his hands on me,” I say, turning back to Julian, who’s staring up at me slack-jawed. “I already have.”
Julian’s friends glance at him, waiting for their cue to react. But he’s frozen, eyes wide and bloodshot as he stares at me in a mixture of hurt and shock.
“I already have,” I repeat, “and it felt so good—better than I ever knew it was possible to feel. Better than you could ever dream of making me feel. And you know what?”
I lean down over him, and he cringes back in his seat, pinned by my gaze.
“And I can’t wait for him to do it again. It’s all I think about, at night, alone in my bed. Him. His body, his voice, his dirty hands and mouth—and just how much I want them on me.”
I straighten myself and give a cold, low laugh.
“I’d say you’re not half the man he is, but that would still be an exaggeration. You’re not even worthy enough to compete with his shadow. You’re pathetic, Julian—and you make me feel pathetic for ever having gone out with you in the first place.”
I look around the table at his friends, their tuxes, the empty bottles of champagne, their bewildered faces.
“Have fun pacifying his fragile ego,” I tell them. “I could never stomach it myself—but somebody’s got to do it, and it’s not like any of you have anything better to do, is it?”
No reply. I smile.
“As I thought.”
And I turn and walk away.
The Pearsons and their staff are on Elias like a pack of hyenas on a young antelope by the time I reach them.
He’s reading out loud from a piece of paper while they watch eagerly on, Mr Pearson nodding while Mrs Pearson’s eyes are pinned to Elias’s facial expression, which is bland and passive, like he’s not fully occupying his own existence.
Despite his outward obedience, he appears like the magnetic centre of this solar system, everyone’s attention fixed on him. They realise he’s important—they just don’t understand why, or what makes him special.
“Remember, Elias,” Mrs Pearson is saying with a tinkling laugh, loud enough for nearby donors to hear, “a smile will take you further than any scholarship.”
“He’s a fine boy,” Mr Pearson adds. “You’re going to do us proud, aren’t you?”
Elias nods, looking like he’s miles away.
I stride right past the staff, who scatter to make way for me, and snatch the paper out of Elias’s hands, handing it to an assistant without looking.
“Ah, Desdemona,” Mrs Pearson says. “How wonderful you could join us. It’s lovely to see youth take an interest in civic duty.
” Her eyes skim over me, evaluating, appraising.
“I’m so glad you and Elias have found one another.
Amazing what a little polish can do for raw material, isn’t it?
A few years ago, I doubt anyone would have imagined him keeping such fine company. ”
I resist the urge to physically recoil from her.
“Yes,” I reply smoothly instead. “You must be proud of your work.” And then I turn from her, looking straight at Elias. “I’d like to leave, please.”
His eyes widen. I lock away that expression in my heart, with the innate sense that I’ve captured something rare and precious: Elias, taken by surprise.
“Oh, Desdemona,” Mrs Pearson immediately intervenes. She smiles, all elegance and warmth, but I’m from her world: I’ve seen this sort of smile a thousand times, displayed over a thousand faces, each as bland and insincere as hers. “I hope you’re not feeling unwell?”
I don’t bother to smile back.
“Thank you for inviting me to this event,” I say with withering formality. “But I’m ready to go now.”
“Ah, of course, and thank you so much for coming.” She smiles, though her husband’s glance betrays worry. The staff shift around us, exchange uneasy looks, the spaces between them vibrating with nervous energy. “Elias will escort you out just as soon as he’s finished here.”
As his wife speaks, Mr Pearson lays a hand on Elias’s shoulder. The gesture is ostensibly fatherly, but Elias’s back stiffens ever so slightly, and there’s a twitch in the delicate vein near his eyes.
I put my hand in his, and interlace our fingers—a silent reassurance.
Mrs Pearson’s eyes never leave mine. “Gratitude is such a rare quality these days, but Elias has learned that everything worth having must be earned.” She fixes him with a heavy look. “Haven’t you, dear?”
Elias doesn’t answer, but his throat moves, his stillness the only reply.
“After all,” Mrs Pearson continues lightly, “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to disappoint those who’ve gone to such lengths on his behalf.”
“He won’t,” I say.
A quiet, deliberate beat.
“You’ll find that my parents’ donation has already matched your fundraising goal for the night.”
I pause and wait for them to interrupt again, but this time, they don’t. All I hear is the tiny hitch of Elias’s breath at my side, his tremor of surprise against my fingers.
Mrs Pearson blinks. The smile remains, but the colour has drained from her face.
“That’s… extraordinarily generous,” she says after a moment of brittle silence.
“That’s why I thought it was safe to assume Elias and I could leave. Staying to drink champagne and make speeches would feel too much like self-indulgence, don’t you think?”
Mrs Pearson watches my face—and if I had been anyone’s daughter but my own parents’, I might’ve cowered. But my mother is Sophie Sutton-Knight, and if anyone thinks they can intimidate me, they’ve clearly not met her.
Finally, Mrs Pearson’s smile flickers back onto her face. She nods in the direction of her husband, and his hand slides away from Elias’s shoulder and drops uselessly down to his side.
“It was a pleasure to meet you both,” I tell them. “I hope this event was everything you hoped it would be.”
And then I turn, Elias’s fingers still laced through mine—his presence a silent, laughing shadow at my side. As we walk away, crystal lights fracture over the marble floor.
For a moment, his shadow and mine look indistinguishable.