CHAPTER 5 #2
“People do it all the time. And m’mother’s good friends with the University chancellor, so they’d got it sorted between them.
But my father put an end to that.” Jasper’s face had darkened.
“He’s got my life all planned out. Economics now, then straight into a job in finance, like him.
I’ll never get to live the way I want.” He kicked at the bench.
“So here I am, back in my box. My roommate wanted to throw this party. Richard. But when it all kicked off, I came out here. I couldn’t face it. ”
“Why not?”
“The same fake stories and jokes and people wanting things. When I could be at sea right now, the spray on my face, where I’m—my real self.” He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Or whatever. That sounded lame.”
“Not lame,” said Emma, reaching out. His forearm was warm, the scars rough under her fingers. “That’s why the photos, right? When I was looking at them in your room, I thought they were like… windows. To somewhere different. An escape.”
Strong tan fingers closed over her own. She felt a jolt in her chest.
“You do get it.”
His gaze was piercing. Emma had the strange sensation that he was looking right through her, to everything that lay behind. His eyes were the most devastating blue.
“Of course.” Emma feigned cool, though her heart was fluttering like a bat caught in a bell jar. “I know what it’s like. To feel out of place, at parties like this. That’s why I was in your bedroom in the first place.”
“Oh yes.” He smiled in a way that made Emma wonder where her insides had gone. “So you were.”
“It was nice, seeing your photos of Tasmania,” she said softly. “Like a piece of home. I miss it.”
“Must’ve been amazing, growing up there.”
“I grew up all over, really. But Tasmania was special. I got to stay there longer than anywhere else. Four years, nearly. Same school, same friends. And there was this beach right near our house—you could see penguins there. Can you imagine? Fairy penguins, they called them.” Emma smiled and sighed.
“I cried every day when we moved. The next place was the middle of Mexico somewhere. I remember refusing to learn Spanish, thinking it would force my mum to take me back to Australia. Eleven-year-old logic.”
“Didn’t work?”
“Not at all. In fact, after that we were on to the Philippines. Then Toronto,” she continued, counting on her fingers. “The C?te d’Ivoire. Hertfordshire, strangest of all. My mum’s work took us a lot of places.”
“And your dad was okay with that?”
“They’re not together. He—he was never really involved. With me. Phone calls now and then, that’s it. So it was just her and me, and a few suitcases.”
Jasper looked entranced. “What an incredible way to live. Country to country, taking only what you need. Living for the experience of it, not the material stuff. That’s the life for me.”
“As long as it comes with breakfast at Le Meurice,” Emma teased, thinking of Julia’s stories.
“Now, who told you that? No, I don’t want to know.” He laughed, eyes dancing. “I don’t want to imagine what other stories you’ve heard. They’re all probably true. Look, what penguin beaches are to you, fine pastries are to me.”
The door above banged open once more.
“Jasper,” bellowed the voice again. “Where the bloody hell are you? Come up for some port before I drag you up.”
“Well.” Jasper rose from the bench. “I don’t think we can hide for much longer. Shall we?”
The moment they entered the main room, Jasper was mobbed.
The press of people was overwhelming. Antonia Viacelli, luscious hair spilling from her bun, winked as they passed.
Imogen danced barefoot at the center of a group of roaring boys, red hair flying.
It was dizzying. Jasper caught Emma’s hand and plunged them through an opening in the capering circle.
He steered her to a figure leaning against the fireplace.
“Emma,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Richard, my roommate.”
“And best mate,” the figure corrected.
He was similar to Jasper, in that they both had blond hair and blue eyes.
But if Jasper was an Aston Martin, Richard was a Land Rover.
He was solidly built, shorter than she was.
His hair was fine and light as a duckling’s down, ruffled into an artfully tousled nest. A pale imitation, Emma thought, next to Jasper’s naturally springy dark gold mane.
Although he wore the same eveningwear as the others, Richard gave off a strong scent of corduroy, soon to become pinstripe.
The saber, the boarding school trunk, the blazer. It was a perfect fit.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” said Richard. “Jasper, get the lady a drink. Where are your manners, boy?” He gave Jasper a fond cuff to the back of the head.
“Boy?” Jasper darted in with a sucker punch.
Richard doubled up but waved off Emma’s horror. “Plenty of padding here.” He chuckled, rubbing his stomach. “You clearly don’t have brothers.”
He saw Emma peer at the framed photo on the mantelpiece. “Yes, that’s me and Jasper.” Richard smiled over her shoulder. “And his father. The day he taught us to fish.”
“You both look so young.”
“Lived with them since I was ten. Best people in the world.”
Emma’s gaze drifted to Jasper, striding back to the fireplace with three brimming glasses.
He was a lightning bolt streaking through the darkened room.
Laughing with some groups, whipping a joke at others.
Wherever he was, faces lit up. She’d been wrong to think it was just about the money.
People followed Jasper like sunflowers leaned toward the sun.
He fetched up against the fireplace. “Sorry about that. It’s like—there’s a person I have to be at these things. I just slip back into it. Still, seems silly now to have been hiding in the garden, doesn’t it?”
He offered her a glass. Richard and Jasper emptied theirs in one, so Emma tried to do the same. At some point, a pack of boys in tailcoats gathered around. The Society, she was sure now.
Even as the heat in the party rose and other shirt points wilted, theirs stayed sharp.
Their tailcoats were cut from fabric so rich, the black of it seemed to drain the light around them.
Firelight dripped from the brocade on their waistcoats, spinning from brass buttons and signet rings in dizzying rays. It was almost hypnotic.
Condensation dripped from the ceiling. Little Tabitha Mountbatten was pressed against a wall.
Francis Carr’s tongue explored her throat with the energy of a man rummaging through a coat stand to find his umbrella.
Julia lay asleep on a sofa, her head in Hugo’s lap.
Emma was nearly knocked over by two boys ushering a staggering Imogen to one of the bedrooms. And over the heads of the writhing crowd, Emma met Jasper’s gaze.
Her heart was doing the strangest things in her chest.
Then Jasper smiled, and Emma knew she was lost.
Emma knew they must have said goodbye, but she couldn’t remember it. As she slipped out of St. Dunstan’s College, all she could think of was the electric brush of his lips on her cheek. He had seen her to the door.
“Would you like to—”
“Maybe we could—Oh, you first.”
Jasper laughed and leaned against the doorframe. It brought his face inches from hers. “So, you’re interested in photography, right?”
“I don’t know much about it, but I wish I could take photos like yours. Ones that tell a story.”
Jasper rubbed a hand over his golden curls, looking pleased. “I could show you a few things. Come out with me, next time I do a session? Go on—put your number in my phone, I’ll message you.”
Her heartbeat had not yet recovered. She hugged her arms to her chest, reliving the match strike of his lips on her skin.
Her steps echoed from the empty city streets.
From the cobbled lanes, where fairy fogs muffled the lampposts.
From the facades of the colleges, turned to mother-of-pearl in the moonlight.
And from the statues, staring everywhere from plinths and rooftops.
Stone eyes, blank and pupilless, followed her path.
She passed Beaufort College, whose outer wall was shrouded with the skeletal remains of a wisteria vine. It had been dead for decades, withered fingers clawed too deep into the mortar to remove.
Now, impossibly, it was blooming. Lush flowers glowed through the dark like alien fruit, fleshy and corpse pale.
Emma coughed, dizzied. The scent of the flood leaked from them, an echo of the rot in the rose garden.
Emma backed away, repulsed and drawn at once.
The scent ran ghostly fingers through her hair, chased her all the way up Beaufort Crescent.
Emma reminded herself that she was only interested, as a scientist would be.
There was no reason to feel troubled. Or to walk faster.
If only she could shake the feeling of eyes on her back.
Emma’s heart made a determined effort to leap out of her chest. Those were drums, faint on the night air. The sinuous rhythm slid into her pulse. And wisps of human voices, like the chatter of a distant bazaar. She spun to face them. But the street was empty.
With a laugh that sounded like a gasp, Emma recovered herself. She was surrounded by student rooms. Students gave parties. Muffled beats from speakers, the sounds of laughter. What could be more expected?
Then, at the top of the High Street, something brushed her foot.
Emma jerked back. But it was just a little frog. Another strange remnant of the flood, trying to find its way back to the river. The shape split. Not one, but two frogs. Squirming against each other.
Breeding. In September. It was impossible. It could only happen in spring. It—
It couldn’t just be the flood. No single flood could change the patterns of millennia, surely.
But what about climate change? There had been journal papers on climate-related behavior shifts before.
She could do some research. None of this would feel so eerie once she found a reason.
A peer-reviewed, data-backed reason, preferably.
Her steps quickened toward Gabriel Tower.
Purring croaks bounced from the shopfronts, following even as she hurried away.
Gabriel Passage was gloriously, gratefully in sight when Emma reeled back.
There, stripped by the streetlight. A writhing mass of amphibious bodies, climbing and scratching at one another.
One moist body slipped from the pile to the gutter, and another mounted in his place. They were croaking in a frenzy.
Emma stopped short. Her heart lurched. She seized a stick and pushed at the mass, sending the stubborn, rubbery bodies squirming away. Knowing what she would find beneath.
The lone female trapped at the heart of the pile.
Legs broken at odd angles, ribs caved in.
Her belly had split open. Emma could not dislodge the last frog from her back.
He stared up with hopeful headlamp eyes, still clamped in position over his dead lover.
Slowly, his head tracked down. Down, where the clotted crystal jelly of her insides peered through.
His tongue flicked once. Twice. He gave a louder croak.
Deeper. Without warning, he opened his mouth wide and plunged it into her side.
The other frogs approached again, a hopping tide.
They tore into the open seam of her belly, jellied innards dripping from their tongues.
Guttural croaks ricocheted from the alley walls.
Emma dropped the stick.
Nature was itself. It was wondrous and it was wild and hungry. Even as a little girl, she had never needed it to be pretty to love it. Never needed to turn away at the sight of its appetite. And yet she found she was almost running now, straining for the North Gate ahead.
She huffed a laugh. If her mother could have seen her, running away from a few frogs.
She deliberately walked the last steps to let herself into Gabriel College.
By the time she reached her bedroom, her heart had stopped its nauseous dance.
She wriggled out of Helena’s dress, feeling as though she shed a skin.
In her own soft nightclothes, hands cradling a moon-silvered cup of tea, the world felt right again.
She turned her back on the window, where the wind whispered at the pane. Where the dark called. Where, down below, the frogs still feasted on their love.