10. Constant Access to Nuts
Driving back through the rear security gate at Temple feels strange, despite how little of the real world Briar glimpsed on that slightly harrowing drive.
Briar actually relaxes as it shuts behind them, as if on some level, they were worried that they wouldn’t be let back in; a one-time offer, already expired.
They expect that Hadley will run off into the stormy night back to Cavendish, the only girls’ dorm, but instead as she opens the car door she looks back at Briar with a quick jerk of her head that clearly indicates that they’re meant to follow her.
Briar slides out, puts up their hood and remote-locks the truck behind them as they both dash across the car park, footsteps crunching on the gravel until it gives way to mushy, waterlogged lawn.
They’re not heading for Cavendish, which is over by the maze, the newest residential building on campus.
Instead, Hadley leads them somewhere grey and Georgian; based on the enormous stone beastie squatting over the pillared portico, this is Griffin, Tate’s dorm.
They’re out of bounds right now. Technically Briar isn’t a student and therefore can’t be reprimanded for scurrying around the school at night, but accompanying a scholar muddies the waters.
The Dame’s door is ajar when they tiptoe in, but it stays cracked, and she doesn’t leap out to intercept them.
Furtive air abandoned, Hadley barrels past and up the stairs before anybody can try to stop her, and Briar follows, taking the steps two at a time to keep up.
The carpet in here is maroon, but otherwise it looks like Eden with nicer cornicing and higher ceilings.
They only encounter one scholar on the stairs, a sleepy-eyed baby of a boy who just blinks at them both like they’re a dream; Hadley hits him with such a concentrated glare that he actually stumbles.
Tate’s door up on the second floor has been left on the latch.
Once Briar and Hadley are inside, the room suddenly feels very full, because it’s comically miniscule.
A single bed, desk and a chair, built-in storage along one wall and an extra clothes rail crammed in by the window, full of colour.
A lavender-scented candle is burning on the desk, a T-Rex record waiting to be turned over on the modern turntable.
The beige wall is mostly covered by a tapestry woven in cream and bright neons, a Moroccan rug on acid.
Tate and Westby are sitting on the narrow patch of faded red carpet surrounded by playing cards, Westby’s injured leg propped up on a cushion, and they are loudly, visibly drunk.
‘Go fish,’ Westby says, dropping half his cards.
‘West,’ Tate says, shaking his head. ‘This is gin rummy.’
‘Go gin, then.’ He squints up at Hadley and Briar. ‘Well met, prodigal daughter. Car daddy. Car . . . parent? Moominpapa. Have a nightcap.’
Tate gets to his feet, swaying slightly but sweetly determined, and fetches a clean towel for Hadley, who accepts it with a nod and starts rubbing at her sodden hair. Westby gropes around under the bed and comes up with a very large stainless-steel Thermos, and offers it to Briar. ‘Martini?’
‘It’s just plain vodka with olives in it,’ Tate confides.
When Briar accepts, all three of them look momentarily surprised, and they wonder how they’ve cultivated such a monkish aspect without meaning to.
Briar drinks. Smokes, even, on occasion.
They’re capable of fun. Besides - you can’t grow up queer in rural England without developing a few unhealthy coping mechanisms. Briar and Seb tried their first sips of wine at the age of nine, goaded by Seb’s father and traumatised by the taste; despite long hours on the farm and at the stables, Briar had occasionally found time to sit on a wall with Kay and the others passing around a squat, flat bottle of vodka and a joint.
There had been parties, briefly, with an undiscerning group from Dunts Briar just replaces the soiled dressing with another, and then it’s done.
‘Easy,’ Westby says. ‘Don’t know what you were making such a fuss about, Jones.’
‘They’ve abandoned the Baptism,’ Hadley says suddenly, still frowning at her phone. ‘They’re moving onto the second Trial.’
Westby is very slowly putting his trousers back on. ‘I’ll have another Martini, please, Adams.’
Briar is looking at Hadley. She’s typing again. Briar wonders who could possibly be on the other end of these missives. ‘Do you have signal in here?’
‘What? No. Bluetooth.’
‘Bluetooth?’
‘You just write out what you want to say in your notes app, screenshot and Bluetooth it,’ Tate explains. ‘West, we’re out of vodka. Can I interest you in . . . hard seltzer? Warm?’
‘Lord have mercy.’
‘But then you can only message people nearby?’ Briar prompts.
‘Yep. But you can pass stuff on in a chain. Sometimes some poor sod has to go and stand outside to get things into the next dorm.’
‘Nobody knows when it’s happening,’ Hadley says, in a conversation with herself. ‘I’ll try to weasel it out of Derbyshire.’
‘The county?’ says Briar.
‘The roommate,’ Westby replies. He checks his watch. ‘Shit. Nearly the Dameing Hour. Miller will dob me in immediately - he’s got no loyalty, that man.’
‘Maybe if you stopped stealing his mum’s lemon drizzle cakes from the cupboard,’ Tate says, and Westby sighs and shrugs, as if to say that this is unfortunate but unavoidable.
The rain is finally letting up outside. Hadley side-steps Westby’s clumsy, fatherly shoulder pat at the front door and sprints away, a surprisingly athletic blur of light brown, a doe darting across a field.
On the walk back to Eden, Westby starts out in fine spirits - humming as he staggers, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be sneaking - but as the dorm approaches, he lapses into silence. When they reach the stairs, he gets very grim about the mouth.
‘Do you need . . . ?’ Briar says, reaching for him already. Westby slaps their hand away, with startling force.
‘Oh, do fuck off, Jones,’ he says, with feeling. ‘I don’t need any more friends.’
It hurts, even though it shouldn’t. Maybe this place has thinned Briar’s skin.
No rejection has ever cut quite as deep as the twin stings of Seb and Temple - everything else since paled in comparison, barely registered at all - but proximity to both has them feeling like their heart is riding closer to the surface than usual.