25. Freely, Yours, Forevermore
The atmosphere in the house is weird the next day, like there was a playbook for the night before but nothing for this unreal dreamscape of a morning, where all evidence of grief revels has been cleared away and Westby’s mother has locked herself in her bedroom, ignoring even the sternest uncle’s knocks.
They all wake up late, pick at the breakfast spread and then go outside to stand in the driveway under oppressive grey clouds and watch Westby smoke. Cousin Will is already out there, suffering in a polo shirt, roll-up in his fingers. Briar feels sick just at the smell of it.
‘She come out yet?’ he says, and Westby leans in so that he can light his cigarette on Will’s proffered lighter and then shakes his head. ‘’Kay. Hold this.’
Will hands his fresh rollie to his cousin and then approaches the house and hoists himself up onto the lowest windowsill. There are enough fancy crags and decorative trims on the facade of the house that he makes it up to the second floor with relative ease.
‘He boulders,’ Hadley says flatly. ‘He told me last night, about eight times.’
Will makes it to what must be Mrs Westby’s window, pulls it from ajar to fully open and disappears inside.
A few minutes later he swings back out and shimmies down a drainpipe, landing lightly on the ground and reclaiming his cigarette from Westby, tapping off the long tube of ash and sticking it back in his mouth.
‘Unlocked the door. My mum’s in there now, and Milly,’ he says. ‘Running her a bath.’
Westby nods. ‘Thanks.’
A Land Rover pulls up full of four fresh-faced, well-aftershaved young men, and Will greets each of them in turn with a vigorous handshake. ‘Good to see you, boys.’
‘Sorry about your old man,’ one of them says to Westby. ‘Hell of a golfer.’
‘That he was,’ Westby says, toneless.
‘We’re going to town to get barbecue stuff in a bit,’ Will says. He does not seem at all put off by the fact that this is a bereavement, not a bank holiday weekend - or the gathering evidence that it’s definitely going to rain. ‘You want to come?’
Westby shoves his hands into his corduroy pockets and scuffs at the ground with his shoe. ‘No. No, I think we’re going back to school.’
Tate touches his elbow. ‘West, are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ Westby says. ‘I’ll just go and say my farewells.’
Hadley, who’s been standing next to Briar in malevolent, hungover silence, suddenly pinches them very hard on the arm.
‘Jesus, what?’
‘Wait for me,’ she says. ‘And can you grab my bag? From upstairs? My jacket is on the desk.’
Briar feels too close to death to interrogate this. ‘Yeah. Fine.’
Westby’s goodbyes take quite a while. Briar chucks everybody’s bags into the back of the truck and then leans against the bonnet, picturing Westby going from uncle to uncle, sharing restaurant recommendations and fielding questions about priceless and/or sentimental items that may or may not be in his dad’s will, getting air kisses from well-highlighted vest wives and consolatory fist bumps from well-meaning cousins.
Hadley has vanished, and hasn’t resurfaced by the time everyone’s gathered at the car.
‘She said . . .’ Briar isn’t actually sure what she said. ‘I don’t know where she is.’
Westby sets off with steely determination, and the others follow him around to the back of the house, where a small crowd of serious men are gathered on the striped, verdant lawn, standing in little groups or sitting on curlicued iron garden chairs with cigars in their hands, presumably talking Business.
Westby’s mother exits the house holding an iced drink, wearing enormous sunglasses and deep in conversation with the drooping man from the armchair.
They spot Hadley too, talking to one of the new arrivals from the Land Rover, a guy with a sweep of dark hair in a red-chequered shirt and pale chinos who looks to be in his mid-twenties.
She catches Westby’s eye and holds up a finger, wait, without a hint of apology.
‘What the fuck is she playing at?’ Westby says irritably. ‘He’s my third cousin or something, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation. I want to go.’
They all watch as she leans over to say something in the man’s ear, and then she’s practically skipping across the lawn towards them.
‘We should go,’ she says, as if they haven’t all been waiting for her.
‘Excuse me everybody,’ the guy she’s just abandoned says, tapping his signet ring on his water glass to get everyone’s attention. ‘If I could just have a minute of your time.’
People dutifully stop talking, although the men his age all look faintly amused. ‘What the fuck, Webber? Are you going to propose? Give a man some warning.’
There’s raucous, ribald laughter at the thought of a man proposing to another man. Briar hates everyone here so much it’s like they can taste it.
Webber doesn’t laugh. Instead, he puts the water glass down on the nearest table, and then very calmly and deliberately unbuckles his belt. There are a couple of wolf-whistles from his peers, and Briar hears Mrs Westby say ‘Oh, for God’s sake’ as she heads back inside.
‘Seriously,’ Hadley says, with sing-song urgency, tugging on Westby’s arm. ‘Let’s go.’
Webber is facing mostly away from them, towards the house, so it takes Briar a moment to realise what’s happening.
Down go his trousers, and then he’s reaching for his shirt, and there’s a chorus of horrified groans and shouts as he starts to pull down his underwear, not stopping until he’s completely naked.
His friends look amused, if baffled, but some of the older men are blatantly appalled.
Westby sighs, puts his sunglasses on and heads for the car. Briar is the last to leave, so they’re treated to the moment one of Webber’s friends throws a jumper in his direction, which he happily tosses aside.
‘That’s the guy,’ Hadley says breathlessly, as they get into the car. ‘The undercover wanker from when I was a pip. Recognised him when he got out of the car. He always was a shitty scholar.’
‘What did you do to him?’ Briar says, starting the engine, feeling like the world’s most slow-moving getaway driver.
Hadley grins in the rear-view. ‘Dispensed a little justice.’ She pauses, then leans forward to Westby, who’s motionless in the passenger seat. ‘Sorry, West. I know this is about your dad.’
‘It’s fine,’ he says dully. ‘Livened things up. Might even invite you to the funeral.’
On the drive back, the car is quiet until they’re halfway down the motorway, when Westby connects his phone to the speakers and insists on blasting a seven-minute Enya remix from YouTube on repeat eight times, only stopping when he loses signal.
Briar is running on an undercurrent of anxiety as steady as the rumble of the engine, desperate to be back at Temple, terrified of what they’ll find there. There’s only one person who can field their questions, but Briar’s not sure they want to hear the answers.
When they finally reach the security gate, and Briar has fished out their pass and convinced the unfamiliar guard that they’re allowed in the staff car park, the sky has cleared.
It’s the kind of golden afternoon that usually sings in Briar’s veins, sunlight blinking through soft-swaying trees and clouds of gnats dancing above the tall grass, the reason Going Outside was invented.
The others disperse with their things, Tate glancing back to see if Briar is following and then lifting a hand in a half-wave when he realises that they aren’t.
Briar’s not heading back to Eden yet, or to immediately return their phone to Eugenia, as promised. They can’t. Not until they know.
A boy in tennis whites almost bumps into Briar on the lawn, but skirts out of the way at the last minute, like they’re a piece of furniture that might bruise a hip; on the stairs at Hawthorn, Briar keeps their gaze down and marches steadily upwards to the fourth floor.
The nerves only kick in then. Some of these rooms are currently occupied, full of older scholars at their leisure, most of the doors closed but a few propped open so that Briar catches glimpses of long-trousered legs, argyle socks and steaming cups of tea as they pass.
Briar raps on the door at the end of the hall. No answer. A scholar with wet hair and a towel slung around his neck a few doors down pokes his head out, curious.
‘What d’you want?’ he says.
‘Is he . . . ?’ Briar gestures towards the door, and the scholar sighs.
‘He’s getting ready with the others,’ he says. ‘Duh.’ He vanishes back into his room.
Briar knocks again, then glances down the corridor, locates the correct key and unlocks the door.
All is as they last left it, except for the copy of Earthsea, which is now sitting on the slim table by Bastian’s bed.
Briar strides over to the dresser, drops to their knees and starts methodically opening each drawer, sifting through the contents with clumsy fingers.
It’s mostly school-related stuff: piles of neatly labelled notebooks, Annals IV by Cornelius Tacitus, a couple of legal dictionaries.
It’s only when Briar reaches the second from last that they discover the drawer packed with personal effects.
Letters from home tucked back into their envelopes, the Temple address inked in Mrs Wolfe’s looping, erratic scrawl, and then, the motherlode - expensive journals locked shut with proper numbered tumblers, a far cry from the little padlocks that kept the diaries of Seb’s youth from prying eyes.
Those locks would rip straight off, if Briar applied enough pressure. They weigh one in their hand - and then find that they can’t do it. That’s good, probably. Perhaps it’s proof that Briar is - was - a decent person.
Under the last diary there’s a plain, thin blue notebook with Bastian’s ten-year-old handwriting on it that practically falls open as they pull it out. Briar doesn’t try particularly hard not to read it.