I don’t know what Gemma’s parents do for a living, but my guess is they either own an airline or run a drugs cartel. We reach the end of the drive just as the sun finally dips and the sleek modern house in front of us, all steel and glass, glows like an ember. Trance beats pulse through the open door and sheer white light flashes in time at the windows.
I don’t want to go inside. This feels like what it is – an exploitative ego trip, an excuse for Gemma to insert herself into the narrative of your death – and it makes me feel nauseated. Plus, there are a lot of people already here: our year, lower-sixth kids, even a few of the cooler Year Elevens. I can see the masses heaving in the entrance hall and the thought of having to squeeze through them…
Can I turn back, El? Will you let me?
“Dylan?” Mike murmurs.
“I’m okay.”
The entrance hall is all marble, what I can see of it. Heads bob around me to the music that seems to be coming from one of the rooms off the hall. It all looks pretty minimalist, with hardly any ornaments or pictures, unless that stuff’s been packed away for the party. I’m guessing Gemma’s parents have been packed away too.
Some kids come over and say hello. A few even give me a hug and say how sorry they are, and what an amazing couple we made, even though their knowledge of us together is based on that single dance the night you died. Prisha Banerjee even bursts into tears and I end up having to console her. All this is okay, nice even, but there’s this other weird vibe going on – a kind of low-level hostility biding its time.
Mike steers us out of the entrance hall and into the kitchen. The Argyles have this Aga the size of a small family car and a huge wooden breakfast bar with a sink so big you could re-enact the Battle of Trafalgar in miniature, all seventy-four ships engaged. The music follows us into the room and I realize the beats are being pumped throughout the house.
It’s here, in this oversized kitchen, that I find you staring back at me, El.
Mike grabs my arm. “Mate.”
“I’m good,” I say, walking slowly over to you. “I’m okay.”
A massive free-standing poster of you dominates the room. It’s black-and-white and clearly a blown-up version of the headshot from our yearbook. Before I can reach you, this couple I don’t recognize come blundering over and stand either side of the poster, grinning like they’re in a fairground hall of mirrors. They cross their eyes and their buddy takes a picture. I just stand there. Then another group comes forward for a memento of the evening, and suddenly Ollie Reynolds is there, shouting and shoving them aside. Ollie’s pretty built, so no one argues.
“Dylan, I’m sorry you had to see that.” He comes over and places a hand on my shoulder. “This sucks on so many levels. I don’t know what that crazy cow is thinking. Hey, Mike.” He nods to his teammate. “Maybe we should all just get out of here? My cousin owns this bar in town and he can get us discounted beer, if you fancy it?”
I wonder vaguely why he’s turned up at all, if he disapproves so much, and especially with the whole him-being-Gemma’s-ex thing. I’ve always been on friendly terms with Ollie, mainly because he’s Mike’s footie pal. We don’t have much else in common though, and I can’t remember ever having a meaningful conversation with him.
“Maybe later,” Mike says. “Me and Dylan have to do something first.”
“Oh. Okay. But look…”
Ollie guides me like a geriatric over to the breakfast bar, where drinks have been set up. I’m still a bit stunned, and I can sense you behind me, El, smiling in that yearbook way – not too formal, not too cheeky. Ollie busies himself pouring us all a glass of this gloopy yellow stuff called advocaat. He orders us to down it and I gag. It tastes like custard.
“So.” He refills and chinks my glass. “I just wanted to tell you how cool Ellis was. He was, like, the coolest, wasn’t he, Mike?” He slaps a frowning, nodding Mike on the back. “Never seen a left foot like it. And in bloody pearls! Guy was a beast. And you were so lucky, Dylan, you know? I don’t give a crap who’s gay or straight or bi or whatever, I know love when I see it. Not bullshit love.” He bends down and breathes fumes into my ear. This clearly isn’t his first drink of the night. “I mean proper twist-your-heart-in-two kind of love. You had that, man. ’Mazing. ’Mazing.”
While he’s talking my gaze has wandered to the open kitchen door. Gemma is in the hallway. She’s wearing this beautiful black dress, slightly torn at the hip, as if she’s been mourning in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. She’s flapping at her face but I can’t see any tears. The committee girls are gathered around her, offering Kleenex and comforting without touching. She’s teetering slightly on her heels, so either she’s really wasted or she’s playing the role of grieving drunk. I think she’s seen me already but suddenly her head twitches my way and she makes quite a display of looking me up and down.
“Didn’t I say it was invitation only?” She sniffs and struts away, acolytes in tow.
I start for the kitchen door and Mike follows. Ollie’s still mid-flow, praising El’s keepy-uppy skills. He stumbles, literally and verbally, as he trails us through the hall and into this immense living room.
It’s like a mausoleum decorated by Versace. Every surface is laced and ribboned and crêped in black and white and there are duplicates of that blown-up yearbook picture everywhere. She’s trying to claim you, El. Remake you as she wanted you to be all along. You hated this kind of repetitive, lyric-less, meaningless music. You hated the idea that a single image could ever sum you up or define you. You even hated black and white, explaining once that your pencil sketches were all about gradations. How you pressed and held and feathered the pencil gave you an almost infinite variation of grey, each suggesting other colours.
“This is wrong,” I tell Mike. “All wrong.”
Maybe I said it louder than I intended. Maybe they’d been told to creep up and listen.
“You don’t get to have a say,” Katie Linton practically purrs in my ear. She circles us and comes to stand in front of me, committee sister Suzie Ford joining her. “You weren’t even invited.”
“He came with me,” Mike says.
The girls give him this long sympathetic look. “Oh, you can stay, Mike. This isn’t about you.”
“What the hell is it about then?” Ollie fumes.
“Mike, will you please call these two a taxi?” Suzie pleads. “They’re not wanted. Gemma’s put a lot of effort into tonight’s celebration of Ellis’s life. She loved El.”
“No,” I say quietly, “I loved El. None of you even knew him.”
