‘You okay?’ Theo asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  Theo hesitates for a moment. Across the room, Darcy seems like he always does – distant and completely unobtainable. He is not goading Theo about fucking in a remote crypt or weeping in his arms. He has become detached again.

  This version of Darcy is intimidating. Still. He had kissed Theo. The thought of Theo with other people had made him lose his goddamn mind.

  Theo slides from his bed and into Darcy’s. Darcy lets out a long breath. Every part of his body is rigid next to Theo’s. His heart beats too quickly beneath his skin. Darcy’s breath catches and Theo waits for him to retreat, to say something gaudy and provocative. Instead, he brings up one long-fingered hand and runs it through Theo’s hair. The feeling of his hand is exquisite. Those fingers.

  Slowly, tentatively, Darcy wraps his arms around Theo, pulling Theo in against his chest so that their bodies are touching, Darcy’s legs and arms so much longer than Theo’s. Darcy kisses Theo, a sort of desperate, hungry kiss that takes Theo’s breath away. It feels different from the lonely island. Darcy doesn’t feel jagged and out of control. He feels like he always has in those fleeting moments when Theo’s been close to him.

  Darcy tugs Theo’s t-shirt off and then pulls off his own. Darcy feels cool against Theo’s skin. He runs his hands over Theo’s body and Theo holds his breath, his brain blank. Wordless. Darcy kisses a tentative line across Theo’s ribs. Darcy, who is so self-contained that a single finger trailing across Theo’s skin is almost enough to make Theo pass out. Theo reaches for Darcy, cupping his face, and Darcy stops breathing. His body, suddenly poised for flight. Theo recognises it – his own body still reacts the same way if he is trapped indoors with too many people. ‘Darcy …’

  ‘Shh.’ Darcy’s hand slips beneath the band of Theo’s boxers and Theo stares at the ceiling, shocked and insensate, as Darcy’s hand finds an exquisite rhythm; as Darcy bends low over him. His lips brushing Theo’s cheek, his forehead, his lips. Darcy, in his room. Darcy, lying next to him. Darcy, fucking touching him. Darcy. This is Darcy.

  ‘God,’ Theo mutters, the impossibility of it. Darcy presses against him, achingly hard. Theo’s fingers drag at the couch cushions, the pooling sheets. His fingers drag at Darcy’s hair, his back, his face. That face. Darcy’s face.

  For a time, there is only sound. Their heavy breathing, pounding hearts. The rustle of small, frenzied motion. And then he finds himself cresting, unable to hold back. He shivers, biting down on Darcy’s shoulder to stop himself from crying out. For a moment, his vision wavers. He has no thoughts. He slowly becomes aware of Darcy sitting a little distance away on his bed, one hand held to the place on his shoulder where Theo had pressed his teeth.

  Theo’s breath is still coming hard. He props himself up on an elbow. Can see Darcy’s pupils huge in the half-light of summer night. Theo sits up more fully, trying to force his stunned and sluggish mind to work the way that he needs it to. ‘Why are you up there?’ he asks, although as he speaks, he knows. He knows. And he hates himself for being so careless; for treating Darcy like anyone else; someone without Darcy’s scars.

  Darcy slowly brings his hands to his face, his whole body shuddering with the echoes of something that he cannot voice. Will probably never be able to voice. There is, Theo thinks, a certain way in which the past casts shadows into the present. And right now they’re both sitting in the cold and the dark of the thing that they have never discussed aloud, but which Theo knows. Which Darcy knows he knows.

  And Theo had fucking bitten him.

  Theo rises from the floor and sits on the bed, with that particular distance between them. The same as always. Distance. Stillness. The sadness that hits Theo then is bruising and endless.

  ‘I thought I could. But I can’t.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Theo says. He sits on his hands, desperate to draw Darcy to him. To soothe those unfathomable, wordless hurts. ‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have … I didn’t think …’

  ‘My brain’s broken,’ Darcy whispers then, his voice suddenly tremulous. It’s a voice Theo has never heard him use before.

  ‘Your brain’s not broken,’ Theo says forcefully. ‘Please. Come here. Can we … I want to …’ Theo swallows, his voice dropping into a whisper. ‘Come back to me.’

  Darcy rises. He picks up his phone from the bedside table. A moment of stillness before he throws it across the room. It breaks. He reaches for his wallet, next – still in the back pocket of his jeans. He reaches for his shoe. Theo does not stop him. Finally, Darcy curls up on his cushion-bed, his back to Theo. Theo counts the vertebrae of Darcy’s spine. The narrow body, all sinew and bone.

  Theo reaches out to touch Darcy’s back, those delicate bones, but Darcy jerks violently. Theo runs his hands through his hair. ‘Darcy …’

  ‘Just don’t. Just … leave me alone. Please. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Is that really what you –’

  ‘Yes!’ Darcy snaps. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t stay.’

  Theo closes his eyes. ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘No.’ A shuddering breath. ‘I can’t.’

  It starts when they’re still waiting to be triaged. The nurse explains that it will be a long wait – her injury is not life-threatening – and that the accident and emergency department is unusually busy. Min tries to call Darcy, but he doesn’t answer. She sends him text messages but he doesn’t answer those, either.

  They sit. Min considers, in great detail, all the things she’s going to do to Darcy when she gets her hands on him. Darcy and his inability to check his fucking phone. Luda gets them crisps from the vending machine. She sits down next to Min and then quickly stands up. ‘Stop it,’ she hisses. A few people look around.

  ‘Mum,’ says Min. She tugs at Luda’s sleeve. ‘Mum.’

  Luda looks at her, sits back down and opens the packet of crisps. ‘I’ve always liked salt and vinegar best,’ she says. ‘I have. Why would I lie? Answer me that. Why would I lie?’

  ‘Mum,’ says Min. ‘You can’t talk like that. Not here.’

  Luda looks at her, surprised. ‘Like what?’

  ‘To … Tristan or whoever.’

  ‘It’s not Tristan – it’s your father,’ Luda says. Then she turns abruptly to the empty corner of the room. ‘I’m not!’ she says, very loudly.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Min says, to the others in the waiting room. ‘She’s fine. I promise. She’s fine.’ She says it until her throat feels raw. The taste of her own swallowed terror. It’s your father. ‘She’s fine,’ she says when the nurses come out to triage her mother. ‘She’s fine,’ she says as she explains her mother’s accident – the water, the brain injury, the disturbances she’d experienced since. Luda is triaged. Her meds are reviewed.

  Min’s ankle throbs.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Min says and finds herself swallowing hard, feeling almost on the verge of tears. A shimmer, in the corner of the room. Imagined. She’s sure. Imagined. Imagined. For a moment, she can’t breathe.

  Tristan-from-the-in-between sits on the arm of Cassandra’s chair. Or perhaps it is a dream. Tristan’s voice is grave. ‘You can’t get there, can you?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Seannay.’

  ‘No. I could, long ago. But not anymore. Not for a long time.’

  ‘So … no trips to London?’

  ‘No trips to London.’

  He frowns. ‘What about boats?’

  ‘The boundary is the water line. No boats.’

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me?’ he asks.

  Cassandra smiles at him, eyes half closed. ‘I don’t know. Am I?’

  ‘Please. Enough. What do they mean?’

  ‘You’re the one who decided that they were whales, Tristan,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  She cracks an eye open. ‘Women back then were not taught how to write. Not even our own names.’

  Tristan-from-the-in-between nods once, grimly.

  ‘We never called in the whales,’ says Cassandra. ‘They just came in sometimes, same as they still do. The signs in the house were our version of signatures turned into witch marks. We kept ourselves safe.’

  ‘From what?’ Tristan-from-the-in-between asks.

  ‘What do women always need to keep each other safe from?’

  Tristan nods sadly. And he reaches for her hand. It is not a physical touch, but she feels the boundaries of him. Dreaming, imagined, or otherwise. They don’t say anything else.

  Darcy comes back to the ghost house with his bag slung over his shoulder. The feel of Theo’s teeth. The sudden flood of warmth against Darcy’s wrist. Darcy had known, deep down, that this was not something he could ever have. But he had hoped (God, he had hoped) that being with Theo would be enough to make it feel like something utterly different.

  Seannay feels hazy and unchanging. Luda wades after razor clams in the water. Min’s sitting at the kitchen table, watching their mother through the window.

  ‘She says that Tristan’s keeping an eye on me,’ Min says. She glances around the empty room and shudders. ‘That he’ll fetch her if I need her. I can’t stand it, Darcy.’

  Darcy stares at Min’s ankle. ‘How’d you do it?’

  ‘I tripped.’ Min looks at him.

  ‘Is it hurting?’

  ‘Not really. Not now. As long as I don’t bang it around too much.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘My phone’s broken.’ He holds it up. The shattered screen. She looks at his clenched fist; notes the way one of his feet taps on the floor. He can feel her looking at his scars. ‘What happened?’ she asks.

  Darcy runs his hands over his face. Leaves them there, over his eyes.

  ‘Did you …’

  ‘Don’t, Min.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Darcy glances up at her. He can tell from her puzzled expression that his own is hard to read, even for her, who has spent so much of her life reading his face. Or trying to. ‘Nothing. Nothing happened,’ he says, his voice wretched. ‘Nothing will ever happen.’

  ‘God, Darcy. Can’t you just …’ She waves her arms around. ‘He loves you.’

  Darcy looks at her, then. At her frowning, serious face. He can feel his eyes growing glassy, stinging. ‘What does that even mean?’ he whispers.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. I just know that it’s true and that it means something.’

  He shakes his head, startling at the feel of Min’s hand suddenly resting on his back.

  ‘He loves you,’ she says again, a little helplessly.

  ‘I’m not ever going to be enough for him,’ Darcy says, so quietly and quickly that he’s not sure Min even hears him. He squeezes his eyes shut, forcing out the words. ‘I can’t … and he wants … he needs …’

  ‘Do you want …?’

  ‘God, Min!’ He shrugs her hand off. ‘Don’t, okay?’ A long pause. He drags his hands back over his face, so that his words are muffled. ‘Yes, I want … but I can’t when … It’s too much when I …’

  He jumps when he feels Min’s arms around him. A hug, he realises. ‘I’m sorry, Darcy,’ she says into his hair. She holds him like that and, exhausted, defeated (grateful) he lets her.

  Theo would keep fighting for Darcy, but what’s the point of that when Darcy does not want him to fight? Does not want him at all. What’s the point of fighting when all it ever does is drive Darcy further away? Perhaps this deep connection he’s always been so certain of is imagined. And that last time … Perhaps Darcy had just wanted to see what it was like. And maybe – Theo swallows – maybe he just didn’t want Theo.

  Theo wants Darcy to have everything, even if it’s not with Theo. He’s just not sure how to help; what to do. His mind blurs and fogs the more he tries to think of what comes next.

  He slumps onto the couch in the little house he shares with Iris. He drinks cola, wincing at the bubbles and chemical taste. Makes himself a tea instead. Dark, like salt water after a storm. How the hell is he meant to do anything useful when Darcy won’t let him close enough to try?

  Min’s ankle keeps her awake. She sleeps in the caravan because the ghost house is too full of voices and movement. She can tolerate it during the day, but at night the sounds startle her too much for sleep. Luda talking to her ghosts. Arguing with them. Three broken bones. If Min falls asleep and moves her ankle while she dreams, the pain is sharp – white-hot. She sleeps in short patches.

  Darcy sleeps in the caravan with her. She sleeps in his freshly made bed at one end and he sleeps on the bench seat at the other. It is like the loft, with its spill of witch marks, warding off the dark.

  ‘Min,’ he says.

  She is roused easily from her shallow, restless sleep. ‘What?’

  A pause. ‘I’ve been shit to you, haven’t I?’

  She frowns, props herself up on the pillows. ‘What?’

  ‘Just … in general.’

  She considers this, blinking. ‘What?’

  ‘I was … I don’t even know if you’re seeing anyone. Or who you’re friends with. Or if you’re still in touch with that dickhead you were going out with when we first moved here.’

  ‘Kole.’

  ‘Kole. It’s … I only ever think about myself.’

  Min thinks about trying to lever herself up and crossing the caravan, but she decides this is probably a conversation that’s easier to have at a distance. ‘Yeah, look,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to argue that you’re not a self-centred arsehole a lot of the time, but I think you’ve had reason to be. With Dad and everything …’

  ‘That was all my fault.’ His voice is rigid.

  ‘What? What was?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it, okay? It’s nothing.’

  ‘Alright.’ She pauses. ‘I never went out with Kole.’

  ‘It’s not that I’m not interested in your life, Min. I just …’

  ‘Jesus, where’s this coming from?’ But she knows. She knows. Darcy, listing all of the ways that he is terrible and unworthy. Darcy, listing all the ways that make it impossible for Theo to actually love him. Min feels a flare of anger at this. It’s always about Darcy. Even when it’s not.

  ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ he asks, his voice small.

  For a moment, Min feels disoriented, like she’s accidentally started a conversation with a stranger. Her anger gutters. She lies back down on the bed and stares up at the curved ceiling. ‘No.’

  ‘Is there anyone you …’ He trails off. She can practically feel him reddening from across the caravan. She’s never encountered anyone who flushes with awkwardness the way Darcy does.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t … want that.’

  There is a silence as he processes this. ‘None of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘So Ewan …’

  ‘Darcy! No! He’s my friend.’

  ‘And Kole told everyone that you …’

  She sighs. ‘Of course he told people that. But I didn’t. He told me I was hot and I got pissed at him and he thought it was because of what he’d done to Theo.’

  ‘Theo’s black eye?’ Darcy asks, his voice pained. Of course Darcy remembers. ‘That was Kole?’

  ‘Well, him and a bunch of hostel boys, I think.’

  ‘So … hang on. You got pissed because he told you that you were hot?’

  ‘It was how he said it, okay?’

  Darcy begins to laugh, loudly and helplessly. ‘Hot,’ he gasps out, and then collapses into full giggling. It’s as unfamiliar as everything else, the way he’d laughed when he was very young. It is edged, now, with hysteria. And yet Min finds herself bursting into giggles too. At the absurdity of everything. At the simple joy of Darcy wanting to know her.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  JULY (THEIR THIRD YEAR)

  Darcy checks the vats of barley at the brewery without properly seeing them. Thinking about Min, who doesn’t want what he is tearing himself up over. His mother, who is a half-dead thing.

  Thinking, mostly, of Theo. Thinking of everything he wants. Wanted. Thinking and hating himself and working and working and not stopping until Tyler, the red-faced brewery manager, touches his arm. ‘Your shift finished an hour ago.’

  Min tries to hold on to giggling with Darcy in the caravan, but it slips away like a dream. She loses the feeling of it within a day. Things sliding into place in a way that makes her whole body shudder.

  She hadn’t realised.

  She hadn’t known.

  She is engulfed by thoughts of her mother’s ghosts.

  The Holden. The echoing crack. The birds against the sky. And if she manages to press all of that away, she is instead engulfed by the car, the shadow of whales.

  The sound of metal on wood.

  The birds.

  The white-hot pain of her ankle. The ghosts. The ghosts. The ghosts.

  Her father’s incandescent rage that day. They had been driving to the bank manager’s house. Sometimes her dreams bleed into wakefulness and she finds herself blinking up at the caravan’s ceiling. She wants Cassandra.

  A shimmer. Her throat. The birds. The stony pain of a broken bone.

  Min asks Ewan to drive her to Cassandra’s house on the hill and he does, muttering under his breath. Inside Cassandra’s warm front room, Min just about flings herself into Cassandra’s lap. ‘I didn’t know,’ Min says. ‘I didn’t think.’

  She feels tiny, burrowed desperately against Cassandra’s blouse. She is terrified that Darcy will hate her and that it will hurt so much more after these brief moments of connection. Wounded and laughing in the midnight sun. ‘I didn’t see what I should have seen, Cass. I didn’t see any of it.’

  And Cassandra lets Min trail tears and snot across her blouse and her cardigan. She strokes Min’s hair. And Min talks and feels the passing of knowing between them. She senses the moment when Cassandra understands. The bruising sorrow for them all comes after.