Allan

Waltham Brinkley. I watch the gaps between the platform signs grow longer as the train slows down, and once we're fully stopped, I grab my rucksack and head slowly for the nearest door. Very slowly.

There is, sadly, little chance of the train moving off again before I disembark. These little shuttle services sit out here at the end of the line for up to half an hour before they set off back to High Wycombe again.

With heavy feet, I drop down onto the platform and into the lamp-studded darkness and the freezing rain. Great. Just great. I want to be here so little that these familiar surroundings seem almost alien. I don't belong here anymore. Everything's different now, and there's no going back, and yet here I am, coming back. I've left something very important behind in London. I can feel the lack trying to drag me backwards, back to the train, back to Richard.

Outside the station, the extent of the foul weather makes itself known as a gust smacks ice-heavy water straight into my face as if it's angry with me. Maybe it thinks I should go back to Stepney too.

For some reason it always seems to be raining when I come back from my London jaunts, but it's rarely this bad. Were my life a film, I'd be criticising the director at this point for belabouring the metaphor. I knowI'm miserable about being back at school; the emphasis really isn't needed. I pull my rucksack on properly, zip up my jacket to the very top, and tug my collar up. Then I head down Station Road to the High Street.

The shop windows have been increasingly full of Christmas goods for a few weeks now. As the season has darkened, the displays have got brighter and more opulent as if in deliberate contrast to the 'no dusk, no dawn, no proper time of day' outside. As opulent as a well-off backwater village gets, anyway, which seems to mean a selection of Norfolk Lavender products, rather a lot of Swarovski Crystal, and all the usual shop window contents, only bedded in cotton wool and covered in tinsel.

I'm going to spend all of the Christmas hols at Richard's, I've decided. I don't care what lies I have to tell to achieve this. Hell, my parents will be glad not to have me underfoot while they hold their many parties and gatherings, I'm sure. I spent a lot of train time thinking about Christmas, Llewellyn style, imagining it and no doubt romanticising in an appallingly Dickensian fashion.

When I was little, I used to fantasise about the proper family Christmases I saw in films and television programs in the same way that other children would dream of being a princess or astronaut, or even being let loose in a sweet shop. That makes me sound rather tragic, I know, but it's still true. Christmas was a symbol of perfection to me, a cornucopia of everything I didn't have. I think it maybe still is.

I'm sure the Llewellyns do it all though, all those wonderful family-based traditions that my parents reject as plebeian. I mean, Martha makes trifle, proper, heavenly trifle. Therefore she can surely be relied upon to ensure the perfect Yule too, with crackers and roast beef -- or a turkey, as that's more standard now, isn't it? -- and mulled wine and charades, and silver sixpences in the Christmas pudding, and even the Queen's speech to sleepily mock when stuffed silly.

Well, perhaps not the sixpences; they were withdrawn from use years before I was even born, but the rest of it. I'm sure she'll make sure the rest happens. But even if she doesn't, two weeks with Richard will be enough of a gift for all of the Christmases I've lived through so far put together.

Two weeks. Sharing his bed for two weeks, a fortnight of fucking... Oh! I wonder if I can afford to get a pair of tickets for a West End panto? Rich wouldn't fall asleep during a rowdy pantomime, surely. They're probably all sold out already; it's very late to be booking such things. It must be worth a try though. I'll have to borrow from Heath, I think, and pay him back out of next term's allowance.

I turn from the main road into Gorse Lane, and as I leave the village, a car passes me, spraying puddle water up my legs in a numbing splatter. It's not really the driver's fault. The lane narrows quickly as it meanders up the hill towards Montgomery, and I'm more worried about being seen than the impossibility of staying dry. The lane is badly lit; something many school council agenda items have concerned. I've been meaning to buy one of those fluorescent sashes cyclists wear, but haven't got around to it yet. My shirt is whitish. I pull it out and make sure it's showing below the black of my jacket.

I wonder if Richard is missing me yet. Assuming he's going to miss me at all, of course, but he seemed so reluctant to say goodbye that surely he will.

Our morning together was weighted with the awareness of ending from the moment we woke up. I woke first, and as Richard seemed to be having some kind of nasty dream, I kissed him awake. If he had been having a nightmare, he soon forgot it as we began sleepily re-exploring each other's bodies. And then again, later and quite wonderfully, in Mel's spacious shower, but it was a bittersweet flavour of wonderful.

The closer we got to the afternoon, the quieter we both became and the more we just touched each other. Only little touches, a brush of fingers or a ruffle of hair, we weren't exactly clinging to each other. I had a feeling that we could cling, however, were we less controlled. I think I wanted to at one level. Yes, I did. It's so hard to believe we've only known each other a fortnight.

We hardly spoke a word on the way to Paddington, just muttered hurried promises to write. I've already planned several paragraphs for as soon as I can get to my computer.

The rain is getting through my jacket somehow. Agreed, I bought it for looks, not practicality, but water shouldn't be able to get through leather quite so easily, should it? The problem is my hair, I realise; the ends are inside my collar and acting as a gutter pipe for all the rain falling on my head. Yuck. I'm looking forward to toasting myself on the radiator in the dorm.

The school looms large ahead of me at the top of the hill, the lights bright even in this gloom. With its turrets and pointed roofs, it's always looked rather gothic, like something out of a Victorian melodrama, but the barricades hide a warm and friendly place in the main. I wonder how Heath's weekend has been. I hope he's in a good mood as there's so much I want to share.

I kick at a pile of leaves and pinecones collected under one of the few lampposts along the lane, sending wet sparks of reflected light scattering.

It's nowhere near as late as it feels, and the school gates are still open. I trudge in, avoiding the big puddle that always builds around the dip in the tarmac near the big oak, and heading straight for Frampton House, which is set to the left of the main building and is altogether less grand. Two younger boys emerge from the door as I approach. They stare at me with odd expressions, so I glare back.

Have I forgotten to hide some incriminating evidence? Not unless Richard gave me a love bite without me noticing, which seems unlikely. Not that they'd be able to see it out here, anyway. I suppose it must be my general similarity to a drowned rat that's attracting their attention.

Inside, it's bright and warm; the bulky old radiator in the entrance hall is always hot enough to cook eggs on at this time of year. Shaking my head like a dog, I send water droplets flying. I hear the quiet patter the last few make on the tiles in the silence after I stop.

There's no one around in the study; I suspect all the prefects are upstairs watching television in the boys' common room. It's altogether much cosier there than the study, which is a wide, tall ceilinged room with a strange echoey effect when you talk. The staff don't seem to like it much either.

I sign myself back in. The big clock on the wall says it's only 6:30. It feels closer to midnight. A quick glance at the notice boards reveals nothing that wasn't there on Friday beyond a few sporting results -- we lost -- so I head upstairs, two at a time.

Passing by the common room, I almost walk straight into William Platter. "Fairchild!" he says guiltily. At least, he looks decidedly guilty to me.

"Yes?"

"Oh, nothing. I just didn't expect to see you. Must dash, Hakashi's waiting for me!" And with that he's past me and gone.

That was odd. I wonder what I almost caught him up to there to make him react like that. Shrugging, I continue on to my dorm. When I try the handle, it's unlocked; I release a little sigh of relief. I really hadn't wanted to interrupt Heath and Corthbolt again.

Inside, the first thing I notice is that my computer is inexplicably missing from my desk. The second thing I see is Heath, sitting curled up tight on top of his bed, staring at me with a blotchy wet face.

"Er," I say intelligently.

"Shut the door," Heath hisses, so I do. He studies me miserably for a few moments and then shudders. "You have to go to see Bish. You were meant to go there first."

"W-why?" Something strange seems to be happening to my skin under my wet clothes. It's crawling with spreading ice crystals, like I'm frosting over. "What's happened?"

Not looking at me, Heath says in a harsh whisper, "He knows everything, knows all of it. I'm not allowed to talk to you. Not yet. You have to go to him now."

Instead, I stumble over and sit beside Heath, putting a hand on his knee. "Tell me what's happened. What does Bish know precisely?" Please, let Heath be exaggerating.

He cranes his head away from me, although his body seems glued into its tight curl. "I'm not allowed to tell you."

"But you're going to anyway, aren't you?" I take hold of his shoulders and try to turn him towards me. There's a hard lump forming in the pit of my stomach as cold as the frost on my skin. "Come on, Heath. You have to give me some warning of what's going on. You've got me terrified here."

"Oh lord, I'm sorry!" Health wails and then throws himself at me. "It's all my fault. I've ruined everything for all of us. It's all over. I've destroyed us all."

I pat him uneasily on his back as he sobs on my shoulder. "It's surely not as bad as all that." Please, let it not be as bad as that. No, it won't be. Heath tends towards exaggeration and drama. It will be all right. "Tell me what happened and let me think it though."

Heath moves his face against my leather jacket. "Bish saw into your box."

"My...? You mean my safe box?" I feel Heath nod. "As in the locked safe box under my bed?"

"It wasn't..."

"It wasn't what? Locked? Or under my bed?" I already know the answer. Oh, Heath. What have you done to me?

"Either thing. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry, Allan."

"Yes, we covered that," I say waspishly, pushing him back. His eyes skate over my face as if I'm made of ice, which, by a startling coincidence, is just how I feel. "Am I to understand that you've been plundering my supplies again and somehow Bish saw?"

"He walked in just as Chris was leaving," Heath says, curling himself up again away from me. "I hadn't had a chance to tidy up yet. I wasn't even fully dressed. He sat on your bed to talk to me, and... it was beside him. I saw him look and tried to distract him, but that just seemed to make him more suspicious. Allan, I'd give anything to make this not have happened. Anything."

Mentally, I run through what was in my box: lube, of course, which was what Heath had been after, but also my corset and boots, gay mags -- not porn but Attitude and reFresh -- and, oh hell, that butt plug I bought months ago and have never had the courage to use. It's still in its packaging, but that won't save me. I'll never hear the end of this from Bish. I'll become one of his 'special cases'. I'll have to see that senile old psychiatrist the school drags in at times like these...

Oh fuck, Bish will send a letter home. He'll have to. I am so utterly buggered.

"Did he take it all?" I ask Heath in a voice that isn't my own.

He's staring at me with swollen eyes, and he nods in response to my question. "It was your computer that condemned us, of course."

"My computer...?" I look around at my naked desk, and suddenly the full horror of the situation hits me. Part of me has known since I walked in, but it was too awful to consider. Even now, I still can't believe this is happening.

I'm always so careful not to leave anything incriminating on my hard drive, but now I don't know why I ever bothered. Bish would hardly need to fish around the back ways and secret alleys of my 160 megabytes when all he had to do was open my browser. I set GMail to be my home page early last week when checking for Richard's emails took precedence over everything else. So the browser would open the page immediately... and the cookie would log Bish in.

He will have seen it all. Groaning gutturally, I drop my head into my hands. "I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead."

"We all are, dear boy," Heath says sadly. "Chris and I have been forbidden any contact at all while they discuss our futures with our respective parents."

"I'm so dead," I say dully. "How can I still be breathing?"

They know about everything: my London trips, my homosexuality, my kinks and one night stands, and my lies. There's no get out of jail free card that can save me from this one. No one can rescue me from what's coming. I'm going down so hard and fast I'll give some poor demon a concussion when I arrive in hell.

"You should go," Heath says, crying again. He's such a Fotherington-Thomas. I stare at him, feeling my lip curl. You don't see me crying, do you? And I'm dead...

"What's the point?" I ask a little viciously. "I know I'm expelled. I'm out. Gone. My father will..." My thoughts stop dead. I simply can't imagine what he'll do. This is his worst nightmare, surely. If the Press... Oh Christ.

I'll never see Richard again.

Heath reaches out and nervously pats at my hair. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

It's nice of him, I suppose, to take all the blame like this when my emails have wrecked his love life. They won't expel him, I don't think, unless that's what his father wants. But he and Corthbolt will be kept firmly apart now; they'll be watched all the time. Corthbolt will lose his prefect status. If he'd waited to leave until Heath had tidied up this would never have happened, so I hope he's suffering now. There's something wrong with my thoughts. They feel like insects skittering over a frozen pond.

I watch my hand reach out to Heath and tug him to me. That's when the door opens. No one knocked first.

"Hello, my lovely sissy boys," says a jolly voice. "Caesar wants some lion food, any takers?" It's Kieran Wilberforce, our resident rugby star. As the Frampton House prefects go, he isn't the worst one Bish could have sent. He has a streak of decency underneath all the bluster and sports king confidence. "Sissy number one, how about you?"

That would be me, I assume. I rise from Heath's bed into air that's suddenly thick and hard to move through. My voice sounds very far away when I say, "Don't I get a last request?" I can see myself in Heath's mirror; my face seems to have forgotten how to form an expression.

Wilberforce chuckles. "Look at it this way, Fairchild. You'll be free of this place five months earlier than the rest of us. Some would think that cause for celebration. Come on. It's always best to get these things over and done with."

So I am getting expelled. I'm not sure why his words hit me like multiple blows; I'd already worked that out, hadn't I? And he's right. I'm only prolonging the agony. The trouble is, I don't see any let up of the agony even after this interview with Bish is over. That's my bright hard future, my brave new anguish. The good times rolled and then rolled away. The party's over now.

I think I may be hysterical behind my blank mask of a face.

My wet clothes are heavy and clammy. I take off my leather jacket, leaving it on the bed, before picking up Bish's copy of Romeo and Juliet and following Wilberforce out of the room. I don't look back at Heath. And so falls Sodom.

I say nothing on the way to Bish's office. After Wilberforce leads me, the condemned man, inside, I put the book down on one of the piles and take the hard chair in front of the desk without being told. I know my place. Bish is writing something behind the battlements of books, his silver pen scraping audibly on the paper. He doesn't look up until Wilberforce has left, shutting the door behind him without a word.

Bish puts his pen down in a deliberate fashion, positioning it 'just so' beside his desk lamp. He leans forward then, elbows on the desk and fingers templed, and he studies me. His face looks grim as if he's been bereaved. I look down, concentrating on the edge of his desk, tracing the wood grain with my eyes.

He doesn't talk for what feels like five minutes or more. I don't look up; I can't. Finally he sighs and says, "It isn't so much what you have done, Allan Fairchild, however disgraceful your behaviour. No, what is grieving me most are your lies. I have shown you a substantial level of consideration, trust, and yes, kindness, and you have repaid me with lies. Hmph."

I say nothing, although I manage to move my gaze to somewhere in the approximate region of his face.

"I can't remember the last time I was this disappointed in a boy. Truly."

I still say nothing as what is there I can say? He's right. He's right about it all. I have behaved appallingly, and the worst of my sins is the way I have treated him, who has tried so hard in his own distant way to look after me, to care for me. I deserve this. I deserve everything that's coming to me.

Bish is still talking. "I had been, hmm, gratified to think that the distance between you and your parents was decreasing and that I, in my small way, had been able to help in that. I've kept you in my prayers, Fairchild, and now I find you have made a liar of me to the Almighty. There has been no healing between you and the unfortunate souls who gave you life. Instead, you have been mocking me by traipsing around London, in female guise no less, having repeated hedonist encounters of a kind that could destroy your father's career. You have brought disgrace to this House, Allan, to Montgomery as a whole, not to mention to your family's good name."

I feel... tired. There are so many things I could be feeling, but mostly I'm just tired. I wonder how much longer this is going to last. It's not as if my sentence is in any doubt. Bish has been metaphorically wearing the black cloth on his head since I got here.

"Well?" he asks. "Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Not really, sir." No, he deserves better than that. "Except that I'm truly sorry to have abused your kindness."

"And am I supposed to believe that?"

I give a little shrug, trying not to seem insolent. "It's true."

"Strange and rather depressing how much it sounds like your earnest lies." Bish sighs, looking at me lugubriously, all the lines of his pointed face pulled down. I'd rather he caned me, truly. "Your mother will be arriving to take you home early tomorrow morning. I suggest you return to your room, pack, and spend your last night at Montgomery in silent contemplation of your disgrace. It is with regret, but with the full approval of your parents, that I tell you formally you are expelled from this school."

And may God have mercy on my soul.

I stand, taking care not to push the chair back across the floor and so break the church-like silence that has now fallen in the room. There's a pressure building up inside me like steam in an engine. Sooner or later, I will need to pull the cord that opens the whistle and scream it out, but not here.

Moving rigidly, my limbs being bizarrely stiff and heavy, I leave the office and make my way back to what is still my dorm for one more night. Boys appear in doorways and lining the corridor, and they stand silently as if watching a funeral cortge pass. They seem sympathetic, most of them. It's not really that surprising. Even those who won't approve of what I've done could still all too easily imagine themselves walking this particular green mile.

Inside our room, Heath doesn't seem to have moved from where I left him. He looks up as I enter, sore eyes wide, but says nothing. I close the door, lock it, and go to sit beside him.

After a few moments, he wraps his arms around me.

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