Page 109 of Oleander

Dear Cas,

I saw the most pretentious film tonight. You’d have loved it. Everyone died, and the score was beautiful. Exactly the kind of thing you’d love. You know, whenever I watch a film where the score is beautiful, I think of you. I think of that night in your bedroom when I made you watch Gladiator for the first time and you cried. I think that’s the first time I thought you might have a heart. I still think about that night now, now that I know you don’t.

I’ve grown to think that the only good thing about you not having a heart is that it means you can’t love him either. That youdon’t. Despite what I see on your social media.

Yes, I still check it every day – sometimes more than that. Sometimes I think you know I do, and you post stuff there just for me.

Secret messages you mean only for me (the heart you drew in the snow a few months ago. The close-up of the Oleander plant at Kew Gardens – I hope you didn’t eat it. The New York City Library) but then I wonder why you’d post the others: Pictures of him, mainly. Pictures of the two of you? Two glasses of red wine on a coffee table next to a set of keys to your new apartment. Are you happy?

You probably think I should have moved on by now. Maybe I should have. But don’t they say that the things that happen to us in the years when our brains are still developing become part of us forever? You happened to me. I grewaround you. Then you left. You uprooted yourself, and now the place you grew out is just barren.

But there’s still a Caspien-shaped avulsion where you once were.

I’m writing fewer of these, which I guess is a good thing. They were the only thing keeping me alive after you left. Thousands of words that you’ll never read, each one a kiss I wish I could place somewhere on your body. I still miss you so much that it hurts, but every day, it hurts a little less. Every day, I heal a little more.

Anyway, I’m going to keep this one short. I really only wanted to tell you about the film. It was called ‘Tidvattensvängen’ – The Turn of Tides. It was directed by the guy who did the film about thedogsin the war.

Love,

Jude

I look back on that first year without him, and then my first few months at Oxford, as some of the bleakest of my twenty-eight years. I’d lost my parents when I was eight, and with it the sorts of experiences that most of us are guaranteed at birth; proud smiles at graduation, a tearful speech at a wedding, a hundred varieties of ‘I’m proud of you, son’ moments, a hundred thousand tight hugs from my mum. The kind of bottomless supply of positive reinforcement you can only get from the two people on earth who are programmed to love you unconditionally. And yet, it was those months after Caspien left me that devastated me most.

More than losing my parents. More than understanding what it meant to be an orphan, I felt the absence of him. The greatchasm into which my hopes and dreams of a life with him had crashed and disappeared.

I couldn’t remember who I’d been before him, and didn’t know who I was now that he’d discarded me.

I felt more singularly alone than I had in my life.

Even now, there’s a physical reaction in my body when I recall the number of nights I spent crying and begging some higher power to have him come back to me; something between mortification and grief. And had some terrible god appeared before me in those months after he left, and given me the option of having my parents – either or both – back or Caspien, then I’d have said his name without a heartbeat’s hesitation.

I moved into Ellis Hall on September 18th, a year and four months to the day after he left me.

A week or so after my A-Level results had come in, a thick white envelope had arrived from the Oxford Admissions Board telling me I’d been accepted. I’d been dizzy from shock. I’d already paid a deposit on my student accommodation in Warwick; I’d already registered my car insurance to the address there. I’d researched the nearest library, Tesco, and parking to where I’d be staying. But here it was, an invitation to study at my first choice uni in black and white and with a tone of importance that reminded me of Caspien.

Caspien, who wouldn’t be studying at Oxford. Caspien, who was now in his second year of study at one of the world’s foremost musical schools.

I thought of turning it down, thinking of the work it would be to unpick everything I’d already laid down in Warwick, but I knew I’d look back and regret it. After all, surely it was better he wasn’t going to be there. That way, I wouldn’t have to see him across a dining hall or bump into him in a corridor or bar. I couldn’t watch him laugh and exist without me.

It was better.

In the end, it took me an afternoon of online admin to reroute my future an hour’s drive south. I didn’t expect there to be any chance of getting a place in the halls, given my late acceptance, but it so happened that a room in Ellis had opened up due to some last-minute refusals. But it would only be for the first academic year. I’d need to reapply for accommodation in year two – if I didn’t get one, then I’d have to find a house share or rent my own place. This wouldn’t be an issue, given that the monthly allowance from the trust fund would easily cover both.

Ellis Hall was an ancient brick building that looked and smelled like an old hospital. My room was south-facing with a single sash window, a single bed, and the single most depressing view I had ever seen. It was of the car park of a mini-supermarket and a row of large commercial bins. The worst part about it wasn’t even the view; it was that the bins were emptied on a Sunday morning right outside the window.

My floor, the second, was mixed; boys and girls, single, double, triple and quad, and with a large communal kitchen and a smaller sitting room. My single room had a small toilet and basin only. Bathrooms and showers were down the hall. Single rooms were apparently like gold dust here and I was shot envious glances as I’d carried my boxes and bags into it a few days before the start of term.

I met Bastian at Freshers Week. He lived on the floor below mine and had come upstairs looking for teaspoons one lunchtime. He was tall, lean, and angular with the longest legs I’d ever seen. He was from Noordwijk in the Netherlands, and struck up a conversation with me about toast toppings. He cycled semi-professionally and wanted to go full pro, but was studying medicine at Oxford as a backup.

He spoke English fluently and came over as sharp and witty, with a way of appearing completely absorbed in whatever you had to say. I liked him instantly. Bast – as he insisted I call him after ten minutes – was single but had left his high school sweetheart called Emmeline back in Noordwijk. A mutual decision, apparently. One that he didn’t seem to be crying himself to sleep over.

“What about you? Single? In love? Celibate?” He had come over to my room one night about a week after we’d met in the kitchen. We had bought some beer from the supermarket outside my window and were drinking it on the floor by the small electric fire as we listened to the university radio broadcast. They were playing Coldplay.

“I think technically I’m all three,” I said without any humour.

“Ah,” he nodded, knowingly. “What was her name?”

There was a decision to be made suddenly. Did I want to answer questions about my sexuality that I was certain I didn’t fully understand myself? Did I want to make a friend? Honesty was the first part of that, surely.