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The first person Indigo Casson saw when he got home was his sister Rose. This was because she was sitting on the front path and, not looking down as he scrambled out of the taxi, Indigo fell over her.
"Ow," he said, untangling himself. "Rose!"
Rose glared at him silently from behind her square glasses, not moving. She was surrounded by a neat semi-circle of shoeboxes, some full of scraps of coloured paper, others full of pastels.
"You could at least say sorry," Indigo snapped. The zip of his bag, strained to its limit, had snapped open, draping jeans and t-shirts across the path.
Rose sighed heavily, before reaching out and plucking a square of blue paper from the box. A few strokes of black pastel and she passed Indigo what was quite clearly a picture of her own face, looking apologetic.
Indigo, sprawled in his front garden and festooned in underwear, had no idea what to make of that. He still prided himself on understanding Rose better than the rest of his pack did, but even fifteen years of practice didn't always help to make sense of her.
Rose pursed her lips and pulled out another piece of paper. She began to draw again, and Indigo, instantly recognising the face taking shape, stumbled to his feet and backed towards the house as fast as his feet would carry him.
The kitchen door was open, so he took a long stride over a patch of scraggly daffodils and stepped through, biting back a sigh of relief to be home.
Nothing had changed here. The kitchen smelt of oil paint and curry and soapy water. The table was covered with paint and paper, and the cupboards hung open, crammed with a mixture of tins and toothpaste, paintbrushes and plant pots. By the door, somebody had carefully glued together gleaming takeaway cartons into a vast, glimmering wave form as high as Indigo's head. Sarah's wheelchair was folded up under the table, and Sarah herself was propped against the sink, singing along to the radio.
She craned round at the sound of his footsteps. "Indigo! What are you doing here?"
"Hi," Indigo said, picking his way across the kitchen. "Reading week."
"I despair of the younger generation," she said, flapping a tea towel at him. "Half term should be dedicated to drunken debauchery."
"Tell your Year Elevens that, do you?"
She shuddered, crossing her eyes. "They don't need any encouragement. Where's Tom?"
Indigo felt his face fold up, his eyes closing and his lips twisting. Sarah said, "Oh, Indigo," and tottered over to give him a hug. Indigo pressed his face against her hair and tried to blink back the sudden burn of tears.
"What happened?" she asked, patting his shoulder. "Tell your Auntie Sarah everything."
"You are not old enough to be my auntie," he said, and was proud that his voice didn't crack too much.
She sighed and pushed off his shoulder so she could look at his face. "Fight?"
He closed his eyes so he didn't have to answer that. "It's over. Don't-"
"Indigo Casson," she said crisply. "You are the stubbornest person I've ever met, even including the rest of your family. Please tell me you are not giving up."
"I'm not one of your students," he said, looking away. "What are you doing here anyway?"
She snorted, but began to make her way back to the sink. "Home for half term - the schools are all back on Monday. Mum's been sending me on rescue missions. She seems to think Eve and Rose will starve without regular food parcels."
Indigo winced. "I could stay. I've only got to revise for Finals and-"
"That bad?"
"Where's Saffy?" he asked, as brightly as he could.
"Fine. Be like that. She's in Prague with some of the other grads. Dry up a mug and you can have tea."
He took the tea towel willingly. "I fell over Rose on the way in. She seemed a little, er, quiet."
"Vow of silence."
"Vow of silence?" Indigo repeated blankly, shoving his own troubles aside with relief. "Why?"
"Nobody knows. And she can't tell us."
"Right," Indigo said. "Being silent."
"Yup."
The door creaked open and they turned in time to see Rose shuffle in. Her arms were full of neatly folded clothes, and she was dangling Indigo's burst bag over her wrist. She set the clothes down carefully on a chair, then waved at Indigo and trotted outside again. Her hair, he noticed, blinking after her, was held up by three purple pencils thrust through a large, scraggly bun.
Indigo looked at Sarah, who shrugged. He shrugged back and went back to drying up. Things might be a little stranger than usual, but it was good to be home.
By mid-afternoon Indigo had coerced Rose into a supermarket foray. She pushed the trolley around cheerfully, indicating by nodding and pointing which brands of soup and cereal she preferred. Her company was oddly soothing, though the other shoppers gave them funny looks.
Indigo, who usually found himself the listener in any conversations, directed odd remarks at her, feeling somehow obliged to make some effort. She nodded, smiled or scowled in reply. It wasn't until they were queuing, in the midst of a crowd of shrieking toddlers and frazzled mothers, that he found himself scraping the bottom of the conversational barrel.
"How's school?"
Rose glowered at him, shoulders hunching.
Aha. Indigo did a quick bit of mental maths. "GCSEs soon, right?"
Another glare.
"You'll be fine."
Rose let go of the trolley and put her hands over her ears.
Indigo caught it before it took out a squealing toddler in a Cinderella outfit and hissed, "Rose!"
She ignored him and the bloke behind them said, "Come on, mate. There's people waiting."
Indigo hurriedly started to unload food onto the checkout. By the time he looked up again, Rose had disappeared.
"What?" he said as the cashier muttered something. "No, I don't have a Nectar card. Um, sorry - did you see where my sister- No, I don't want cashback. Rose!"
The bloke behind him whuffed something about kids these days, and Indigo punched his pin number in rapidly, glancing around. He caught a glimpse of purple pencils by the doors, but by the time he staggered away from the till she was gone.
When he got outside it was raining, a thin, cold drizzle. He'd been relying on Rose to carry half the bags, so he was too weighed down to work his hood up or his phone out of his pocket. Irritated, he began to lug his bags home.
Rose's silence was obviously something to do with her exams. That made some sort of sense - she'd hated the last bunch of public exams she'd been forced to do, and there hadn't been as many of those. Indigo could still remember how panicky he'd been at the thought of his GCSEs, and how many despairing emails had gone flitting across the Atlantic. Unlike Rose, though, he hadn't loathed school desperately to start with.
He sighed and shifted the handles of the carrier bags up his arms so they'd stop scoring his palms. Maybe he should ask Tom to talk to-
Then he remembered and stopped dead.
He wouldn't be asking Tom anything, because Tom didn't care anymore.
A car skidded through a puddle, drenching his legs, and he swung the bags out of the way automatically, but did not move. Damn, damn, damn.
The car that had drenched him swung across the traffic and came to a halt on the other side of the road. Horns blared. Indigo sighed, biting his lip, and began to trudge onwards. His arms hurt.
A horn beeped behind him, and a familiar voice shrieked, "Indigo! Over here!"
His sister Caddy was leaning out of the car, waving at him cheerfully. Indigo dodged across the road, trying to appear inconspicuous in case one of the offended drivers tried to run him down. He shoved the shopping into the back seat, between the baby seats, and then slid in beside her, squelching with rain.
"Rose told me she'd abandoned you," Caddy said cheerfully, pulling away from the curb with a screech and a worrying metallic clang.
Indigo glanced up from hunting for his seatbelt. "She spoke?"
"Cartoon strip."
"Hell. Caddy, what's going on?"
Caddy shrugged eloquently, throwing both hands in the air. "She hasn't said a word since she brought her exam timetable home. Poor old Eve is at her wits' end. She keeps getting phonecalls from the school."
"Unsurprisingly. Hold on to the wheel!"
"Hark at you. Seriously, if you can think of any way to get through to her - we're all stuck."
"I'll see what I can come up with," Indigo said, watching the familiar rain-grey streets slide past. He'd never really thought about this town until he'd moved away, but it fitted him somehow, plain and quiet and as familiar as breathing. He suspected he would dream about it if he ever went away.
But he wasn't going anywhere. There was no point in speculating.
"I spoke to Sarah, too," Caddy said casually.
"Can't pull me in from the window this time," Indigo said, feeling his shoulders stiffen.
"What happened?" She didn't look at him, but he looked away anyway, watching the rain trace lines across the window. She wouldn't nag if he didn't say anything, not Caddy, but-
"He's going back to the States again."
"Ah," Caddy said softly. "Are we losing you, Indy?"
"I've not been invited." The view through the windows was blurry with rain, and his eyes hurt so he shut them, ignoring Caddy's quick indignant breath. Then they were home, and he managed, through lugging bags in and cooking and coordinating the first clean-up of the kitchen since he had last been home, to avoid their questions.
That evening, he sat on his bed and stared at the ceiling. His room seemed somehow hollow, both smaller and larger than it had been when he actually lived here. There were faded patches on the walls where his posters had been, and the radiator was hidden behind boxes of other people's stuff. A stray bit of tinsel straggled out of the corner of a box at the back, reflecting little red circles onto the bare wall.
His bookshelves were half-empty. Most of his books were still in London, not to mention his music, most of his clothes, his computer and his boyfriend.
Hell.
He could nick the radio out of the kitchen - fill up the silence a bit. Shoving to his feet, he pulled the door open.
Rose was sitting on the landing, chin propped on her hands. She had a book open on her lap, though she wasn't reading.
"What on earth are you doing?" Indigo asked.
She shrugged, scrambling up. She offered him the book, eyes hopeful.
It was the Morte D'Arthur, more battered than ever, its spine faded to beige, and loose, furry pages pushing out from the edges of the cover. Indigo took it from her, heart sinking. Much as he loved the language, he wasn't sure he could get much comfort from Arthur's fellowship today.
Rose pushed past him to perch on his bed. Indigo sighed and sat on top of a large box, which sagged dangerously beneath him. "You're going to have to tell me what you want."
She pointed imperiously at the book.
Indigo rolled his eyes. "I really need to move back home, don't I? Someone needs to stop you being such a brat."
She scowled.
"If I read to you, will you talk to me?"
Another incredulous stare, and he gave up, flicking through the book for something that fitted his mood.
"`Mine uncle King Arthur' said Sir Gawaine, `wit you well my death-day is come, and all is through mine own hastiness and wilfulness; for I am smitten upon the old wound the which Sir Launcelot gave me-"
Rose rolled her eyes. Indigo ignored her. The lovely old flow of the language was soothing.
"-and had Sir Launcelot been with you as he was, this unhappy war had never begun; and of all this am I causer, for Sir Launcelot and his blood, through their prowess, held all your cankered enemies in subjection and daunger-"
The book was snatched out of his hands, and Rose hit him with a pillow.
"Ow!" Indigo protested.
She hit him again, grinning, and he dived for the bed, grabbing the other pillow with a yell. He'd be buggered if he lost a pillow fight with Rose.
By midmorning the next day he had managed to clear the assorted boxes out of his room, with Rose's occasional assistance.
They stopped for tea, although the only teabags he could find were unlabelled. They brewed up pink and vaguely blackcurrant smelling. Indigo sniffed it warily and risked one of the questions he'd been pondering all morning. "Rose? Homework?"
She put her cup down hard, sending pink tea slopping down the sides of the cup.
"You can't just opt out of your exams," Indigo said calmly. "You know that, Rose, don't you?"
She crossed her arms, refusing to meet his gaze.
"Why don't you get your books and I'll help you."
She turned to look out of the window, lips set.
"Rose-"
The telephone rang.
Rose shot off down the hall.
"How are you going to answer that in silence?" Indigo yelled after her, standing up. He supposed he should go and intervene. It was probably Bill, who he was sure didn't know anything about vows of silence.
Rose came rushing back up the hall, holding the phone out to him, beaming.
Indigo had a very bad feeling about this. He mouthed, "Who is it?"
Rose shoved it towards him again and he heard a familiar voice at the other end. Indigo stepped backwards, shaking his head.
Eve stuck her head around the back door. "Did I hear the phone, darlings?"
Indigo nodded desperately and waved her towards it. She plucked it from Rose's hand, looking bewildered. "Hello? Oh, hello, Tom. Indigo? Uh-"
Indigo grabbed one of Rose's bits of paper and a pastel and scrawled I'm NOT here!!!
"Haven't seen him for weeks," Eve said brightly. "Is something wrong?"
Even from the other side of the kitchen, Indigo could detect the note of worry in Tom's voice. Well, let him worry. He wasn't worried enough to stay, was he?
"I'm sure he's fine," Eve said cheerfully. "Have you tried Bill? Or Saffy?"
Rose ripped the paper out of his hands, glaring at him. Indigo retreated silently from the kitchen, not knowing how to explain. They'd never even told her.
Rose was still ignoring him the next morning. She was also ignoring Eve's increasingly stern hints about the need to go to school.
"Up," Indigo said, picking up her box of art supplies and heading for the door.
She darted after him, grabbing at his arm. He merely lifted the box out of her reach and glanced down at her. She was more or less in school uniform, though her jumper seemed to have decorative streaks of bleach around the hem. It would do. He kept walking.
By the time he got to the end of the road she was stomping along beside him, glowering. He tucked her box firmly under his arm and said, "Rose? Is anyone at school bothering you?"
She shook her head vehemently.
"Good," he said. "So it is the exams?"
Her shoulders hunched.
"Look, all you have to do is pass them. Then you can drop all the subjects you hate."
She stopped dead, putting her hands over her ears again.
"Rose!"
The school bus rumbled past them, and Indigo looked up in time to see half the bus were waving. He marvelled wryly at the ability all his sisters had to be effortlessly popular, and said, "Look, don't you want to get there and catch up with everyone?"
She sat down on the pavement.
"Your bum will get wet," Indigo said, feeling it didn't deserve a more mature reaction. "Get up."
She ignored him, fishing a piece of chalk out of her pocket and beginning to doodle on the paving stones.
Indigo sighed and sat down too. "You're beginning to scare me, Rosy Pose."
She looked up, eyes wide with surprise.
"It's a funny thing, school," Indigo said. "They send you there so early that by the time you're old enough to wonder why you have to go, it's become a habit. Then you leave and that's when you realise that there was actually some point."
Rose rolled her eyes.
"It's daft, really, that all the things you have to learn at school are things you need to learn when you're young, when it's people who are older who actually want to go. Like all Eve's old age pensioners."
She fiddled with the chalk.
"The older you get, the more fun it is."
She shot him a sceptical look. He nodded at her. "Promise. Once you finish learning the things other people think you should know, then you get to study the things you're interested in. Only problem is that you have to do it in the right order."
She sighed heavily and brought her knees up so she could hug them.
Indigo sighed as well, racking his brains. At last he tried, "I still hate exams. Last year I felt sick every morning in exam week. Tom-"
Rose frowned, waiting, and he swallowed the lump in his throat and continued, "Tom started making me camomile tea for breakfast every day. Put milk in it, though, so it didn't help much."
She was looking pensive now.
"School?" Indigo asked hopefully.
She sighed heavily, but stood up. Indigo looked at his watch and winced. They were going to be late. All the same, he started walking, and Rose fell in beside him, brushing mud off her jacket. Indigo looked down at her bowed head and sighed. He hated seeing Rose miserable.
As they trailed along the main road, he suddenly heard someone shouting his name. Rose looked up, almost cheerful for a second, and began to wave.
A hundred metres back, stranded in the midst of school run traffic, David was waving out of the window of his van with a wide-mouthed smile. Indigo, hoping for a lift, trotted back towards him.
"Hey!" David said, round face bright. "Hi, Rose."
Rose waved politely and ran her fingernail through the dust on the side of the van.
"Your Mum said you'd be down here somewhere."
"You were looking for me?" Indigo asked, slightly cheered. He still had mates here, after all. London wasn't everything.
"Yeah," David said, squirming slightly. "Want a lift?"
"Please," Indigo said. Rose sighed, but scrambled into the front of the van without protest.
They crept through the traffic towards school. Rose retuned the radio, which made David grin and shake his head and turn it back to the local station.
"Still not talking, then?" he said cheerily.
She grinned at him.
"Bet your teachers love that."
She smirked. Indigo sighed.
They dropped her at the school gates only five minutes after she should have been there. David waited until she had slouched through the gates before he mumbled, "Tom phoned. I said I didn't think you were here, but I was passing your mum's so I thought I'd pop in."
"Oh," Indigo said, feeling his heart sink.
"Yeah." David agreed heavily and fished a humbug out of the packet on the dashboard. "Look, I've got to deliver a fridge at nine - do you mind if I drop you off after?"
"Thanks," Indigo said. "You want a hand?"
"Cheers."
The ring road was still thick with traffic. David sighed and poked the radio until he found some travel news. Then he muttered. "So. Are you two, y'know, okay?"
Indigo felt guilt twist in his stomach. David hadn't found it easy to accept that two of his best mates were gay, but he had tried so hard and so earnestly to fight down his first reaction that Indigo now felt like an utter traitor. He didn't say anything, staring out at the roofs of the warehouses below the flyover.
"Oh," David said, and he sounded so disappointed that Indigo cringed. Then he asked, rather awkwardly, "You have talked to him, haven't you?"
"Wouldn't help," Indigo said sadly.
"Um," David said and then, "So what about our Rose, then?"
Indigo shrugged. "I can't get through to her. It's to do with her exams, as far as I can tell."
David nodded, turning right into one of the posher bits of town. The houses here were all built on a grand scale, with turrets sticking out of their corners and magnolia bushes in their gardens. "She doesn't like her French teacher much. She told me that before she stopped talking."
"You have to do a speaking exam for French," Indigo said, sitting up a little.
David hummed thoughtfully. "Yeah."
"Maybe I should get Eve to talk to her French teacher."
They both thought about that for a moment, and then Indigo added, "Or Bill. Or Sarah's Mum."
"Or Caddy," David suggested, drawing in to the kerb.
That, Indigo thought, as he helped manhandle the fridge out the back of the van, was a stroke of sheer genius. Caddy had a knack for making people do things they hadn't even realised they wanted to do, and she was far less likely to either be intimidated by or to intimidate a teacher.
The woman waiting for her fridge was a little impatient, but by the time David had explained, very sincerely, about the ring road, she was nodding. Indigo hung back as David crawled under the worktop, chatting cheerfully. The woman's accent was enough to tell him that she was a New Yorker, but he was happy enough to listen as David's cheerfulness drew out the details of her husband's job here and which bits of home she missed the most.
Indigo hung back, smiling politely and trying not to get in David's way.
When they settled back into the van, David said thoughtfully, "Sounds good, New York."
"Yeah," Indigo said wistfully.
"You'll have to send lots of postcards."
Indigo blinked. "I'm not going to New York."
"You will one day," David said. "Once you've sorted all this out." Then he turned up the radio and began to drum his fingers against the steering wheel. Indigo stared at him for a moment, before he shrugged and began to hum along.
When David murmured something about dropping him off, Indigo shook his head. He was enjoying the day, in an odd way, as if the illusory comfort of easy company and a bit of work was a plaster over his actual misery.
They delivered two more fridges, a microwave and a washing machine, not talking about anything more problematic than music. They stopped for lunch up on the moor, and David split his sandwiches with Indigo. The wind was cold, but Indigo could look down at the town and see the first green fuzz of spring.
"We never even told Rose," Indigo said vaguely.
"She still fancy him?"
Indigo shrugged. "It's not - she doesn't - she's pretty possessive, but it's not like that. It's just - I don't know. Maybe I was always scared this would happen."
"You should tell her now. So she understands."
"She'll be upset anyway. Like last time he went back."
David gave that thoughtful hum again.
They finally got home just before dusk, making vague plans to meet for a pint soon. Then David's van trundled into the distance, and Indigo went inside to cook.
After dinner he warned upstairs to his freshly immaculate room. Eve had told him, rather reproachfully, that Tom had phoned again, but he wasn't going to think about it. He could deal with recriminations later. Now he had to work out what to do with his life. After all, being single meant being free, right?
He ran through past ambitions, from the band that never quite got a gig beyond the school disco to astronomer. Then he dug under his bed until he found his old box of books about polar exploration. They smelt faded and musty and old, so he cracked them open gently, flicking past the familiar stories of explorers with stiff moustaches and stiffer upper lips.
There was no reason he couldn't go to Antarctica. It would be a change of scenery. He could follow in Saffy's footsteps and become an eternal student, a polar historian. He wondered if any of them had found comfort in each other, those men who belonged best in the company of other men, always testing themselves against the unknown.
He heard a movement in the doorway and said, not looking up, "Rose, did you know that if you drill down far enough into the Antarctic ice sheet the ice is under so much pressure it's blue?"
"Suits you, then," Tom said, crossing the room with an impatient stride. He stopped in front of Indigo, fingers tapping against his leg.
Indigo clung to his book, struggling for words. All he could manage was, "Eve didn't-"
"David called me."
"David?" Indigo echoed.
"And Sarah," Tom added, scowling down at him. He had pulled his hair back from his face so tightly his cheekbones pressed against his skin, making him look hawklike. "And Rose sent me a picture-"
"She's taken a vow of silence," Indigo said, feeling dizzy.
"And Caddy left a rather incoherent message."
"Oh," Indigo said and closed his book carefully.
"I haven't heard from Saffy yet."
"She's in Prague." He found he couldn't look up from where his fingers had curled around his knees, creasing the worn denim of his jeans.
"That would explain that, then."
Indigo could see Tom's foot tapping against his grubby old carpet, and it was so familiar it hurt. Tom never could stand still, all raging energy and restless hands.
"I'm assuming you didn't actually vanish without a word because you're planning to run away to the Antarctic?"
Indigo shook his head. His throat had closed up, but he was beginning to feel a faint flicker of indignation. Tom didn't seem to have realised who'd been wronged here.
"Good," Tom snapped and tugged him to his feet, one arm sliding around Indigo's waist as his other hand cupped his face. Indigo met his gaze, not even trying to hide his feelings.
"I'd just like to make it entirely clear," Tom said, voice shaking, "that I am not going back to America without you."
What? "But- You said it yourself. You said you were going back at the end of the year."
"To visit!" Tom exploded, pulling him closer. "I came back here for you, you fool. Do you honestly think I'd just leave again without you? I'm going back to visit. Not to stay!"
"Oh," Indigo said weakly and felt his mouth begin to curve up. Very soon he was going to realise what a complete and utter fool he had made of himself, but right now all he could feel was the relief rushing through him. He buried his face against Tom's shoulder, winding his arms around him tightly.
Tom chuckled breathily into his ear. "Feeling blue, Indigo?"
"Not any more," Indigo managed, looking up.
"Good," Tom said and kissed him.
Indigo, shaking with relief, plunged into the kiss, pressing Tom's lips apart hungrily as his breath quickened. Tom's arms were locked around him, and he obviously wasn't the only one who'd had a really horrible weekend. He could feel Tom's pulse pounding and couldn't quite bite back a moan as he slid his hands down to press around his hips.
"Oh!"
They jerked apart, both swinging to face the door. Rose was standing there, wide-eyed, her hands clapped across her mouth.
"Rose," Tom started, sounding flustered. "It's a long story-"
"You spoke!" Indigo said over him.
She shook her head, still staring.
"I heard you. You spoke."
"Indigo-"
"Didn't you hear her?"
"Yes, but-"
"You broke your vow of silence," Indigo said, grinning at her.
She glared for a moment, but then lowered her hands and said, in an indignant, croaky voice, "You kissed him!"
"Yeah," Indigo said, grinning stupidly. "I did. Er, I've been kissing him for months."
Rose gaped at him and then squeaked, "You never told me!"
"We didn't want to upset you, Rosy Pose," said Tom, easing his hand away from its place inside Indigo's shirt.
"You're both stupid, then!" she snapped, backing out of the room. "And I'm still not going to take those horrible exams!"
"Yeah?" Indigo said heartlessly, feeling another worry slip away. He really needed to unleash Caddy on the French teacher.
She snarled at him and stormed away, slamming the door behind her.
"Should we go after her?" Tom asked, twisting the corner of Indigo's shirt between his fingers.
He shook his head. "She needs time to calm down. She's going to be all right."
"Sure of that?"
"Positive," said Indigo, tangling his hands in Tom's hair.
"And us? Are we going to be all right?"
"Definitely," Indigo murmured and kissed him again.