Junk (7 page)

“It’s
when
we get it beaten, not
if
. You’ll see.” Lewis rubbed his hands together as if relishing the notion of getting going, although even he had to admit a hoard of this scale was daunting. “Right, then, how about you show me the other rooms first, and in the meantime you can start thinking about where in the house you’d like us to start.”

“Down here,” Jasper said, so emphatically Lewis blinked in surprise.

“Okay, that makes sense. Getting this clear first will make it much easier to work on the other rooms.”

Jasper nodded, but something in his facial expression didn’t sit right. He appeared relieved, which could be explained simply by Lewis’s approval, but the pinched look remaining around his eyes suggested he was hiding something.

Still, there would be plenty of time to discover all Jasper’s little secrets once they got working on the house together.

“I’ll take you to the kitchen first,” Jasper said, turning to shuffle his way to the back of the house through the drifts of junk mail. They rustled like autumn leaves, making Lewis shiver. Watching his footing carefully, he followed.

The kitchen wasn’t quite as bad as the hallway had led him to expect. To the right of the main doorway was a U-shaped kitchen that had mostly escaped the tide of paper. That wasn’t to say that the worktops weren’t full of random utensils and items that would normally live elsewhere in a house, like a tool kit and a laundry basket, but at least the floor was clear and the area around the gas hob and sink bore evidence of recent cooking. Lewis took a cautious breath, but the room smelled acceptable, if a little musty. Clearly he wasn’t dealing with a rotten-food hoarder, thank God.

The other side of the room was more like the hallway, but this time with piles of newspapers rather than books. A wooden dining table was half buried in the melee, with three of the visible chairs piled high with yet more papers, but the end of it was clear, and an empty chair sat there. Beyond the table lay the door onto the back garden, and through the dirty pane, Lewis could see a jungle of plants and riotous flowers.

“This would be the periodicals room, then,” he quipped, holding his hand over a paper from the nearest pile just to gauge Jasper’s reaction. “Mind if I pick it up?”

Jasper frowned. “Of course not. Why would I?”

“Just checking your boundaries. Some hoarders are so protective of their stuff, they don’t even like me touching it. To begin with, anyway. It’s often the first thing we have to work on together.”

“Oh. I’m not like that. It’s fine for you to pick up anything you see. Just make sure you put it back in the same place, that’s all I ask.”

“It would bother you if things were out of place?”

“I have a system. I know it probably doesn’t look like it, but I do.”

Jasper sounded so defensive, Lewis decided to change the subject. He glanced at the paper in his hand but couldn’t even make out the title as it was all written in those crazy Arabic squiggles. “Can you even read this?”

“Only a little. I’m afraid I’m rather rusty now. It’s one of the more left-wing Egyptian papers, I know that much.”

Okay, that was unexpected. Lewis examined the paper some more, noting the red ink stamp from the university library. “Did you grow up in Egypt?”

“No. What makes you think that?”

“You look like you might have some Middle Eastern ancestry.”

“My mother was Egyptian,” Jasper muttered, so low Lewis had to strain his ears.

“But I’m guessing your father was British, then. From the surname,” he added, when faced with a blank gaze.

“Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry. I thought maybe…maybe you knew something about me. I don’t know. Maybe you did research or something.”

“I haven’t been snooping into your past. Don’t worry. I’ll rely purely on what you decide to tell me when you’re ready. But I do have one confession to make. We’ve met before.”

“We have?” Jasper closed the space between them, staring down the two or so inches he had on Lewis. “No. I’d remember someone like you. Your hair…” He reached out his hand as if to touch, then withdrew it suddenly. “I’d remember,” he maintained, a stubborn set to his jaw.

“It was a long time ago, and maybe saying we met is stretching it. I was at Cotham Grammar too. Three years below you. That’s probably why you never noticed me.” Lewis gave a mirthless laugh. “Even if I was the favourite topic of gossip in my year.” First for being out and sort-of-proud, then for the whole shagging-the-drama-teacher scandal, which had never been as hushed up as the headmistress had imagined, despite Mr. C being relocated to another school way up north.

“I never listened to gossip,” Jasper muttered. “No, wait. Hang on. I remember… I do remember a blond boy. Always neatly turned out. Wore one of those AIDS ribbons on his blazer. Kind of…” He mimed a swooshing fringe over his forehead. “Kind of foppish hair.”

Lewis grimaced. “Yep. That was me. Used to straighten my curls back then. Not my most flattering hairstyle, it has to be said.”

“That was you?” The amazement in Jasper’s voice made Lewis look up. He’d stepped forward again, and all Lewis’s body prickled with the awareness of how close he was standing to his teenage heartthrob.

“I didn’t think you’d ever noticed me.”

“How could I not have?” Jasper’s hands twitched, wanting to grab hold of Lewis, so he shoved them into his armpits instead. “You were… You were my hero.”

Chapter Six

Silence crowded them, jostling into the space between their bodies. Jasper squeezed his eyes shut. What had he just said? Oh God, Lewis was going to think he was completely hopeless when he explained himself. He cracked his eyes open to find Lewis gazing up at him, the glimmer of a smile haunting his face. Lewis wasn’t going to laugh at him, was he? Jasper didn’t think he could bear it if he was mocked.

Lewis tilted his head to one side. “Your hero?” he murmured. “I’ve never done anything remotely heroic.”

“You were out when you were at school. I’d call that pretty heroic.”

“I don’t know. If I’d realised how it was going to go down, I might have kept my big mouth shut for a few more years.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“You are?”

Could he say this? Jasper turned away to face his kitchen, but all he could see was the defiant face of a fifteen-year-old Lewis walking past a bunch of sniggering lads with his head held high, despite the taunts of “gaylord” and “poofter”. Someone had even drawn a crude cock and balls on the back of his blazer in chalk, and Jasper had wanted to run down the language block steps and tell him. To help him rub the offending picture off. To tell him he wasn’t the only queer at school.

Jasper hadn’t fallen in love at first sight or anything. As a teenager, Lewis had been all bones and awkward posture, his face blighted with acne. No, Jasper hadn’t even fancied him back then—not like he did now. The scarring on his tanned cheeks gave him a rugged, outdoorsy look, like an explorer in one of the adventure books Jasper had devoured as a child. And like those heroic men, Lewis had grown into his body and gave an impression of great energy held in calm reserve.

No, back then Jasper hadn’t found the teenaged Lewis attractive, but he’d felt an instant rapport. A recognition of another who was like him.

Or perhaps not like him, because Lewis was ever so much braver than Jasper had ever been.

Time to emulate that bravery and come clean.

“I didn’t notice you until the last few months of my A-levels. Never did find out your name. And I don’t remember Carroll. Was she at a different school or something?”

“Nope. But we didn’t spend much time together back then. She was usually out in the car park getting stoned with all her weirdo mates.”

“Ah, I see. And you weren’t like that.”

“Neither were you.”

“I was a nerd,” Jasper said decisively. “Teachers’ pet. No friends. Always had my head in a book. I only noticed you because I was on my way to the library one day and I saw you had this…er, this giant pink cock and balls. On your back!” he squeaked, at Lewis’s mischievous smile. “Someone had chalked it on your back.”

“I would say I remember that day, but it happened a few times, so I can’t be sure which it was.”

“Well, this bunch of lads were making fun of you outside the language block, but you just carried on walking with your head held high. One of them asked you to, er, service him.” Oh God, he sounded like such a prude. The swaggering thug in question had in fact ordered Lewis to suck his cock like a bitch, since he was a one of them dirty benders. “You told him you wouldn’t touch his nob if he paid you because you didn’t know where he’d been sticking it.”

Lewis’s grin spread all over his face. “I think I might have put it more crudely than that, but yeah, I remember now. You were watching?”

“I was watching. You were so brave. I couldn’t have done that. Couldn’t have told anyone. That I was gay, I mean.”

“There’s no reason why you should have. Everyone comes out when it feels right for them. Hey, it’s okay. There’s no rule book for these things.”

“Maybe there should be,” Jasper said, surprised at his own ferocity. “I mean, it might have been easier to know what to do then. I left it way too late. Especially with Mama.”

Lewis laid his hand on top of Jasper’s. “But you told her in the end, didn’t you?”

Oh, he’d told her, all right. The expression on her face still haunted his nightmares. She’d come round after a few days and told him it was fine, and she didn’t mind really, but it could never erase the memory of her devastation. “I waited until she was having a good spell. I’d somehow convinced myself she’d take it okay. But she went downhill again after that. Barely got out of bed again from then on.”

“She was ill?”

“Leukaemia. She’d had it for a while. It started getting bad when I was in my late teens. Dad died when I was a kid, so I was her sole carer. It’s why I never moved away.” He could say it in such a matter-of-fact tone now. He’d almost convinced himself it hadn’t hurt like hell to give up all his dreams of moving to a new city. Somewhere he’d have been able to start afresh and be someone different. Someone confident and proud of who he was.

Instead, he’d stayed here and stagnated.

“Was she a hoarder herself?” Lewis asked, the question surprising Jasper, even though he probably should have expected it. That was what Lewis was here for, wasn’t it? Talking about Jasper’s hoarding problem. Not going over their schooldays.

“She had lots of stuff. Not books. Hobbies. Crafts. That kind of thing.”

“And is that all still here, behind your stuff?”

How did Lewis know these things? Jasper nodded mutely.

“It’s probably going to be tough on you when we get things cleared back to that stratum. All hoarders react differently, but all of them find it emotionally draining.”

“Why are you telling me this? Sounds like you’re trying to put me off.”

“I just want you to go into this with your eyes open. It will be difficult, and you’ll need to be brave, but you can do it, I know.”

“You don’t know anything about me really. I’m not brave. I’m a coward. Always have been.”

“I don’t know. You’ve taken the first step and admitted you have a hoarding issue. That takes guts. Asking for help takes even more.”

“I spent weeks with your number programmed into my phone.” Jasper exhaled an almost-laugh at the memory of his vacillations. “Every day I’d look at it at least five times, daring myself to touch the screen. In the end it was the book slide in the living room that made me call. I just couldn’t bear living like this anymore.”

“I’m glad you did call,” Lewis said, smiling just as a shaft of sunlight lanced in through the back door glass and lit up his face. His eyes glowed like a pool of water, small flecks of lighter and darker blues in his iris only adding to the effect. Everything about Lewis looked wholesome and outdoorsy, from his sun-bleached hair to the light tan across the bridge of his nose. In comparison, Jasper felt sallow and drawn, even though he knew his skin was actually darker than Lewis’s.

“Did you want to see the back garden?” Jasper asked. Lewis would fit in just right there. He was all wrong surrounded by the stacks of unread paper. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.”

“Sounds great.”

Jasper led the way to the back door and opened it onto brilliant sunshine. There were trees in the back garden too, but fortunately they were dwarf fruit trees and planted far enough away from the house not to shade it out. There was a shallow veranda along the back, something his dad had apparently added to make Mama feel more at home after moving to England. Between that, sheltering them from the view of the neighbour’s upstairs windows, and the high stone walls overgrown with plants, it was an intensely private place.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lewis step next to him and pull a bottle of water out of his bag.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t offer you a drink. Where are my manners?”

Lewis took a long swig, then offered him the bottle. “No worries. I’d rather that than be force-fed lukewarm, stale-milky tea from a dirty cup like I do with some of my clients.”

“Ugh. No, no dirty cups here.”

“I saw. It’s fascinating how differently everyone approaches hoarding. You, for instance, don’t seem to have any trouble keeping some areas clear.” Lewis gestured around the veranda, empty apart from the hammock swinging between two rafters.