The cuckoo

Part 15 The ebb and flow of trust

In his mind all that Julian could think of was the taxi driver.  He could visualise in his mind the circumstances that would have led him to tell the authorities what he knew of them.  Indeed he would have thought he was doing a good thing.  So how could he have had the trust in them from such a short exposure to suddenly decide to help them, it couldn't have been easy to do that as Julian himself well knew.  There were very strict protocols for contacting a pilot in flight on the security wavelength.  people could get into a lot of trouble for getting that message to them.

Julian's  mind wandered back to  his college days, he had always felt a bit like a fish out of water.  All of the other kids there seemed to live in a different world to him.  So he became the loner, the one who got looked upon as okay, but not the type to include.  And that was how he survived those days by staying out of the limelight and generally making himself seem invisible to the other students. 

Then one day out of the blue, everything changed.   Becky turned up, and as soon as Julian clapped eyes on her he felt drawn to her.  Soon after that he plucked up the courage to talk to her and amazingly she didn't rebuff him, it turned she came from a very similar background to him, and so they began dating.  suddenly the world had become a bright and exciting place.  Alan soon noticed the difference in his son and tackled him about it.  They had always had a very close relationship and Julian was glad to tell his father all about Becky and how much she was beginning to mean to him.  And he told his dad how he felt happy and looked forward to each day, he told his dad they had now been seeing each other at college break times and sometimes after college for coffee for a few weeks now.  Alan had been pleased because no father likes to see that his children are unhappy or  having a hard time dealing with life.  The very next day Julian and Becky had slipped away to a spot that they had made their own on the roof of one of the old college outbuildings.    They lay comfortably together and after a while Julian turned and very deliberately he kissed Becky, he held the kiss and she returned it. as their lips parted he whispered to her, "I love you Becks,"  she whispered back "I love you too Jules"

One week later and the principle announced that there would be a one month student exchange with a French college that apparently theirs had some links with.  Another week after that and three French students duly arrived, two boys and a girl, and three of our students went to their college in France.   The girl and one of the boys seemed as though they were an item and the other boy seemed a bit lost.  Julian being Julian, and knowing how that felt, had invited him to join them for lunch one day.  He turned out to be a really nice guy, in fact very similar in his values and ways to himself.  The very next day Julian woke up feeling wretched.  Turns out he had contracted the vomit bug that was doing the rounds and he was unable to leave his room for two days, and even then couldn't  interact with anyone because he was still infectious.  When he finally got back to college he still didn't feel one hundred percent and at lunch time he said to Becky why don't you and Leon go to lunch together, I don't feel ready to face college food yet.   

At lunchtime he found a quiet but nicely refreshingly breezy spot and settled himself down to rest, when who should come along but the other two exchange students. "What's up? " he had asked them.  If you want to know what's up they had told him you should climb up onto the old storeroom roof and you will see.  With a feeling already of foreboding Julian did as they had suggested, and he silently climbed up the stairs of the old fire escape.  As his head emerged above the edge of the roof the first sight that met his eyes was Leon and his Becky in a passionate embrace.  He felt as though his arms and legs had become jelly, yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from the two of them and how totally engrossed they were with each other.  All of this had happened in under a week.  Julian had been building his relationship with her over the course of many weeks, and they had never been as passionate as she and Leon were now.  Tears blurring his vision Jules quietly retreated down the old fire escape ladder and he had slowly trudged home.  He had known he would be in trouble for bunking off college for the afternoon but he couldn't bear the thought of encountering Becky or Leon again that day.  He had never felt so bad in all of  his life.  In his head since he had told her how he felt, and she had told him she felt the same his whole future had become mapped out.  As he slowly walked home all he could think was never trust anyone this much again.