Chapter Twenty-Two
There were a scant five minutes before the train was due to depart, her phone kept buzzing in her pocket with texts she assumed were from Ruth, and Bette categorically did not have time to stop and check them. The road up to Temple Meads felt endless as she dodged her way through slow-moving tourists and uncertain drop-offs, her heart racing in her chest. She was going to make it. Almost certainly. Probably. So long as there wasn’t a huge queue at the ticket barriers, or a group blocking her journey through the tunnel under the tracks, and so long as the little suitcase she was hauling behind her didn’t break a wheel or burst open or break where the long metal bits connected from her hand to the case. Oh god, what if the long metal bits broke?
She ran through the tunnel, feeling as though she might vomit, wondering whether she would be able to keep running if she suddenly couldn’t hold it back any more. She’d never run and vomited at the same time before. It might be interesting.
And then she was on the platform and up the step and through the doors and on the train and it was moving forward with her in it. She sat down in the bit between the carriages, blocking everyone, gulping in stuffy, air-conditioned air. On her phone, Ruth’s gentle, polite, nudging messages hovered closer and closer to panicked but never quite crossed over. Thankfully, what the messages did include was a carriage and seat number; Ruth had found them two together for the first leg of the journey. Bette took one more deep breath, tapped out a quick reply confirming she was at least on the train, and made her way down the narrow aisle, trying to avoid hitting her case against the ankles that spilled into it as she did.
And finally, there was Ruth, her bag in the seat next to her, clearly reserving it for Bette. She had a plastic MS bag on the tray table in front of her and was staring ahead, white headphones over her ears, her head nodding slightly with the movement of the train. It was the first time she’d seen her since they’d hugged goodbye at the wharf, and Bette was tangibly aware of having spent the week thinking about Ruth, about her jaw and her collarbone, about her ability to laugh at Bette and at herself, about her clear eyes and the silk of her thick hair, about her asking for details of Carmen and Anton in Bette’s kitchen, about the line of her spine in the dress she’d worn to dinner. And here she was.
And Ruth, of course, knew none of it. She jumped when Bette picked up her case and flopped down next to her, and then exhaled in apparent relief. She pushed off her headphones and left them sitting round her neck, a tinny voice issuing faintly from them.
“Oh thank god. Really thought you might have missed it.”
“I’m the worst. I’m on time for everything. I’ve spent weeks of my life scrolling through my phone because I’m waiting for someone. But when it actually matters I’ll sleep through an alarm or get stuck in an impossible traffic jam, or leave my bag on a bus.”
“I woke up to the buzz of my phone once, thinking it was my alarm. It was actually the calendar reminder for my flight to Budapest, telling me it was time to board the plane.”
“Ouch.”
“Yep. Went from being a cheap, easy holiday to a really stressful, really expensive nightmare. The hot baths were nice though.”
They settled back into their seats, and Bette caught sight of the ticket on Ruth’s phone screen, open and ready for inspection. Bette had paid for it on her “only for emergencies” credit card, had forwarded it through, and had then felt sick about it all week. This close to the trip, it was almost eye-wateringly expensive for Ruth to journey up with her. It would have been far cheaper for her to fly. But it was part of the whole thing; it wasn’t unrealistic to imagine Mei was on her train, probably with her new girlfriend. Traveling solo was not an option. And she wasn’t about to ask Ruth to pay for her own ticket.
She planned to ignore the MS bag for as long as possible, at least until they were past the Bristol stations. But, as soon as her heart rate returned to normal, inevitably, eventually: “Okay, so I didn’t bring a packed lunch, and it appears you very much did.”
“I thought this would get us to Birmingham at least. Then we can restock.” Ruth looked sheepish for a moment. It was an intimate expression, one Bette hadn’t seen before. There was an admission in it. “Whenever I go somewhere, I like feeling on holiday immediately. And I know it’s eight a.m., so I should have bought pastries and coffee or something. But a train pastry says work trip to me. Crisps and a GT at eight a.m. are a holiday.”
It was a shame, really, to have already realized that she fancied Ruth. The better story began…she pulled a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, a pot of ricotta-stuffed peppers and a can of gin from an MS bag first thing in the morning and then I knew. Except, of course, they’d never be telling the story. Because, clearly, she’d never be telling Ruth. She had to live with the fact of fancying her and be fine with it. It didn’t help to watch Ruth pull open the bag of salt and vinegar crisps and offer her one. It didn’t help to wonder whether Ruth knew they were her favorite or whether it was just a coincidence, and what that said about them, about how Ruth might feel and about how much it didn’t matter because Ruth deserved someone so much better than her. Already had someone better. It just didn’t make things easier, was all. It wasn’t easy to fancy her friend, the one who was sucking salt from her fingers, her elbow nudging against Bette’s on the Great Western Railway armrest.
“Salt and vinegar,” said Bette, fishing, leaning into making her own life more difficult. “I love them. No better crisp.”
“I thought so!” Ruth said, the sides of her eyes crinkling as she smiled. “They’re what you brought to the party. Anyway, it seemed like a thing that the girl you’re dating should get right. So. Well done me.”
Oh great. She was perfect.
“Yep. Yeah. Well done you,” she said. Her voice sounded odd to her ears, too high, too bright.
“On that, though,” Ruth said as she pulled open a bag of prawn cocktail crisps and used one to scoop the cheese from a pepper. “It’s Erin and Niamh, right? Tell me what I need to know. Tell me what your girlfriend would know.”
Bette inched her elbow away, aware of being too close, of her heart jumping every time Ruth’s skin brushed against hers. There was only so much she could handle. She nodded and launched into a potted history of Erin and Niamh, accepting as she did quite how comprehensively fucked she was.
Seven hours was a long time to be seated side by side. The train was long and trundling, and they chatted about nothing much. Eventually, Ruth pointed out that taking a book out wouldn’t be rude. It might have made her worry, Bette thought, coming from someone else. But it was exactly what she wanted too.
Ruth had something called My Year of Meats, by another Ruth. Bette made a joke about it that sounded clever in her head and utterly stupid once she let it pass her lips. In her bag were two Jilly Coopers that she had pulled off her shelf before leaving. They had felt like a good idea at home, the exact sort of familiarity and comfort she was going to need in those first Mei-anticipating hours. It hadn’t occurred to her to feel embarrassed when packing them, but once Ruth was beside her with something she’d never heard of, probably some challenging literary masterpiece, she second-guessed herself. But Ruth looked over and hissed out a yes of appreciation and then followed it with Harriet’s the best one.
She hadn’t always been this perfect, surely? This was Bette reading into things and being weird and obsessed. This was her falling for someone and instantly writing the whole perfect narrative in her head. But then she remembered Ash and her thousand smug glances. Ash had seen it, had long approved of this coming agony. Bette put Harriet on her lap, leaned her forehead against the jostling and jolting window and allowed the movement to send her off to sleep.
She woke somewhere before the Scottish border, along a stretch of sea that took her breath away. Ruth was writing in a large spiral notebook, the type Bette had had at school, filling the page with lines of untidy scrawl in green biro.
“?’S a serial killer pen,” Bette mumbled, brain still slightly behind her voice. As she spoke she realized how intimate it felt, for Ruth to hear the voice she had when she first woke up. Bette shook herself a little, willing her brain to catch up and join the conversation properly.
“It’s actually an I’ve never been without a black biro in my life and today I can only find this stupid conference pen in my handbag and I’ve been wanting to die for pages pen,” Ruth said, hand still moving across the page.
“Yeah, that’s awful. It’s not even a nice, easy-to-read green. Nightmare. What kind of disgusting company commissioned that?”
Ruth turned it over to read the name. “It’s a thesaurus app, I think? Or something? Look, I don’t know, but I didn’t have another option and now it’s making me question my whole career.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Serial killer, Bette. That was your first reaction. I have to read back over this at some point, and all I’m going to be thinking is: serial killer.”
“Do you want my pen?” Bette asked, rummaging in her backpack. “It’s black.”
Ruth turned, not just her head but her whole body, knee bumping against Bette’s. “I cannot believe you’ve been holding out on me.”
“I was asleep.”
“You’ve been awake for at least a minute now. You’ve watched me write full sentences.”
Bette handed the pen over and they settled back into a comfortable silence, black slowly overtaking green on Ruth’s paper. The words swam in front of Bette’s eyes, so she turned away and looked out of the window again, pulling open the final bag of crisps.
By the time the train crossed over into Scotland, Bette was full of crisps, her mouth dry and salty, and full of nerves too. Somehow, in the midst of the feelings that had arrived in the last week, she’d not really considered what she planned to say to Mei. Bette had somehow managed to avoid her on the same trains, waiting on the same platforms, making all the same endless connections because it was cheaper. But they were basically in Edinburgh now. And even if they managed to avoid each other at the station, there were only a couple of hours until dinner.
She hadn’t seen Mei since leaving her and her car behind at four in the morning. The drive home from Cheltenham had been even quieter than the one there. What had Mei been thinking, in that hour? Had she been agonizing over all she hadn’t said? Had she tried to say it, in that moment before they’d reached her house? When Bette had stopped them from discussing it? Or was she relieved? Relieved to have got away with the lie, of begging a favor from Bette and knowing she’d get whatever she wanted?
She was going to be at dinner. And she was going to have to smile and be polite and be the bigger person. Because she sure as hell wasn’t letting Mei win.
A hand on Bette’s arm made her jump. Ruth was holding a bag of chocolate buttons in her direction.
“We’ve got ten minutes left, I think. Last little chance for a train snack?”
Bette took a pinch of buttons from the bag and put them in her mouth all at once, comforted by the way they melted, the chocolate blandly familiar on her tongue. She wanted a cup of tea. A cup of tea and a bath and six back-to-back episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and a takeaway and all of it with Ruth still beside her.
But instead they began to gather up their things, readying their bags and watching people crowd the aisles, as if the seconds they might save by being the first off were worth the passive-aggressive crush of bodies.
Edinburgh Waverley was sprawling and huge, and she stepped onto the platform feeling suddenly overwhelmed. This wasn’t a trip where she could disappear. She felt exposed, on display, like everyone would be able to see that Ruth wasn’t actually hers, that Mei had broken her and rejected her, that she was unfanciable and unloved and…
A hand slipped gently into hers, warm and soft and safe. “Let’s go check in before dinner, yeah?”
She nodded, squeezing Ruth’s hand back before letting go. It was far too early to be taking advantage. She should save that for the wedding itself. There was so much advantage-taking ahead of them.
There were, much to Bette’s relief, two beds. The woman on reception had been adamant about that, to the point where, if they had been a real couple, Bette would have been inspired to kick up a pretty significant stink. The hotel desk was oddly low—an office desk, rather than one the right sort of height for propping up on, a chin cupped elegantly in a hand. It made the reception area feel as if they’d been called to the headmistress’s office, an unsettling sensation reinforced by the unmistakable air of prim assuredness coming from behind it.
“We’ll pop you two in our twin room. It’s the Wind in the Willows suite. Very popular. Girls’ trip to Edinburgh is it?”
“Oh yes,” Ruth replied, her voice drier than an unbuttered rice cake. “Just two gals being pals.”
The woman stared, her lined forehead growing more creased by the second.
Upstairs, Bette’s first impression of the room itself was of a crowded Oxfam surplus depot. She had never been to one before, wasn’t even sure they existed. But if one did, it would be this: a graveyard of dusty, mismatched furniture, with not nearly enough space for anything to be functional. It was the esthetic opposite of a Premier Inn, uncomfortably personal and esoteric. The walls were covered in supremely weird paintings and prints of toads that contrasted horribly with the floral wallpaper. Bette turned to Ruth, who was shaking with laughter, her bag still hanging from her shoulder.
“The Wind in the Willows suite?” she said, gasping for breath. “I thought it might be a bit Tory. A bit Union Jacky. I was surprised! It’s Edinburgh! But I was not prepared for…toads.”
Bette flopped down on the bed closest to the door, leaving the nicer (nicer? the bar was impossibly low) bed under the window for Ruth.
“At the very least, I’ve now seen the ugliest room in all of Scotland. So if the rest of the weekend is a bust, we’ve had this.”
“Well, we’ll always have the framed toads can be our we’ll always have Paris,” Ruth said, her voice wistful. She sat down on her own bed and it sank in the middle, both sides of the mattress popping up to form a V around her.
“So, pub before dinner?” Bette asked, pushing herself up on her elbows.
“God, yes,” Ruth replied. “The only way through this is whisky.”
They were two rounds in before Bette could properly look Ruth in the eye. Once they had decided to leave the toad room in search of warmth and alcohol and sanity, Bette had retreated to the bathroom to change, leaving Ruth with space to maneuver. And then, before her brain could stop her, she walked back into the room without knocking, to find Ruth in a black bra and her jeans. Ruth didn’t seem bothered and so Bette feigned easy nonchalance—it wasn’t different from seeing someone in their swimming costume. It was just a bra. Not even a particularly revealing one. But it was longline, and low-cut, and Bette wanted to run her fingers under the band that hit Ruth at the top of her waist. Wanted to pull the strap off her shoulder and kiss the skin beneath it. It was not, in any way, a useful step in the journey toward assuring herself that Ruth was her platonic gal pal. It was one thing to know, objectively, that Ruth was hot. It was quite another to be faced with continuing evidence of it, to have Ruth half dressed in front of her in the room they were sharing.
Thankfully, it didn’t seem to have had an impact on Ruth at all. She was sitting in the pub, cheeks pink from the cold and the alcohol, recounting the story of the last wedding she had gone to. It was a huge one, near her parents in North London, and there was something in the story about a live chicken. It was a great anecdote, funny and unexpected; Ruth was a brilliant storyteller. Bette knew that she would be able to recall precisely none of it once the moment had passed, that she would be entirely incapable of reassembling any of the vague component parts into a cohesive whole. Her mind was too full already, too occupied with the exact line of Ruth’s plunging black top and the shade of pink her lipstick left on her whisky glass.
“We should go,” Bette realized, glancing at her watch. Her voice betrayed her, quavering slightly and destroying any suggestion that she was fine. “The dinner.”
“Hey,” Ruth said, laying a hand over Bette’s on the sticky table between them. “You look great. You’re charming and brilliant. You’ve got a cool girlfriend on your arm. You’ve won. You’ve unequivocally won.”
Bette puffed out a breath. Of course Ruth would think it was about the dinner. It was. Sort of. And she couldn’t know about the rest of it.
It was a hike to the restaurant. Everywhere in Edinburgh was a hike. By the time they were on the correct side of town, Bette was feeling significantly less put together, and Ruth was out of breath and flushed down her chest. As they reached the top of the steps behind the station, Ruth shrugged off her coat.
“I love this stupid thing,” she said, tucking miles of fluffy leopard print fabric under her arm. “But it’s the most synthetic coat in existence. The sweatiest I’ve ever owned.”
“It looks warm, at least.”
“Oh no, not at all. The wind goes right through it. It’s worn away in big patches. But I’ll be wearing it until it falls directly from my shoulders into landfill.”
While they stood to catch their respective breaths, Bette pulled her phone out to check the address.
“Right, it’s up here, I think,” Bette pointed, and kept glancing down at the map until they were outside the restaurant, watching the distance between her and Mei narrow in real time. As she reached the door Bette took a deep, steadying breath.
“It’s okay,” Ruth said, and a hand squeezed her elbow.
“I know. I’m almost relieved now, I guess? Like, I just want it to have happened. I want to have seen her and survived and then get on with things. The anticipation has been the worst bit.”
“You’re brilliant. You can do this. I’ll be right beside you.”
They weren’t too late arriving, but the sound as soon as they entered the restaurant made it clear that most of the rest of the group were already there.
“Bette!” Erin called, running over in a blur of teal and leather and hugging her tightly. “You’re here! You’re here! And you must be Ruth?”
“Thank you so much for making space for me,” Ruth said, holding her hand out to be shaken.
“Oh, don’t even mention it,” Erin said, brushing her hand aside and pulling her in for a hug too. Erin been a complete hero when Bette had floated the idea of a plus-one who wasn’t Mei, not poking for details, accepting the “new girlfriend” as though she had no idea what Bette’s month had been like. “We assumed there would be dropouts, and we’d already paid for everyone’s meal. It was easy. You’re doing us a favor, honestly.”
The conversation was background noise to Bette, who was looking again at a table that had only two unclaimed seats and a distinct lack of dreaded ex-girlfriends.
“Shit, did I not warn you?” Erin said, looking intently at Bette. “Mei’s not here tonight. Family something. I meant to text you. Sorry, sorry. It’s been a real day.”
Bette felt Ruth reach down and squeeze her hand again, and forced a smile onto her face. It would be fine. One more evening of anticipation. And, really, it was impossible not to find herself distracted by the hand in hers, by the feeling of Ruth’s thumb running back and forth over her fingers.