If I Were You

Chapter 16 Flynn

We’re definitely lost. We’ve been past that five-bar gate about three times. I keep pretending it’s a different five-bar gate but we both know it’s not.

I was navigating but then I got sidetracked by an email from the magician for tomorrow’s fifth birthday party. He has norovirus. Gulping down the flare of worry, I forward the email to Bex with an appropriately stressed emoji. The kids’ party arm of the business is relatively new, set up four years ago and something I really care about.

‘Are we going in a circle, Flynn?’

The rain is bucketing down in earnest now, the wiper blades moving furiously. I start to scroll to find the map and my screen goes black. I can’t stop the noise that emerges from my mouth in time. Amy hears it.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks, already in panic mode. ‘Has it DIED?’

I freeze, immediately thinking about Bex, the replies, how I can get back online to help.

‘Flynn?’ The car swerves as she stares at me.

‘It’s run out of charge, yes.’

‘This is so typical,’ Amy says. ‘I hope the comedy tweets were worth it.’

‘It was work … I need to find a magici— woah …’

A corner looms and Amy swings round it abruptly, pressing sharply down on her brakes as we are greeted with an entire wall of cows crossing the road into a field.

She pauses for breath, the engine still idling. The rain is pounding on the roof of the car, the windscreen a complete wash of rivulets so that the cows in the road ahead are just a blur of white and black. Another ominous rumble echoes around the surrounding hills.

‘Fucking great,’ she says, throwing up her hands. Then she clutches her head. ‘Oh my god, I’ve already missed helping her set up, now we’re going to miss the dinner. Laura is going to be so mad, she’ll say I’ve done it deliberately or that I don’t care …’

‘She won’t say that,’ I say, trying to bring up the directions on Amy’s phone and not be distracted by the cows, one of which is staring right at us, its enormous eyes unblinking.

‘You don’t get it.’

‘I do and you’re wrong,’ I say bluntly, my voice raised over the rain, my own temper fraying.

‘I’m not,’ Amy says, angry tears swimming in her brown eyes as she looks across at me.

I try to calm her. ‘I’m sure she’ll understand. We just need to let these cows pass and then we’ll ask someone.’

‘We’re still going to be massively late.’

‘It’ll be cool. Others will be in the same boat.’

‘That’s different: they’re not me.’

And suddenly she has opened the car door, rain streaking onto the driver’s seat as she steps out onto the road. I reach for my door handle, pushing it open, shocked by the extent of the rain, hair flattened, clothes drenched almost immediately. I look across at Amy who is standing glowering at me over the roof of the car, wind whipping her curls back from her face.

‘Oh my god, Amy, stop being insane and get back in the car.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I do understand you’re ACTING CRAZY,’ I call out.

‘No. We’re not all laid-back like you, Flynn.’

Heat rises inside me as I think of the things I don’t say to keep the peace. ‘Hey, I get stressed, I just don’t bang on about it all the time.’

‘I don’t bang on.’

I can’t help the bark of laughter and that makes her glower at me even more.

Stop this, I think, I want this weekend to be happy, focus on the positives of our relationship. Move things forward. I can’t screw up another relationship.

‘Don’t laugh at me, Flynn! This isn’t a joke to me!’

‘It’s not a joke to me either,’ I say, practically spitting rainwater out of my mouth.

‘You could have fooled me!’

‘Get back in the car,’ I shout over the rain that is worsening by the second.

‘You just don’t get it. You don’t get me.’

‘Well, that makes two of us,’ I challenge. Sometimes it’s like she barely knows me at all. That thought shocks me for a moment. Do I really think that? I think of the ring in my bag. I want this woman to be my wife – don’t think like that, Flynn. Things are fine.

‘WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND ME!’ The chorus is simultaneous as we screech it at each other.

Another enormous rumble of thunder surrounds us as we glare at each other. The cows peer on and, in a terrible, blinding flash, the sky above us cracks open. My whole body is flung backwards through the air, everything spinning, before I come to an abrupt stop in the long grass of the verge.