Chapter 9 #2
Instead I am tossing and turning, and every minute I spend awake makes me more and more stressed about how wiped out I’m going to be in the morning.
Which, obviously, makes it even tougher for me to switch off.
Eventually, I need to go to the loo again, and then I need a glass of water, and by that point sleep seems out of my grasp.
I settle back into my little single bed and decide not to fight it.
I’ve discovered over the years of on-and-off insomnia that fighting is the worst thing to do.
Instead, I just accept that tomorrow will be a shitstorm, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I let my stupid mind wander, and the random thoughts of the day ping around my skull like dodgem cars, crashing into each other.
How long has my dad been seeing Sandra? Is there a chance they might get married and then I wouldn’t worry so much about him?
And why doesn’t he have a cleaner or extra bar staff anymore?
Does Maggie still make those amazing fruit scones?
Should I start baking fresh bread for the breakfasts, because it’s the best smell in the world?
What is Tyler doing tonight? How long will I be here? And what about Liam?
As soon as that last thought lands, the others fade away. Liam. That’s what’s actually bothering me. I might as well be honest with myself. I stare at the moonlight filtering in through the curtains and listen out for the owl that lives in the trees nearby. Nothing. Even the owl is steering clear.
I sit up, sip some water, and rub my sore eyes.
I have tried so hard not to think about Liam over the years.
Too hurtful, too sad, too embarrassing. I cut him out, blanked him from my mind.
Made him a creature of dread and legend.
Now, tonight, I came face to face with the monster – and he wasn’t a monster at all.
Of course he wasn’t. He never was – he just became a symbol of that broken time in my life.
Tonight, he wasn’t a symbol, he was… Liam.
No matter how buff he looked or how much he’d grown, beneath all the physical changes he was still just the goofy boy I used to think of as my soul mate.
Neither of us talked about the past very much, or in fact the present – we just messed around.
We sang and danced and made stupid jokes about farting.
Both of us almost forty, both of us still behaving like kids.
The last time I spoke to Liam, it was this time of year.
In fact it was Christmas Day, when I was sixteen.
It was not a good time in my life. It was probably the messiest I have ever been.
Being a teenage girl is always messy; your body and mind – and the world’s perception of you – is in a state of constant change. Your own perception is even more fluid.
Added to that unappealing blend of hormones and natural boundary-pushing was my home situation.
My parents had turned into strangers, and looking back I think that all upset me so much more than I was able to acknowledge.
My mum and dad had never been the kind of people who had rows or swore at each other.
Suddenly, though, they were – and they stayed like that for months and months.
When Mum met Ethan, things changed very quickly.
The rows stopped, but a different type of upheaval began.
The kind that involved me moving to another country, and my dad looking like he was being crushed by the weight of his own sorrow. Me trapped between them.
I was a kid. I didn’t really understand any of it.
I just felt insecure and helpless, and those feelings manifested in my small rebellions.
Staying out later than I should, drinking too much, refusing to help in the B&B.
Some of this had already started, and was harmless and natural enough at my age – but the changes at home accelerated it.
Like most girls at that stage, I was interested in sex.
I’d never done it, and in fact I’d only ever kissed a couple of boys, and found the whole process a bit icky.
Too much tongue, too much groping, too much everything.
I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about, and even wondered if I might be gay – except I didn’t find girls especially attractive either.
Looking back it’s just funny – those poor teenage boys, no clue what they were doing, and me thinking ‘huh, really?’ I was convinced that Josh Hartnett would be much better at it.
If I’d carried on living where I lived and leading my normal life, I’m sure I’d have figured it all out – but there was the great schism.
When my mum told me we were leaving for California, I basically lost the plot.
She broke the news maybe ten days before Christmas, and I was furious.
With her, with my dad, with everything. Nobody was listening to me when I said I wouldn’t go, and nobody seemed to give a damn what I thought about it at all. I felt irrelevant and invisible.
A few days after that I broke into the pub cellar and stole a whole crate of Budweiser.
Well, technically I didn’t break in – the place wasn’t locked.
I waited until Mum and Dad were in bed (in their separate rooms by then), and snuck down in my pyjamas and Converse.
I could barely carry the crate, and remember the clinking noises of the glass as I made my escape.
I’d arranged to meet Liam down at the beach, and he was bringing the essentials – sleeping bags, torches, snacks and cigarettes that neither of us wanted to smoke.
He used to pinch them from his older brother Patrick.
I wrapped up in an extra layer of fleece, added my hat and gloves, and clinked my way down the steep steps to the bay. I’m lucky I didn’t die, in all honesty – I wouldn’t do it now. I’d be too scared that I’d slip in the dark and impale myself on a Budweiser bottle. What an undignified way to go.
He’d galloped up the steps as soon as he heard me coming and helped me carry the case down to the sand.
We weren’t complete idiots, we did know the tide wasn’t due to come in and trap us, and it all felt deliciously naughty – the theft, the sneaking around, setting up our little camp in the early hours of the morning.
We zipped the sleeping bags together to create one big one and sat snuggled up together as we got to work on the beers.
I often look back and wonder if I was an especially bad teenager.
I certainly seemed to drink quite a lot, but part of that at least was because I had relatively easy access to alcohol.
Once I moved to the US, where they were much more strict on IDs and technically didn’t let you touch booze until you were twenty-one, I wasn’t as interested. Probably a big save for my liver.
That night, to start with at least, was so perfect.
Me, Liam, the sea. There was a full moon, and it seemed to paint the rippling water in shimmering shades of silver.
It was cold but not freezing, and we were well wrapped up, only our faces showing.
We laughed and talked and sang along to our favourite music.
We planned our future, one where we were independent and no grown-ups could tell us how to live.
We would go to college and then he would start his own business building computers, which was the only thing he was interested in.
We would both go to Bristol uni, and share a house, and have so much fun.
Eventually we might even get a puppy. He would meet and marry Sarah Michelle Gellar, and I would be wooed by Josh Hartnett, and we would be friends forever.
It was a version of a conversation we had shared over and over again – but this time, it felt totally impossible.
Even as I was saying the words, I knew that none of it would happen.
Because I was moving to the States, and Liam was staying here and, let’s face it, neither of us was ever going to marry a movie star.
‘It’s all crap, though, isn’t it?’ I’d said. I’d drunk so much by then that I was already sounding a bit slurred. ‘It’s all crap because I won’t be here. I’ll be on the other side of the world, and you’ll forget all about me.’
‘Don’t say that!’ he’d replied, passing me another bottle of beer which I very much didn’t need. ‘It’s not all crap. It might just happen differently than we planned. And I will never forget about you, Ellie. You’re my lobster!’
‘That isn’t even real. That’s just a stupid thing off Friends. I’ll move away, and you’ll find a new lobster, and I’ll never make another friend like you…’
I was crying by that stage, all snot and tears, the sheer frustration of my position combining with the booze to overwhelm me.
Liam put his arm around me, and let me cry on his shoulder, doing as good a job of comforting me as most sixteen-year-old boys could.
He stroked my back and held my hand and kissed the tears from my cheeks.
I think it was that final gesture that pushed me over the edge.
He was kind and sweet and there, and I was so unhappy – desperate to feel anything other than that swirling pit of emotional nausea.
After all these years, it is still vivid.
It still stings. It still makes me blush, even as I lie alone in my own bed as a grown woman.
It was all too much for me – the waves, the booze, the boy.
The way he always seemed to know me so much better than anybody else, and the horror of leaving it all behind.
I grabbed hold of his face and kissed him.
Properly kissed him. At first he went rigid in shock, which was totally fair enough – there had never been even a hint of anything romantic between us.
He was about as experienced as I was – in other words, not very – and neither of us had ever expressed an interest in our friendship being anything more than it was.