6
At first Inga seemed really happy living in London—keen to take me and Alex on a tour of Camden Market when we visited for the weekend. Full of all the exciting job opportunities she’d applied for. Talking proudly of how well Matt was getting on in his new job.
Matt looked tired—apparently he worked long hours—but when he showed us the plans for the office building his company was designing, I was seriously impressed. If you had to work in a high-rise in the city, you’d want to work in that one. It was beautiful, with its angles and curves. A rival to the Shard.
The four of us went for a walk on nearby Hampstead Heath before it was time for me and Alex to catch the train home, and as the boys went on ahead, I took Inga’s arm and hugged her close. “It’s all going well for you, then, living here?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. It’ll be a lot better when I get a job, you know? Something to get me out of the flat for a bit. But, yeah. It’s great to see all the exhibitions as soon as they come out instead of having to wait. How about you and Alex? Is that going okay?”
“He missed Matt like crazy at first. But I’ve been encouraging him to play more sport.”
The way Inga smiled and squeezed my arm told me she’d heard the words I hadn’t spoken out loud. That I’d encouraged Alex to join another football team so I’d have some time to myself.
“I miss you,” I said, but I said it with a smile, because I was glad things were working out for her.
“Me too. Maybe we could meet somewhere halfway sometime? Cambridge, maybe? For a bit of shopping? Or does your teaching course take up too much of your time for that?”
I’d started an evening course to become qualified to teach art to adults after Inga left, and now I spent a large part of my weekends completing assignments. I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in months.
“It’s only part time, but it is pretty full on. I’m not sure I can afford Cambridge just now either. Things are pretty tight.”
Inga sighed. “Don’t you sometimes wish you hadn’t been born creative? That you were the type who was happy filing or working in a supermarket?”
I’d done both jobs in my time and was currently temping for an insurance company doing soul-destroying data-inputting work. The completion of my teaching qualification couldn’t come soon enough. At least then work would be related to something I loved. Yet did I wish I wasn’t creative? Not when I was in the zone and nothing else in the world existed, no. Art—and Violet—had been the only things that had got me through my bleak childhood.
“Sometimes,” I said, pushing aside memories of myself filling sketchbook after sketchbook with drawings and paintings in an effort to express my frustration and despair. “Come on, enough of this depressing chat. Let’s race the boys to the top of the hill.”
“Christ,” Inga said. “Do you want to kill me?”
But she joined in, anyway, and we took Matt and Alex by surprise, tearing gleefully past them and ending up in giggling—and no doubt sickening to any observers—couple clinches at the top when Alex and Matt caught us up and tackled us to the ground.
Then Alex sprang to his feet saying, “Let’s roll all the way back down!”
And we did, like four overgrown kids, Inga moaning, “If I roll over some dog shit, I’m going to fucking kill you, Alex Hammond.”
As I rolled, my nose picked up the scent of the grass and crushed clover, transporting me back in time and reducing the squeals of the other three into the distance. I was with Violet, all those years ago at Shrublands Manor, risking feeling nauseous all over again by rolling down the hill with her to distract her from the trauma of being abandoned at the tower.
“Again, Lil! Again!” Violet yelled when we reached the bottom, loving it.
“Come here, terror,” I’d said, grabbing her when she tried to run back up, pulling her wriggling body down on top of mine, her arms around my neck, her blond curls tickling my face.
“You have some harebrained ideas, Alex,” Inga said loudly, snapping me back to the present, making a great show of checking every item of her clothing to make sure it was dog poo–free.
Matt hung back with me, putting a friendly arm around my shoulders. “You look miles away. You all right?”
I blinked away the memories and pushed myself affectionately into his side. “Sure. All good.”
It was extremely tough, saying goodbye to them all over again at Liverpool Street Station. They were Matt and Inga, the other halves of us.
“Thanks for a really fun weekend.” Alex’s voice was determinedly chipper. “Great to have the crew back together.”
“We’ll always be together, mate,” Matt told him, giving him a bear hug. “Even when we’re apart.”
It was my turn next. “Take good care of her, won’t you?” I whispered to him as we hugged, and when he kissed my cheek and squeezed my arm, I knew it was his way of saying he would.
There were tears in my eyes when I hugged Inga, her body almost as familiar against mine as a lover’s. “Call me.”
“Tonight too soon?”
“Tonight’s perfect,” I said, and Alex and Matt lifted their eyebrows at each other and laughed.
Alex and I walked home from the station instead of getting a bus. The moon was out, sending glittering reflections on the river, and I think we needed a non-transport-based transition before we got home.
Where the river curves around the ancient tower that was once a part of the city wall, we cut up a steep, grassy hill to a viewpoint overlooking the flood-lit cathedral and the distinctive cube of the castle.
I was panting before we were even halfway up, my East Anglian leg muscles unaccustomed to hills and still tired from running up the hill on Hampstead Heath. “Tell me again why we’re taking this route home?” I asked, stopping to catch my breath, hands on my hips.
Alex smiled at me through the darkness. “For the view. Oh, and so I can get you alone.”
I opened my mouth to say we were usually alone these days, now that Matt and Inga had gone, but I didn’t get the chance to speak the words because Alex grabbed me.
“So I can do this.”
He kissed me, blocking the view of the cathedral and the stars, pulling me down onto the grass, and I kissed him back, holding him, pressed into the ground by his weight.
“I love you, Lily,” he said, moving back slightly to gaze down at me.
“I love you too,” I said. “Even if you are squashing my as-yet-undigested chicken rogan josh.”
“How to kill a romantic gesture, directed by Lily Best,” he joked. “Coming to a cinema near you.”
I laughed. “Sorry.” I reached out to stroke his hair back from his face. “And I’m sorry, too, for not wanting to move to London. I’m happy living here.”
He kissed the end of my nose. “Me too. Maybe it was time for the four of us to be apart more, anyway. Do our own thing.”
“Maybe. I was thinking actually, you should do an open-mic night or something. Play your guitar to an audience.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“You’re much better than you think.”
“And what are you going to be doing while I’m stepping up and being brave?”
“I’ll be supporting you, of course. Sitting at the front, being your groupie.”
“Well, naturally. But what are you going to do to expand your comfort zone while I’m making a tit of myself onstage?”
“Alex,” I reminded him, “I’ve got my teaching practise test next week. That’s enough comfort-zone expansion for anyone, believe me. Now, shut up and kiss me again.”
I rolled on top of him, my hands slipping inside his clothing, our passion soon taking us away from the thought of anything but the here and now. And later at home, while Alex slept, I painted a picture of us rolling together on the crushed grass—a fused unit, with the cathedral and the landmarks we’d visited in London that weekend flying through the air away from us.
The following week I did my teaching practise test in front of my fellow students, and although my voice was shaking and my mind froze at one point, so the presentation was a bit clunky, I did it. And people seemed reasonably engaged. Best of all, I knew that now I’d done it once, I’d be able to do it again. For real, this time. And although teaching wasn’t creating art, it was a thousand times better than data inputting or waitressing.
If Inga hadn’t been in London, I’d probably have gone out with her to celebrate my achievement, but she was, so I went out with my fellow survivors from the course instead. All of us were high on relief and drank far too much. And I got talking to Amy, an aspiring writer, who I’d sat next to in training sessions a few times.
“We ought to try teaching together sometime,” she suggested. “Find a way to combine words and images.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said, something sparking inside me at the suggestion. “My boyfriend’s a part-time musician, if you want to include music as well.”
Amy grinned, displaying a cute gap between her two front teeth. “My boyfriend works for the council—he’s in charge of recycling. Not sure how he’d be any help to the project. Except maybe for clearing up after us if we make a mess?”
We both burst out laughing at that, our amusement fuelled by the amount of wine we’d consumed, and from then on we became firm friends, and my parting from Inga became a bit easier to bear.