Chapter 15 #2
Quickly, his moment of hesitation resumes into another grin after a nonchalant shrug, as his nauseating optimism persists again.
‘But it’s only a year. Soon you’ll be away in Milan, and I’ll be wherever will have me in this country.
’ Perhaps it’s some weird twin intuition, or I’m not hiding it as well as I thought, but he can see clearly that I am not coping as well as he is.
He knows I need his positivity more than anything right now, and he’d happily brush aside his own feelings just to make me feel better.
Callum has always been a better person than anyone I’ve met, and far better than me in every single way.
I really don’t know what I’d do without him.
‘We’ve never been apart longer than a few weeks.’ I had hardly given it a thought until now. All my life, I could always just assume that Callum would be by my side. I’d never be alone because my twin, my shadow, wouldn’t be far behind. And now I’m just expected to live without him for three years?
‘We don’t need to think about that now,’ he says, sensing my anguish. ‘Besides, do you really think I will pass up on weekends in bloody Milan? Not a chance. I hope you get a room with enough space for a blow-up bed.’
Callum nudges me with his shoulder and I crack a real smile. ‘What about me? Why can’t I spend the weekend in Norwich, or Leeds, or wherever you will be?’
‘Ava.’ He looks at me with a look of full seriousness. ‘It’s Milan.’
‘Touché.’ We both laugh. The dimple on his left side matches mine on my right. Granny always said we looked the most like twins when we laughed. There was rarely a time we weren’t laughing when we’d visit her and Grandad.
‘Have you told Dad you got in?’ Callum asks, and the weight returns to the conversation.
I shake my head. ‘He keeps texting, but I can’t bring myself to reply.’ Dad never used to text. I’d be lucky to get a thumbs up emoji or one-word answers from him over the phone. He’d always wait to have a conversation until he got home from work. Now he can’t.
‘You should tell him. He’ll be so proud.’ My twin smiles sadly.
‘He’ll be too busy with the house sale.’ I make the excuse and Callum sighs. ‘And I’m too busy with this.’ I hand him the flyer for the exhibition and he scans his eyes over it. ‘It will help with my fashion and photography,’ I explain. ‘It could count towards my coursework apparently.’
He looks at me. ‘You are doing it, right?’
‘I don’t know.’ I pull my jacket tighter across my chest. ‘I’m already so far behind in everything else.
And I don’t even have a teacher for the fashion coursework, just an email address that sets me work and marks things for me.
It just feels like a lot of risk for something that might amount to nothing. ’
‘Or it might amount to something.’ Callum shrugs, as though it really is that simple. ‘You’ve never needed someone standing over you telling you to work hard. You’ve been making things since you were eleven years old with stolen bits of Granny’s fabrics. You never needed any encouragement then.’
‘I wasn’t stealing them! She gave them to me.’
‘She gave them to you because you’d already taken them and she didn’t have the heart to tell you off.’ He raises an eyebrow, and I open my mouth to argue before realising he is almost certainly right.
‘The point is,’ he continues, ‘you’ve always known what you wanted to do. Like, always. I don’t think you’ve ever not known. Do you have any idea how rare that is?’
I look at him. There is something almost wistful in the way he says it, underneath the cheerfulness.
‘Don’t you know?’ I ask. ‘What you want to do, I mean.’ He’s always seemed like he’s got it all together, all thought out and perfect. He’s never not been confident in himself, or at least, he’s never shown any glimmers of doubt.
Callum exhales, and tilts his head back to look at the sky for a moment.
‘No,’ he admits. ‘Not really. Like, I know I love history. I know I could talk about it for the rest of my life without getting bored. But now we’re not in London, I’m starting to feel like my options are limited.
In the city, it feels like you could do anything and you have the world at your feet.
There’s always so much going on and you’re in amongst it.
But I suppose living here has given me a little reality check.
I’m on the outside looking in this time, and realising it’s all much harder than it looks.
What could I actually do, realistically, with a history degree if I can’t be the next Lucy Worsley?
’ He pulls a face. ‘Maybe I’ll get into teaching.
History, obviously. Secondary school, maybe.
’ He glances at me, a little self-conscious in a way Callum rarely is. ‘I know it’s not very glamorous.’
‘I think it’s brilliant,’ I say, and I mean it. ‘You’d be so good at it. You’ve been giving unsolicited lectures about the Habsburg Empire since you were eleven.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Hardy har har. You’re just jealous you don’t have my encyclopaedic knowledge.’
‘But honestly, Cal. I don’t think it’s too out there to think you could be the next big historian on the telly, if that’s really what you want to do.
You’ve got to dream, got to give it a shot at least. You don’t need to sell yourself short because it’s hard, or because you don’t have a posh name that does the talking for you.
I’d watch your documentaries. Hell, I’ve listened to you ramble on about movies for eighteen years and know far more about Star Wars than I ever intended to, and couldn’t shake this knowledge if I tried.
You’ve got a gift, now all you need to do is take the leap of faith.
If it doesn’t work out, you won’t have lost anything that you have right now. If you fall, I’ll always catch you.’
‘Cringe.’ My brother replies with glassy eyes, forcing us both to pause in our seriousness for a moment to chuckle. He throws an arm over my shoulders in a rare embrace and squeezes me close. I know well enough that that is all the reply I’m getting, and that’s all the reply I need.
We stand in comfortable silence for a moment, before he asks, ‘You do want to go to Milan, right?’
‘Yes.’ It comes out without hesitation, and I realise that my advice to Callum is the same advice I needed too.
I’m allowed to follow my dreams, even if failure awaits at the end.
I want to make something of myself. So what if in three years’ time I just end up back here, in the exact place I started?
I’m sure I’ll have learnt something. And if I don’t? If I succeed? Well, who knows …
‘Then I think you’d be stupid not to do the exhibition,’ my brother says bluntly. ‘You might even enjoy it.’
Perhaps I will do it after all. Having no time left in my day to think about Dad and the house, and everything else that’s come with this divorce, sounds like a plan to me.
‘I’d catch you too, Ava,’ he says, without his usual teasing tone, and a lump forms in my throat.
Then, before I can reply, my brother looks at me with genuine pride. ‘I love watching you at the sewing machine, you know. It reminds me of Granny, and it’s like she’s still here when I hear it rumbling away in the next room.’
I hold him tighter, and he places a hand over mine. We don’t need words to know what the other is saying, we never have.
‘You wanna walk into town and get some chips?’ he asks. ‘This bus is taking an age, and I dread to think what Mum and Grandad have cooked for tea tonight.’
I nod enthusiastically, grateful at the prospect of not having ham, egg, and chips for the sixth night in a row.