Chapter 25
Night gathered close, a hush settling over the landscape. The river ran blindly beyond their camp, polished stones turning in the dark. The breeze had quieted, lulled by the late hour.
The four of them circled close to a small fire that smoldered rather than burned. The wood they’d collected earlier from the forest floor was too green to flame.
Liz scraped her fork against the side of the pan, scooping up the last of the noodles. “I could eat that all over again.”
She pushed to her feet, backside numbed from the hard log where she’d been perched. She flicked on her headlamp and carried the pan to the river edge.
She cast the beam to the opposite riverbank, thinking of Vilhelm’s strange presence there earlier. A cluster of tiny winged insects darted in and out of the light, but the bank appeared empty.
Kneeling on the damp grass, she plunged the pan into the icy flow. She scooped up water and used her fingers to flush out the noodles that had burned at the edge of the pan.
Away from the glow of the fire and her friends, a strange, unnerving sensation tickled the edges of her senses. Her back felt exposed, the curve of her spine vulnerable, as if, behind her, lurked some unnamed threat.
Vilhelm’s warning about the landscape drifted into her mind, dark and unsettling.
She shook her head briskly to dislodge the thought, annoyed for allowing her imagination to spin so wildly. She rinsed the pan clean, then hurried back to the fire, grateful for its faint glow and the presence of her friends.
Maggie was handing around a bar of chocolate. “You sure?” Liz asked. Supplies were precious when you had to carry everything you planned to eat for the next four days.
“Course.”
Liz gratefully snapped off a small square, bringing it reverently toward her face, breathing in its sweet, milky scent. She dropped it into her mouth, chocolate melting against her tongue.
“We’ve survived day one,” Helena said, stretching her bare feet toward the modest warmth of the fire. She and Joni had propped their wet hiking boots beside it to dry. “We hiked, crossed a river, put up tents, cooked on a camp stove—and now we have fire. Well, smoke.”
“Wish Aidan could see us!” Maggie said triumphantly.
“How is your delightful ex-husband?” Joni asked.
“Still bitter that you didn’t sing at our wedding.”
Joni laughed for the first time in hours.
“God, what did I see in him?” Maggie asked.
“Don’t ask me.” Helena shrugged.
“I think I was so swept up by how romantic he was—surprising me with weekends in Amsterdam and Paris, sending flowers all the time, making me feel adored—that I didn’t see—”
“What a self-absorbed, jumped-up, narcissistic arsehole he was?” Helena suggested helpfully.
“Don’t hold back,” Maggie said wryly. “I knew things weren’t right, but then I fell pregnant, and the wedding was already booked, and I felt obliged to go ahead.
Isn’t that insane? I married him because I was too embarrassed to say I’d changed my mind.
God, I’m weak.” Her expression looked doleful in the firelight.
“You’re not weak,” Joni said, elbows on her knees. “I think you were hopeful. You were pregnant with his baby. You wanted it to be right. You wanted him to be a wonderful father. You wanted the marriage to work. So you hoped and hoped. That’s what happened.”
Behind them, in the dark line of trees, Liz thought she caught a movement. She froze, staring. She blinked into the darkness, but the shadow dissolved into the woodland.
“How do you and Patrick manage it?” Maggie asked Liz.
She blinked. “Us?”
“You’ve been together for years. You’ve always been so solid, so strong. So in love. I remember Patrick recording you mix tapes—all the track titles handwritten.”
Liz smiled. She still had those tapes, filled with songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz, Beastie Boys.
She used to play them over and over as she tried on outfits for their dates to the cinema, or to get fish and chips in town.
She hadn’t owned a tape deck in two decades, but she had kept every single one.
Maggie continued, “You survived university in different cities. You got through your medical placements. You managed to keep it together with kids. What’s the secret?”
Liz still hadn’t said a word. She kept her eyes on the fire. She attempted to smile, but her mouth seemed to wobble.
“What is it?” Maggie asked, head tilted to one side.
Liz could feel the others looking at her across the fire. She wanted to reassure them that everything was fine. That yes, she and Patrick were still wildly in love. But she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. Tears began pricking at her eyelids. Heat rushed to her cheeks.
“Oh, Liz,” Maggie said, scooting close, placing a warm hand on her back.
Her breath snagged. “Patrick and I . . . we’re on a trial separation.
” She wanted to say, But it’s fine. It’s a good thing.
It’s not even a real separation—it’s a trial.
She wanted to emphasize the word trial. That was the important part—that they were just trying it out to remind themselves how much they loved each other—but she couldn’t say any of this because, alarmingly, she’d started to cry. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her face.
“Don’t apologize for having emotions,” Maggie said, producing a pack of tissues from a pocket.
“I wasn’t planning on saying anything. I didn’t want to be a downer.”
“We are your oldest friends!” Maggie cried. “We do the good and the bad. The whole messy journey, okay?”
Joni nodded emphatically.
“I know.” Maybe she hadn’t talked about it because then it would be real, or perhaps it was that she liked people thinking of her as strong and capable. She was the one whom other people came to for advice. Those were the foundations of her identity. Without those things, then who was Liz Wallace?
“Why are you separating?” Helena asked.
Wood smoke drifted toward her, thick in her throat.
“Things have been . . . hard . . . for a while. I can’t even explain what’s gone wrong.
” She shook her head. Could feel the others watching her, waiting.
“We’ve just . . . lost something,” she tried.
“We haven’t laughed together in ages. We used to talk about things, you know?
Bands. Adventures. Books. Dreams. Everything.
Now all we have time to talk about is who’s ordered the school dinners, or what after-school clubs have been canceled.
We’re living out the before-kids and after-kids cliché.
” She’d seen the same thing happen to her parents’ marriage: kisses moving from mouths to cheeks; a double bed traded for separate rooms; irritation in place of laughter. Not us, she’d thought.
But it was them. Liz kept her gaze on the fire as she admitted, “We’ve stopped having sex.
” It wasn’t that one of them was pulling back.
It was that they both weren’t bothered. It was as subtle and devastating as that.
Desire lay in the space of anticipation and mystery.
In the beginning, she’d had no idea what Patrick would do in bed—so everything felt surprising and exciting.
But she realized that in a relationship, you become so intoxicated by those spaces that you want to know more, you want to be pulled so incredibly tight together—and you inadvertently close them.
And then you look up and there are no spaces or mysteries left.
“Do you still love him?” Maggie asked quietly.
“Whose idea was the separation?” Joni asked.
“Mine.”
“But, why?” Helena asked.
“I wanted to hear Patrick tell me it was a crazy idea.” She sniffed. “Only he didn’t. He said, It sounds like a good idea.”
“Oh, Liz!” Maggie cried.
“It’s all been so polite. So civil. We agreed to it. Made a plan. Put it in our schedule. We’re taking it in turns to be at home for a week at a time. The kids don’t know what’s happening yet. This is my week to be away.”
“Maybe this will be a good thing,” Maggie said. “Like pressing a reset button.”
She nodded, desperate for Maggie to be right.
She wiped her face, looked down at her hiking boots. That was why she needed this trip. Needed to walk with these women. She felt so lost—in her marriage, in herself—that the only thing that made sense right now was to follow a trail from one point to another, step by step.