Chapter 44
Adam
This is torture.
The camp-bed is the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever slept on, and I have a gold Duke of Edinburgh award. But it isn’t the furniture that’s rendering me unable to sleep. It’s Eve, lying there, three feet away from me in the dark.
This evening... this evening has been like a weird, exhilarating dream. What am I doing here, in the middle of the Lake District, with a neighbour I’ve known for a couple of weeks and a stray cat? I almost laugh into the darkness.
I can hear her tossing and turning too, struggling to sleep. She said she was a bad sleeper — said that things plagued her at night. A busy brain, she called it.
She’s a problem-solver, that much is clear. She gets things done. But there’s something under that, a vulnerability that I can’t seem to tap into. Her confession outside, about the war that broke out between her and her colleague, felt like the first piece of real truth I’d heard from her since we met.
I roll over in my cot and sigh. I know I won’t sleep. I feel like I’ve been jabbed with adrenaline. I think she might be the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I banish the thought. She’s a neighbour, a potential friend, and we each of us have too many problems. But the more I get to know her, the more attractive she becomes. I roll onto my other side, pulling the cover up higher. In a moment, I’ll go out onto the balcony and watch the lake until the sun comes up.
‘Adam?’ Her whisper carries across the room, and I startle.
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you sleeping?’
‘Obviously not.’ I laugh softly.
‘Is it really uncomfortable?’
‘It’s like sleeping on gravel.’
‘Do you want to swap?’
‘No.’
She’s silent for a while, and I think she’s fallen asleep, but then she speaks again. ‘Do you want to just share? We can build a pillow wall.’
My pulse jumps. ‘No, don’t worry.’
‘Come on. I don’t mind, honestly.’
I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling. I can’t. Why not? We can build a pillow wall, like she said. I get out of bed and stand up, feeling my way over to the double bed.
‘Hang on, let me shift over,’ she whispers.
‘Why are we whispering?’ I murmur back.
‘I don’t know.’ She giggles — a vulnerable sound I haven’t heard from her yet — and I slide under the duvet.
We lie for a second, one single pillow wedged between us. I can hear her breathing. ‘This is also very uncomfortable,’ I say.
‘I know. Fucking Palmgroves.’
We laugh together, and in the darkness it’s easy, like we’re two bodiless souls, floating blindly.
‘Do you think you’ll sleep?’ I ask.
‘Probably not.’
I mull my next question over in my mind. ‘What do you think about, when you can’t sleep?’
She sighs. ‘Friends. My parents. Myself.’
‘That’s quite the combo.’
‘Yeah.’
I roll over so that I’m facing her, and I can see her outline as she lies on her back, staring at the ceiling.
‘Do you miss your parents?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says, quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t know. They left.’
‘You’re not close?’
‘I suppose we are, sort of.’
I sense that she’s closing down again, but then she continues.
‘When you saw me, the other day . . .’
‘Yeah.’ My voice is barely audible, I’m so desperate not to break her confidence, to hear what she has to say.
‘That was the first time I’ve cried since I was seventeen.’
I swallow. ‘That’s a really long time.’
‘Mmm.’
‘What happened?’ I ask. I don’t mean the other day, I mean back then, when she decided she wouldn’t cry anymore.
She understands my question. ‘My grandad died, and my boyfriend left me the next day. It’s a pathetic story.’ She laughs sadly. ‘But I feel like it might have fucked me up a bit.’ She pauses. ‘People leaving, depending on people, you know? That sort of thing.’
I watch her, the silhouette of her chest rising and falling as she breathes. ‘My parents are dead,’ I say.
She rolls over, so we’re facing each other. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah.’ I laugh at her response: inadequate, but also perfectly fitting. ‘But I have Hugh, you know? And aunties and uncles who send birthday cards and a brilliant group of friends. It’s OK.’
‘How did it happen?’ she whispers, and I feel her breath. She’s only centimetres away.
‘Car crash. When I was sixteen.’ I look beyond her, to the tiny slither of moonlight filtering through the curtains.
‘Shit,’ she says again.
We’re quiet for a while.
‘Don’t you feel it too? That everyone’s going to leave you one day?’ she asks, and there’s a tremor in her voice.
‘No,’ I say, certain. ‘I know it.’
She hesitates. ‘And so you hold on to what you have while it’s there.’ It’s a statement, not a question, and it’s posed as though it’s just occurred to her, like she’s not really talking to me at all.
A moment passes, the only noise the whir of the empty mini fridge and our breathing.
‘So your ex left you,’ Eve murmurs.
‘She did.’
‘Sorry. I imagine it’s quite fresh?’
‘Doesn’t feel as fresh as I’d have thought,’ I say truthfully. ‘What about you?’
She doesn’t answer, instead asking, ‘Are you... dating?’
‘No,’ I laugh, remembering my terrible attempt at things with Becky. ‘Absolutely not.’
We lapse into silence again. I want to repeat the question back to her, but I stop myself. Maybe I’m sure she’s single, maybe I don’t want to hear otherwise.
Our faces are just inches away from each other. I want to reach out, to run a finger down her bare arm, to hold the back of her head and pull her towards me, to feel her pressed against me.
She’s looking at me. I can see the glint of the dim light reflecting in her eyes. I want her hands on me, my mouth on her neck, her smooth thigh looped over mine.
There’s a breath, and I lift my head.
‘Night, then,’ she says.
I blink, and then lower my head back down and close my eyes, the image of her staring at me in the dark printed on the back of my eyelids.
Eve shuffles beside me, and I feel the pillow between us move. She reaches under and takes my hand in hers, running her fingers over my palm, and then holds it tight.
* * *
When I wake up, Eve is sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Morning.’ I sit up, feeling stiff, a sharp pain in my hip where the seam of my jeans has dug into me during the night.
‘Hey.’ She turns around and smiles. Her face is bare — she must have washed her makeup off with the tiny bar of soap in the bathroom. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Me too,’ I say, trying to remember the last time I ate. We skipped dinner last night, but I didn’t notice at time. ‘Where’s Old Sausage?’
She nods to the other side of the room, where the cat is curled up on the camp-bed. ‘At least someone got some use out of it.’
I stand up and go to the bathroom, running my fingers through Old Sausage’s fur as I pass. ‘I’ll just grab a shower and then we can go and find some food?’
‘Sure.’ She smiles at me again.
I manage a full wash with the minuscule soap, the bathroom filling with steam so thick it dampens my clothes, which I’ve piled next to the sink. Out of the shower, I wipe a smear across the mirror and inspect my face in the three seconds before it clouds over again. There’s a brightness to my eyes I haven’t seen in months.
My mind goes back to last night, but the whole thing is dreamlike, the heightened moments fading as I inspect them in the light of day. Did she feel what I felt? Did she sense I was about to kiss her, and that’s why she said good night? For her, was it just another evening — albeit a weird one — that she’ll forget as soon as we’re back in Manchester?
I towel dry my hair and emerge back into the bedroom accompanied by a plume of steam, wearing yesterday’s clothes.
‘I need to buy some deodorant,’ I say, looking outside to the already high sun. ‘Think there’s a Boots round here?’
Eve rummages around in her backpack and pulls out a small aerosol. She tosses it to me.
‘Always prepared,’ I remark, ducking back into the bathroom and leaving the door open.
We take Old Sausage for a stroll around the terrace before chivvying her back into her crate, where she promptly falls asleep again. As we’re closing the door, I allow myself one final glimpse of the bed. I can’t be the only one feeling like something happened there last night, can I?
We emerge into Windermere, scouring for somewhere that does takeaway breakfasts. Eventually, we locate two bacon wraps, and eat them with difficulty as we walk to the train station.
Our phones are almost dead, so we buy physical tickets, and the act of it feels quaint, like it’s a special occasion.
As we settle into our seats, I look out of the window. Windermere begins rolling past us, fading into the distance, and if Eve wasn’t sat here, with me, I could almost believe it had never happened.