Chapter 8
8
EMMA
When we arrive at the garage, there’s no one to be seen initially.
Callum and I both get out and look around. There’s still no one to be seen.
‘You have to be fecking joking,’ Callum almost howls. ‘We are never, ever going to get out of here.’
‘So when Azim told you that I was happy to give you a lift, did he give you a time frame?’ I keep meaning to ask that question and then get distracted. ‘I feel like you’re a lot less keen than I am to sightsee in Florence.’ One of the few good things about Callum as a travel companion is that I know him very well – well, knew him, but I don’t think people’s basic personalities change that much – and I know I don’t have to pussyfoot around with him. ‘I’m getting the impression that you just want to get straight back to London as fast as you can. Which obviously makes sense given that if it hadn’t been for the ash you’d have just got a plane yesterday.’ I’m thinking out loud now.
‘Well, yes, obviously I was expecting to be home yesterday.’ He looks at me. ‘But I refuse to cause you in any way to cut your trip short and it sounds a lot of fun—’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound so fake when he’s trying to be sincere ‘—and so I’d love to accompany you on the rest of it, if you’re happy to have me. And obviously when you’re passing through a major city I could of course hop out of the van if there are any other transport options.’
Another good thing about Callum is that he’s always made me laugh, and now is no exception, although usually he’s intending to be funny, and he definitely wasn’t trying to be just now.
I can’t help sniggering out loud as I say, ‘I’m so excited to have such an enthusiastic companion.’
‘Of course I’m enthusiastic. If the rest of the trip is even half as good as it’s been so far, I’m the luckiest man alive,’ he says. ‘Half the night pretending to be asleep in a single bed and the other half sitting in a chair, and now a morning sitting for an unspecified length of time in an incredibly attractive garage. Fun times.’
‘You enjoyed dinner. And breakfast.’
‘That is actually true,’ he concedes. ‘And we did meet a lot of nice people. And the monks were great. And the food was pretty good.’
‘Exactly. And we can have fun this morning while we’re waiting.’
‘Really?’
I almost go down the ‘Er, isn’t that quite rude; shouldn’t you be expecting to enjoy my wonderful company?’ route until I realise just in time that it might sound flirty and that would be excruciating.
So instead I say, ‘I have a backgammon set stashed away for just these eventualities. It’s come in very handy during this trip and you’re going to appreciate it now.’
‘Have you been playing solo backgammon or have you been meeting people along the way?’
‘I frequently lure strangers back to my van and make them play backgammon.’ I smile as he laughs politely. ‘No, I’ve had a couple of friends come out to meet me. Some girlfriends and my sister came at different times and—’ for some reason I’ve suddenly had this feeling that I should mention Dev ‘—my ex visited too.’
Callum nods a lot and says, ‘Great,’ and I feel like I’ve achieved exactly what my subconscious probably meant me to do when I mentioned Dev, which was – I think – to underline that I have no hesitation (although I did hesitate) in mentioning him to Callum because Callum and I are so far in the past we might as well not have happened.
Okay, now I feel sad, which is silly.
‘Backgammon,’ I say.
‘I had no idea you played.’ Callum’s frowning a bit, as though it’s wrong that there’s something he doesn’t know about me, which is utterly ridiculous because he’s the one who left and didn’t come back and it’s been a very long time. I am an adult and there’s a lot more than my backgammon skills that he doesn’t know about me.
‘I played a lot with my grandmother at one point,’ I explain.
‘Oh, how is she?’
Callum used to get on very well with her. They had a very similar sense of humour.
‘We lost her three years ago.’
I shouldn’t have mentioned my grandmother; I don’t want to talk about her with Callum.
‘Oh, no, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ I could give him the details of her illness, but… I don’t want to.
It was a huge thing in my life when we lost her and, now that we’ve touched on it, it seems very, very odd that Callum knew nothing about it. It’s so strange, actually, the way two people can be so entirely in each other’s lives and then just go off in their separate directions. If we’d stayed together – and we could have done, I truly believe – we wouldn’t have huge things to find out about each other, and he would have been with me through that difficult time, and I would have been there for him through whatever’s happened in his life.
So much must have happened in his life that I just don’t know about. Starting with how he’s wound up wearing lawyerly clothing and doing a lawyerly job and being in Rome on business.
It would have killed me if I’d known that our lives would diverge so entirely.
I don’t want to think about this any more.
‘I’m going to find the board,’ I say.
The backgammon works like a charm because the second we have it all set up on the van’s table and Callum’s rolled up his sleeves and flexed his wrists and told me to prepare to lose – and then admitted he doesn’t even know the rules – a man who looks like he might be in charge of the garage turns up.
We both stand up to rush out of the van so fast that we collide as we scramble to the door.
And it’s weird physically bumping into Callum. Every time I’ve touched him over the past twenty-four hours – like when we were squished up against each other at breakfast – I’ve felt odd about it.
He clearly feels odd too, because he’s just leapt about a mile and banged his head on the van’s ceiling.
‘You first,’ he suggests, rubbing his head.
I nod and give myself a mental slap for being so ridiculous before climbing down the three steps to the ground and bringing out my best Italian for the garage worker.
‘ Buongiorno .’
I ask if the man speaks English and… no, he doesn’t.
‘It’ll be fine. I did Italian GCSE,’ Callum says. ‘And Google Translate is our friend.’
He speaks some Italian to the man, who surprisingly does understand. And then speaks very fast to us and we do not understand.
Fortunately, it’s very easy to point and mime when it comes to broken windscreen wipers and back lights, so we do that instead, and soon we’ve agreed (I think) that he has the parts (thank goodness) and he’ll have finished by lunchtime, and will call us when it’s done, and it won’t cost anywhere near as much as it would in London.
As we wander out of the garage (we’ve agreed that going for a walk or sitting reading in the sun would be a lot nicer than staying), Callum says, ‘I’m paying, end of.’
‘No, no, it’s my van,’ I say, horrified.
‘But I really do owe you, plus I’ll be getting a refund from the airline and I have to travel back somehow so it’ll just be on my expenses. And I would pay anyway. Because, as I say, I owe you.’
‘You don’t owe me. You’re already paying for half the fuel. And you didn’t want to stay in a monastery and you don’t want to visit Florence or do any of the rest of the trip.’
‘From my side I’d far rather be on this trip with you than sitting working in a hotel room for a few days.’ He totally fails to hide a wistful expression, which makes me laugh. Clearly right now he’d adore to be in a hotel room by himself for a few days rather than here with me. Although… actually… why was he so extremely desperate to get a lift back to London?
Who knows. Maybe he has some important in-person meetings lined up.
I decide it’s nothing to do with me, and say, ‘Yes, anyone would bin a luxury five-star hotel for Miranda, a monastery and several more two-star overnight stays.’
‘Exactly. And therefore I am paying.’
Eventually, I give in, because Callum’s very insistent and if I’m honest I hadn’t totally budgeted for repairs and an extra night on the road.
If he were anyone else, I’d laugh and say that he could pay on condition that he lets me cook him a three-course dinner when we get back to London.
Since it’s Callum, I just say, ‘Okay, well thank you very much and in return I will kindly teach you the rules of backgammon.’
‘Now?’ He actually looks quite keen.
‘That’s a very good idea.’ I put the box into my tote and off we go.
We amble around the village, commenting vaguely on the pretty stone buildings and vibrant flowers, until we come to a bench under a tree.
‘Sit down?’ Callum suggests, and I nod.
We set the board up again and I begin to explain the rules.
Callum catches on fast and soon we’re playing a very competitive game.
It’s good that we’re playing, I reflect between goes, because I don’t really want to have too much time to think right now.
Yesterday morning, when I saw Callum, I was just furious with fate for throwing us back together like this, and I was determined to avoid chatting to him too much. I thought we’d travel together but otherwise do our own thing. Now, though, I’m enjoying his company. A lot.
And that is bad.
So maybe, when we’ve finished the backgammon and picked Miranda up, I’ll revert to being more distant.
Otherwise I’m going to miss him when we say goodbye at the end of the trip, and I’ve missed Callum once and it was horrible. I don’t want to do it again.
We just keep on playing backgammon until Antonio, the garage man, calls.
It’s nice. It’s friendly. It’s fun.
I suddenly realise as we stand up to go back that I don’t even know for certain whether Callum’s single.
I feel like he must be because if he weren’t it would be too odd for him to agree to go in the van with me. And I feel like there have been moments between us. But I don’t know.
‘Do you play poker?’ Callum asks me. ‘I always thought you’d be good at it.’
‘Never played.’
‘I’ll have to teach you the rules if we have any more enforced stops. I think there’s a one-on-one version you can play called heads-up.’
It’s so strange how we know the bones of each other so well but absolutely nothing about each other’s actual lives now.
I don’t want to know about Callum’s life. I don’t want to find out. It would be too much.
Actually, I do want to know.
I’m just going to allow myself one tiny little question.
‘Do you play a lot?’
‘I had a flatmate a few years ago who was amazing at it. As in he used to compete and win actual sums of money. He got me into it.’ And there it is. He’s telling me stuff about his life. ‘A group of us went to Oklahoma one time when he played a big tournament there, and it was truly amazing. The intensity of the competition, fortunes made.’
‘Wow,’ I say.
And then I realise that he hasn’t told me anything about his life other than that a few years ago he had a male flatmate and he went to Oklahoma with some friends. He’s keeping it light, not telling me anything more than surface-level anecdotes, exactly the same as I did last night over dinner.
It’s sad. Really sad.
It’s for the best.
‘Tell me about Oklahoma,’ I say.
He has more than enough anecdotes to ensure that there are no further awkward gaps in our conversation and no possibility of us straying into more personal details, and I find myself enjoying the walk.
When we’re approaching the garage, my flip-flop gets caught on a stone and I trip and half-scream, convinced I’m going to fall over and hurt myself, but Callum’s arm shoots out and he catches me round the waist. We hover, kind of suspended like that, for a moment, and then he goes all hot potato with me and removes his arm extremely speedily, and I pretend that my heart hasn’t suddenly started beating as fast as he took his arm away, and after a moment he resumes the story he was telling. His voice sounds a little bit odd to start with and I can’t totally concentrate on what he’s saying because I’m listening to his lovely deep gravelly tone rather than his actual words, and I can’t stop thinking about how his arm felt round my waist.
After far too long, I do eventually recover my wits, and then we’re at the garage. The wipers and lights are working and Callum pays and all’s good; Callum pumps Antonio’s hand hard and I air-kiss him and then we hop up into Miranda and we’re off.
‘Direction Florence, then,’ Callum says.
‘Yep.’
‘Your flip-flops.’
‘Again?’ I ask. ‘Really? I’m fine driving in them.’
‘Yep, you know how you tripped back there, though? When we were walking?’
I remember it extremely well because I still can’t totally forget that when he had his arm round me we fitted together very well.
I’m tempted to pretend to catch my foot now and see how stressed that’ll make him but decide that there’s a chance it would be dangerous, so I don’t.
‘Callum. I have driven thousands of miles in flip-flops. I do not want to have a crash. So if I think it’s dangerous I will change them, but I really don’t. And obviously you would never be patronising enough to suggest that you know better than me?’
We’re at a junction and I’ve stopped, so I turn to look at him.
He looks back at me through narrowed eyes for a long moment and then nods. ‘Of course not.’
Given that he’s reopened the flip-flop chat, I’m tempted to reopen the ‘ How did you get so anal?’ conversation, but I think it’s best not to.
It feels like we’re at a bit of a crossroads metaphorically as well as road-wise. We could start to get to know each other properly again, fill each other in on what’s been happening in our lives, or we could… not.
We’re still looking at each other, and we just sit there frozen for a long moment, staring into each other’s eyes.
Maybe he’s thinking exactly the same thing as I am.
My eyes are drawn lower. He’s so solid . And big, right there next to me. I could just reach out and put my hand on his nicely muscled thigh.
I smother a laugh at the thought of what would happen if I did. I’m guessing he’d leap a mile.
‘Something funny?’ Callum’s looking straight at me with raised eyebrows.
‘I was just thinking…’ And oh my God , I just nearly told him what I was thinking about his thigh. I am far too tired; I need to be careful.
This is actually what happened to me when we split up. I just wanted to talk to Callum, tell him how I was feeling about the split, because he was my best friend as well as lover and the only person who would have been able to fully understand what I was feeling and with whom I could have been fully open.
And now he’s the only person who would understand how ridiculously conflicted I feel right now.
On the one hand I want to dive in and explore the life of the (still gorgeous) grown-up Callum sitting next to me, but on the other I want to find out nothing more and live this trip like we’re very surface-level acquaintances, because it feels like that would be so much safer for me sanity-wise.
I don’t want to have what-ifs and regrets after this trip and I don’t know what I will regret more. I really don’t know what I want to do.
I do know that I am not in fact going to discuss my dilemma with him.
And shit we’ve been sitting at this junction for… how long? I need to turn out.
‘Right or left?’ I ask.
‘Right,’ he croaks. The croaking makes me smile inside, even though it shouldn’t, because it would hurt a lot if I thought he was entirely unaffected by seeing me.
As I work my way up through the gears, I decide that for the time being I’m going to go for mere acquaintanceship-level relations with Callum and no more. There’s time to change my mind (although obviously he might not want to engage and I would totally understand if that were the case) but once I start asking questions and getting answers (if I do) I can’t go back.
So I say, ‘Funny how rainy it was this time yesterday and how lovely it is now.’
‘Yeah,’ Callum says.
And then for the next hour and a bit, we listen to music and exchange maybe fifty words, all related to directions.
I’m finding myself getting my words mixed up and forgetting what Callum just said about directions and my head’s bobbing a bit. I realise that I’ve been in danger of nodding off. I blink really hard and do some (probably very weird) face-yoga type movements, and roll my shoulders a bit, but none of it works. I just keep feeling as though I’m on the brink of sinking into sleep. And we’re in the middle lane of the motorway.
‘Are you okay?’ Callum’s possibly been alerted to the fact that something’s up by the way I’m jiggling my upper body and taking deep breaths in an attempt to shake the tiredness.
‘I have to turn off.’ I’m panicking a bit. ‘I’m going to go to sleep at the wheel otherwise.’
‘Okay, no, it’s going to be fine. I’m going to watch the road as well and we’re going to talk and I’m going to keep you awake, and then we’re going to turn off as soon as we can. I think there are services in fifteen kilometres.’
‘That’s ages.’ I can actually feel my whole body going into a deep slumbery state. The road is so long and straight and boring . ‘I’d love a traffic jam right now.’ I could stretch and roll the window down and look around and have a drink of water. Actually, water’s a good idea. Cold liquid might wake me up a bit. ‘Could you pass me some water?’
‘Of course. And while I’m getting it, can I interest you in a joke to keep you awake?’
‘I’d love a wake-me-up joke,’ I say sleepily.
‘What’s brown and sticky?’
‘Heard it before,’ I say, still sleepily. ‘From you.’ I’m too tired to make the effort not to mention the past. ‘Stick.’
‘Nicely remembered. And I think you’ll agree it’s still a fantastic joke.’
‘Yes, amazing.’ I yawn.
Callum unscrews the lid of the water and passes the bottle to me as I continue to drive. I try very hard not to touch his fingers as I take it and end up nearly dropping it. He catches both my hand and the bottle in his (successful) attempt to save the day and prevent me from being drenched. I jerk my hand really hard in reaction and nearly knock the bottle again.
There’s a short silence during which I think that at least that’s woken me up a bit.
Callum then coughs slightly and says, ‘So this time I’m going to tell you exactly when I’m going to give you the bottle and maybe you should put your left hand out in a kind of bottle-holding position so I can put it directly into your hand.’
‘Okay.’ I begin to snigger.
‘When you’re ready.’ Callum’s still sounding very serious and I start really laughing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, still laughing. ‘You just sounded like a gynaecologist. Like you were talking me through an upcoming smear, trying to make me comfortable. It was very funny.’
Maybe the tiredness and stress are getting to me.
‘Oh, I see ,’ Callum says, all sarky. ‘Legs in stirrups, speculum at the ready and hold the bottle .’
‘So many questions,’ I tell him. ‘And facts. You don’t put your legs in stirrups. And I was just pointing out that your tone of voice was highly gynaecologist-pre-internal-exam-like. And question: what do you know about speculums?’
‘I remember you going to your first ever smear and talking me through it in detail afterwards because you were pissed off that women have to do shit that men don’t have to do, and I should at least suffer being told about it.’
‘Oh yes.’ I remember that too. ‘Yeah.’
We both go silent for a bit, me because I’m now thinking about the past and how young and untouched by the shit reality of life we were; I don’t know why Callum’s silent.
After a bit, I say, ‘So I’d love some water.’ I’m not actually thirsty right now and I’m feeling a lot more wide awake after our conversation, but I think we need to conclude this.
‘So if you put your hand out, I’ll put the bottle in,’ Callum says, and then he begins to laugh, and then I laugh too, and then he says, ‘Okay, I did hear myself. I don’t know a lot of gynaecologists and yet I can hear exactly what you mean. And now I can’t talk about this bottle without adopting my gynae persona.’
‘We can’t do it,’ I say, when I’ve stopped laughing again. ‘I might crash if we spill it. I’ll wait until we turn off.’
We lapse into silence once more and then I get all sleepy again.
‘How far until the services?’ I blink hard to try to wake myself up.
‘Nine kilometres.’
‘What? How can it be so long? It’s ages since I last asked.’
‘Because you’re driving very, very slowly.’
‘But if I drive faster I might crash because I’m so tired.’
‘Then it will take a long time to get there.’
‘Yes, okay, thank you, Mr Logic.’ I smile at him to indicate that I’m not really being snippy. The smile turns into a huge yawn.
‘Okay, we need to do something else to wake you up.’
Callum doesn’t really sound like a gynaecologist any more, just like a very concerned regular man. With a very sexy voice (and that’s stress and tiredness addling my brain again).
‘Yes, we should talk, or play a game,’ I say, hoping that I don’t sound as though I was thinking about anything to do with sexiness.
‘Okay. Um… I Spy?’
Yep, that’s better. I Spy is very unsexy.
‘Good idea,’ I say. I hate that game. ‘You go first.’
‘Okay. I spy with my little eye something beginning with… C.’
‘Car?’ I’m already bored but I am actually awake.
‘Yes, you’re a genius.’
‘That was ridiculous. Do a harder one.’
‘Okay.’ He looks around for a moment. ‘Right. M-D-B-W-I-H.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous too.’
‘You asked for a harder one. You have to do it. It’ll keep you awake.’
I really can’t think of anything so I just stare into the distance.
‘Emma!’ Callum’s voice cuts into my sleepiness. ‘You have to focus. Okay. That was too hard.’
‘What was it?’
‘I can’t remember. I can’t even remember what letters I had. It’s been minutes.’
‘That is so frustrating.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘you seemed so invested as you nearly nodded off. Okay, now I’m going to be a famous person. You have to guess who I am.’
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘but you can’t be really annoying with it. It can’t be too obvious. You can’t be the king or Taylor Swift, but also you can’t be too niche. Like don’t do a sports person or politician I’ve barely heard of.’
‘Okay.’
‘ Also : don’t do anyone I don’t like. That always really annoys me.’
‘How will I know whether or not you like them, though?’
‘I mean, it’s obvious. I like nice people and I don’t like mean people. And I don’t like rudeness.’
‘Right.’ Callum sounds a teensy bit as though he might be rolling his eyes. ‘Okay. I’m ready.’
Several minutes later, I’m yelling ‘Claudia Winkleman,’ triumphantly, just as we pass a sign saying the services are one kilometre away, thank goodness . ‘That was a good one.’
‘Thank you. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet too much but I do have to say that I’m widely known as being a master at choosing exactly the right famous person.’
‘How often do you play this game?’
He hesitates and then says, ‘I know a lot of kids.’
Maybe it’s tiredness, maybe it was inevitable all along, but I hear myself asking a personal question: ‘Which kids? How old are they? How often do you play it?’
Okay, that’s more than one personal question.
Callum hesitates more. For ages. And then he says, ‘Girls. They range in age.’
I want to question him some more but we’re turning off now and I just want to find the services and not go the wrong way, so I start speculating about which exact exit to take from the roundabout that pops up in front of us and then Callum starts talking about service stations in great detail, exactly as though he’s changing the subject.