Chapter 9
9
CALLUM
What was I thinking ? Why would I mention children?
I don’t want to go there with Emma.
While she parks, I continue a boring monologue on the best and worst service stations I have known (I am dull on the subject) until Emma’s finished squeezing the van into a space between another van and a seven-seater car piled high with bags, bikes and people.
‘Oh my goodness ,’ she says, her yawn so big I can’t believe it doesn’t hurt her jaw. ‘I’m so tired.’
She closes her eyes and slides down a bit in her seat. And just like that, she nods off.
She’s clearly actually asleep, not faking it like I was last night, because there’s no good reason for her to pretend now.
Her head tilts sideways against the door. Her lashes are dark against her cheeks, her ponytail’s coming loose and one of the straps of her dress has fallen down her shoulder a little. Her chest rises and falls gently and she stirs a little, and I just want to wrap her up in my arms and hold her.
I could watch her for hours.
Yeah, it’s a little bit weird to just sit and stare at a sleeping person.
I should get out and stretch my legs. I can’t, though, because we’re too close to the vehicles on either side for me to be able to open any of the doors enough to squeeze out.
Okay, fine, I can catch up on my emails. Maybe I’ll have my half of the packed lunch the monks very kindly insisted on providing us with. Emma can eat hers when she wakes up.
It’s tricky concentrating on emails, though, it turns out, because oh my God it’s uncomfortable sitting here. I roll my shoulders and try to stretch my back and neck. How did Emma go to sleep so easily? She’s got the steering wheel in the way as well. I wonder how long I should let her sleep.
I wake with a start sometime later (minutes, hours, I can’t immediately tell which), a little confused. I’ve been dreaming about Emma, which is something that still happens to me from time to time and never fails to ruin the beginning of my morning; melancholy is not a great breakfast accompaniment.
I lie – slump – there for a few moments, eyes still closed, and scour my brain for ideas on where I am. And suddenly realise that oh my God I’m with Emma in the camper van and that wasn’t really a dream. I open my eyes and see to my horror that I’m slumped so far over in her direction that I’m practically on top of her. I jerk myself upright and she stirs from the semi-curled-up position she’s been in and blinks a lot.
She lets out a big, sleepy sigh, and then says, ‘Callum.’ I love the sound of my name on her lips. I’m reminded of waking up next to her in the past and my traitorous body wants to do exactly what I’d have done then. And that is completely inappropriate.
I move as far left to my side as I can to put as much physical space between us as possible.
Emma blinks some more and then suddenly opens her eyes extremely wide and says, ‘Callum!’
Clearly she has just remembered where we are. Maybe she was dreaming about me too. I wonder if our dreams were similar. Back when we were together, I used to wonder whether she’d be thinking about me when I was thinking about her and whether we’d meet in our dreams. I was a fanciful idiot.
‘What time is it?’ she asks.
Yep, best to focus on practicalities.
‘No idea.’ I look around for my phone, because obviously the camper van does not have a working clock. I see it on the floor, where it must have slid when I went to sleep, and pick it up. ‘Two thirty. Wow. We must have been asleep for a good hour. That would explain my growling stomach.’
‘Shall we get out and eat the monks’ lunch and have a little walk?’ Emma suggests.
‘Good plan.’
The car to the right of us left at some point while we were sleeping, so we both get out on that side and wander round the corner of the restaurant building and over to where there are some picnic tables.
There’s a German family at the table next to us: parents and three small children. The youngest, who’s maybe two years old, is toddling around trying to catch birds.
After we’ve been sitting there for a minute or two, the toddler crashes straight into Emma’s leg and his mother comes over to apologise.
‘No, don’t say sorry,’ says Emma, laughing as the woman picks him up. ‘He’s gorgeous. I’ve been enjoying watching him. How old is he?’
And next thing she’s in deep conversation with the woman, Danika, so I start chatting to the father. About three-quarters of an hour later we’re still sitting there, sharing some slightly odd but quite moreish little cakes with them, and I’m wondering whether we’re even going to make it to Florence today.
‘We should probably make a move soon,’ I say. ‘Given that we’re aiming for Florence and we’d like to do some sightseeing. Darling.’
‘Ha,’ Emma says. ‘We don’t have to pretend to be married any more.’
Oh yes. She turns to her new best friend and explains about the monastery and that I’ve obviously continued to call her darling through force of habit.
‘You do seem very good together, though.’ Danika waggles her eyebrows at us. ‘Like a couple. Maybe the monks were fate’s way of giving you a helping hand?’
‘Ha, ha, ha,’ I laugh.
‘Yes, ha,’ Emma says. ‘Yes, we should actually get going now. So lovely to meet you.’
It’s genuinely comical how fast she stands up, suddenly keen to leave.
Obviously she exchanges numbers with Danika, and then there’s a lot of hugging – honestly, insane , how many strangers has she hugged on this trip? – and then we walk off in the direction of the van.
I don’t mention the couple thing, and nor does Emma.
‘Oh my God,’ I suddenly say as we walk back towards the van. ‘What if someone’s parked on the other side again and we can’t get in?’
‘Nooo,’ Emma breathes.
I break into a run and she follows, more slowly.
‘You go,’ she calls. ‘I can’t run in flip-flops.’
‘Bloody flip-flops,’ I call over my shoulder.
I stop running when I get round the corner of the services’ main building and see that all’s well with the parking, and wait for Emma to catch me up.
‘I think I’ll need to take one more break on the journey today,’ she says as we get back into the van.
I nod. She clearly will. I think it’s only another couple of hours’ drive for someone who goes at regular motorway speed, but for Emma it’s going to be at least three hours.
‘I feel good now, though.’ She straps herself in. ‘That was an amazing power nap.’
We do make good progress and again we don’t really talk, other than directions; we just listen to music. Emma starts to sing along, at first just with a gentle ‘la la’, progressing to belting out those of the words that she knows (not many) or just her own made-up words the rest of the time.
She continues like that and I think about how I always used to start singing the correct words very loudly and then we used to sing more and more loudly, over each other, until we were essentially shouting, and it was very immature and probably really irritated anyone who could hear us. We loved it.
And it turns out that I can’t help doing that now and then Emma does her ‘la, la’ thing, and then I sing more loudly and then she does too and there we are.
It’s fun. A lot of fun. Innocent, easy, simple fun.
We end up laughing so much that I’m scared Emma’s going to crash.
‘Good times,’ she says, when we’ve calmed down. ‘When we were young.’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
And then we don’t sing along any more.
We take our next stop in a small town called Arezzo. It isn’t far off the motorway and Emma’s seen online that it’s very picturesque. She thinks it would be nicer than a service station. She isn’t wrong, if your goal is to go to see pretty things rather than get back to England as fast as possible.
We wander around, we exclaim about how truly lovely and historic it is, Emma gets very excited about how we’re about to go to amazingly lovely and historic Florence, and then by mutual agreement we go to a café. (I’m hot and I’ve resigned myself to getting very little work done today; Emma’s just thirsty.) We sit and watch the world go by and talk a lot about not much, and, okay, this isn’t what I wanted to be doing today but if I’m honest I’m really enjoying myself.
As I find myself laughing just because Emma’s giggling about a pigeon strutting backwards and forwards past three Italian girls like it’s trying to impress them, I realise that I could happily spend the rest of the day here, doing, essentially, absolutely nothing.
I haven’t done nothing for a long time. I work, I work out, I see Thea, I relax in a very structured way. That’s the route I went down after I shocked myself – or maybe it was Emma who shocked me – with how out of control my life had got, and I’m happy. I have a great life, I’m entirely in control, I live well.
‘We should probably go, so that we have time to look round Florence properly this evening,’ Emma says. ‘If you want to. I’m going to look round. Obviously you might not want to.’ She smiles at the café owner and he immediately comes over.
God, this entire situation’s stupidly awkward with both of us tiptoeing around the other in terms of having to say: ‘You’re welcome to do stuff but only if you want to.’
‘Have you booked a hotel?’ she continues, before I can speak. ‘For this evening?’
I don’t have a chance to reply because the café owner’s chatting to her, asking her if she’s on holiday, and obviously Emma has a lot to say and I’m drawn into the conversation and soon we’re getting what does sound like very good advice on where we should visit in Florence, with a couple of genuinely funny tourist stories thrown in.
Emma insists on paying, because I paid for the garage work. I accept on condition that she allows me to buy her dinner this evening.
Oh, okay, there we are, it seems that I’m assuming that we’ll spend the evening together.
And, yes, of course we are.
I don’t want to leave her this evening. She’s just so bloody friendly. You don’t analyse stuff a lot when you’re young (and often drunk), but thinking back she was always like this. She just gets talking to people. Anyone. All the time. Most of the time they’re great people, because it’s like she has a natural instinct for niceness, but I’m still astonished that she hasn’t landed herself in trouble on this trip. And it would be ridiculous if, having come this far, something happened to her now, so I’d like to hang out with her in Florence, and stay in the same hotel. It isn’t like we’re going to be in each other’s lives in the future, obviously, but I have a kind of ‘not on my watch’ feeling. Shit, I hope I’m not being patronising. I mean, I wouldn’t ever say any of this out loud but I don’t even want to think patronising things.
‘There’s really no need to buy me dinner,’ Emma says.
‘I’d like to.’ It’s easy to say it sincerely when it’s true.
We do the singalong thing again for the journey from Arezzo to Florence, and it is of course a lot of fun.
‘What hotel did you book in Florence?’ I suddenly remember to ask. ‘If they have a spare room, the easiest thing would obviously be for me to stay in the same place.’
‘I’m not totally sure that you’d like it,’ Emma sings in place of the words to ‘Mamma Mia’.
‘Because?’ I ask (not singing).
‘I feel like you like fancy places.’ She’s still singing.
‘And that is because?’
Wow, I’m genuinely mildly offended. I never think of myself as thin-skinned. No one says the fancy-place thing as a compliment, though, and does Emma not know me?
‘Well. The way you dress now.’ Emma’s stopped singing, obviously in response to the tone of my voice. ‘You were staying at one of the most famous hotels in Rome. You just seem… expensive.’
‘I…’ I stop for a moment to think. I do have quite a fancy job, I suppose. A lot of people would find it boring (I’m a solicitor) but I do actually like it. It pays fairly well so I’m lucky enough to live in quite a nice flat. And when I go away for work I stay in nice hotels, because that’s what they book for me. And when I go on holiday I suppose I do stay in nice places because I work hard and I feel like I need a break. However , I don’t have to stay in fancy places. I don’t always. I frown. When was the last time I didn’t stay in a fancyish hotel on holiday? When was the last time I laughed as much as we did earlier when we were singing?
‘That’s just the clothes I’m wearing because I was here on a business trip,’ I say. ‘I’ll be happy in any hotel.’
‘You did love the monastery,’ Emma says, maybe regretting having said the expensive thing.
‘I actually genuinely did.’
‘Apart from the lack of sleep and the bathroom.’
‘Details,’ I say. ‘So what hotel are you staying in? I’ll call now and see if they have a spare room. And if they don’t, I’ll find one nearby.’
Did it sound ridiculous that I felt that I had to make it clear that I would under no circumstances suggest sharing a room again? I think it did. I can’t imagine Emma would offer. Florence is a city with plenty of rooms available, I’m sure, so there would be no need.
The hotel is a small one on the outskirts of Florence and they have two rooms spare. The woman I speak to tells me that one is their best room, with a large double bed and an en-suite, while the other is much smaller with a shared bathroom. Really hoping that Emma can’t hear that I am exactly proving her point, I go for the en-suite one.
I look at her out of the corner of my eye as I end the call. Yep, she heard. She isn’t hiding her smirk very well.
Then I book one of the restaurants the café owner recommended for us, overlooking one of the main squares.
When I’ve finished making my bookings, Emma says, speaking, not singing, ‘Sorry about the expensive comment. That didn’t sound very nice. And I’m sure it isn’t true. I mean, you can’t help where you work and where they book for you and the way you’re expected to dress. Sorry. Very rude and not even right.’
‘Yeah, no, don’t be silly. I mean, I’m sorry about…’ Well. I have a lot more than one ‘expensive’ comment to say sorry for, and I don’t think I ever can, but I don’t think either of us will ever want to go there. ‘I’m sorry about the ongoing flip-flop comments.’
‘If I’m honest I can slightly see where you’re coming from.’ She smiles at me while continuing to look ahead at the road and I’m suddenly reminded of the first time we met.
She took over from me in a summer job in a café and she smiled at me like that while our (very difficult) boss ranted at her. I think I fell in love with her at that moment. And then she resigned on the spot and we went and spent our entire day’s earnings on Cornish pasties and iced tea to celebrate and the rest is history.
I am not going to fall in love with her all over again. I’m a lot older now and very much wiser.
‘Ha, yes,’ I say. And then making a big effort to keep things light, I say, ‘So I’ll look forward to when you stop wearing them.’
‘Ha, in your dreams.’
We both smile.
And then we go back to the singing.
When we arrive in Florence, we go straight to the hotel and park.
We meet in the hotel reception twenty minutes after being shown to our rooms, during which time I have a fifteen-minute call with Thea, and then Emma and I begin the walk into town.
It’s a lovely, leafy area, near the Boboli Gardens, and Emma’s still making me laugh a lot, and, other than the fact that I never wanted to see her again and now I’m doing nothing but seeing her, I can’t criticise the walk. It’s just… nice. Very nice.
As is Florence, of course. We wander round looking at some of the many beautiful buildings and squares, before going to the restaurant that I booked for ninep.m.
When the waiter comes to take our drinks orders, I see Emma hesitate and then say, ‘I’m very happy with tap water.’
‘You sure you don’t want a glass or two of wine?’ I ask. ‘I’d more than happily have some red.’
‘Oh! I thought… Please don’t feel…’
I look up at the waiter. ‘Could we have some tap water for now and we’ll probably order some wine in a minute?’
Then I turn to Emma. ‘I think you might have the impression that I don’t – can’t – drink any more. I wasn’t an alcoholic; I wasn’t addicted. I was just… stupid. I drank too much a lot of the time but I was lucky enough to be able to stop. It wasn’t a physical addiction. It was just… stupidity.’ And maybe a self-destruct thing because of my family situation, but I’m not going to talk about that with Emma.
Emma nods slowly. She opens her mouth, closes it again, tilts her head, blatantly thinks for a few moments and then says, ‘You know you don’t have to answer this question. But recently I’ve wondered whether you drank – did all those stupid things – because of your… home life? Your… family? I think I might have been too young to understand that at the time.’
Oh, okay, yes, Emma obviously knew about my family and she can obviously add two and two correctly.
There’s a lot to unpick in what she just said. Not least that she says that she’s thought recently about me. I had no idea that either of us was going to admit that we still might think about the other.
Also: yep, of course she’s right.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And I think I was too young to understand that myself.’
Emma nods. She looks as though she’s thinking hard again. She repeats the mouth opening and closing thing, and then this time stops and doesn’t say anything else, for ages.
The waiter puts a jug of water and two glasses on the table and I tell him that we still haven’t chosen anything. He gives Emma a big smile. Everyone always smiles at Emma, and I don’t blame them.
And then I say, ‘I can, and do, drink without being drunk. I haven’t been drunk since that evening.’
I immediately regret my words. Why would I bring that up?
That evening was the one with the ultimatum. Our last evening together.
It was the day after I passed my driving test. We’d been together for three years then. I was twenty-four; Emma was twenty-two. Back then, I would often get really drunk. We used to have a lot of fun together and with friends (or just random strangers we’d met. It was usually me who got talking to them first back then). Sometimes I was drunk; sometimes I wasn’t. I was, very often, completely off my face. Always alcohol, never anything else, which was something I suppose.
At the end of the evening on the day I passed my test, I said I was going for a drive. Really drunk. In all seriousness. And I took someone else’s keys (someone I hardly knew – he’d left them lying on the bar while he went to the pub toilets).
Emma got the keys off me before I got anywhere near the car and we had a big argument (even though I clearly didn’t have a leg to stand on) and then the next evening I insanely proposed. I’d been intending to do it but straight after demonstrating what a dickhead you can be is not the time for it. It led to a really big conversation – not an argument because I was too stunned to reply really – the crux of which was her ultimatum. She said she needed us to take a break until I stopped being so wild. And I knew she meant it. And then she walked away from me.
So… moron that I was, I went on a big bender, with some complete strangers.
And at the end of it, I actually got into the driving seat of my car and tried to put the keys in the ignition. And then, thank God, because who knows what might have happened, the police turned up because someone had called them. I spent the night in a cell and lost my licence. The shock of losing Emma and the close shave with driving when drunk had a huge effect on me.
I just stopped getting drunk. I was incredibly lucky in that I wasn’t physically addicted to alcohol. I’d just been trying to escape reality I suppose, and it had become a habit.
I stopped doing that and faced up to my life, made all the changes I needed to and basically have been a lot wiser ever since.
Apart from getting myself another driving licence. I’ve never been able to face doing that.
I thought I’d go back to Emma when I could prove that I’d sorted myself out but I never did. At first it was because I knew that I’d hurt her and I was scared that I’d hurt her again, as though there was maybe something about being in love that made me behave like an idiot. And then, as life happened, I knew that I would have hurt her by not getting back in touch, and by how life had panned out.
So that was that. Emma and I were not meant to be together long term.
And… yep, here we are.
In touch, for these few days, but certainly not revisiting the past.
There’s been a very long silence.
Emma has her lips pressed together and I think her eyes are glistening.
I am an idiot.
‘So I would very happily have a glass or two of red,’ I say, because that’s what we were talking about and I can’t talk about any of what’s on my mind and what I’m sure is on Emma’s.
‘Great.’ She gives me a very, very wide and very, very forced-looking smile.
‘So… would you like to choose? Or shall I choose?’
‘I’m very happy for you to choose. I’m not good with wine. Shall we get a carafe? Or a bottle?’ She sounds angry now, as though she’s almost throwing her words at me. And that will perhaps be because I have just told her that I cleaned myself up pretty quickly, and yet I never went back to her.
‘Maybe a carafe?’ I say cautiously.
‘Good idea.’ She’s still punching her words out.
I could address… things. Explain.
I take the coward’s approach and open my menu.
‘The food looks good,’ I say.
We begin with a platter of antipasti.
In desperation, in the face of more frostiness than I have ever before experienced from Emma, I drag out some eco facts from the back of my mind about Italian farming methods.
When the waiter puts two plates of rabbit stew down on the table, I open my mouth to continue the one-sided chat, and Emma says, ‘Let me guess: you have rabbit farming facts?’
‘Who doesn’t like a rabbit fact?’
‘That’s actually a really good question. You’d have to be stone-hearted not to like talking about rabbits,’ Emma agrees. ‘That moment when you’re out for a walk or looking out of the window on a train and you suddenly realise that they’re everywhere. All those little bunny tails.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Apparently they’re tricky to look after, though.’ Emma’s clearly making a big effort and I hugely appreciate it.
It’s as though the air between us was twisted and it gradually straightens itself out over the course of the evening as we both work to keep the conversation light until it’s actually flowing quite naturally.
And then while we’re eating a beautiful lemon tart and fruit, Maroon 5’s ‘Memories’ begins to play.
We really don’t need to hear the word memories right now.
I look at Emma, and she looks at me.
And Emma – to her enormous credit – screws up her face at me and shakes her head but then she laughs. And I laugh too. And then we really laugh. We’re almost crying with laughter.
And in that moment I know that I will always love her.
That does not mean that we should ever be together again.
It doesn’t mean anything. Other than that I should really not see her again after this for my own sanity.
What I do realise, and should have decided long ago, is that if Emma still has any kind of feelings at all for me, I do owe her the courtesy of explaining .
I’m going to do it by the end of the trip. Tomorrow, ideally.