Chapter 1 #2
Beth has no clue what I was like when I was her age.
She would be so shocked to know the truth – that when I was a few years older than her, I was in love with a boy who changed my entire world.
Even as I think that, a vision of him leaps into my mind – his easy self-confidence, his smile.
The way even the slightest touch of his fingertips gave me butterflies in my stomach.
My Romeo. What would he look like now? I wonder.
And why am I even imagining that? It’s probably being here, in Shakespeare’s home, stirring up a hornet’s nest of feelings I normally keep deeply buried.
‘Shakespeare and all that!’ Beth echoes, her tone mocking. ‘Have you even ever read any Shakespeare? Seen any plays?’
‘Yes. I went to school as well, Beth,’ I say, as gently as I can. I am starting to scream a little inside now. ‘My favourite was always Romeo and Juliet. It still makes me cry…’
Would she even believe that I once played Juliet, in our sixth-form show? That I lived those words, found my very own love? That life most definitely imitated art?
She stares at me for a solid ten seconds without blinking. It’s like being sized up by a carnivorous reptile preparing to strike at you with venomous fangs. No. I’m guessing she wouldn’t.
I stand up, and grab my bag. My eyes are suddenly swimming with tears.
Being here, talking about that play, thinking about him…
well, that was an emotional ambush I could have lived without.
I stride away to the door. I don’t want her to see me upset.
I don’t want to show her any weakness. She might, of course, respond with kindness, and offer me words of comfort.
But more likely she will verbally tear my throat out, and I already feel too exposed.
Romeo and Juliet are dead, and so is that version of me.
‘Come on, let’s go for a walk,’ I tell her.
‘No. Changed my mind. I’ll stay here.’
‘You will not.’ I face away from her for a moment, try to suck my tears back in before I turn again.
‘Look, babe, I’m sorry this isn’t what you had in mind for the summer – but I didn’t have time to plan anything better, and I really did think you’d enjoy this.
We’re here now though, so let’s try and make the most of it, okay? ’
She sighs, but heaves herself to her feet.
Beth is planning to study English Literature, History and Art at A-level, so I didn’t think Stratford was an especially bad choice of absolute last-minute trip.
But honestly, whatever I picked would have been wrong.
I could have arranged a private tour of the Louvre led by Timothée Chalamet and she’d still have found something to criticise.
She’s externalising her pain, I remind myself as we leave – a phrase I came across while randomly googling ‘how to deal with your teenaged daughter’ one night.
My parents were interfering to the point of suffocating, doing what they thought was right for me without ever considering my opinion.
I never want to be like that – but I also need to find boundaries.
Like my mum and dad, I’m doing my best, but it often doesn’t feel good enough.
Technically I have been a single mum since she was five.
In reality I was one from the day I found out I was pregnant.
It’s hard, making all the decisions, going to all the parents’ evenings, dealing with absolutely every little problem that comes your way.
It can be joyful too, and Beth and I are sometimes very close, very connected.
Those moments, when they flicker into focus, are so special, so magical. And increasingly rare.
She stomps along ten steps behind me, staring at her phone. I feel like plucking the cursed thing from her hand and lobbing it straight into the flowing waters of the River Avon, where one can only hope it might get pecked to death by an angry flock of swans. Alas, poor iPhone – I threw him well.
I head down a small cobbled street, appreciating the shade as I amble past cute tea rooms and a place that sells hand-made soap, the scents of lemon and rose wafting from the open door.
I know Beth is close, because there’s a slight twitch between my shoulder blades.
Like she’s sizing me up for a hatchet. Then I pause in front of a little bookshop, thankfully seeing Beth in the reflection as she comes to stand beside me.
We silently look at the books on offer, expensive-looking leather-bound first editions sitting alongside modern paperback classics.
‘Shall we go in?’ I ask, raising my eyebrows, internally adopting the emotional brace position in case she’s not yet ready for a truce. She shrugs – it’s a win.
It’s a long, narrow room that goes so far back you can’t see the end of it.
The building carries its years with shabby style, with beams and character and the effortless oozing of age and history.
I smile as I inhale the familiar aromas of old books, seeing that Beth’s expression has softened slightly.
I browse the shelves. There is, predictably enough, an entire section of Shakespeare-related editions.
Not just the plays themselves, but history books, children’s versions, and fiction that’s been inspired by the Bard over the centuries: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.
I’m drawn to one called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, a crime novel where a Scotland Yard detective investigates the crimes of Richard III.
Beth is looking at a copy of Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, which I remember from the movie is a zombie retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
I am being stalked by the doomed lovers today.
By my own memories of him, of us, of the way we used to be…
A man in a tweed waistcoat approaches, completely bald but sporting an impressively waxed handlebar moustache. He has the kind of gentle smile that tells you all will be well with the world. That maybe, all you need to do is read a good book, and the burdens will fall from your shoulders.
‘Hot out there, isn’t it?’ he says, his voice an unexpectedly Scottish burr. ‘There’s a reading room down at the back – completely empty today. For some reason people are spending time in the great outdoors instead.’
‘How disgusting!’ I reply, unable to resist the playful twinkle in his eyes.
‘Indeed. Give me a quiet spot and a cup of tea any day. Well, the room is just at the end – feel free to stay as long as you like. No pressure, you don’t need to buy anything. Just enjoy the books.’
He genuinely sounds as though he means that, and I wonder about his life.
Is he a secret lottery winner? Is he an aristocrat who owns the Traitors castle?
Or is he just a really bad businessman? I don’t suppose it matters.
I pick up the Josephine Tey book, and I notice Beth wait until my back is half turned to snag Warm Bodies.
Heaven forbid she shows enthusiasm for anything.
I also pick up a collection of Shakespeare’s poems, and a big hardback with a tattered dust cover – The Real World of Macbeth, it’s called, and its description promises me a ‘colourful glimpse into the real-life landscapes that inspired one of the most famous stories in the world’.
It’s pretty heavy, so if Beth starts playing up again, I can always knock myself unconscious with it.
The reading room has lamps and squishy sofas, and feels like a little cosy cave.
I put my books on the central table and make a slight ‘oof’ noise as I lower myself onto the sofa.
Everything I do these days seems to be accompanied by some kind of sound, it’s one of the symptoms of getting older that nobody warns you about.
Beth shoots me a suitably disgusted look and sits as far away from me as possible.
She gets out her phone, and I am now officially dead to her.
Okay then. I reach for the book of poems, laying it on my lap.
It randomly opens on a page near the end, and I feel a splinter slide into in my heart when I see what it is. Of course.
It’s not even a full sonnet. It’s the final scene of Romeo and Juliet, and my head swims slightly as I read the words:
A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
I always remember thinking how simple and beautiful those words were.
That the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers was so moving, even the sun was too sad to shine.
At the time I first came across that half-poem, I knew nothing of pain or suffering or tragedy.
I knew nothing of heartbreak, or the way you can feel so lost without another human being that you genuinely fear you might die from the agony of it all.
Not much later, I found out. That sweet handsome boy with the irresistible Irish accent taught me that harsh lesson.
I was eighteen. I was a child. At least, that’s what I’d think if it was Beth – but even now, all these years later, that shard of hurt is still lodged somewhere deep inside me. It’s stupid, really, I know. Another time, another world, another me. Long gone, long dead. It shouldn’t matter any more.
Except the hammering of my pulse tells me that it does. The rush of regret and sadness tells me that it does. The image of his smile, the sense memory of his kisses, tell me it does. How can my past feel more vivid than my real life?
I need to not give in to the magnetic pull of what was, of what might have been.
Of remembering him, and the future we never got to share.
We’d planned to run away together, me and my Romeo – to escape the controlling world of our parents, and make our own life.
I still to this day don’t know what I did wrong, and why he treated me the way he did.
It still confuses me, still has the power to wound.
In modern parlance, he ‘ghosted’ me. It sounds so simple, but it really wasn’t.