Chapter 7
I doze as the bus lumbers on. I dream of her: our first meeting, and the confident, careless way she set about establishing our tribe, like she never knew a second of self-doubt.
Our friendship didn’t so much grow as burst into full bloom.
I came upon her on the steps – literally bumped into her.
She was reading, long legs outstretched.
Her lips moved as she read and her strawberry-blonde hair spilled over her shoulders, so long it brushed the ancient stone steps.
She wore tatty white Converse with lines of poetry scribed on them in loopy Sharpie, and her eyes, which flew open when she looked up to see which clumsy idiot had stumbled over her legs, were a startling blue.
She took one look at me – bus-weary and tearful from the parting with Dad and Mitch, still reeling from my mother’s death less than a month prior, snapped her book shut and took me under her wing.
The moment she smiled at me, all my doubts and uncertainty about what my university life would hold dissipated.
I was chosen, saved. My future was mapped out.
She was extraordinary. Gallus, glorious and a little bit terrifying, such was her confidence. That afternoon she dragged me through the corridors of St Salvator’s dorm, knocking on doors, getting to know our fellow students.
The whole of first year we were inseparable, and if not for the fate that befell her on West Sands that summer, I’m sure we would have continued to be.
That first night, we toured the town like we owned it and over the coming days Gen picked out the others to be part of our gang.
That’s how it felt – like everyone we came into contact with was auditioning for a spot in her inner circle.
She chose Leo because … well, duh. He was undoubtedly the biggest catch in the place.
Alex was a less obvious choice, but later I came to realise that there was a part of Gen that liked the challenge he gave her.
He was still under her spell, we all were, but he wasn’t afraid to stand up to her, and a girl like Gen – whose power might otherwise be all-consuming – needed that.
Alex was controversial, argumentative and unexpected.
He was also the polar opposite of Leo, and it was amusing to watch them try to bond.
He and Jameson came as a package deal thanks to a long-held childhood fealty – later I’d learn that Jameson had dragged Alex through some dark times, and Alex had stood up for Jameson when he needed an ally.
The only one Gen didn’t choose was Becca – Alex pulled her into the fold after a one-night stand that somehow morphed into an unlikely friendship.
A montage of images infiltrates my half-dreams: scuffing leaves in Lade Braes, lazing in the quad with our textbooks, sitting in the Old Union café nursing hot chocolates while Gen – glasses perched on her nose, oversized scarf trailing and an ancient volume of poetry on her lap – looked like the poster child for the university.
The Mermaid Ball – Gen exquisite in cream silk on Leo’s arm, the pair of them blazing a trail and the rest of us trotting like courtiers behind our king and queen.
The parade of red gowns in chapel and those proud, begowned pier walks which Gen insisted we join at least once. It all feels like a million years ago.
Like it happened to someone else.
I jerk back to the present, feeling queasy.
I wipe a peephole in the condensation and see that we’ve left the city behind and the snow has redoubled its efforts.
Swathes of white drape the fields that flash past the bus.
A thrill of anticipation runs through me.
I love snow – proper snow, not the pathetic excuse for it you get in a city by the sea.
There’s a flicker of unease too: what if we do get snowed in?
Stuck all the way out here.
Again I imagine those cavernous fireplaces and cosy nooks.
No doubt Becca has stuffed the fridges with good food and the wine cellar alone could keep us going for months.
We’ll survive, see out the storm in comfort.
Our fractured relationships might prove awkward to navigate, but we’ll get there.
And if we don’t, it’s a few days at most. Best-case scenario, we recapture something that we can take away from this trip, become part of each other’s futures again. That’s my hope, anyway.
I check my messages. Becca has sent another cheery text:
Can’t wait to see you!
Followed by:
The boys are looking forward to it too.
They’re hardly boys. And yet they are – pressed in amber in my mind: lithe, nineteen-year-old bodies and flexible teenage minds.
With all their hopes, fears and idiocies intact.
Leo was always worrying about his father’s opinion of him, Alex battled an inferiority complex with big-man-on-campus brashness and Jameson always put others’ needs before his own, sometimes to his detriment.
In a few short hours I will overwrite the old memories of Becca, Leo and Jameson with new ones.
Alex I already know – no longer the daredevil boy famed for his cheeky grin and biting sarcasm.
Now a serious-eyed man with shadows and secrets I want to dig into, and a strangely nervy air about him.
He still has that cracking sense of humour.
I tap a reply:
I can’t wait either. On the bus now, this snow is serious!
A few seconds later, she responds:
I know, it’s really settling. We might get snowed in for a day or two, but we’ve got loads of Champagne and my boy Euan is cooking up a storm.
Euan is the new boyfriend who works in her mother’s stables. Alex was disparaging about him, but then Alex was always disparaging about Becca’s life choices – particularly in relation to her love life, which tended to feature pretentious preppy boys with floppy hair and braying laughter.
Boys like Leo.
A working-class kid, Alex never lost the opportunity to remind people of it, or to take a dig at the privilege that surrounded us. Jameson came from similar origins to Alex, but poverty was less of an identity for him. Nothing othered you like being poor in the world in which we’d landed.
Despite their bickering, Becca and Alex were tight. Once they got sex out their systems, they settled into a tight, platonic harmony, with an old-married-couple vibe that drove the rest of us crazy sometimes. They took the piss out of each other in a way that didn’t fly with anyone else.
The bus is chilly, the heating struggling to keep up with the sinking temperatures.
The windows are fogged, fellow passengers quiet.
The engine chugs steadily, wheels churning through deepening snow.
We leave Penicuik and venture into the wilds of Borders country.
The landscape is blanketed, the sky dimming towards night.
I think of crime novels featuring inhospitable Scandinavian landscapes, jolly Christmas films set in snowy Vermont.
The estate is only a mile or two from the road, but I bet they get cut off frequently.
I remember how remote it felt, up that winding track – definitely more Scandi Noir than White Christmas.
We pass Leadburn Junction, only five or so miles until my stop. Expectancy coils in my stomach and my nerves tingle. I’m ready for this now. Eager.
Desperate, even.
And if there’s a sliver of suspicion that still haunts me, suggesting that coming here is a bad idea, well, it’s easy to push aside. Hope shouts louder than doubt.
There’s part of me that so badly wants to find friendship with these people again – the carefree, full-on sort I’m not sure exists in an adult world. Or if it does, I’m yet to find it.
And maybe it’s more than friendship I’m yearning for.
Maybe it’s forgiveness.