Chapter Eight #2
“Don’t know what’s worse: your muddy shoes, or the smell of your feet, if I’m honest,” says his friend, as they amble away.
Inside, I collapse on a bench in a homey, cozy boot room to remove my shoes and drop my bag before staggering into the warm café where I’m greeted by the smell of freshly baked scones and hot, steaming soup.
After a morning of wind and walking, it’s enough to bring a tear to my eyes, and I go all out: ordering a pot of tea, a scone with jam and cream and a bowl of soup with a buttered roll. It’s too much, and I don’t care.
For a moment, I miss Ethan with a fierceness that shocks me. It was the first thing we bonded over: our mutual love of food. Pizza dripping with cheese, and garlic dip, and thick, hand-cut noodles that ooze with oil, and chunky potato wedges that crunch between your teeth.
We had fun, at the beginning. Picnics in the park, lazy Sundays in bed, pastries by the canal.
Trying out new restaurants together and pretending to be critics.
Movie dates, and evenings in jazz bars listening to music I didn’t understand.
Sure, he was always trying to drag me out dancing, when I wanted to curl up at home, and sure, I thought his obsession with fine wine was a little pretentious, and yes, I found his friends annoying, with their cooler-than-thou attitudes, micro-beanies and matching Carhartt jackets, and their long-winded discussions about anarchist politics, and what genre was more interesting to listen to, techno or house (neither, in my opinion, but I’d never tell them that).
And maybe the sex was never more than adequate, and yes, once I did fall asleep in the middle and he didn’t even notice.
And no, there weren’t any fireworks, any sparks, any glowing bubble of warmth in my chest when I looked at him that told me yes, yes, yes.
But wasn’t that what I wanted? Someone stable. Someone safe. A nice, normal bloke, with a nice, normal life, and kind eyes and a contagious laugh.
And maybe he never gave me butterflies, but at least with him, I wouldn’t get hurt.
Or so I’d thought.
As if my thoughts summon him, my phone buzzes in my pack.
I check my messages: five from Mum, asking where I am, with an increasingly intense use of exclamation marks, one from Sophie, short and curt, two from Marnie, wishing me luck and sending me a picture of Brian and Rufus dressed up as Mario and Luigi, one from my Aunt Joan, which I almost reply to, she being the only member of my family who is unlikely to cry or shout at me, and three from Ethan.
ETHAN: Look, Ro, I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I’m so sorry. Words can’t express how bad I feel about what I did.
ETHAN: You have to know it was a mistake. A horrible mistake. A moment of weakness. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll never do it again.
ETHAN: Rowan. I love you. Please call me.
I read the messages with dry eyes. My tears have all run out. I don’t know what I feel. “I love you”, he says. But does he really?
And if I’m really, truly honest with myself, do I love him?
Have I ever loved him?
I’m saved from having to dive further into my thoughts by the arrival of my food, which is piled precariously on a thin plastic tray, white crockery clinking together. It smells heavenly.
I turn, ready to hunt down a warm corner to curl up in, and lock eyes with Angus, who has already taken up prime position in a tartan armchair across the room. He smirks at me, his dark eyes molten.
Every thought of Ethan evaporates.
My cheeks heat. Penis. Arse. No, Rowan.
I almost trip over my own feet, narrowly avoiding sending the tray flying, my lunchtime goodies shuddering as I clutch them to my chest. I’m hot all over, and I push past another line of hikers entering as fast as I can, flying through the boot-room and back into the bracing air outside.
There. Safe. Tray of food intact. No arrogant, attractive men to ruin my lunch.
Priya and Lila wave at me across the outdoor seating area, wedged comfortably in beside Ewan. This is not the plan. The plan is to sit inside, out of the wind, alone, where I can eat my food in peace, and nurse my possibly broken heart.
But now I’m outside, I can’t ignore them. That would be rude, and given how often the same people seem to be showing up on this walk, I don’t want to make things too uncomfortable for the next few days.
“Nice socks,” Ewan comments as I set my tray down. His cheese and pickle sandwich is neatly laid out in front of him, cut into triangles with the crusts removed.
I glance down, realising I’ve left my shoes and bag inside the boot room. “Wanted to let my feet breathe,” I lie, and change the topic. “You’ve met Priya and Lila then?”
“It was the only table with any space left.” Ewan shoves an entire triangle of sandwich into his mouth and chews.
“Scones!” Priya leans over, inspecting my lunch. “My favourite. Mum, can we have a scone too?”
“If you finish your sandwich, love,” Lila says.
“She’s welcome to half,” I offer. The amount of food I’ve ordered seems a bit ridiculous now, and I doubt I’ll finish. I take a sip of tea and breathe out a happy sigh.
“That’s very kind of you. Did you hear that, Priya?”
“Thanks, Rowan,” Priya says through a mouthful of her own sandwich, eyes fixed on her scone-shaped prize.
“How is your morning?” I ask, swirling my spoon through my soup.
“We saw a Guelder-rose,” Priya says happily. “And a coralroot orchid. And I got to touch a Corsican pine.” She sighs at her hands. “It had such a great texture. Gnarly and soft and spiky.”
Seeing my look of confusion, Lila smiles. “Those are plants. Priya is going through a flower phase, and now she’s moved onto her tree era, haven’t you, honey? We brought her a book on trees for her birthday, and she takes it with her everywhere she goes.”
I find myself thinking that at ten Priya is already more accomplished than I’ve managed by twenty-nine.
“I’m going to be a botanist.”
“I thought you were going to be a violinist?” I ask.
Priya shrugs with the confidence of someone who has never had their dreams shattered. “I’ll do both. Girls can do anything, right?”
“Right!” I high five her.
It isn’t up to me to ruin her optimism. Life will do that quickly enough.
We finish our lunch, and Priya, Lila and I share the scone.
The café’s overdone it on the cream and jam so there is plenty to go around, and afterwards we take turns heading to the bathroom to wash our sticky hands.
Ewan declines the scone and instead draws a packet of Monster Munch from his bag for his dessert.
When it’s time to leave, I grab my boots and pack and find the others waiting for me. There’s nothing for it. We’re walking together.
The path ahead is rutted and uneven: broken with stones and roots, the canopy hanging low over our heads.
Every step is a minefield, to avoid slipping on the damp moss, plunging a boot into a deeper than expected puddle, or to find a solid piece of surface among the broken rocks littering the floor.
Ewan scowls as he limps along. We find him another stick, so he can use them both as crutches, and Lila and I are quick with an arm or a hand when he is forced to scramble over or under something, but it’s hard going, even without what is probably a sprained ankle.
To his credit, he doesn’t complain, but the pain and effort are clear on his face.
“What are you studying, Ewan?” Lila ducks under a particularly spiky branch.
“What?” He shakes sweat from his eyes.
“You’re at university, right? So what are you studying?”
I shoot Lila a look, knowing exactly what she is doing: distracting him with conversation so he can’t think so much about the pain.
“Yeah. I am. Second year doing sports psychology at Bristol.” He pauses, using both sticks to step over a knee-high rock.
“And? Do you like it?”
“Hate it.” He says it tonelessly, as if hating the entire experience you’re going through is a fact of the world: like cheese sandwiches, or walking, or the sun rising tomorrow.
“Yeah, like, I don’t see the point, you know?
I like going out and that, and I’ve got some friends, but…
I’m not sure what the use of all this shit I’m learning is?
I don’t even know why I picked sports psych.
I guess I like football, and I didn’t know what else to pick.
I didn’t even want to go, but Mum really wanted me to apply, and once I got in, it felt like there wasn’t another option. Like, I didn’t even have a choice?”
“Oh, you mustn’t give up!” I find myself saying. “Degrees are important. And you’re already so far through. Why not push on?”
Why not push on indeed? As soon as I say the words, I want to take them back. There it is. My shame. The demon at my door. The thing that lurks behind everything else, my weakness.
I didn’t push on, did I? No, one emotional breakdown and I was out the door.
Weak. Useless. Pathetic.
The thoughts knock at my walls, scrabbling to get in. And here I am, making it so easy for them. Exposing myself like this. I need to get back into my comfort zone. Need to pull the duvet up, to shut the door.
“Because it’s making me miserable, yeah? So why should I do something that I hate?”
I don’t have an answer to that.
“Did you go to uni then? Miss Degrees Are So Important?”
“I— Yeah, I did.”
“And did you finish?”
My shoulders slump, defeated. My own fault, for the quickfire response. I should have left well enough alone, let Ewan and Lila chat without sticking my gob in it. Should have let them walk off and not tried to be friendly.
“No.”
I pretend to be absorbed in the passing foliage, tilting my face away, so that I won’t have to see their expressions.
“Well, there you go.” Ewan sounds satisfied. His sticks clop across another piece of rocky ground. “And you seem alright. Bit uptight, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
Thankfully, Lila intervenes when the silence grows too long. I want to reply, but I’m scared that if I do, it will come out choked and raw.
“I think degrees are important,” she says carefully, looking at Priya, “but they’re not the only path. There’s no right path, really. I suppose the question is: what you would do instead?”
That is the question, isn’t it.
What would you do instead?
I arrived at university with a head full of big ideas: the friends I’d make, the experiences I’d have. Fall in love. Graduate top of my class. Start the clothing business I’d been dreaming about since I was five. Use it as the springboard to start my real life.
What had I done instead? Slide into a black hole where there was no light, no air, where my body was an anchor, where even waking up in the morning felt like too much.
For a year, I lived in that hole. Growing smaller. Growing more scared.
Becoming less.
Until, step by step, I emerged back into the light. But it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same. And what had illuminated before, burned. And what had excited me, scared me. I’d taken a risk, I’d left the nest, and what had happened? I’d fallen short.
I focused on building a life that was safe. Soft.
A life with no risk.
So that it could never happen again.
What had I done instead?
Nothing good.