Chapter 7
7
CALLUM
Despite everything, I think I’m going to laugh.
Very, very carefully, to avoid making any sound moving the sheets, I inch my wrist up so that I can see my watch.
Bloody hell. It’s nearly three thirtya.m. Three thirty .
Part of the reason that I dragged Emma away from the group was that it just felt too odd socialising like that with her, and the other part was that I thought we should both get a good night’s sleep given tomorrow’s long (I hope) drive.
And here we are both having been awake the whole time.
I think Emma still thinks I’m asleep, though, so at least we don’t have to talk.
I’m unbelievably bored, and very envious of Emma’s Kindle. I shouldn’t have pretended to be asleep. Then I could have read something too.
She heaves herself onto her other side yet again and mutters something.
I really think she just said, ‘Stupid shit.’
She says it again. Yep. I’m guessing she’s jealous of my supposed deep sleep during her extreme wakefulness.
I laugh. I can’t help it.
‘Did you just laugh ?’ she asks.
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘No reason.’
‘Callum.’ She’s speaking quite quietly but she sounds as though she’s on the brink of screaming, which unfortunately just makes me want to laugh more. ‘Are. You. Awake?’
‘Mmhmm?’
‘How long have you been awake?’ She definitely isn’t finding this moment as funny as I am.
To be fair, I don’t actually know why I’m finding it funny. Possibly exhaustion-induced hysteria.
I always wonder whether the perpetrators of really successful crimes are tempted to tell people about their warped cleverness. It’s hard keeping secrets. And apparently I suddenly want to boast about my own cleverness.
‘The whole time,’ I tell her.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you or have any awkwardness so I pretended to be asleep,’ I explain.
‘Didn’t want to disturb me?’ Her voice is rising. ‘But I’ve been awake the whole time. I’m one of the most tired women on the planet right now because I can’t sleep because of you and your stupid deep sleep-breathing but you haven’t even been to sleep and you’ve been faking it this whole time?’
‘You had your Kindle, though?’ I offer.
‘I didn’t want to read. I just wanted to sleep. What time is it?’
She scrabbles around on the table between us, as I say, ‘Three thirtyish.’
‘Noooo. I’m going to die of tiredness.’ She scrabbles some more and then switches the bedside light on.
I blink a lot, because the bulb’s aimed directly into my eyes.
When the light’s image has cleared from my vision, I see that she’s propped herself up on her pillows and has her arms crossed over her chest and is glaring at me.
‘I just want to remind you…’ I begin.
‘Shut up.’ She pulls one of her pillows out from behind her and throws it at me.
I catch it and say, ‘That I haven’t been to sleep either and I was trying to help .’
‘Oh, yes. Fair point. Sorry.’ She drops her annoyance very suddenly and smiles at me, and I have to work hard to ignore how beautiful she looks with her bed-tousled hair and the smile and her big pyjama T-shirt falling off her shoulder. I glimpse a bra strap before I whip my eyes away from anywhere near her body. I’m pretty sure that will have been some strategic bra-wearing and hope she didn’t think I might in any way be tempted into trying any kind of intimacy.
I mean, she’s attractive, of course she is.
I mean, gorgeous .
But I would never, never consider going back to where we were. We were so, so wrong for each other. I hurt her. I hurt myself. I’m not risking that again.
And physical attraction means absolutely nothing.
‘I think…’ There’s a frog in my throat. I swallow and try again. ‘Maybe I should sleep somewhere else.’
‘But then everyone will wonder whether we have a problem in our marriage.’
‘But we do have a problem, which is that we are not in fact married? And the monks aren’t going to kick us out in the middle of the night, are they? And we’re not going to stay friends with these people who we’ve met under false marriage pretences. So it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Emma nods slowly. ‘You make a series of very valid points.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m going to be honest. I would love it if you slept somewhere else because I’m so, so tired – too tired to be polite – and I’m never going to get to sleep with you in the same room.’
‘Likewise,’ I agree.
‘But what if you can’t find anywhere comfortable?’
‘Then I will be awake all night just like I would be awake in here but you’ll be asleep so between us we’ll have gained some sleep and that’ll be a win? And it’s more important for you to sleep because you’re the one who’ll be driving.’
‘You’re a genius and a saint,’ she says. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
I laugh. ‘My pleasure.’
I swing my legs out of bed and shove my feet into my shoes, gather up my phone and a jumper and head for the door.
‘Callum?’ She’s already sounding sleepy.
‘Mmm?’
‘Did I say thank you?’
Oh God , I love her smile.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You did. But if you remember, I owe you. And you’re the one driving so you need the sleep.’
‘Mmm.’ She’s slid down the bed and turned on her side and her long lashes are against her cheek. Her breathing is going rhythmic-sleepy before I even have the door fully open.
I have to battle with myself not to go over to her bed and basically tuck her in.
‘Night,’ I say instead. ‘You should lock the door from inside.’
She just wriggles a bit in the bed, so I step outside and close the door very quietly behind me, before locking it on my side and sliding the key under the door.
I wander around, tiptoe-fashion, for a couple of minutes before finding a communal lounge area, where I settle myself in a (fairly) comfortable armchair.
It’s now heading towards foura.m. and sitting in the chair free of Emma’s presence I’m finally very sleepy.
I wake up to broad daylight, a cricked neck (and possibly a bit of a dribble; sleeping upright is not flattering) and one of the monks standing next to me with a concerned look on his face.
Before he has the chance to enquire about the state of my marriage or anything else, I stand up and say, ‘I got locked out of the room going to the loo and didn’t want to wake my wife, so I decided to wait here until she woke up, but I must have nodded off. I’ll go and wake her now. Good morning.’
On my way to the room, I check my phone and see that it’s now quarter past eight, so hopefully it isn’t too early for Emma to wake up, despite our very late night.
Obviously, I genuinely am in fact locked out, having put my key under the door, so I knock to wake Emma. No response. I knock again. Then I phone. Then I knock really loudly. I know that logically of course she’s fine but worry’s clawing at the edges of my brain, so I give the door a huge hammering and accompany it with a bit of a shout.
Two other doors along the corridor open before I hear Emma’s muffled voice saying, ‘Yes?’
I smile at the heads poking out of the other rooms while I say, ‘Would you be able to let me in?’
Emma says something that sounds like Unphnh , and nothing happens.
I knock again, and finally hear a thud inside and then the key rattles in the lock and the door’s opened.
‘Morning.’ I smile.
She blinks at me, heavy-lidded, and staggers back to her bed where she burrows back under the covers.
‘Time?’ she asks.
‘Eight fifteen.’
‘Too early.’ She pulls a pillow over her head.
‘It is early,’ I concede, ‘if you’ve been up late. But also it isn’t that early if you have to get washed in a not-very-up-to-date bathroom, breakfasted, packed, back to the van and over to the garage before setting off on a long journey.’
Emma mumbles something that I can’t make out and I sit down on my bed.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘You go first,’ she manages to say.
Twenty minutes later I’m washed and dressed and packed and ready to go and Emma… is still looking dead to the world, buried beneath sheets and pillows.
‘Obviously I don’t want to be rude,’ I tell her, ‘but also I do think you should consider getting up sooner rather than later.’
‘Nooooo,’ she moans.
I remember this. When we were together I had extensive experience of Emma in the mornings, and she was not good at getting out of bed. She did, though, love her breakfasts.
‘I think breakfast finishes at nine,’ I lie.
‘Really?’ she asks through the pillow.
‘Yup.’
‘Fuckssake.’ She sticks one foot out from under the sheets, which from memory is a very good sign.
‘Are you skipping breakfast?’ I ask, faux-innocent. I’m not ashamed to use a successful blackmail tool when I find one.
‘No.’ She stretches the foot. Then she flings an arm above the covers.
And that action is so familiar and was once so loved by me as being so very Emma, that all at once something inside me kind of breaks, and I have to swallow hard before I’m able to speak normally again.
‘So I guess you should…’ I prompt.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she grumbles.
And then all of a sudden she rolls over and sits up and looks at me. The intimacy of looking at her sleep-creased face and mussed hair and seeing the sleepy half-smile she directs at me nearly kills me.
‘Why don’t I wait outside while you get up?’ I check my watch. ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes?’
‘Twenty.’
I laugh. ‘Deal.’
Unless the past twelve years have changed her, Emma is not going to be ready in twenty minutes’ time.
Twenty-one minutes later I’m back at the room after a short stroll outside (the clear sky and daylight allowed me to see that we’re in a stunningly beautiful location) and Emma is… ready. And tapping her watch when I walk into the room.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘You didn’t think I’d be ready, did you?’
‘Nope,’ I admit.
‘Yeah, like you, I’m not exactly the same as I was when I was young.’
I don’t need to think about what sounded like an edge of bitterness to her words, because it probably isn’t surprising if she feels that way towards me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. We won’t be seeing each other after this, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Emma greets those of our fellow guests who are currently at the breakfast table as though they’re long-lost best friends. There’s a lot of hugging, accompanied by Emma’s hair narrowly missing yoghurt pots and glasses of orange juice. This is what Emma does, I remember. Half the time if I asked her how she knew a very good friend, she’d have told me she met them on a train or in the road or at a gig. I’m pretty sure she met her friend Samira sitting on adjacent tables in a pizza place and they bonded over their mutual love of parmesan rice balls.
I’m having my hand shaken hard by several of the men, and it seems like I have several new best friends too.
I’m pretty sure that the second we leave, Emma’s going to want to text everyone from here and explain about the marriage lie because she will end up staying in touch with one or two of them long term and she will not want to do that under false pretences.
It’s busy and there’s only one table laid for breakfast, so we end up squished on a bench at the end of it. (I walked to the other end with my plate but lovely Laura wouldn’t hear of newly-marrieds spending one meal seated so far from each other.)
I’m getting more used to being physically around Emma now, so I’m managing to be pretty grown-up about our thighs being pressed up against each other and the fact that I almost elbowed her in the boob when I was buttering some bread.
Really grown-up, actually.
I mean, I’m very, very conscious of her proximity. I can feel her warmth against my leg and if I turn my head in her direction I get a faceful of her hair, which smells lovely. At one point she nearly falls off the bench and I have to shoot an arm out to catch her, and am then reminded of how well she used to fit in my arms, like we were created specifically to go together, but really, I’m cool about it. Genuinely.
There’s no private chat between us, because there are lots of people around and everyone’s discussing their onward journey or sightseeing plans, until Emma suddenly turns to me, hitting me in the face with her hair, and says, ‘A lot of people are still trickling in for breakfast.’
I nod.
‘What time is it?’
‘Don’t know. Can’t get to my phone. Maybe half past. Maybe even quarter to.’
‘Hmm, did you not tell me that breakfast finishes at nine?’
‘Whoops,’ I say.
‘You lied.’ She shakes her head and tuts.
And I look at her upturned face and I can’t take my eyes off her lips, which are slightly moist from the sip of juice she just took and a tiny bit pursed. A coil of hair has escaped from her ponytail, framing her face beautifully.
‘Cheeky,’ she says.
I nod, because I have no idea what we were talking about. All I can think about is the way her lips moved when she spoke, and the way she’s now gazing at me in the same way I’m looking at her.
‘I…’ I begin.
And then Laura shrieks, ‘You two are too cute. Just eating each other up with your eyes. Love it. Can I get a photo?’ She’s snapping before she’s finished speaking and then she checks the photos she’s taken and selects the best one and puts it on our ‘Montecastello Monastery’ group chat that she set up for us all last night.
And there we are in the photo, Emma and me, looking at each other, and it’s horrifying, because we really are doing an excellent impression of a besotted couple. From my side I’m very aware that in that moment I wasn’t acting, I was just… well, briefly besotted. In a lustful way I think. And Emma was either doing some fantastic acting or feeling pretty similar in that moment.
‘Lovely,’ Emma says in a slightly strangled voice.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I say.
We look at each other and at the exact same moment give a small nod and indicate the door with our eyes.
‘It’s been so wonderful to meet you all,’ Emma says, ‘and we’d both love to stay and talk, but we have to get going. Long day ahead.’
It takes us a long time to extricate ourselves from all the genuinely lovely holidaymakers and then a further few minutes of chat with the very friendly monks before we’re back on the road with our bags.
‘I cannot believe ,’ Emma says as she manoeuvres her case around a muddy puddle that the sun hasn’t reached because of the large tree above it, ‘that we have to walk all the way back now.’
‘Yeah.’
Once we’re about fifty feet down the lane, Emma looks over her shoulder and swivels her head in all directions.
‘Honestly,’ I say. ‘You might as well have put a sign with large neon letters on your head announcing that you’re now planning to gossip and you don’t want anyone to hear.’
‘Well, duh,’ she says. ‘I am planning to gossip and I don’t want anyone to hear.’ She dives straight in. ‘Did you hear what John and Manda and those two Croatian girls ended up doing last night? Half of me wishes I’d been there too and the other half is ecstatic that I wasn’t.’
‘I did hear and yes, me too.’
And just like that we slip straight back into the way we always used to dissect evenings out. I go with it because walking in silence is actually quite hard work, and talking about other people is way easier.
The conversation carries us all the way back to the clearing and the van.
‘Hey, Miranda,’ Emma says when we get to the van. As in, she is addressing the van as Miranda . ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Sorry, what?’ I say as we place (me) and throw (Emma) our cases into the back.
‘I’ve missed her.’ Emma’s in the driving seat and jiggling the key in the ignition and we’re back to the same routine that I now realise she probably does every time.
‘I have a few questions,’ I say.
‘Mmm?’ She’s concentrating on coaxing the engine into life. It suddenly starts and she says, ‘Thank goodness.’
‘Yeah, thank goodness. That leads me on to my first question.’ I watch her as she manoeuvres us out of the clearing and I have to say that for someone who only passed their test three months ago she’s doing a good job of it; it can’t be easy to drive a vehicle as old and with such a terrible turning circle as this. ‘How many times has—’ I cannot bring myself to say Miranda ‘—it failed completely to start?’
‘None.’ Emma’s tone is triumphant.
I decide not to point out that there’s a first time for everything. I’m really going to have to hope that we aren’t heading towards another enforced stay somewhere while we get the engine fixed.
‘Another question I have is, just: Miranda? Is that a new name for her – it – today? I don’t think you called it that yesterday?’
‘I feel like the ice between us has been broken,’ she says. ‘And yesterday I felt like you’d judge me for calling her Miranda.’
What, like I’m not judging her now?
‘So it – she – is always called Miranda?’
‘Yes.’ Emma’s tone turns saccharine. ‘I think all vehicles have souls and you just have to find the right name for them. Also trees, obviously. And also wooden furniture because it comes from trees.’
I stare at her and she looks straight ahead serenely as she drives us back towards the monastery and the garage.
‘That’s… great,’ I say eventually.
‘Ha, ha, ha.’ Emma cackles. ‘No, I do not believe that vehicles have souls. But the previous owner was very fond of Miranda and said he would only sell her to me if I promised to continue to call her by her given name. And so I do.’
‘Because you don’t want to break a promise to a man who cannot see you?’
‘ Miranda can see me. And shh, she can hear, too. Stop being so rude.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, and she grins, and I realise that over the past twenty-four hours we’ve wound up in a place we’ve never been in before: two separate, very much not-a-couple people, who could be quite good friends. Very good friends, I think.
I don’t want to be friends with her, though, if I’m honest; it’s too weird. And also, I could easily allow myself to slip into a more-than-friends situation, because what’s not to, frankly, adore about her?
Obviously, she might not feel the same way; for all I know she’s looking at me the whole time going: what was I thinking ? Even if she is, though, I’m just not going there. That would be one of the most stupid things I’ve ever done (and when I was younger I did a lot of stupid things). You should never go back. And we demonstrated quite comprehensively when we were young that we weren’t right for each other. And what if being with her made me stupid again? I’d just hurt her, and myself, all over again.
Stupid to even think of it.
Now we’ve left the monastery we can easily not talk much and obviously we’ll have separate rooms for however many more nights we’re on the road, and, yep, it would have to be a conscious decision to go down any kind of romantic route.
Not going there.