Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
We’re on a canary-yellow train heading for Sintra and I should be excited, but my chest feels heavy. I don’t want to see my parents this evening, and I don’t want to leave Ash. We only have a few more hours together before we’ll need to say goodbye. I feel miserable at the thought. I’ve felt such a lightness in his presence. Laughter is never far from his lips, or mine.
He’s subdued too, as he stares out the window, and I wonder what he’s thinking. I don’t have the energy to strike up a conversation, but an idea comes to me and I get out my phone and headphones. He jolts out of his daze as I nudge his knee.
‘What sort of music do you like?’ I ask.
‘Indie, rock, alternative,’ he replies with a lazy shrug.
‘What was the last album you listened to?’
‘Er …’ He rakes his hand through his hair as he thinks. ‘ The Ride by Catfish and the Bottlemen, I reckon.’
‘Oh, that’s their new one, right? I like them. Aren’t they from North Wales too?’
‘Yeah, Llandudno.’
How I love his Welsh accent.
‘I remember you saying that you missed music.’ I pass him one of my earphones.
He slides me a sideways smile as he docks it in his ear.
Neither of us says another word as the album begins to play, and after a while the warmth of his arm against mine and the gentle rocking of the train make my eyelids droop. Without thinking, I rest my head on his shoulder.
In my semi-conscious state, my mind drifts back to my last visit to Nottingham to see Stella on Valentine’s Day. To her prickish boyfriend, Julian, and the drugs I didn’t say anything about. Stella sensed that I was upset about something and she was frustrated with me for not being straight with her.
But my patience for her has always been immeasurable – she is my rock, my champion, my home – so I didn’t lay into her about the company she was keeping. And look how that turned out.
‘Are you all right?’ Ash asks as we arrive at the Quinta da Regaleira.
‘I’m a little hungover,’ I say to explain my quiet mood.
‘Yeah, I’m feeling it too,’ he replies.
I wonder if he’s using that as an excuse, like I am. I’ve been so caught up in my own thoughts that I haven’t considered where his head might be at. We said a lot of vulnerable things to each other last night. Did he mean it when he asked me to go travelling with him? Does he have regrets?
I don’t want to overthink – I want to be present for our last few hours together – but it’s a tall order.
It takes us half an hour to walk up to the Quinta da Regaleira via Sintra’s pretty town centre and the place is already swarming with people. Through the wrought-iron gates, we can see gleaming white spires and ornate chimneys rising out of a sea of greenery. We’re keen to check out the palace later, but we agree to go straight to the Initiation Well.
It turns out that everyone else has had the same idea. The line of people snaking away from the cave-like entrance goes on and on, up a dusty curved path edged with ferns and boulders. The further uphill we climb, the more hopeless I begin to feel.
This well was Stella’s main reason for wanting to come to Portugal. She saw it on Instagram that last time I visited her and she thought it looked like something out of A Court of Thorns and Roses , the book she’d just finished reading. She’d already insisted I borrow it, but when she started researching other cool things to do in Lisbon, she grabbed it back and scribbled her list on the inside cover.
That book links me to Stella, to this place, and I needed to come today to feel closer to her.
But this queue is too much.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say desperately, slowing to a stop.
‘Why don’t we come back later?’ Ash suggests. ‘What time’s your train?’
‘Four o’clock,’ I reply dully.
‘It’s okay, we’ve got hours. Maybe the queue will die down.’
‘I really don’t want to miss out on seeing it.’
He places his hand on my shoulder. ‘I promise that you won’t.’
When I meet his eyes, I believe him. I release a long breath and nod and then we turn to head back down the hill.
Off in the distance are the yellow dome and red tower of the famous Pena Palace, and in the foreground, on the lower part of the property, mist rises up over towering palms, leafy tree ferns and primeval-looking cycads.
‘Check that out!’ Ash exclaims, coming to a stop by a white stone wall.
‘It must be water vapour from the fountains,’ I say as I join him. ‘Real mist would have burned off in this heat.’
‘Let’s pretend. It makes this place seem more mystical.’
I give him a small smile. My mind is still in overdrive about whether he feels awkward about last night, but the smile he mirrors back at me allows me to relax a little.
‘Do you want to sit down a sec? Take a breather?’ He nods past me at a stone bench seat that has been carved out of a boulder.
I nod.
The temperature is brutal, but it’s relatively cool once we take a seat in the shade of the giant oak branching out over our heads.
‘What do you know about this place?’ Ash asks as he gets a packet of spearmints out of his pocket and offers me one.
‘Only that it was built on the whim of a very rich man and by an Italian architect who used to design opera sets. Oh, and that it has approximately five hundred different species of trees from all around the world.’
‘But of course you remember that fact,’ Ash says teasingly, bumping my arm.
I let out a small laugh as my gaze wanders. There’s a stone tower nearby with a small balcony looking out over the lower terraces.
‘I kind of like that there are no manicured beds here, at least from what I can see. It all looks so wild and lush and overgrown.’
‘Which do you prefer?’ Ash asks. ‘Formal gardens or wild ones?’
‘I like both,’ I reply. ‘But when it comes to flowers, cottage garden plants are my favourites – irises and peonies, rambling roses, drifts of foxgloves and big clouds of purple Nepeta ,’ I say with a smile. ‘My nan had the most incredible collection of lupins in just about every colour under the sun. She only had a garden the size of a postage stamp, but boy did she make the most of it. She planted them all out in a floral rainbow.’
‘Is that where you got your passion for gardening from? Your nan?’ Ash asks, his expression full of warmth.
‘Yeah,’ I reply sadly. ‘I used to go over to my grandparents’ house after school and help Nan with weeding and clearing. I felt so at home with my hands several inches deep in the soil.’
‘When did you lose them?’ he asks, his tone gentle, compassionate.
‘When I was sixteen. They passed away two months apart. I wanted to dig up some of Nan’s lupins before we sold the house, but my mum wouldn’t let me.’
‘Why not?’
‘They were just about to flower and she thought they’d help to attract a buyer. I asked if I could take some once the sale was going through, but she insisted the new owners had to get the garden they’d paid for. I wish I’d done it anyway. There were so many, no one would have noticed a few missing.’
He looks crushed on my behalf.
‘Shall we go for a wander?’ I ask.
Sunlight streams through the leafy cover of magnolia, chestnut, cedar and cypress trees as we make our way along the meandering paths. A hot wind flattens the long grass growing in some of the beds, and the clink of cutlery at the café carries on the breeze, along with the indistinguishable chatter of tourists.
Ash and I are both wearing the same outfits as yesterday and the wind is wreaking havoc on my red dress. As we walk up a spectacular staircase carved out of giant boulders, I have to hold it down so it doesn’t blow upwards.
‘I like your hair like that,’ he says with a smile as I secure it with a butterfly clip – the wind tore it loose.
We’ve come to a stop by a stone tower with a narrow spiral staircase winding up the inside.
‘You liked it last night too,’ I tease.
He laughs and his cheeks grow pink. ‘Last night was fun. The most fun I’ve had in a long time.’
‘Me too,’ I admit.
His expression grows serious as he stares down at me. I can’t drag my eyes away and jitters start up in my stomach as we stand for a minute, unmoving.
‘I guess we should go get in line for the Initiation Well,’ he murmurs, breaking the spell.
The queue is still long, but it’s nowhere near as bad as earlier.
I pull my water bottle out of my bag and take a few mouthfuls before offering it to Ash. He gratefully accepts. My eyes catch on his lips, pressed to the rim, then on a drop of water tracing its way down his neck. I try to distract myself from the lust rampaging through my body by firing off a quick text to Stella: I’m finally going to see the spiral staircase that you wouldn’t stop bleating on about!
I throw my phone back into my bag and we shuffle forwards a pathetic couple of feet. We’re going to be here a good half hour at least.
My phone buzzes.
My first thought is: Stella . And even though I know it’s wishful thinking, I get my phone back out and check the display.
And there – in bold text – is her name.
My head spins as I open the message.
Don’t think you meant to send this to me. This is my new number.
I immediately feel shaky. The phone slips from my grasp, and in my haste to catch it, I somehow knock it flying into a boulder. It makes a cracking sound as it tumbles over the rocky surface before falling to the ground a few metres away.
‘Whoa,’ Ash says, hurrying over to pick it up.
When he returns to my side, I’m horrified to see that the screen is shattered and the display is dark.
‘Is it broken?’ I can hardly bear to ask.
He presses at it, his expression tense. ‘Looks like it. I’m sorry. Are you okay?’ He touches his hand to my shoulder. ‘You’ve gone white as a sheet.’
I swallow rapidly and nod, unable to speak. And then my vision goes blurry and a moment later two tears break free from my eyes and slip down my cheeks. I hastily brush them away before they can reach my chin.
‘Ellie, is this just about your phone?’ Ash whispers. ‘You still have your SIM, so you should be able to replace it pretty easily. Or is something else wrong?’
‘Stella died five and a half months ago,’ I reply in a choked voice, unable to keep it in a second longer.
Ash bristles with shock.
‘I still text her, but her parents must have given up her mobile phone contract, because her number has been assigned to someone else. A stranger just replied to my message.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmurs, placing his hand on my lower back as my chest begins to shake with silent sobs.
Everyone around us is distracted. The boys from the family in front of us are scrapping, and behind us a group of tourists are talking loudly amongst themselves.
Miraculously I manage to wrestle my emotions under control, but Ash rubs my back for a minute before asking, ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘She took MDMA at university.’ I breathe in unsteadily. ‘And then she danced so hard that her heart stopped.’
Stella was my sunshine, my breath of fresh air. She was the daughter of the high-street greengrocer, and she was down to earth and funny, never giving a shit what anyone thought of her. For the first eleven years of our lives, we grew up in terraced houses right next door to each other and we would scrape our knees daily climbing over the fence to play. We were joined at the hip all through primary school, and I’d assumed we’d stick together at secondary school too, so I was devastated when my parents pulled me out after two years.
I felt like a fish out of water at my new school, which was one of the most elite in London. Without Stella at my side, I lost confidence. I was tall for my age, and curvy too, and some of the kids took to calling me the ‘lumbering ginger giant’, but their taunts weren’t the lone reason I loathed my new classmates. I was only there because my mum and dad wanted to rub shoulders with their wealthy, well-connected parents. I was so angry at them.
All I wanted was to go back to riding the bus with my best friend, to passing secret notes to each other in class. But while I became a shadow of my former self, Stella continued to thrive, strengthening friendships that in the past had only ever been peripheral. I envied her, but she thought I was the lucky one – her parents would have killed to send her to private school. They’d been saving up her entire life for her to go to university.
We drifted apart but came back together at sixth-form college and we intended to go to the same university too. Nottingham Trent had great courses in both media studies – her choice – and furniture design, but my getting a place at Central Saint Martins scuppered our plans. My parents wanted the prestigious college to be featured in my bio on their website for the business and they refused to pay for me to go anywhere else. Stella was frustrated at me for not trying harder to convince them. If I had, would things have turned out differently?
‘We almost went to the same university,’ I tell Ash miserably. ‘I keep thinking that maybe if I’d been there, I could have steered her away from the arsehole she was dating.’ I would have eventually been honest with Stella about what I thought of Julian, if only we’d had more time. ‘He was a posh, entitled twat who flashed his cash around,’ I say bitterly. ‘The last time I saw Stella, he was snorting coke, so I’m sure he gave her the Ecstasy. We’d never done drugs before.’
At least, I hadn’t. There was a chance Stella had been keeping secrets from me. I hated that losing her cast doubt over how well I’d known her. Grieving has been a complicated process.
‘I was so furious at her,’ I say hoarsely. ‘But I miss her so much. Being able to text her has helped.’
The first time I texted Stella, I laid into her about what she’d done, telling her that she was stupid, full-on raging. I got all my anger off my chest while ugly-crying my heart out, but afterwards I was horrified at the thought of her parents reading what I’d written.
I remember how nervous I was, going to see them at the shop. When I confessed to what I’d done, her mum told me in a voice wracked with emotion that Stella’s phone was turned off and she was unlikely to ever turn it back on again. She promised that she’d never read my message and that if it helped, I could text her again. I felt so relieved.
Later, I felt compelled to apologise to Stella for all the mean things I’d said. I tried to explain why I was so angry and that helped too: I was sorting through my feelings as I wrote them down and it felt like a form of therapy before I actually did do therapy – something my tutor recommended to help me through my final months at university. I was in serious danger of stumbling at the last hurdle.
But recently I’ve begun to text her more general things – my plans for interrailing, gossip about old friends, gripes about my parents. It’s been comforting.
‘I naively thought I’d be able to carry on texting her forever,’ I say to Ash.
He makes a noise of compassion and slides his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close as more tears spill down my cheeks. His strong embrace and the steady beat of his heart slowly soothe me.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble. ‘I wanted to tell you before, but it’s hard to talk about her without getting upset.’
A moment passes before he speaks. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
Something in his tone causes me to turn and look at him properly.
He lets me go and shoves his hands into his pockets, then he blinks and I’m taken aback to see that there are tears in his eyes. He swallows, his gaze fixed on the ground, but then he throws me a heavy look.
‘I lost my best friend too,’ he confesses in a husky voice. ‘Taran.’
‘Oh, Ash, I’m so sorry,’ I murmur, distraught. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Leukaemia.’ I inhale quickly as he continues. ‘We used to talk about going interrailing too. I don’t think he ever really believed he was going to die until days before he did.’
He looks at the ground again as we shuffle forward in the queue. I loop my arm through his – he still has his hands in his pockets.
‘When did you lose him?’
‘It will be two years next month.’ It’s the middle of August. ‘He passed away a week before I was due to start my second year.’
‘That must have been so hard.’
‘It was,’ he agrees.
‘Taran had a telescope, right? He got you into space?’
He nods. ‘It was technically his dad’s,’ he says softly. ‘I’m still close to his family.’
‘You said that you spent a lot of time at his house, growing up?’
He nods again, but doesn’t elaborate.
He had mentioned that his home life could be hectic. He also said something about space making anything he was experiencing down on Earth feel inconsequential. Did he have a difficult upbringing? I so want to get to know him better.
‘Anyway, he’s been on my mind a bit,’ he says.
‘I understand.’
‘And the weird thing is, you do.’
The look we share carries so much weight.
It’s probably another quarter of an hour before the entrance to the Initiation Well comes into view and during that time Ash and I stay close but don’t speak. I can’t explain how it feels, the silence. It’s more than comfortable – it’s profound.
Just before we reach the entrance, he casts me one of his small, steady smiles and takes his hands out of his pockets. I let go of his arm and he reaches down to interlace our fingers. My heart flutters at the press of his palm against mine as he leads me through the rocky doorway.
We come out at the top of a beautiful spiral staircase and I know that I’m wearing the same look of wonder that’s etched on his face.
The wide staircase curves round a hollow space in the centre that is completely open to the elements, and the rough stone walls are alive with green moss. When the people in front of us pause to take photos, Ash squeezes my hand in sympathy. It pains me to realise that I’ve probably lost all my pictures of Lisbon, but I focus on soaking up every detail and committing them to memory in the same way that Ash has been doing for weeks without a phone.
Down below is a patterned floor, and above is a disc of daylight encircled by jagged stones that look like trolls’ teeth. This circle of light shrinks as we walk round and round, descending several storeys underground.
The further we go, the cooler and damper the air gets and I become increasingly aware of the heat of Ash’s body whenever we come to a stop. There are people ahead of and behind us, but they’re all so consumed with taking videos and photographs that I feel as if we’re on another plane altogether.
Eventually we reach the bottom and find ourselves in a man-made tunnel lit by a warm glow. The rocky walls and ceiling curve over our heads, and stalactite-like pillars that look as though they’re made of candle wax come down from the ceiling to perch on the ground. We head towards a pocket of sunlight and discover a waterfall trickling down the rocks into a pond dotted with a confetti layer of green algae. A mossy bridge made of rough stone spans the water.
‘Everything looks so natural, it’s hard to believe it’s a construct of some rich guy’s imagination,’ I say.
It’s the first time either of us has spoken in almost half an hour.
Ash looks at me, his gaze piercing, and then he tugs me into the relative darkness of the tunnel, letting me go as we turn to face each other.
‘What is this?’ he asks quietly as he motions between us.
My scalp prickles at the intensity in his expression. It’s a few seconds before I’m able to reply.
‘I don’t know.’ It’s the truth. ‘What do you think it is?’
I sound nervous, but his eye contact is unwavering.
‘It feels like something.’
Goosebumps race down my arms as I nod at him. ‘It feels like something to me too.’
He’s studying me, his eyes glinting.
‘Come to the beach with me,’ he murmurs.
‘To swim?’
‘No, to sleep. Don’t catch your train this afternoon.’
My eyes widen. ‘But my parents are expecting me.’
‘Can’t they expect you tomorrow?’
Ash is asking me to sleep under the stars with him. The thought of it is tantalising, dizzying.
‘But I can’t even call them,’ I point out.
‘We’ll find a phone.’
Another idea occurs to me. ‘If we could get to an internet café, I could email their PA.’ Then I wouldn’t even have to speak to them. Do I dare?
‘Come on,’ Ash encourages. ‘You can do it.’
I let out a giddy laugh and he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back momentarily before looking at me again through lowered lashes.
‘What’s that look for?’ I ask, baffled.
‘I really, really love your laugh,’ he says slowly, candidly, placing his hand over his heart.
Snakes could come slithering down these walls and they wouldn’t wipe the smile from my face.
I nod at him. ‘Yes. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s go.’