Chapter Six
“Idon’t know what he’s thinking…” James mutters. He moves his bag again, shifting it away as he pulls out an Ordnance Survey map and begins to unravel it. There’s a clinking, rattling sound in his bag as it lands with a thud.
“What was that?” I ask.
He frowns, as he finds another zip in the main compartment, opening it to find a bottle of clear liquid. “Vodka…” he muses. Then he laughs. “Christ, what sort of shit does he think we’re going to get up to?”
“This isn’t funny… He’s given us empty bottles for water but a full bottle of vodka?”
James passes it across to me as I’m busy using my sleeve to wipe away some of the smudged makeup from my face. I use my spare hand to take the bottle. It is indeed straight vodka. An expensive bottle too. “He could’ve at least given us some lemonade to mix it with.”
James laughs again but holds his face in his hands like he might also cry. “Oh, bloody hell. What the fuck are we going to do?”
“Get drunk?” I suggest.
“We need to get back. I need to get back. My sister… I can’t be here, Felicity.”
“Ok…” I nod, acknowledging his predicament.
James’ phone pings again. He grabs it out, groaning whilst cradling his chin in his hand as the final vibration signifies the end of his battery supplies. “Shit.”
A moment of weakness leaks into my heart at the sight of his sorry expression. Who knew the man had feelings? I really try to stop my mouth from opening. I try so hard but… “I have power. You could use mine if you wanted to?” I suggest. Gosh, why am I being so kind to this man all of a sudden? “Not that you deserve it really.”
He doesn’t respond to my quip. Instead, he stands up and walks away from where I’m sat with all our things, as the skies clear enough for the sun to peek through. A ray of light pushes down and settles on his head, glittering on his damp, dark hair. He stops. And although I can’t see his face, I can tell by his shoulders and the way he thrusts his hands into his chino pockets that he’s taking some deep sighs. I should stop looking at him. If he turns around, he’ll catch me staring and his ego is big enough to assume I’m perving.
I take in my surroundings and my original idea to get to higher ground to decide where to go next is flawed. There’s nothing up here to pinpoint exactly where we are. I take out the map, but it’s all colours and shapes to me right now. I’m hungry and tired, and my brain is pulsing thinking about all the things I should be doing but am not doing. We’re three weeks out from an event. I trust my team to cover a lot of the work. The issue is, they shouldn’t have to.
And now I have a new set of challenges. But I must not let them detract from my overall objectives. I suppose I should add another one, which up until a few hours ago I took for granted.
Objective one: Work up to director position at Starr.
Objective two: Earn the only bonus I expect to earn this year, which means not letting James sneak his idea through Michael.
Objective three (new): Stay alive. First two objectives rely heavily on the success of this one.
“I did my Duke of Edinburgh,” I shout across the space between us. This is probably useless to mention since it was fifteen years ago, and I tagged along with a very knowledgeable bunch of scout leaders who looked after me most of the way. I also remember the walking draining me, and taking a few days to recover.
James laughs, not bothering to look back at me. “Of course you did.”
“Hey… What’s wrong with that?”
“Posh girl,” he says. I don’t know where James gets this impression, but he’s convinced I’m some sort of nepo-baby. I am not.
“What? Didn’t they do it at your school?” I ask, remembering most of my friends from other schools at least had the option to do it. I hardly went to Eton. It wasn’t private or anything. Arguably though, my parents played the postcode lottery well. And could afford to do that.
“It cost money,” he says. “And we didn’t have a lot of that around.”
I chew on my bottom lip as I look down to fiddle with my sorry-looking boots. I don’t want to pry further. I don’t remember the Duke of Edinburgh costing very much and so he must’ve been in a very tight predicament if he couldn’t afford to do it. But also, he could be manipulating me somehow. I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Are you wearing a watch?” I shout. “Do you have the time?”
I’ve stopped wearing mine recently and now rely on my mobile phone but that’s turned off.
“It’s just gone three,” he shouts back.
“Should we find somewhere to set the tent up?” I ask. The tight pang of anxiety resurfaces in my stomach. I can’t believe I have to share a tent with this man. It’s actually not ok.
“Stop freaking out,” James mutters, as he walks back towards me.
I gawp. How can he tell from a distance? And he’s one to talk. “Says the man who was pulling his hair out down by the lake earlier.”
“That’s because I’ve been abandoned with a lunatic.”
“I’m a lunatic? You’re a total psychopath.”
“You’re having one of your epic meltdowns. You know, I can almost hear it happen when I send emails sometimes. It’s like the mood shifts from Great British Bake-Off tent to the Death Star in a flash. The air thickens. And it’s not just me who notices.”
“Shut up,” I say. But… “Who else notices?” I realise he’s purposefully baiting me, and I am absolutely falling for it. It’s not true, of course. And, well, maybe he shouldn’t send emails to make me go all Darth Vader. “Whatever… We just… I don’t know .”
Objective three… Focus on objective three, Fliss.
“We need to find somewhere to camp. We need to find water. Do we just fill our bottles up? Do we have those tablets that disinfect it? Or are we going to risk getting poisoned?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re safe drinking Highland water,” James says, looking down at me in that stupid hands-on-hip pose again. It’s a pose I usually appreciate in a man, but on him, it’s patronising. He’s looking at me like I’m a child.
“Do you know how to put this tent up?” I ask, climbing to my feet, patting my soggy dress down. “I need to get out of these clothes.” I glare at James waiting for a smart comment, but he just tilts his head as if to suggest he’d never. “And soon…”
“Well, I guess we might as well stay here tonight then, yeah? Don’t know about you but I’m knackered, frankly. We can look at that map properly and work out how to get to the nearest town. Don’t see much point in heading back to that other one. Do you?”
“They did have a phone.”
“But we only have fifty pounds. That’s not going to get us a taxi out of here.”
I nod. “Besides, I’ve already decided I’m doing this challenge. We spend a night here then tomorrow we hike.”
James drops his head as if this plan fills him with dread. “Tomorrow, we hike. God help me.”
*
I’m not sure when it happened but as the sun began to lower over the horizon and a navy-blue sky rose above us, the wind seemed to drop. The clouds have cleared. There’s a promise of a gorgeous starry night sky. The ripple of water from a nearby waterfall I found earlier and used to fill our bottles, trickles in the background. And as the beauty of Scotland’s summer evening curls around us, so do the midges.
“It’s like a fucking apocalypse,” James complains as he tries once again to wedge the tent pole in. He spits as he tastes a few.
“Do you mean the Exodus?”
“The what?”
“Are you referring to the locusts?”
“They’re midges, Felic- puh !” James spits more of the buggers out, batting his hands around his face. He shakes his head before ducking down again to fight the pole into the tent.
I give up the discussion, concluding I’m right and he’s wrong. I’m standing uselessly beside the tent waiting for him to erect it so I can finally get dressed. “I think you’re doing, puh , it wrong-g,” I say through spits.
James tenses all over, throws the pole he’s wrestling with down on the floor and gives me a glare. “Do you want to do it then?”
“Fine,” I say, shouldering past him. He straightens and steps back to let me past.
“No, it doesn’t – pah – Christ, these midges are making me mad! It doesn’t go like that.” I can see the faint outline of his shadow pointing at my progress.
“Look, let’s just peg it in and hope for the best,” I say. He goes quiet and I realise too late I’ve used the word “peg” around a child. When I turn around, he’s looking up to the sky, hands on hips again, doing that irritating foot-tapping thing. He’s biting his lip, so I know he’s trying not to laugh. “It’s literally a peg though.”
He laughs. “Come on, Felici- puh … Get that peg in.”
“Grow up,” I say, turning to place the peg in the ground, then standing to squish it in with my foot. Once it’s in, and the tent is manageable, for one night at least, I grab my bag and dive in to change out of these knitted tights I may very well have to peel off at this stage.
James, however, seems to have the same idea and is already sat inside with his legs crossed.
“Get out!” I demand. “I need to get dressed.”
“You can’t seriously expect me to stand out there whilst those midges eat me alive?”
“They don’t eat flesh… Do they?”
He gives me a funny look. “What, midges? God, I don’t know.”
“Out,” I say, nodding behind me as I crawl in too.
“I’ll turn my back,” he suggests.
“Oh my god! Get the hell out! Now! ”
James huffs. “Fuck’s sake,” he mutters as he climbs back out of the tiny space. And, shit, it is a tiny space. Definitely a two sleeper. It narrows in height so you must have to sleep with your head at the top, toes pointing down. Once I’ve done the zip up behind me, I can hear James telling me he’s not going to wait long so to “hurry the fuck up”. So, despite claustrophobia creeping in, I peel my clothes off, unclipping my bra too, and pull on some clean, dry items that Michael packed for me. Interestingly, despite his (or Millie’s) keen attention to detail, he did not pack me a spare bra. I suppose I should be grateful he doesn’t know my bra size. My bra is wet too but if I hang it somewhere ( where to hang it without James seeing? ) I can maybe dry it overnight ready for us to get started in the morning.
“You have ten seco- puh -onds!” James yells.
“Alright, alright…”
Practically throwing the rest of my stuff on, I start to climb out just as James grabs the zip. He dives back into the tent as if he’s outrunning wolves. He lands with a thump on his sleeping bag.
At least we have two of those. Ever the optimist.
I slide my feet into my trainers and, whilst whipping my hands in front of my face, look around for a suitable place to hang my bra. Thankfully, there’s a low branch on a nearby tree, which I lay it over, mentally reminding myself to get up first tomorrow and remove it before James sees.
Cannot let the worst man in the world discover my bra size. It would be like feeding candy to an arsehole.
Once I’ve clambered back into the tent, I see James has managed to change super-quickly too and is now studying the map. “Do you even know where we are?”
“Nope.”
“What about here?”
I squint. The light is waning quickly, especially in the tent. Without a fire or any sort of torch, we’re kind of screwed. “Maybe we should do this tomorrow.”
James exhales slowly. “What do we do now then? Talk?”
“Definitely not… We should, erm…”
We sit in silence for a moment. I’ve tucked my legs into myself in order to avoid touching him. It’s not a sustainable position. He’s taking up most of the space. I’m going to say it’s a 70/30 ratio. A shiver racks through me. My hands and feet are freezing. As if James notices, he raises his eyes to mine. “You should get into your sleeping bag and start warming it up. You’ve probably got a chill from walking in the rain. Don’t need you going hypothermic, do we?”
“I’m fine,” I say. But I climb into the bag anyway, awkwardly shuffling around, then end up sitting there like a slug, with my legs pointing down the tent, only my face visible with the hood up.
James pretends to be busy with his bag but we both know there’s nothing left in there.
“Tell me about your sisters,” I say after about ten minutes, meeting my silence quota for the week. I find silence suffocating. I always have. It’s probably partly to do with my people-pleasing tendencies. Silence means I’m not doing anything to ease the tension. And the tension pulls at my weak self until I cave and talk nonsense.
James climbs into his sleeping bag too, lying down beside me, and I think this might be the weirdest moment of my life so far.
“Josie, Hannah and Sophie. Josie’s the baby. She’ll be twenty this year. Hannah’s getting married in two months. She’s twenty-eight. And then Sophie, well, she’s possibly a mum now… She’s thirty.”
“I’m sorry you can’t be there for her.”
James shrugs. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be much help at this stage. It’s not as if I’d be in the room. It’s weird though, not being there. We’ve always been close. There’s only ten months between us in age.” He’s quiet for a beat. “I should be meeting my nephew.”
“You will,” I say.
“Yes, but I’ll have missed the birth, missed the first week of his life. I shouldn’t’ve come. I should’ve stuck to my guns.”
“You were going to bail?”
I turn my head to get a proper read on his face in the dying light. He’s staring blankly at the roof of the tent. “I told Michael I couldn’t come. I’d missed our flight anyway. Sophie called my mum to say she was in labour. That’s who I called at the church in the fishing village earlier. Dean, her husband, didn’t answer, but I suppose it was an unknown number. So, I don’t know how she’s getting on.”
“Well, I guess now we know why Michael insisted on you coming?”
James’ eyes lock with mine, the dark blue almost black in the dark. Something about the intensity sends a shockwave through me, forcing me to look away. “Please don’t tell me you’re apologising for him? You know he’s an arse-raving lunatic, don’t you?”
“You said I was a lunatic earlier. Maybe you’re the problem.”
James laughs with frustration. “You are! You’re making excuses for him in your head. I can hear your brain ticking.”
“Whatever… I want to like him.”
“Why? Because you can’t keep providing free labour for someone you hate?”
“I get paid…”
“Not enough for the hours you do. What’s your salary? Let me guess. You’re Head of Marketing but your negotiation skills are lacking.”
“Excuse me!” I scoff, insulted. “Anyway, it’s against HR policy to talk about salaries.”
“Forty,” he says.
“ Forty grand? ”
“More?” he guesses.
I look back at him with a frown. “What do you earn?”
He faux gasps. “Are you breaking HR policy? Felicity …”
“Don’t be annoying. Just tell me.”
“You really want to know?”
I blink. Do I? I feel like the answer might hurt. I’ve always assumed he was on the same base pay as me. Of course, he earnt bonuses on top of that. One of the perks of being a salesperson. The shit part being all the customer interaction and pimping out of oneself that’s required. It was the way he guessed forty grand… It’s like he knows I earn less than him. But by how much?
“I’m on sixty grand basic, with potential to earn forty per cent on top of that.”
I swallow, looking away into the darkness at the far corner of the tent. I’m not sure what to say, I didn’t expect it to be that bad. I bite my bottom lip. I should end this conversation. Wherever it’s headed, it’s not going to help me. Besides, I don’t particularly want him to know how much I’m on. It feels like a failing somehow.
James cringes at me. He’s noticed my hesitation. “Go on then, your turn.”
“I’m on less,” I say quietly.
James doesn’t say anything, instead he lets the silence linger on, which is somehow more annoying than having a smart comment or two.
I lie back down, staring up at the ceiling of the tent too.
“A lot less?” he finally asks.
I shrug. “More than half what you earn. But not by much.”
He blows out a breath. “No wonder you’re after the promotion.”
I don’t want to say more in fear of revealing myself. I feel somewhat betrayed by this news. How can it be that he earns that much more than me? What did I do wrong?
As if James can hear my thoughts out loud, he says, “Could be that marketing generally earn less. It’s business, but not the ugly part. People actually enjoy it. You can stay in your comfort zone. You don’t have to put yourself out there. Sales is the battle. Marketing is the banquet.”
I’m speechless – annoyed with myself for even asking the question before. Annoyed that James is right and I’m sticking up for someone who clearly doesn’t have my back in return. Someone who has literally all but banished me to the swamp whilst he sits comfortably in his castle.
James must realise I’m not in the mood to talk anymore. There’s a slight shiver running through my limbs, despite trying discreetly to warm myself up. My toes are now numb. I don’t want to talk in case there’s a quiver in my voice – I don’t want James to know I’m struggling. He unzips the tent, leaning up to peer out.
“Hey, Felicity… Take a look at this.”
I roll to the side so I can peer up out of the tent too. He holds the flap open for me. There, in the sky, is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. My eyes water as I stare up at a vista of stars scattered like sugar in the dark sky. We settle for the night with them twinkling down on us, mesmerised.
*
At some point I must’ve fallen asleep because a voice wakes me. There’s a gentle hand on my shoulder. I startle, sparking awake. “What is it?! Wh-h-ere are we?” I say, a rattle in my voice, my teeth chattering.
That’s when I realise how cold I am. The tent is freezing. I can’t feel my feet at all. My limbs are vibrating.
“You woke me up with your shivering,” the quiet voice says, almost huskily, as if it might wake someone up. It’s so gentle it’s like a kind of lullaby. “You’re freezing, you loon. You need to warm up, fast.”
I hear a zipping sound in the dark. It’s not clear what it is until I feel hot, firm skin collide with my arms. I’m too cold to think about anything. The heat is exquisite. I roll over, attaching myself to it as more zipping occurs. Limbs are rearranged. My face finds somewhere cosy, safe, as arms wrap around my body.
“It’s ok,” the voice says as I drift back off to sleep.