by Minnie Darke
The partygoers stood together in clusters, sat on the low brick wall of the herb gardens and lolled on the banana lounges. Everywhere he looked, Arie saw couples, arms entwined, hands clasped, heads rested on shoulders, one lover sitting in the other’s lap. The chorus of the Zombies’ ‘This Will Be Our Year’ blended with their laughter and talk.
You’ll find someone else, Belinda had said, but Arie didn’t know how it was even possible to fall in love again. Did he first have to work out a way to grow a new heart to replace the one he’d given away?
He thought back over the events of the night. Kissing Grace . . . it reminded him of the way it could all too easily be when you first bought a new music album. You pressed play and started to listen but you just didn’t really know any of it, and although it washed over you perfectly pleasantly, none of it really grabbed you. Maybe, just maybe, over time you might become familiar with the tracks and maybe, just maybe, they might begin to mean something to you. But more likely it would always be that no matter how many times you played the album, it would never sound like anything more than elevator music.
Arie turned away from the window and poured himself a whisky. He was thirty-five years old, and the miracle of his life was over and done with. He could see no reason to believe that the universe might yet deliver him another.
ON AN EARLY morning express train from London to Edinburgh, Beatrix Romero, at sixteen, having just spent a quiet half-hour watching the January scenery scroll by, turned to her friend Olivia and said, ‘They’d better not all be duds this time.’
Olivia shrugged. ‘I’d like to say they couldn’t possibly be as bad as the last lot, but I’d be lying.’
‘One hot boy. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Maybe it’s like the ideal car parking space. If you want him to turn up, you have to start thinking about him now. You know, like, visualise.’ Olivia closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temples. ‘I’m picturing a luscious Scot-boy with a gorgeous set of . . . bagpipes.’
‘Ew,’ said Beatrix, her mind leaping simultaneously to images of haggis, and to the jangly habit of not wearing jocks under kilts.
Beatrix and Olivia had been going to music camps together, twice or three times a year, since they were twelve. This camp would bring together – for three days and two nights – music students from three specialist performing arts schools: Beatrix and Olivia’s private London college, a school in Vancouver, Canada, and the host school in an inner suburb of Edinburgh. Half the passengers in the carriage were from Beatrix’s school, and the luggage racks were crammed with instrument cases in all shapes and sizes.
It was usual for Beatrix and Olivia to share a room and, for the last two years, they’d had an agreement about giving each other space in the event that either of them got lucky. So far, however, the arrangement had been entirely to Olivia’s benefit.
Olivia – with jet black hair and flawless skin passed down by her father, and striking blue eyes inherited from her mother – was stunning. She played the violin and this gave her the opportunity to show off in public another of her signature features, which was that she possessed possibly the most beautiful wrists in the history of hands being attached to arms. Being around Olivia made Beatrix horribly aware of the slight squish of her stomach, the fuzzy down on her forearms and the wild, thick mess of her hair.
‘The odds are always going to be worse for you,’ Olivia observed, not without a hint of smugness. ‘Music boys are geeky.’
‘Why does it have to be like that, though?’ Beatrix moaned.
Olivia, inspecting her fingernails, shrugged. ‘Just a law of nature, I guess.’
Beatrix didn’t know how Olivia managed it, but every camp, quick as a fox, she would work out who was who. Before the second day was over, she’d have found a girl to flirt with during breaks and entertain in their twin-share room at night while Beatrix sat up on some shabby armchair in a cold common room, watching late-night television or reading a novel, waiting for the time on her phone to tick over to the appointed hour when she would knock softly on the door to be let back in. When she’d packed her bags this time, Beatrix had put in not one novel, but two.
Typically, she’d left packing to the night before she left. Her father had been working late, but he’d called Juanita and had her come over to – as he put it – ‘be a presence in the house’. Forming her lithe body into yoga poses while at the same time reading out the packing list, Juanita had sent Beatrix off to various parts of the house to retrieve the items needed. Getting towards the end of the list, she’d read out, ‘Pillowslip.’
Then – but only once Beatrix had been to the linen press and come back again – she added, ‘Single bed sheet.’
‘What’s the euphemism for sadist?’ Beatrix had asked, and upon returning with the sheet, she’d flung it good-naturedly at Juanita. ‘What else?’
‘Bring your instrument. Somewhat obvious, I’d have thought. And any necessary instrument-specific supplies . . . reeds, valve oil, extra strings, picks, blah, blah. And . . . manuscript notebook, or loose-leaf manuscript paper.’
Beatrix went upstairs and came back empty-handed. ‘I left my manuscript book at school.’
‘Too late to go to the stationery shop, but you might find something over there,’ Juanita said, gesturing to the shelves behind Bene’s keyboard, draped in its black dust cover.
As Beatrix stood at the shelves, hands on hips, it was tempting to imagine that one particular item on the shelf wriggled its way forward just a little.
‘Aha,’ she said, yanking out the book, which had a black leather cover and a scarlet ribbon for a bookmark. She flicked through from the back and saw that most of the pages were blank. It was her dad’s book, but she needed it. What was she supposed to do? He wouldn’t mind.
‘Manuscript notebook: check,’ she told Juanita. ‘What else?’
‘As far as the list goes? Nada,’ Juanita said, getting to her feet. ‘But here, have these.’
From a pocket of her handbag, Juanita produced a handful of condoms, bright as sweets in their crinkly foil wrappers. Beatrix blushed deeply.
‘I know your dad would rather I gave you a nice little razor-encrusted chastity belt. But since they didn’t have any of those at Sainsbury’s, I got you these instead. Better safe than under-supplied. I used to go to music camps too, you understand.’
The first afternoon went the way first afternoons at music camp usually did, with bags being dropped off at a ‘hotel’ that had an institutional-looking dining room and two vinyl-covered beds to a room. From there, the entire group travelled by bus to the host school’s auditorium. There were speeches, one of which, predictably, was cheesy and welcoming. The other, equally predictably, was about rules and safety, and contained hints about the dire disciplinary consequences of mucking up.
Like everyone else, Beatrix barely heard a word that either of the teachers said. In her line of sight was a boy, not from her school, who had blond hair, beautiful cheekbones and a French horn case at his feet. It didn’t take long, though, for her to observe both the rainbow wristband and the fact that his roving eye was taking pretty much the same route as hers.
When the speeches were over, Beatrix braced herself for the icebreaker activities. It was a strange affliction of Beatrix’s that whenever she was forced to introduce herself in a situation like this, she became terrified that she would lose the ability to pronounce her own name.
‘So, everybody,’ said the chirpy teacher who’d delivered the welcome speech, ‘find somebody you’ve never met before, say hello –’
In her Scots accent, this came out sounding like haloo.
‘– and then I want you to play a little game together. You might have heard of it. It’s called Two Truths and a Lie. The rules are simple. You make three statements about yourself, two of which are true and one of which is . . . not. The other person has to guess which one is the lie. Rightio. Off you go, then.’
Beatrix turned to Olivia to c
omplain about the cringe-worthiness of the challenge, but her friend had already tapped the shoulder of a girl in the row in front of them. With a sigh, Beatrix swivelled in her seat to look behind her for a partner in mortification.
And there he was.
Beatrix had the sense that she was back on the train again, rocking ever so slightly from side to side. What had she seen, this morning, when Olivia had told her that she ought to visualise the person she wanted to meet? Whatever it had been, she couldn’t remember any more because it was already overtaken and overwhelmed. Whatever it had been, it ought to have been him.
Although he was sitting down, she could see that he was tall. His dark red hair wasn’t artfully cut or even brushed – it was just a regular short haircut that had been let grow wild until it had passed his collar. His eyes were large and on the browner side of hazel, and while there was something soulful about them, they were also smiling eyes. Around his neck was the finest gold chain she had ever seen – its shape made asymmetrical by the interruption of his collarbones. Resting against the seat beside him was a cello case. Of course he was a cellist. What else would he be, with hands like that? They were like the oversized paws of a puppy. A Great Dane, perhaps. No, something less sleek, she thought, as she watched him run a hand through the well-worn tracks in his hair. Maybe a wolfhound.
‘So, haloo,’ he said.
He wasn’t from her school, and that wasn’t a real Scots accent. Canadian, then.
‘Hello,’ Beatrix said, not trusting herself to do the accent back at him.
‘Felix.’ He held out one of those cello-playing hands.
‘Beatrix,’ she said, feeling a little light-headed at the touch of his hand, which was warm and dry and not at all sweaty and gross the way boys’ hands sometimes were.
‘Beatrix,’ he repeated, nodding in what seemed to be approval. ‘So, if we started a band, we could be called something like the X Factor.’
Beatrix wished she had his easy confidence. How did it happen that some people were just blessed with it?
‘Or, Sealed with an X?’ Beatrix offered, trying not to look like she thought that was a pretty clever comeback.
‘Ni-i-ice,’ Felix said, looking at Beatrix so directly that it made her blush. ‘So this truth/lie thing, you want to go first?’
Having never in her life wanted so badly to sound fascinating and exotic, Beatrix turned to her mental larder only to find its shelves completely and utterly bare. If she told him two truths, what might they be? I have a thing about red hair? I’m already thinking about what it would be like to kiss you? If you tell me that you have a girlfriend, it’s going to break my heart? She had to find a way to stall.
‘International visitors first, surely,’ she said.
Felix sat back in his chair, arms crossed, and thought for a moment.
‘So,’ he said, affecting a serious face, ‘my first statement about myself is that I was born in the year 1512.’
Okay, so if he’s going to make it that easy to pick the lie, what game ARE we playing?
‘My second is that I don’t have a phone.’
You what? Seriously?
‘A-a-and, my third is this: everyone from our school is getting let out on the town for a few hours tonight, and I’m kind of curious to know if you are too.’
He threw her a smile then, as big and bright as a beachball, and in that moment – if she hadn’t already – Beatrix Romero fell in love.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, the midwinter festivities in the East Princes Street Gardens would come to their end. For now, though, tired stallholders continued to plate up hot waffles and drench them in chocolate sauce, and to ladle spiced cider and mulled wine into corrugated paper cups. Meanwhile, ever more generous markdowns were applied to holly wreaths, hearthside stockings and delicate Christmas tree baubles.
As Beatrix and Olivia made their way in the early winter dark through the city’s narrow closes and cobbled streets towards the market, they passed gift shops with names like Thistle Do Nicely, with windows that glowed in shades of amber and lemon, lighting up the displays of tartans and shortbread within.
‘Oh my God, will you slow down?’ Olivia pleaded.
‘Can’t be late,’ Beatrix said, striding up a steep street in her knee-high, fleece-lined boots.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Olivia said, trotting a few steps in her high heels in an effort to keep up. ‘Can’t you just text him? A couple of minutes aren’t worth dying over.’
‘He doesn’t have a phone, so we’re doing this old school,’ Beatrix said. ‘Eight o’clock at the Scott Monument. I have to be there.’
‘He doesn’t have a phone? What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with him.’
‘So . . . what? He has Amish parents?’
‘He just doesn’t like phones. Says he’s never had the need for one.’
‘What the actual fuck?’
‘Liv, can we talk about this later? And can we hurry? Please?’
‘Honestly,’ Olivia said, ‘you need to chill out.’
‘I can’t, Liv. He’s perfect.’
Olivia raised one of her beautifully shaped eyebrows so that it disappeared beneath the rim of her knitted hat. ‘That is a big call. Especially on the basis of, what, a quarter of an hour’s acquaintance?’
‘He is, though. Perfect.’
Reaching a rise, Beatrix saw the market. Beside it, the Gothic spire of the Scott Monument stood out against the deep, deep blue sky, a historic contrast to the Star Flyer, the fairground ride that rose into the air beside it, sending plastic carriages spiralling on long lengths of chain around a central column that pulsed with a multitude of neon lights.
The girls arrived at their destination precisely on time, leaving Beatrix with the challenge of watching out for Felix without appearing to do so. She came up with the solution of browsing at a clothing stall not far from the monument, shoving her own woollen hat into her pocket and trying on tam-o’-shanters to pass the time. She had set a tweedy tam at a fetching angle on her head, and was pulling a pouty expression for Olivia’s phone camera, when a pair of gloved hands covered her eyes.
In the sudden darkness, she caught a sharp drift of boy deodorant.
‘Haloo,’ Felix said, and his close proximity alone was enough to set off the butterflies in her stomach. He took his hands away from her eyes, swiped the tam-o’-shanter and perched it on his own head.
‘A little closer together, please,’ Olivia instructed, aiming her phone at the pair. This was the very first photograph to be taken of Beatrix Romero and Felix Carter. There would be more – many more, in the years to come – not that either one of them knew this as Beatrix introduced Felix to Olivia, and Felix introduced his friend Charlie, and Olivia and Charlie tactfully made themselves scarce, leaving Beatrix and Felix standing alone together, awkward and speechless for a moment.
‘So,’ Felix said, breaking the silence at last, ‘hot chocolate?’
Steaming cups in hand, they strolled the markets together and shared stories. Beatrix learned that Felix lived with his mother and father and a Russian blue cat called Kilmauski, and in most ways he was an only child, like her, except that he had a much older half-brother, who was only sixteen years younger than their mum.
‘Sixteen,’ Beatrix said, and gave a low whistle. ‘I’m sixteen.’
‘Me too,’ Felix said. ‘Seventeen in April.’
‘August, for me.’
She also learned that while Felix had brought his acoustic cello to camp, back home he usually played an electric one. On weekends he went busking, and he was starting to turn a decent trade.
‘Given my new-found affluence,’ he said, gesturing at the Star Flyer ride, ‘it would be my treat.’
Beatrix looked up at the Star Flyer’s chairs, spiralling through the night sky.
He held out a hand to her. ‘So, are we going to do this thing?’
She smiled, thought for a nanosecond, and took h
is hand. ‘You bet.’
From where they stood, the Star Flyer looked fairly harmless. It wasn’t until the chairs lifted off the ground and began to spin, while the lights flashed to the beat of a thumping bassline, that Beatrix became aware of the colossal scale of the thing. Increment by increment, the chairs went higher, and faster. In other chairs, people rode with their arms in the air, squealing with delight, but each time Beatrix felt herself being winched to the next level, she clung tighter to Felix’s hand. The higher they went, the colder it became, the speed of the whirling chairs turning the wind to ice on her cheeks and her nose. As the speed increased, the angle of the flying chairs became more acute, and as she and Felix careened towards the stone spire of the Scott Monument, Beatrix was almost sure that they were going to be ploughed straight into it.
‘Hey, you okay?’ Felix asked.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Beatrix said. ‘It’s scarier than I thought.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he admitted. ‘It looked pretty tame from down there, hey?’
‘Uh-huh. I don’t suppose it will last forever though,’ Beatrix said, wishing they’d chosen instead to take a sedate turn on the Ferris wheel that she could see twinkling in the near distance.
‘Try keeping your eyes up, hey?’ Felix suggested. ‘Watch the castle. Don’t look down.’
She did as he said, fixing her gaze on the shape of the fortress on the hill, but soon the ride spun her around so that the castle was at her back.
‘Okay, so . . . look at me instead,’ Felix said.
For the rest of the ride, she didn’t so much as glance at the ground, or the city, or its lights. As she stared into Felix’s large, hazel-brown eyes, he pulled faces that made her laugh, and although her face felt stiff from the cold and her fear, she returned the favour as best she could. In his eyes, she could see his determination to keep her safe, to quash her fear. Or, at the very least, to hold on to it for her.
‘I think we’re going down,’ Beatrix said, without taking her eyes from Felix’s.
‘I think you’re beautiful,’ Felix said, over the music and rushing air.