by Natasha West
He was saying things I’d been saying for a long time, but he’d put it together in a more complex and eloquent way than I’d ever managed. I couldn’t have been prouder of him. He was Olly’s son, after all.
I turned to see the general impact of all this on his mother and I was shocked to see tears in her eyes. Maybe I wasn’t the only one seeing Olly in Jude right now. Emma turned away, ashamed of the emotion she’d displayed. Jude was on his feet in a second, straight to his mother’s back. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just how I feel.’
Emma turned to him and Jude grabbed hold of her and she let him hold her, as though she were the child and he the parent. She wept in his arms and said, ‘I miss your Dad.’
It wasn’t my fight for a change and I didn’t say or do anything. I just let them get on with it, apart from it. I turned to look at Rachel, to see her face, what she thought of all this. But she was missing from her spot. She’d vanished.
Twenty-One
Rachel
It wasn’t just the emotion they were throwing around. That would have been enough. But what I knew in that moment was that I shouldn’t have been there. They weren’t my family. Their stuff wasn’t my stuff. It never would be. All my family, the people I might have had arguments with, wept with, laughed with, they were all dead. Sarah, who’d been my closest family, she would be bones by now.
So I decided to get away from all the Quinn messiness, head out for an hour, wait for them all to go to bed and creep back in. It would all be done in a day, anyway. For better or worse. They would either be whole or they’d know the gap would not be filled and they’d close up the space. As they should.
I was trudging through the dark woods, the moon bright enough to lead my way, when I heard a crackle behind me, a foot breaking a twig. I spun to the sound, my hand to my pocket, ready to pull out my baton.
But it was Alice. She’d followed me.
‘Look, I just need a bit of space from you lot. I’ll be back later. Leave me alone.’
But she didn’t leave. She just looked at me.
‘Shoo, would you!’ I said, as though she were an errant pigeon.
She shook her head. ‘You ran off. I’m checking on you. That’s what we do.’
I thought of the first day I met her, semi-conscious, waking up to her concerned face, splashing me with water. Just like now, me and her, alone in the woods.
‘That’s what you do. Go back to your family’ I ordered.
‘For once, they don’t need me’ she shrugged, a sad smile faintly present on her lips.
‘And neither do I.’
Her face fell slightly and I knew I shouldn’t have said that. I just needed to be alone and she always seemed so tough, as though anything I said or did would just slide off. But that wasn’t true and I should have known.
‘Sorry’ I mumbled.
She shook her head, as though it didn’t matter. ‘You wanna go, I won’t follow.’
I considered it, simply walking away. Alice wouldn’t follow me, not if she’d said she wouldn’t. But I didn’t go. Instead, I leaned against a large oak tree, gnarled and ugly. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to keep going.’
‘Then I guess you’re just going to stand there and I’ll stand here and that’ll be that’ Alice said, shifting her weight.
I looked up at the sky and exhaled. I should have just walked away. Why didn’t I?
‘I guess you probably enjoyed all that?’ I asked her, trying to throw off my confusion.
‘If you’re talking about Jude’s apology, that’s not the word I’d use.’
‘What word would you use?’
She looked away. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked down at the ground and after a while, she looked back at me. ‘Actually, it was sad.’
‘Sad?’ I repeated.
‘Not for him. He’s becoming an adult and now I don’t need to worry about the kind he’ll be. But that’s the problem. I lost Olly and all my focus was on Jude. I was trying to save my brother by saving him. And now that feels done. So what now?’
It was a lot of stuff to take in. What confused me the most was that she was telling it to me at all. She was giving me something personal and I felt that something was expected back. Words. Good words. And I didn’t have them. ‘You save your real one?’ I supplied, desperately, inadequately.
‘What if he’s not there to save?’ she answered after a moment.
I scratched my fingernail on the rough bark at my back, thinking I had nothing further to say. But I heard myself say, ‘Then you should maybe try saving yourself.’
I wanted to swallow my stupid words back up, forcing them down my throat, to be digested, never to make it back out of my body. But when I dared to look at Alice, at her reaction to what I’d said, she didn’t seem… I don’t know what she seemed. But she was looking at me intensely. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ she said.
I didn’t know if it was right or wrong. But Alice seemed to know the answer to that. ‘The only problem is… I never learnt how. Not like you.’
‘Like me?’ I exclaimed, shocked.
‘How long have you been on your own?’ she asked.
‘Long time.’
‘And that’s enough? Just yourself?’
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
She nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. That’s the whole problem with making your life about other people. You think you’re doing it for them. But you’re not. It’s all really still just about you. And by the time you figure that out… It’s kind of too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
‘Too late to change’ she told me. It hurt her to say that, I could see. I wished I knew what to do to change how she felt. Suddenly, all I wanted was for her to see herself as I saw her. It wasn’t the picture she painted. She was much better than that. I’d spent a long time avoiding everything she had because I wasn’t strong enough for it. But she was strong and that’s what I saw.
She suddenly shook her head, self-conscious. ‘You don’t want to know this’ she said with an embarrassed laugh. She turned to leave.
‘Maybe I do’ I blurted.
She turned back to me, surprised. ‘Why on earth would you want that?’
I couldn’t answer her. Because I didn’t know.
And then she took a step toward me. One little step in my direction. I began to feel cold. Or at least, I began to feel myself shake.
‘I wish you’d tell me something’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Anything. You’re a very mysterious person.’
I laughed at the notion of myself as mysterious. ‘What’s so mysterious about me?’
‘You don’t say much about yourself. And what you say conflicts with what you do. Like at the hotel. Before I left you on the road, you made it clear that it was your way or the highway. Literally. But you came into that place and you risked your life to get us back out. Why did you do that?’
I knew the answer. But I wouldn’t have told Alice the answer on pain of death. That I cared what happened to her, and by extension, Jude and Emma. Imagine me, saying a thing like that. I care about you, Alice. Fucking ridiculous. ‘I guess I just felt like if I wanted the van, that I’d prefer to earn it.’
She wasn’t fooled. ‘Can’t drive a van if you’re dead.’
She took another step toward me and I wanted to cry out, ‘Stop!’ But that was a crazy reaction. She wasn’t going to hurt me. Not that way.
She took another step.
‘Why are you coming closer?’ I exclaimed.
She looked down at her feet, as though she didn’t know she’d been moving, then back up at me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t… What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. I just…’ I stopped. I was being weird. The only thing left to do was to shut my mouth.
‘You’re scared of me getting closer to you? Why? I’m not gonna attack you’ she said with a wry smile. And then the smile faded. ‘Maybe you’re afraid I’m coming closer for another reason
?’
I laughed, but it came out weird, like a bark. ‘What reason is that?’ But I knew. I knew.
And now we were just looking at each other in the dark woods.
Suddenly, a drop of rain landed on my arm. And another. And another. ‘It’s raining’ I told Alice. ‘We should get back to camp.’
‘You’re sure that’s what you want to do?’ she asked me, her eyes fixed on me, intense and intent. I felt an urge to run away. I felt an urge to do other things. Instead, I did nothing.
‘What if I took another step?’ she asked. But it wasn’t a question. She was already doing it. And then she took a few more and now she was a foot away. At last, I found my voice. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing, if you don’t want’ she said.
I looked away, unable to take the heat of her gaze anymore.
‘You told me I was pretty once. Do you remember that?’ Alice asked me quietly.
‘No’ I answered honestly.
‘You were coming around from those berries. You said it then.’
I wanted to die of shame. ‘I was delirious’ I said defensively.
‘So you don’t really think so?’ she asked, the moon catching her in its bright ray, bringing out those flecks of green around her mostly blue eyes, her laughter lines deepening as she smiled.
My mouth fell open and I didn’t know what to say. Because I did think so. Of course I did. But if I said it, I knew what came next. I’d wanted her and I hadn’t known if she wanted me back and now I did know and it frightened the hell out of me. More than anyone in that hotel, more than passing out from the berries, more than any threat that lay in front of us, I was scared to death. Scared of Alice Quinn.
I felt suddenly too weary to keep up the pretence. ‘Please don’t ask me that’ I told her seriously.
Whatever spell Alice had been under appeared to break and she took one step back. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me today. I guess I’m freaking out about tomorrow.’
I realised that as close as we’d come, that the moment was about to end, if I wanted it to. I could let her go, let her talk herself out of this. The storm was about to pass.
As the rain worsened, I watched her take another step back. She couldn’t look at me anymore. ‘I’m gonna go’ she said, turning away, walking back in the direction of the camp site.
I stood in the rain, not caring about how soaked I was getting. I was remembering that this had happened before. That first time. She’d walked away. I’d let her. I knew without doubt, this wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t press this. Because I’d made her feel a fool.
I felt myself stand, taking my weight off the old tree, chasing after her. I walked for a minute, catching sight of her. ‘I’m sorry’ I called and she turned around, her face wet, her hair damp and straggly. ‘For what?’
‘I don’t… You’re too much’ I told her. ‘Don’t you get that?’
‘Not really’ she answered.
‘You are. You’re too much. For me.’
She didn’t say anything. She just stood there in the rain, sad and alone.
‘Why couldn’t you leave it?’ I asked, stepping closer. ‘Don’t you understand that I’m not anything?’ Her mouth fell open, but I went on. ‘I’ve been alone on purpose because I have nothing left to give to anyone. That should be obvious to someone like you.’
‘No’ she said with certainty. ‘I don’t see that at all.’
‘Well, it’s true. You need to see it’ I told her, trying not to cry. I’d forgotten I could. But my face ached in that old way and I remembered it. That need, wanting to weep for something, something that mattered. ‘You shouldn’t come any closer to me.’
‘You followed me’ she said and I realised it was true. I’d gone after her. And now I was telling her to stay away. What was I doing? ‘If you want to use me for something, sex or whatever…’
Alice shook her head and took the last step, closing the gap. ‘You know that’s not all I want’ she told me. ‘And I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Because it’s too late, Rachel. You showed your hand. I’ve seen you.’
My tears fell at last. And then she kissed me and I kissed her back and we fell onto the wet ground, and she undressed me and I undressed her and it was happening on the dirty ground, in the dark, in the cold rain and the mud. But I couldn’t feel any of it. There was only Alice, only me.
Twenty-Two
Alice
I don’t know how it happened. Only that it was happening, and it was good. No, it was better than good. It was consuming.
Rachel’s body was in my hands and she was strong, firm, but somehow fragile. She was strong, and she was weak. She wanted this, and it terrified her. She was mine and she wasn’t. Rachel, the eternal paradox. She let me take her in the mud and I forgot the rest of the world but after it was over and we lay there, breathless, as the rain stopped and a warm wind ran through the trees and our bones began to warm, I remembered the one thing I knew. She couldn’t stay, she wouldn’t let me near her, not in the long run. I’d gotten to touch her but only momentarily and this feeling, the warmth of her body, was all I could expect.
I don’t know exactly why I decided to take her there and then, in the dirt. The only way to explain it was that I felt, in that moment, when she told me something true about herself, that I couldn’t not touch her. She was leaving the door open ajar and I couldn’t not step through. But it was only the first door of many with Rachel. And it was a revolving door. If I tried to push too hard, I would be spat back out in no time.
So we lay there in that darkness, saying nothing. The light of the moon had vanished and the night was thick. Rachel sat up and began to look for her clothes. I started to feel vulnerable in my nudity so I joined her, and we felt around in the dark, finding scraps of clothing, unsure whose, but putting them on anyway. They were wet and it was uncomfortable and cold. But eventually, we were dressed.
I was still waiting for Rachel to say something, anything, but I had an idea I might be waiting a while if I left it to her to speak first. So I broke. ‘That was nice’ I said. It wasn’t really an accurate description of what had happened, which had been something far beyond the scope of the word ‘Nice’, but it was all I could think of.
I heard her sigh. ‘Yes.’
We stood in the darkness, listening to the wind. I swallowed and reached for her hand and she let me take it and I thought for a moment that I’d gotten her wrong, that she wanted this in the same way that I did. But she leaned in to my ear and said, ‘Thank you. But we can’t do that again.’
And then she let go of my hand and rushed away, back in the direction of the camp.
I didn’t try to follow at her pace. If she’d wanted to wait, she would have. So I let her go ahead while I thought about what had just happened. My body was thrumming with heat, as though her skin was still against mine.
But it wasn’t. She wasn’t even here anymore.
Eventually, I went back to the campsite and I found Jude and Emma, sitting alone, having apparently gotten themselves together after their breakdown.
‘What the shitting hell happened to you?’ Emma cried at the sight of me. I looked down, seeing myself properly in the light of the fire. I was in quite a state. My top was on backwards, although it was covered in mud so that helped to disguise the fact. ‘Oh. I fell. Did Rachel come back?’
‘Yeah, she went straight into her tent. She was pretty muddy as well’ Emma said in a tone I didn’t like. It was the tone of a woman who knows two people that have just had sex when she sees them. I didn’t want Emma to know anything, nor Jude. What had happened felt intensely private.
Luckily, Emma’s focus, as ever, had turned to herself. ‘Don’t even think of getting in the tent in that state. Wait there. I’ll pass some fresh clothes to you and you can wipe the mud off your hands with a cloth’ she said, standing up and getting to business.
I did as I was told and got myself cleaned down as best I
could, changing while Jude averted his eyes. Once I was kind of clean, I told the pair of them that I was going to bed.
‘It’s still very early’ Jude told me. ‘You sure you can sleep?’
‘I’m exhausted, don’t worry about that. Anyway, we need to be up at dawn, get on the road. Next stop, Gable.’
Jude nodded, grimly. He was thinking what we all were. What awaited us in that town? Olly? Or the news that he was lost for good?
As I got into my sleeping bag, I thought of him, wondering what I’d say if I saw him again. I wished he was here right now, so I could talk to him about Rachel. He’d always been the best listener in our family. But what if he were here, what could I say? Rachel had given me something, but it was fleeting and that wasn’t good enough. I wanted more.
I wanted to be in her tent, next to her, listening to her sleep. I wanted that sleep to be peaceful and comfortable with my presence. And then I wanted her to wake me in the morning with a kiss. I wanted last night to be the start of something and not the end. I wanted us to walk to Gable where my brother would be waiting, and he’d say, ‘What took you so long?’ I wanted to see him reunited with his family. I wanted that to be the story of how Rachel and I met and began. I wanted us to sleep in a bed together. I wanted her to stop travelling and want to stay still. I wanted to be enough to hold her in place. I wanted us to fall in love.