by Kate Le Vann
‘Wolfie makes everything hard, I think,’ I said. ‘He tells me he loves me, then he tells me he won’t spend the summer with me. But I’m only unhappy because I’m happy, you know? If I didn’t get so much out of going out with him, if thinking about him didn’t make me smile every single time, then it wouldn’t make me so sad to not have him around. So it’s not real unhappiness, is it? It’s just noticing that there are other... emotions ... than being in love.’
‘Yeah,’ Matty said, ‘I’ve heard there are. But what’s the point of them?
I could see Wolfie even though he was only talking to me on the phone. See him clearly. Almost touch him. I could see the light stubble on his cheeks and chin, the softness of his mouth. He was wearing the army-green T-shirt I loved and the cords he’d worn the first time we kissed, and he was holding the phone and talking to me, like I was watching a film of him, but for some reason I couldn’t answer him back – I couldn’t speak. He was saying, ‘Tess, I can’t live without you any longer. This whole summer’s pointless without you; Peru is beautiful, but I miss you too much. I’m going to get a boat back in the morning and we can be together. We never have to be apart again and I’m not going anywhere without you again.’ I was still trying to answer, and couldn’t. I could only hold the receiver more tightly and look at him, my eyes pleading with him, but that seemed to be enough. He was saying, ‘Me too. I’m always going to be in love with you,’ then, almost shouting, ‘I’m always going to love you, Tessa,’ and getting further away, his voice getting quieter and the image of him fading and shrinking, and he was kissing his fingertips and blowing gently on them, while his brown eyes searched for me and found me.
It was a dream; I was dreaming. My bedroom was drenched with sunshine – the curtains were rubbish at keeping the light out. It was only 6.20 a.m. and I didn’t have to get up or go anywhere. Wolfie had been gone for sixty-four days, and would be in Peru for another sixty-five. He’d e-mailed to say he’d bought a new phone card and would be calling tonight to use it all, to mark the halfway point.
It had been days since the last time he’d phoned me, and not hearing from him was hard. But when he called it was hard too, because, when it was over, or after I’d read the e-mails he sent over an Internet session, I knew there would be nothing else until at least the next day. The dream was bitter-sweet, because I missed him so much it almost felt like something, but I’d woken too soon and couldn’t catch it back.
I got up anyway, tiptoeing downstairs to make myself a cup of tea and listen to the birdsong. It was strange being the only person up when the house was light. I read yesterday’s newspaper at the kitchen table, picking the cold icing off a cake I’d found in the fridge. Today Matty and I were going to sort out her mum’s garden.
Matty wasn’t really up by the time I got round to hers.
She was still wearing her pyjamas and watching MTV.
‘Come and look at this,’ she said, turning the volume up on a video she liked.
‘Aren’t you two going to do something useful, today?’ Matty’s mum said, walking past the door. ‘You go back to school the day after tomorrow and you haven’t done anything with your summer, and, Matilda, you’re not at all prepared for going back – you haven’t started organising anything. You shouldn’t waste your free time. It’s precious, you know.’
Matty rolled her eyes. We ended up watching music videos for the next hour, without Matty making much of a move to get up. She was telling me about how Jim was turning out to be the best boyfriend she’d ever had; he was so romantic and cute.
‘When you started going out with Wolfie,’ Matty said, ‘I realised there was probably something wrong with me and Lee. That was probably why I was suspicious of Wolfie – he sounded too good to be true. I know relationships are always easier at the start, and you start taking each other for granted a bit, but Lee was never . . . you know. Jim doesn’t just get me – he cares about me. I don’t think I’ve had a boy like that before.’
I was so pleased for her. Matty’s looks and confidence had always guaranteed her no shortage of boys, but all too often they’d been the wrong types of boy – some of them, like Lee, were insecure and tried to put her down, so she wouldn’t realise she was too good for them, others had mainly been interested in her because she was so pretty. Jim had always loved her, the real her; the proof was in Cadeby Wood. Matty was showing me the little pretend sleeve-notes he’d written in the case of a CD he’d made her, when her mum came in and said my mum was outside in the car.
I was instantly worried. I knew there was no non-serious reason she’d choose to drive over when I had my phone. I hurried downstairs, trying to work out what could be wrong, and why she’d drive here without just calling and asking me to go back. I was afraid it was something terribly serious, that maybe my brother or my dad were hurt, and my heart started beating out of control.
‘Tessa, I need to talk to you,’ she said when I got to the car. Her voice was horribly low and quiet. Her face was pale and she looked afraid, which really frightened me, because I couldn’t remember ever having seen her like that. I sort of waved to Matty, who stood in her doorway, looking concerned, trying to reassure her that I was fine even though I didn’t have a clue what was wrong. I got in the car and Mum drove a little way around the corner, away from the houses, and parked.
‘Chunk called our house just a little while ago. Wolfie was in a traffic accident. He died yesterday.’
I believed her straight away and it sank in straight away and I started hurting straight away, and my mum leaned over me in the car, hugging me and stroking my hair while I shook. I was shivering all over; my skin was hurting, and I thought I might forget how to breathe. I could hear my voice, high and weird sounding – it didn’t sound like me. It sounded as if I could hear it through speakers, ringing in my ears and making fun of me. I kept asking the same questions: ‘Do they know it’s true? Is it definitely Wolfie? Do they KNOW? Is he definitely dead? Has Chunk seen him?’ But I was just hoping I could find a loophole that would make it not have happened, while in my heart I knew there was no hope. It was almost like I understood all at once why our separation had been so hard – why I’d been afraid for us when he said he had to go – as if I’d somehow known something bad would happen.
He’d been crossing a road in Lima, when a lorry was taking a corner too fast and lost control; it crashed through a shop window after hitting Wolfie. They told me he would have died instantly.
***
Chunk travelled straight back to Britain. He came to visit me the next day, and brought round some of Wolfie’s things – his wallet, his hoodie that I sometimes used to wear, some photographs of Manchay he’d just had developed. There weren’t many of him, they were all of Peruvian children and pretty views and Chunk, and I felt bad as I looked through them, because I was disappointed there weren’t more pictures of Wolfie.
‘He was nuts about you, you know,’ Chunk said, mumbling, because he wasn’t used to being serious. I looked at him: he looked terrible – his eyes were bloodshot and his hair was dirty and sticking up all over. ‘He kept complaining every night before we slept about having to share a bedroom with me. The morning it happened, he woke up and said he’d just been dreaming about seeing you. Sorry, that’s sort of a stupid thing to say, but I remember it.’
‘I just like hearing about him,’ I said.
‘He was missing you a lot,’ Chunk said. ‘He liked the work, but he got quite blue in the evenings. Wouldn’t join in when I was trying to pull local girls. You know, typical man in love.’
I started crying, and Chunk put his arms around me and I let myself fall against him, even though we’d never really touched before. I buried my face in his shoulder, drenching it with tears, gulping with pain. In a moment of quiet, I heard Chunk sniff and realised he was crying too. He’d just lost his best friend. He’d had to fly back alone, knowing that he’d never see him again. Then he’d come straight to me. He was amazingly brave and kind, and
I loved him and wished there was something I could do to thank him and make him feel better.
When Chunk went home, I put the hoodie around my shoulders and curled into a ball on my bed, burying my face deep in the sheets so I could cry out loud without anyone hearing me and worrying that I was dying, although it felt as if I might, and I wanted to, at that moment I really wanted to. I felt as though my heart had been ripped straight out of my body, leaving a raw, aching hole in me. This horrible, physical pain.
In Wolfie’s wallet, there was a black and white photograph of me laughing that I realised was the one he’d taken when we went to the wood together for the newspaper piece. On the back of it he’d written, ‘Tess, ten minutes before we first kissed’.
When school started again, my mum let me take the first week off; we’d agreed it would just be a week. I’d expected her to make me go, and to tell me it would be good for me to get out and into a new routine, that it would take my mind off things. Instead, she made me jammy toast, and my dad took over all the rest of the cooking, and, when she had time, my mum sat with me and held me, and sometimes she cried too.
Wolfie’s funeral was on the first Friday after school started again and, as I hadn’t been back to school yet, and had hardly stepped outside my house, I found the large group of people made me nervous, and I wanted to hide from them. Wolfie’s mum and dad sat together and spent ages talking to each other, which I found touching. Chunk talked about his best friend in front of everyone. I didn’t. I couldn’t. During the service, Jane held my hand and cried the most. Matty sat on my other side and leaned against me.
Wolfie’s mum came over to talk to me at the wake. She looked a lot like him; she had the same swingy brown hair, the same brown eyes, but hers were sadder, and harder.
‘He wrote to me to tell me he’d fallen in love,’ Wolfie’s mum said. She had asked me to call her by her first name, Chloe. ‘He sounded happier than I’ve ever known him being.’
‘He was happy,’ I said. I wanted to tell her how fantastic her son was. But I didn’t really dare, because I was afraid of her. I was afraid that she might suddenly shout at me and tell me off for letting him go to Peru. A small part of me was almost angry with her for having hurt him. I knew that the pain she was going through must have been awful, and she must have felt so much guilt. In the end, though, I realised all I wanted to tell her was that he had been happy.
The next morning, Lara called from her mobile to ask if I wanted to go to Cadeby Wood with her and Jane and Chunk. My parents were having breakfast and I told them where I was going. My dad asked me if I was OK, and I nodded, and then as I was leaving the kitchen he said, ‘Come here, Tessie,’ and pulled me close and hugged me. He didn’t say anything else.
I met Jane and Lara at the end of my street and we walked quietly into the Wood together. It was a little before nine o’clock and it was going to be a beautiful day. There was a slight chill in the air and the sky was a very pale blue and completely clear. The wood was rustling with wildlife hurrying to hide from the daytime visitors, and there was a warm, leafy smell. It was everything I loved most about it, without the one person who had made it my favourite place on earth. Chunk found us sitting in a line on the trunk of a fallen tree, and sat down in silence with us.
‘Can you feel him?’ Jane said. ‘I feel like he’s here.’
I wished it could be true. I wished that he was there, in every tree that leaned, breathing, towards us, in the squirrels that circled their roots, in the rays of sunshine filtering through the heavy leaves that had already started turning golden brown. That he could see me here, loving him, waiting for him, and send his love back to me.
The others told stories about him. Lara talked about the first time he had brought her to the Wood, when she hadn’t known it existed, and that that was when she’d found out why he was called Wolfie. Jane remembered how the four of them once got a group detention, because Wolfie had accidentally broken a table trying to get Jane’s diary down from a high window ledge where a boy who was bullying Jane had thrown it, and they’d all agreed to take the blame together but not to grass on the bully. I was desperate to hear more about him – I wanted to know everything. But at the same time, even though these people were my friends, and they meant so much to me and wanted to talk about how much they loved Wolfie, I couldn’t stop myself being jealous of them for knowing him better than me. They had enjoyed so much time with him – and I’d had so little. I hated myself for feeling like that, but it pounded through my head every time they finished each other’s sentences and smiled at the memories. It didn’t seem fair, when I’d believed I would spend for ever getting to know everything about him, that I would only have a few months’ worth of memories to last me the rest of my life. Then Jane told a story about the first time he told them all that he was falling for me, and said she’d never known him like that, so shy and serious. It was as if she had read my mind and wanted to reassure me that I knew a Wolfie they hadn’t known, too. Then Chunk said some more about the way Wolfie talked about me in Peru, and I was embarrassed and moved by their kindness, and just incredibly grateful for their friendship.
On my first day back at school, I felt, or knew, that everyone was looking at me. I was terrified that at any moment anything might make me lose it, and the last thing I wanted to do was to cry in front of everyone and attract more attention. But when people were kind, and felt sorry for me, it was almost impossible not to cry, and I seemed to spend the whole day trying to draw my face back into itself and not let go. To keep the tears in my eyes, because, if one escaped, there would be nothing to stop me breaking down completely.
I slipped away at lunch-time to sit by the goat’s pen. Matty came along to ask if I wanted her to get me something from outside school, but she could sense I wanted to be alone.
‘Do you remember him?’ I asked the goat, when I was sure that no one was anywhere near. ‘He helped you once. He let you see a little more of the world. Just for a brief moment.’ I knew that if anyone saw me or heard me they’d think I might be losing my mind. I needed to speak out loud but not to be heard by anyone who could say something back to me, or tell me I’d be fine. I didn’t want to hear it, because I knew it was a lie.
The week went on and being at school did help, in a way. I was forced to think about coursework and timetables and where I was supposed to be, and to use my brain to worry about other things. I couldn’t just follow Matty around in a daze, because we had different classes. I’d been crying for so long that it almost seemed like a break: being made to focus on words, writing, spending time not thinking about myself. I hadn’t realised how much I’d needed the break until it came, but I also felt I didn’t deserve it – that it was wrong and bad to begin to move on, no matter how small the move. Whenever my concentration ebbed and my mind fell back on Wolfie, I felt as though my heart had been temporarily emptied and was flooding again, fast, with sadness, and that it beat more heavily and pulsed with waves of guilt, as if I was letting him go, as if a few of the million threads that held him to me were breaking. And it hurt. It hurt so much.
It was deeper, more searing, completely different from the pain I’d felt when he left me to go to Peru. All through the summer, there had been aching and longing and fear for him and me – but always hope. There were e-mails to read and the real sound of his voice when he called, not just a memory. There was more of him, or the promise of more in the future. I knew that I could count the moments until I felt happy again, no matter how brief the conversations and e-mails were – no matter how quickly sadness would follow, or the loneliness start to pull the ground from under my feet. Now, there was nothing to stop me falling, and no one to catch me.
Matty said that I have nothing to worry about. ‘Yeah, not much,’ I said. I’d been crying again, and I had my hair in front of my red streaky face, and was resting my chin on my hands on the edge of the sofa.
She brushed my hair off my forehead and smiled.
‘You?’ she sa
id. ‘I don’t need to worry about you. You’re Tess.’
‘Lucky me,’ I said.
‘Listen, you twit,’ Matty said. ‘Not once in your whole life have you settled for anything. Not once have you wasted your time with anyone who didn’t deserve you or anyone you didn’t think was the coolest person alive. You’ve always had that, but you used to worry that you’d never fall in love. And now you’ve fallen in love.’
‘Exactly. I had my chance. I didn’t settle. I waited for the right guy and the right guy is gone.’
‘Which means,’ Matty said, ‘that in addition to having the kind of pride that means you don’t settle for losers and idiots and Lees, you know you have the ability to fall head over heels, check your e-mail three hundred times a day, burst out laughing when you’re walking down the street because you’re so happy you met him, in TRUE LOVE!’
‘There was only him,’ I said.
‘No,’ Matty said. ‘I’m not going to tell you you’ll meet another man like him, because I know that Wolfie was unique. But he is not the only man you’ll ever be in love with. Your heart has already proved to you that it works. The people you should worry about are the people who’ve never been in love. Like my mum – I think she always did what was sensible and never really lost herself. I never saw her kiss my dad, or light up when he walked in, the way I sometimes see your mum look at your dad, or the way I know I look at Jim. There are some people, I think, who just don’t feel that. You know, who just never fall that hard. You fall all the way, you’re one of the lucky ones.’ She leaned back and took a sip of her latte. ‘So no, I don’t worry about you. So you shouldn’t either.’