Because of Her

by KE Payne

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “Shit. You’re kidding me, right?” I stood up. How could it be the weekend already?

  “So you want to come with me?” Eden asked.

  “You’ll be going to one with Gabby and Beth, won’t you?” I said.

  Eden held her arms out. “Do you even see them here today?” she asked. “They can’t be bothered to come to today’s lesson, so they’re not going to worry about some old fart talking about Freud, are they?” She stood up, too. “Although I’m sure they’ll be tapping me for some notes.” Her face darkened. “So?” she asked.

  “So…what?”

  “Will you come with me to one of them?” she asked. “I thought perhaps the one thirty one?”

  “Tomorrow?” I followed her from the room.

  Amy.

  Why did she have to come this weekend, of all weekends?

  “Yes, tomorrow.” Eden looked at me in amusement.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry.” My mind was in turmoil. Could I bail on Amy so late?

  Of course I couldn’t.

  “You’ve got other plans.” Eden bounced her bag up onto her shoulder. “No worries.”

  “I’d love to, really, I would,” I said, following her out across the quadrangle. “Amy’s coming down, that’s all. It’s too late to ask her not to come. She’s bought her train ticket now.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to cancel Amy,” Eden said.

  “It’s an unscheduled visit,” I said. “She seemed very keen to come down again.” I fell into step with Eden. “I didn’t think I’d see her again for weeks,” I continued. “It’d be way too difficult to put her off.”

  I was rambling, I have no idea why. Just like I had no idea why I felt the need to justify Amy coming to visit me.

  Eden stopped. She put her hand on my arm and smiled.

  “I told you,” she said, “it’s cool. Quit stressing.”

  Couldn’t Eden read me? Couldn’t she see I was stressing because I would have given anything to go with her, rather than spend the day with Amy?

  Eden started walking again. I followed her, wanting to say so much to her. The thought of Amy visiting deadened me every time I thought about it. That, plus the prospect of having to tell her I’d be dragging her off to a lecture across the other side of London.

  That was going to go down like the proverbial lead balloon. I just knew it.

  And it did.

  *

  “A lecture?” Amy placed her hands on her hips. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  That irritated me. She’d barely been off the train an hour, as well.

  “It’s just half an hour, I promise.” I looked at my watch, my insides squeezed tight with anxiety. I had ten minutes to get across to Hampstead before it started.

  “And you tell me this now?” Amy persisted.

  “I have to go to it, Ames.” I started walking towards the Tube station. “How can I write an essay on psychoanalysis and hand it in on Monday if I don’t?”

  “Google it like the rest of us would?”

  “Oh, sure. Like that’s going to get me top marks.”

  Amy stopped dead. “Since when have you been so concerned with getting top marks?” she asked. She had a grouchy look on her face, but at least she’d started to follow me again.

  “Since, like, now,” I said, urging her to hurry up. “So, come on.”

  She dawdled. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn I heard her whine, like a spoilt child. I chose to ignore that.

  “It’s important to me,” I said. “The lecture’s going to give me so many things I can put into this essay.”

  “So you keep saying.” Amy lagged behind. “And what about going to the Hard Rock Cafe?” she called out. “You said you’d take me.”

  I slowed my pace. “Which I will,” I said, “once I’ve got this over and done with.”

  “Good.” Amy was still a few paces behind me. “’Cos I told Sarah Mathers we were going.”

  Why wasn’t she hurrying?

  “You remember Sarah Mathers, don’t you?” Amy called out again, to my retreating back. “Said I’d nick her a cup. Or a mug. She wasn’t fussy.”

  “I remember Sarah,” I called back to Amy. “And you can nick whatever you want, if you must. Just hurry, will you?”

  I don’t think my patience had ever been worn so thin.

  *

  The museum was packed when we got there. Saturday tourists out in the foyer mingled with students, like me, rushing to get to the lecture before it started. Dropping my rucksack from my shoulders, I hurried to the entrance to the lecture hall and peered inside. There were still some seats left. I breathed out and turned to find Amy. She was lurking by the gift shop, a sullen look on her face.

  “You coming?” I called out.

  “And listen to some wacko talking about feelings?” Amy called back. “Nah. You’re all right.”

  A surge of embarrassment washed over me as a few faces turned to look and see who’d shouted out across the foyer.

  I strode over to her. “Freud’s not a wacko, Amy. And psychoanalysis is—” I waved my hand. “Never mind.” I looked around, aware we were being watched. “I’ll be half an hour. No more, promise.”

  “Enjoy.” Amy turned her back on me and ambled into the gift shop.

  Mature. Real mature.

  Shaking my head at her childishness, I returned to the lecture hall and took the first seat I could find, towards the back. I took a pen and notepad from my rucksack, all the while wondering what sort of mood Amy would be in by the time I returned. Why couldn’t she see this was important to me? Why couldn’t she understand, rather than making some puerile joke out there which other people were bound to have heard? Had she done it deliberately? To embarrass me? Well, she’d succeeded. Her petulance and infantile comments, bellowed out across the foyer, had done that, all right.

  I scribbled on the notepad, pressing far harder than was necessary. All I’d asked for was half an hour to do something that was important to me. It wasn’t like I asked much of her, was it? I texted her all the time. I Skyped her constantly, sometimes when I didn’t feel like it. I sent her e-mails, telling her how much I missed her. Yet the one time I really need her to give something back to me, she…

  “Of all the lecture halls in all the world.”

  I snapped my head up.

  Eden.

  “Where did you come from?” Such a dumb question.

  “I just got here.” Eden sat down next to me. “I looked for the first empty seat I could see, and what do you know? It’s right here next to you.”

  “I thought you came to the earlier lecture.” I stole a look past Eden, out to the foyer. Amy had disappeared. I slid down further in my seat. I’d no idea why.

  “Nah,” Eden said, reaching down to her bag, “By the time I got up and…well, you know.” She followed my gaze. I must have been looking out to the foyer again. “No Amy?” she asked.

  “She’s out there,” I said. “In the gift shop.”

  “Freud not her thing?”

  “Hardly.” I smiled weakly.

  “I figured you’d have come to the five p.m. lecture.” Eden looked at me. “I thought you’d want to spend most of the day hanging out with Amy.”

  “Mm.” It was the best I could come up with.

  “This is going to be the best ever,” Eden said. “Don’t you think?” Her face was animated. Alive. “It’ll make everything Mrs. Belling has been saying in lessons so much clearer.”

  I thought back to Amy. Sullen, reluctant Amy hanging around the foyer telling me she thought the lecture was for wackos. She just didn’t understand. Eden understood. Eden wanted to understand. Eden wanted to broaden her mind, whereas Amy was happy to tread water, never venturing into the unknown, never willing to open her mind or expand her knowledge. In life as well as anything else.

  Light and dark. Positive and negative.

  The lights dimmed. The hubbub in the ha
ll quieted as a small man in a tweed jacket stepped up to the lectern. With one final look out to the foyer, and then a quick glance at Eden’s profile, the lecture began.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “What did you think of his theories on the unconscious mind?” Eden hauled herself to her feet and waited for me to do the same.

  “Interesting. Yeah.” I sidestepped her and stood in the aisle. My eyes focused on the foyer outside, seeking Amy. I was torn. I knew Amy would be waiting for me, but I wanted to stay with Eden, even if just for a few minutes longer.

  “And I wrote more than enough notes to nail this essay.” Eden flicked her notepad.

  “Me too.” I turned to her. “I better go find Amy.”

  “Of course.”

  We stood and looked at one another a moment longer, neither of us willing or able to leave.

  “You…uh…you want to talk stuff over later?” Eden asked.

  “Stuff?”

  “The lecture?” Eden asked. “I could ring you.”

  Yes, I want to talk to you. Of course I do.

  “I’m not sure what time I’ll be home tonight,” I said.

  “But if it’s not too late, then you could ring—”

  “—I could ring you?” We spoke at the same time. “Sorry.” I stuffed my hands into my pockets and stared down at the floor, my face on fire.

  “Are you analysed to death?” Amy’s voice sounded beside me. I’d not even noticed her approaching.

  “Hey.” My head sprang up.

  Act normal.

  “Did you manage to fill your half hour okay?” I asked her.

  “I bought a mug.” Amy fished in a paper bag and brought out a yellow mug with a picture of Freud and the words Freudian Sips on it. “And a Freud rubber duck.”

  “As you do,” I muttered.

  I glanced at Eden. She was watching me.

  “Amy, this is Eden from school.” I opened my palm towards Eden. “Eden, this is Amy. From home.” I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

  Eden and Amy smiled at one another. They didn’t speak. Instead, I was aware of each of them metaphorically sizing the other up. My two worlds colliding, right there in front of me, in a museum foyer.

  Too weird. Way too weird.

  Freud, I thought wryly, would be having a field day.

  Finally Eden spoke. “Are you here just for the day, Amy?” she asked.

  “I am, yes.” I thought I detected Amy running her eyes up and down Eden when she replied. Again, imagination. “My train leaves at six.”

  “So we should go.” I pressed my hand into the small of Amy’s back and steered her away from Eden.

  “It’s only two o’clock.” Amy frowned.

  “Even so. Tubes, crowds.” Babbling. Stomach-clenching. Babbling.

  Did Amy really think I wanted to go? Nothing in me wanted to leave Eden at that moment. The thought of walking away from her and trying to act normally with Amy for the rest of the afternoon filled my heart with lead.

  The stark contrast between Amy and Eden had never been as obvious as it was that afternoon. It was overpowering. Light versus dark. Now versus then. Eden versus Amy.

  Polar opposites.

  I shot a look at Amy. I tried to find a smidgen of what we used to have. God knows, I tried.

  It wasn’t there.

  The thought scared me. I’d fought for so long, trying to quell my feelings for Eden. But there was no more fight left in me. The realization hit me harder than anything had ever done before: Eden was good for me. Amy was holding me back.

  If I could have taken Eden’s hand and run with her from the museum, I would have in an instant. Instead, I had to ignore my churning insides, paint a smile on my face, convince them both that everything was okay, and walk out of the museum. Away from Eden.

  It was agony. With one final curt nod to Eden, totally stressing that she would think I was being rude, I ushered Amy away from her and out towards the exit. I felt like the biggest rat in the world, but my mind was clear. Possibly for the first time in months. No more playing around. I wanted Eden more than I wanted Amy. One hundred per cent certain.

  But I couldn’t have her.

  That thought nearly killed me. And it didn’t help that the last thing I saw as I left the building and glanced back over my shoulder was Eden.

  She was still watching me, biting her lip.

  Damn.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “She didn’t have much to say for herself, did she?” Amy threw herself down onto a sofa at Starbucks. She stared out of the window, deep in thought.

  “Who?”

  Who! I knew full well whom she meant.

  “That girl.” Amy looked at me. “What was her name again?”

  I swallowed. “Eden.”

  “I suppose she does philosophy, does she?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “She looks the type.” Amy stretched her legs out in front of her.

  “She’s not a type,” I said defensively. “She happens to be very nice.”

  “Get you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Start.” I sighed. The atmosphere, from the second Amy had stepped off her train a few hours before, had been strained, to say the least. It wasn’t getting any better.

  I thought about Eden, wondering where she was. Was she still at the museum, or had she gone home? I rubbed at my face as if to scrub her from my mind.

  Eden refused to be erased.

  You know how it is when you really don’t want to be somewhere, but you don’t have any choice but to stay? And it makes you so cranky you think you could scream? That’s just how I felt at that moment. Waves of irritation washed over me. My cappuccino wasn’t hot enough. The people on the next table were annoying me. The espresso machine behind the counter was too noisy.

  And Eden wasn’t with me.

  This situation that I’d somehow managed to get myself tangled up in was overwhelming. I wanted Eden; I couldn’t have her. I wanted to be loyal to Amy; I was struggling.

  “What’s with the face?” Amy asked.

  I forced myself to relax. “Sorry, I was miles away.” I sat back and crossed my legs. “How’s your mocha?” I asked.

  “Chocolatey,” Amy said. “Want some?” She lifted her mug.

  I shook my head.

  “You like it here, don’t you?” she suddenly asked.

  “Starbucks? It’s okay.”

  “London, you dummy.”

  Oh. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “More than you thought you would?” she asked.

  “It’s better than I was expecting, yeah.” I studied her carefully.

  “This from the girl who hates any kind of disruption in her life,” Amy continued.

  She wasn’t wrong there.

  “And you’re happy here?” She blew on her drink. Studied me.

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Remember how we felt the night before you left?” Amy asked. She was smiling now, a soft look on her face.

  “I was gutted at leaving you,” I said.

  “And all the promises we made to one another?” she said. “About how we’d be together again soon?”

  “Amy, I…”

  She waved away my protestations. “It’s what you do when you’re about to be dragged three hundred miles away from the first and only girl you’ve ever loved.”

  “I meant every word.” I leant closer to her.

  “I know you did,” she said. “So did I.”

  Silence.

  “Have you met someone else?” she finally asked. “Since you’ve been here?”

  “No.” My heart flailed in my chest.

  Why would she ask that? Did she suspect something?

  “Have you?” I asked.

  Had she seen the way I looked at Eden earlier in the museum? Had she put two and two together?

  “Yes.”

  I’d barely said two words to Eden while I was with Amy
. That had been deliberate. How could she have—

  “What did you say?” I snapped my head up.

  “I said yes,” Amy repeated.

  “You’ve met someone else?”

  Other voices in the room echoed around me.

  “Who?”

  “It’s no one you know.” My question was dismissed just like that.

  “And all the stuff we said to one another?” I asked. “Before I left?”

  “Like I just said. Knee-jerk promises of two people distraught at being torn apart,” Amy said. She looked squarely at me. “I thought for a long time that you’d come back,” she continued, “but as time’s gone on…” She shrugged. “I can’t cope with us being so far apart, never seeing each other. It used to be fun. Me and you skipping school, hanging out together. Living three hundred miles apart isn’t fun.”

  School. Eden.

  She was my first thought as Amy carried on talking.

  I tried to look upset. I tried to look pissed off. God knows, I tried to look like I cared, but I couldn’t. All I felt was pressure being released and an overwhelming sense of relief that I didn’t have to go through the charade of pretending that I loved Amy any more.

  “You changed.” Her words jolted me back to her.

  Focus.

  “Why did you come down here if you knew you didn’t want to be with me any more?” I asked.

  “One last roll of the dice,” Amy said. Short and to the point.

  “Even though you were seeing someone else?” The words stuck.

  “I wanted to see if we still had something,” she said. “But the second I met you off the train, I knew we didn’t.”

  As I looked at Amy, still talking, all I could think was she was totally right about me. I had changed. Amy had stayed the same wild, crazy girl I’d fallen in love with, and I was happy about that. I didn’t want her to change. Why should she? No, this was all about me, and how different I was now. I knew I wasn’t the girl who had left Cragthorne all those months ago. I’d moved on. And that was all down to one person.

  Eden.

  Thanks to Eden, I knew I was a better person than before. I was more mature and thoughtful. Nicer, even. She’d shown me, despite all my initial protestations and railing against moving away, that the move truly had been for the best. And as much as I hated to admit it, my father might have been right all along: moving to London could be the making of me.