by Serena Lyons
I zip up my leather jacket as I skip down the steps to the tow path. The cold, autumn wind hurtles across the water. The river is steely grey and filled with slim rowing boats practising their form, up and down for hours.
Everyone keeps telling me I should try rowing while I’m here, but it looks goddamn boring, the opposite of cheerleading where flair is what it’s all about. In rowing the idea is to be as much of a machine as possible, to just glide back and forward in rhythm like a cog. And all the early morning practices in the cold. No thanks.
I search the water our college colours; royal blue and hot pink, but I don’t find them. None of the rowers look right either, the crews see are duller, no one with the eye-catching shine of Callum.
Finally, I reach our club house—ridiculously every single college of three hundred students has their own—and sit on a fallen log in the trees beside it waiting for Callum’s team to come in. I want to be able to approach him in my own time, I don’t want to have to face him until I’m ready.
Time passes slowly in the icy chill. Every time a boat budges into view around the bend of the river, I straighten up, straining to see if it’s Callum’s crew. Every time I’m disappointed as I work out it’s a female boat, or only a pair.
Finally a boat with eight hulking men comes into view. I spot the navy and pink livery at the same point as a ray of autumn sunshine breaks through the clouds and lights up Callum’s burnished hair. It’s like the heavens are anointing him as a god.
Callum’s crew glides through the water, moving at a quicker pace than the other boats I watched, but making it seem effortless. Their cox barks instructions and they land smoothly on the sloping concrete ramp that runs all the way from the water to the boathouse. They scurry out of the boat like crabs, then flip it over their heads, as if it weighs nothing.
God, they really do look more like Greek gods than cerebral university students. They’re wearing skintight lycra that shows off their endless muscles and tight asses. Their muscles are more sculpted than even the professional football players on the team I used to cheerlead for.
As soon as they go into the boathouse, I wander from my hiding spot to the side of the building. I can hear everything through the open garage door.
“You’ve gotten slow, Smith.” Someone teases with a chuckle in their voice.
“No, you’ve gotten fat.”
“Boys.” A familiar voice warns, authoritatively. That is definitely Callum. “Remember we’re all one team.”
My pulse races despite myself. Now he’s so close I realise I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to say to him.
“Just keeping each honest, right?” It’s the same person who called one of his teammates fat.
“Well, if it’s honesty you’re after, you’ve gotten slow.” Callum says.
“You’re killing me, Captain.”
“Pussy!” Someone yells. “Can’t take a bit of honest critique?”
“As if you’d know what that is. Last one you saw was your mum’s.”
There’s a thunder of laughter and their chatter moves on to girls. It’s complete locker room banter. I phase out until I hear something that interests me too much.
“Saw you and Jess hooking up the other night,” an Irish voice says. “You still got that sweet friends with benefits deal going on?”
That must be directed to Callum, my heart starts racing. He doesn’t know I’m listening. He might mention me and I’ll know where I stand.
“For now.” Annoyingly, my heart thuds at his answer, hoping he’ll say he’s too into someone else. “She’s getting too clingy. I’ve told her a hundred times nothing more’s ever going to happen, but she’s always trying to engineer dates. Christ, she wants me to meet her baby sister when she visits.”
There’s a chorus of laughs and shouts of “Run, man”. Poor Jess, even if she was just a completely cow to me, I’d hate to think of half the boys in college mocking me like that.
“Right, that’s everything away. Last one to the pub buys the round?” Someone shouts and heavy footsteps thunder my way.
I smooth my hair down. This is it.
The first couple of guys head straight to the bike rack, not noticing me emerge from the shadows. Callum’s in the middle of the pack, standing out from the rest of the team of six-foot hulks as the strongest and shiniest by far.
“Callum, can I have a word?” I move in front of his group, so there’s no way he can pretend not to have seen me. I try not to notice how much I’m shaking.
His eyes narrow as he looks at me, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s a ripple of electricity in the rest of his team, they seem to sense drama.
“Ooh, breaking even more hearts are you Cal?” One of the guys teases. “She’s a hottie.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Callum flexes his hands into fists and his teammates look at each other as if in warning. “Leave us alone.”
“Time for the pub anyway, boys.” The Irish accent belongs to the shortest guy there, the cox who’s a foot below everyone else, but somehow seems to be second in charge after Callum. “Give me the keys later, Cal.” He walks from the door and tosses a bunch of keys at Callum.
Callum nods brusquely. “What are you doing here?” He keeps his eyes away from me, as if he can’t bear to look at me and pulls down the cantilevered garage doors, jamming the keys into the lock.
“I want to know what the hell is happening, why you went so weird yesterday afternoon and why the hell you sent me this?” I reach into my back pocket and pull out the note.
“What’s this?” He moves towards me, but doesn’t take the note.
Perhaps because he already knows what it says.
“Oh, don’t play the innocent with me, I know you sent it.”
“Sent what?”
“This threat telling me to leave.”
His cheek twitches, but he doesn’t deny it.
“See, you’re not even bothering to argue.” I pass the note to him. “Let me remind you.”
He tuts, but takes the paper, his eyes quickly scanning it. “I don’t care what you think about me. You probably wrote this note yourself.”
“I’m not sure I can even trust my memories anymore.” Millie looked ravaged.
“What are you talking about?”
“Callum says he never asked me to visit him this weekend, but his note told me to do exactly that.”
“He sent you a note? What are we, back in the nineties?”
“I thought it was romantic,” Millie’s voice caught. “But then I turned up at his house in London and his parents told me he’d gone to New York for the weekend with his friends. And when I called he claimed he never asked me to visit him.”
“You deserve better than him, Mil.” I reached out to stroke her hair. “You deserve better than someone who continually lies to you.”
“I don’t know why I even came here.” I snatch the note from him and stuff it back in my pocket. “I should have known you’d just lie about it.”
“Oh, like you’re not the real liar.” Callum’s blue eyes finally meet mine and I’ve never seen them so cold. He’s staring at me with absolute conviction that I’m scum.
“What do you mean?” My heart thumps. Has he put two and two together and came to four?
“Your essay yesterday, that wasn’t the smartest move.”
My essay? “What the hell are you talking about?”
“At first I thought maybe you were just a terrible cheater. That you’d plagiarised a textbook and somehow Professor Headley hadn’t picked up on it.”
“I don’t need to cheat.” His words remind me of Jess’s friend saying I got in on a charity ticket. “When will your people realise I got here through skill? It’s the rest of you who paid you way in.”
“Skill maybe, but whose skill exactly?” Callum’s lip curls up in a snarl. He looks like a handsome rendition of the devil. I shiver.
“Stop talking in riddles.” It’s like I’m in the hall of mirror
s at a fairground, nothing about this conversation is making sense with what I know to be true.
“Stop already—” Callum holds out his hands to silence me. “I’m leaving now. I remember exactly who first showed me that essay two years ago, and I’m not wasting any more time talking to you. I’m never going to believe a single thing you say ever again.”
“What—” I wrote every single word.
“You might as well leave already Faith, it’s just going to get ugly if you wait for me to drive you out.”
“Are you threatening me again?”
“Again?” Callum spins around his eyes blazing. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but it’s sick.”
Rage grows inside me. He’s acting like I’m the one in the wrong?
‘I’m never going to believe a single thing you say.’ Callum’s refrain echoes in my head as he brusquely turns away and begins unlocking his bike. It’s the only one left in the rack in front of us.
His shoulders are tense as he works, and it takes him longer than I would have expected to unfasten it. As soon as it’s free, he throws the lock over the handlebars, grabs them to set the bike in motion, and then begins running alongside it, jumping on to it in one sleek move that shows off his athletic prowess.
He cycles away without saying anything else to me, his thighs pumping furiously as he glides onto the tow path and accelerates towards the bend round the river.
Just as he is about to glide around the corner and become hidden by the bushes, he glances back. He jerks his head away as soon as his eyes meet mine, like he didn’t mean to look at me, and then he disappears around the bend.
Somehow I feel like I’m the one in the wrong.
20: Faith
I stand looking at the spot where he disappeared for a few minutes, half hoping he’ll come back even as I know he won’t. Idiot.
I’m winded, unable to face the long, uphill walk back to college, so I move back to the log. I need to order my jumbled thoughts. Sitting is all I can face doing right now.
Why the hell do I feel like I’m the one in the wrong? I came here to confront him about that threat, yet he turned it around so I sounded like the crazy one. And what the hell did he mean when he mentioned my essay?
My entrance essay. I know it inside out; its words are emblazoned on my brain. I worked it over so many times, editing and re-editing it to perfection. I spent two years working on that damn thing. From long before I even wanted to apply here, when medicine was my goal, but I helped Millie with her…. Fuck.
I jump up, my veins wild with energy. I wrote an example essay for Millie to get her started for her application here. Fuck. What if Callum saw it, what if that’s where he remembers it from?
I try to cast my mind back. I was always helping Millie out with her homework.
Millie: Babe. Could you do me a huge favour… let’s meet in the summer house I’ll bring your favourite brownies…
I sighed at Millie’s message. Having her back for the summer wasn’t as fun as I was expecting. All she ever wanted to talk about was Callum bloody Carter-Wright. Dull, dull, dull.
There was no question I’d meet her in the summer house though. Even as I thought how annoying it was, I leapt from bed, switching out my scruffy trackie bottoms for my favourite skinny jeans, the ones that made me feel marginally less like a servant next to Millie and her designer outfits from Selfridge’s.
I left a note for Gran on the kitchen table.
‘Gone to see some friends, be back before dinner.’
It was deliberately vague. She must have suspected that Millie and I still met up, but we skirted the issue.
“My job’s on the line, it’s not some silly kid’s game,” she used to tell me when I complained about being banned from seeing Millie. “You know no one around here, apart from Lady Charrington will ever need a cook. If I lose this job we’re screwed.”
“But it’s not fair. I don’t understand why Lady Charrington hates me so much. Is it just because we’re poor? I’ve done nothing to hurt Millie. And I never will. But she acts like I’m the last person in the world she wants to be friends with her precious daughter.”
“There’s no accounting for some folk, Faith.” Gran always sighed. “But just promise me, you’ll stay away from that girl. There’s plenty of other nice lasses around here that you can hang out with. But if I don’t have that job things will get really tough for us.”
“Okay, Gran, I promise.” I always answered, knowing full well that Millie and I would not stop seeing each other.
That day Gran was working up at the big house, so I took the sneaky back route to the summer house.
“God, that took you long enough,” Millie whinged when I opened the door to the summer house. She was lying on the couch sucking an ice-lolly, looking as glamorously bored as only a young ingenue can.
“I do have a bit further than you to travel, you know,” I snapped. “What is this massive favour that you want from me, anyway?
“I’ve decided to apply for Westforde College.” Millie sprang upright and clapped her hands together.
“What’s that when it’s at home?”
“You know, only the fanciest most elite college at Oxford.” She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s where everyone who’s anyone goes.”
“I didn’t think you really cared about university?” Millie was the school year above me, even though there was only three months difference in our actual ages.
“Callum starts there in October. I think it’d be good for our relationship.” She smiled and licked her lolly.
I swallowed down the temptation to ask whether she really thought they’d still be dating in fifteen months’ time. “But I thought you wanted to go to art school? Do they even offer art degrees there?”
“I’m planning to leave art school until I’ve seen some of the world. There’s no point in going at eighteen. You need to know life to paint it.”
It sounded like she was parroting someone else’s words. Callum’s maybe? But I couldn’t imagine him persuading her to attend the same university as him seeing as he spent half the summer ignoring her.
“What are you going to apply for then?” I decided to stick to neutral subjects. Experience taught me that if I said anything negative about Calum, we just ended up arguing.
“Politics, philosophy and economics.” She lifted her chin regally. “PPE it’s the course to read. Anyone who can takes it.”
I resisted the powerful urge to call her out for being such a snob. Couldn’t she just say study like anyone else? I could already see where this favour was going.
“Didn’t you say your fifth a-level was economics?” Millie continued. “I was wondering if you could help me with my entrance essay?”
“But I’m a whole year behind you, I just took my GCSEs.”
“As if that matters. You know you’re much smarter than me. Imagine if you went to my school, you’d get even higher grades than you already do.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.” I laughed and rolled my eyes. “What’s the essay topic?”
Millie smiled, then tried to hide it. “That’s the problem, it’s so open-ended. You have to come up with your own interesting and unique topic area. Apparently, that’s what really counts for getting in…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, I just know you’ll do a better job than me. Please, pretty please, Faith. I brought this.” She passed over a lump of foil.
I opened it to reveal a brownie. “Did you really just bring me food that my Gran made in your kitchen?”
“No! Of course not! I made it.” She bit her bottom lip like she was trying not to laugh. “It’s not just any brownie try it.”
It smells good; thick and rich with an almost earthy smell underneath it. My stomach growls. “Okay. Okay,” I broke off a chunk and put it in my mouth. “Hmmm, that is good. Bit of a weird aftertaste, though. At least you’re not applying to chef school.”
Millie laughed hysterically, like I said the funniest thing in the wo
rld. “Oh, you’re so innocent, they’re special brownies.”
“Spec…” My brain caught up. “Are there fucking drugs in here? You know I don’t do that, not with my Mam.” My breath quickened and a panic attack beckoned.
“Relax.” Millie grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’ve got you, Faith.”
Two hours later, we were lying draped over each other unable to really tell when one of us started and the other stopped.
“See that wasn’t so bad was it?” Millie asked.
“Maybe not, just tell me next time. If my gran ever finds out about this, I’m dead.”
“If your Gran ever finds out about what?” A mocking male voice made us both jolt up.
In our haze we hadn’t noticed Millie’s older brother creep up to the summerhouse.”You girls been getting up to no good again? In fact isn’t even the fact she’s here against the rules? Mama would love to hear about this, Millie.”
“For fuck’s sake, Philip.” Millie pushes herself up onto her elbows.”You do behave like a twelve-year-old. No one would ever believe you’re actually twenty. Don’t you have better things to do than tattletale on your little sister?”
He glowered at us both. “One might suggest this is exactly why Mama, doesn’t want you hanging around with this riffraff. You develop quite the potty mouth when you’re around her.”
“Just buzz off Phillip, go and annoy someone else.” Millie picked up a cushion from the daybed and threw it straight at him. It knocked his glasses askew, and we giggled like it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen.
He sighed and left, but not before I saw his eyes narrow.
“Brothers, who’d have them?” Millie said.
“I’d quite like one, but you need a mother and a father for that.” I picked at a loose threat on my cardigan.
“Oh, babe.” She rubbed my arm. “Sorry, I didn’t think.”
“It’s okay.” I try to exhale the ball of tension in my stomach. I hate thinking about my lack of family.
“So… about that essay?”