by Lia Louis
I hold her hands tightly and open my mouth to speak, but the barman appears at our side and picks up Priscilla’s empty glass.
‘Can I get you another drink?’
‘Two orange juices. A little champagne in mine, please,’ I say quickly, and he walks off. ‘P,’ I whisper. ‘Have you been to the doctor?’
Priscilla shakes her head and says, ‘I already know. I know what it is. They told me. After the termination, when I had all those problems. It was on a sheet they gave me. That …’ Priscilla pauses, voice wobbling. ‘That it can sometimes, in very rare cases, cause infertility.’
‘In very rare cases, Priscilla,’ I say, but she’s already crying, hands hiding her face. ‘Look, you did the right thing, back then. Do not for a minute beat yourself up about something that was right for you.’
Priscilla looks at me, lifting her shoulders to her ears. ‘I just can’t shake this feeling that I’m being punished.’
‘No. No, Priscilla.’
‘And now I’m going to have to explain it all to Chris, aren’t I? Everything. That I got knocked up at sixteen and I’ve probably ruined our chances of having kids, just like that.’
‘You didn’t do anything just like that, Priscilla—’
‘At some fucking party,’ Priscilla’s angry words run right over mine, ‘with a boy that treated me like I was something to be used and thrown away. I’m an idiot.’
My heart throbs. I want to tell her she doesn’t know that, that it’s the worst-case scenario, and making a mistake at sixteen, at any age, doesn’t define anyone. It’s a mistake. We’re allowed to make them. And no god, no force in their right mind would punish a woman, a good person – anyone – for something like this. But she is crying again, and I can do nothing but wrap my arms around her and tell her everything will be OK. Because it will be. We haven’t come this far to be shaken now. And Priscilla is steel. We are.
Two hours, two more drinks, and a Burger King meal each later, Priscilla has made me promise that the subject is to be left in London, and we are on the plane, fifteen minutes into our journey to Inverness. On our way to see Roman. Roman. My friend Roman. I want to say it out loud. I want to say it over and over again. I want to tell every single person on this plane.
‘I could eat another one,’ I say, rubbing my stomach.
‘Another what?’
‘Whopper,’ I say to Priscilla, as a flight attendant walks by with her trolley of puffed up Pringles and miniature cans of coke.
Priscilla pauses, then bends, losing herself in giggles. ‘Whopper,’ she squeaks. ‘Do you … do you remember?’
‘What?’ I laugh, as she bends, dragging down on my arm, juddering with giggles beside me.
‘It’s what we called Mr Reed’s dick,’ she laughs, hysterically, as a man a few seats away, looks up from his laptop, and scowls.
‘P, shhhhh.’
‘Don’t you remember?’ whispers Priscilla, eyes wide. ‘Oh, come on, of course you do.’
‘Priscilla, I do, but people can hear—’
‘When he came into school in those cycling shorts and you could see it. Like a damn marrow with a beating heart, it was so big. And we drew it in your maths book and you … you drew it … with arms … holding dumbbells … and breeze blocks.’
The man on the laptop, tuts and huffs, as we explode into fits of laughter.
Bursts of light, up here, in dark, autumn skies.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
2nd December 2005
Roman finds me on the bathroom floor, knees under my chin, my back against the bath, the lights off. He opens the door and stands in the doorway for a moment, hesitating, before pulling the door closed behind him and crossing the room, boots scuffing on the tiles. He sits beside me, back against the bathtub, long legs in front of him.
‘Nathan let me in,’ he says. ‘Cold arse?’
‘A bit.’
‘Generally what happens when you sit on the floor of a bog.’
‘I felt like I was going to be sick,’ I tell him. My voice is deep and hoarse but tiny, and it echoes around the cold, empty bathroom, barely sounding like my own. All the crying. All the heartache, ripping through me like a storm. ‘I just needed to be somewhere cool and dark.’
Roman shuffles so our hips touch. ‘Like a slug,’ he says, putting his arm around me.
‘My face looks like a slug.’
Roman laughs. ‘Give over.’
‘It does,’ I croak, laying my head on his shoulder. ‘It’s swollen. Like a big bollock. From the crying. I think that’s why Dad’s gone away to his cousins’. He says it’s to talk to them about Hubble, explain what happened, talk about the funeral but … me crying; he doesn’t know what to say to me. He can barely look at me.’ I choke on the words.
Roman squeezes me into him. The whirring of the extractor fan on the wall stops, and besides the drip-dropping of water, there is pure silence. Neither of us says anything. We just sit, side by side, in the darkness, the sounds of Nathan and Katie moving downstairs, opening the fridge, closing the living room door, turning up the television, echoing through the floor. It reminds me of when I’d lie in bed and listen to Mum and Dad downstairs when I was younger, when they were together, when I felt safe. I feel safe now, here, with Roman.
‘Tell me,’ I whisper into the darkness, ‘things will get better.’
Roman swallows. ‘They will.’
‘Promise me.’
Silence.
‘Roman?’
I lift my head from his shoulder. The only thing lighting the room is the moon outside, shimmering through the frosted glass of the bathroom windows, but I can see his eyes are watery. I can see the shadows on his face.
‘What’s wrong?’
He looks at me. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I just …’ He blows out a breath, his cheeks puffed out, and brings the heels of his hands to his head.
‘Ro? What is it?’
Roman closes his eyes and brings his hands down so they’re hiding his face. ‘It’s … H-Hubble, man,’ he says, his voice cracking. ‘This is so hard, J. It’s not fair. I … miss him. He should be here. He should be right here and—’ Beneath his hand, Roman sniffs, his voice breaking and I feel like a thumb is pressed on my heart, bruised as it already is. Roman misses Hubble. He loved him. Like I did. It’s been six days since I’ve been able to call him, to hear his voice, to nuzzle my nose into his flannel shirts, to smell his lovely smell, to hold his crepey, strong hand, to watch him make mince and mash, humming to the radio, using patterned, chipped dishes and pots he and Mimi got on the happiest day of their lives, forty years before, and the longing in my gut is sickening. I miss him. I miss him so much my bones ache and I want to scream. I link my arms around Roman’s, and in a heap on the dark bathroom floor, we huddle together, foreheads pressed together. We listen to the silence and the sound of each other’s breathing, and we sit like that for ages, head to head, limbs tangled. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know the way out of this. How will we ever smile again, without him?
‘Shit.’ Roman wipes his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. His eyes open slowly, his dark lashes fanning so close to my cheeks that I feel them. He shakes his head, forehead still pressed to mine. ‘I feel like everything’s changing,’ Roman says, his voice so quiet, it’s barely there. ‘And I’m— I’m scared, J.’
I push a loose wave of hair away from Roman’s eye. He’s beautiful. He really, really is. ‘Don’t be scared,’ I whisper to him, even though I am too. Terrified. ‘I’m here.’
He stares at me with deep blue eyes. They shine like marbles. ‘You,’ he murmurs, the corner of his mouth twitching a smile. ‘You’re … something.’
‘Something?’
His breath tickles my lips. His eyelashes catch on mine. ‘Perfect,’ he whispers.
And like we’ve done it a million times before, in every version of ourselves, in every universe, I kiss him. I kiss Roman Meyers. I press my lips softly to his; those pink, per
fect lips, and feel the warmth of them on mine. So close. Closer than we’ve ever been. He leans forward, kissing me back, and like something has interrupted us, we draw back, suddenly, lips inches apart. Roman looks at me. I look at him. My heart thumps in my throat. I open my mouth to speak, but the second I do, Roman’s lips are on mine, parted now, his hand holding the side of my face, his fingers in my hair, hungry, both of us melting together. And I fall away from myself. I’m free in this moment. Nothing else exists. And I don’t want him to stop. I don’t want this to end.
Roman Meyers is kissing me.
More.
We are more.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It’s just like I remember. Rugged, dark and moody, and utterly, utterly beautiful. Other-worldly, really. A place of nothing but stretches of landscape, and hills that look like a watercolour, the houses in the distance, dotted upon them like tiny white Lego bricks. Priscilla drives slowly, with both hands on the wheel. At the next turning, we will be there. We will be at Cliff Acre Park – the now finished site that me and Roman sat beside when they were only half-built. We will be there, where we always promised to be when we met again. We will be there, at the end of the world.
‘That view,’ says Priscilla, as we wind, close to the cliff edge, an endless stretch of rough, angry sea beside us, like wide open arms, welcoming me back. Priscilla looks at me quickly, then back to the road. ‘We OK?’
I nod. And so does she. Then she reaches over and squeezes my hand.
‘Fuck,’ she says.
‘Fuuuuck,’ I say. Then we both burst out laughing.
‘I feel a bit sick, you know,’ laughs Priscilla. ‘Like I might shit myself.’
‘Oh? Oh, it’s nerves,’ I sing. ‘I know your bowels so intimately, Priscilla, you’ll never ever shit yourself.’
Priscilla shoves my leg and laughs loudly – that infectious pneumatic drill of a laugh that’s been part of the soundtrack of so many of our memories together. ‘Shut up,’ she says ‘Oh, look. Are they lodges? Those little dots. Do you think that’s it? The park?’
As Priscilla turns the car left, it all comes into view. It’s as if I have been winded; a punch to the stomach, and all the clocks in the world have stopped ticking. Everything slows, and I feel like I am stepping into a memory – a place that is sharper and crisper than the memory itself. Everything is the same. The cliff where we sat on that bench is just ahead, and just beyond it, I’m sure I can see the lodges like tiny bricks on the horizon – on the grassy heath that was once a building site.
‘This is it,’ I say, the tension building in my chest with each breath, like strong wings fluttering against my chest. ‘God, Priscilla, this is definitely it.’
We are so far from home. We are so far from everything that is safe, and it’s not until I stepped on the plane, saw the world below getting tinier and tinier as we rose into the sky, that I realised how stuck I have been, living in what is a tiny, barely-there speck on this earth. Dormant, even, because living is something I haven’t done for so long, not really. And I want to. As I felt us take off, home moving further and further from me, and now, as I look out to endless ocean and endless sky, I realise I really want to. I want to see places and do things and feel terrified but do it anyway. I don’t want to hide anymore. What’s that quote? The one about wanting to see the world, as much as you can, before it goes dark. That’s what I want. Because there is no darkness now. I left that behind twelve years ago. I want to start living in the light, where I can be seen.
‘Don’t look down,’ winces Priscilla, fists clenched around the steering wheel as we pass a sheer, stomach-flipping drop to nothing but jagged ocean below. ‘Take more than the AA to save our arses if we fell down there now.’
‘Yeah, try not to kill us before we get there, P,’ I smile. ‘I’d prefer not to die never knowing.’
I open the window halfway, and cold air laps in, whipping our faces. I remember this; the smell of the salt and the way the air felt new and clean, like it had been made just for us. I remember the greens – a kaleidoscope of them – and the hills of thistley grass that looked as though it would leave scratches on your skin if you laid upon it. I remember the view that knocks the wind from your lungs. And I remember exactly how I felt. Free. Hopeful. Healthy.
‘This is it,’ Priscilla says, tapping a fingernail to the sat nav’s screen. ‘See.’
Priscilla is always calm, but I can tell by the way her hands squeeze the wheel, the way her shoulders are up by her ears and her eyes are barely blinking, that she’s nervous. The way she’d get before she did a presentation at school or knew she would be seeing Ethan Sykes at a party. He was the only boy ever to do that to her. She shrunk around him.
Priscilla clicks the headlights on. The November sky is dimming now, beginning to cloud with the smoke of the night, and the lodges are silhouettes, growing bigger as we approach. One of them in the distance is Roman’s. One of those lodges is where Roman lives. I know it now, inside, in my veins and my gut, that we’re in the right place. Maybe it’s hope. It feels like much more.
We arrive at the entrance. A wrought iron gate, and a burgundy sign, bordered in gold and with a small lamp above it, dimly lighting the words, ‘Welcome to Cliff Acre Park’. Priscilla pulls in, the nose of the car inches from the gate. It’s shut, and doesn’t open automatically, like I expect. Through the railings, there is a steep path, just wide enough for a car, and at the top, a brick chalet, posters and leaflets in the window, but it’s in darkness. A reception, perhaps, for guests to check in.
Priscilla kills the engine and undoes her seatbelt. We stare through the windscreen, then at each other.
‘It … it looks shut,’ I say.
‘But there’re lights on.’
Priscilla’s right. The street lamps that light the path beyond the gate are on, dim against the dusk.
‘I’ll try the gate.’ Priscilla gets out of the car, skipping over to the entrance. She pulls hard on the railing. It doesn’t budge. Through the window, she turns back and shrugs, mouthing, ‘It’s locked.’
Now my heart is sinking.
Priscilla gets back into the car, slamming the door behind her and bringing her arms around herself. ‘Jesus, it’s fucking freezing.’ The pair of us look out at the locked gate again, in silence. She leans forward, cupping her hands around her eyes and looks out into the darkening night. ‘Maybe there’s another way in.’
‘Where though, P?’
Silence again.
There’s tension now, between us both. The hope that surrounded us and bounced off us so tangibly, like electricity is slowly turning into sizzling, hot tension and panic. We’ve come all the way here – all the way to the end of the world, alone – all because a stranger told us the person we are trying to find lived in Scotland, in a chalet. This is the white rabbit again, and we have chased it for hundreds of miles – hundreds of miles to a dead end.
A car pulls behind us, gradually slowing and then stopping. The headlights fill our car with yellow light. Both of us turn to look through the rear window. A figure gets out of the car – a large, dark, four by four. And all I am thinking is that this is the part where we get murdered. This is when we get murdered and people all over crow about how two young women shouldn’t be in the Highlands in a bitter cold seaside town in November, alone, on a cliff-top, with nothing but useless mobile phones with barely-there signal and half a Spar shop tuna sandwich between them.
The figure approaches the car, his engine still running behind us, headlights still on. Priscilla clicks down the lock on her door. There is a bang as all the locks shut into place at once. The figure is at the window. It’s a man. He bends and knocks on the glass. He must be Hubble’s age. His face is a mix of concern and irritation.
Priscilla presses to slide open the window.
‘If you’re going to sit with your rear out like that, put on your hazards,’ he says. ‘This road is narrow and if there’s passing traffic, we won’t see you.�
� He has a thick Scottish accent.
‘Oh, I-I’m sorry,’ says Priscilla, her saleswoman phone voice springing into life. ‘I didn’t realise I was jutting out.’
‘It’s a narrow road.’
‘We’re not from the area.’
‘Aye. Right.’
He looks at the gate, then at me, then again at Priscilla. He rubs his chin with thick, chubby hands. They’re gnarly from arthritis or gout or something similar, and at his wrists there is blue checked material jutting out from under a huge dark wax jacket. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. Again, the news article and 1453 Daily Mail comments about how women should never be on cliff-tops alone, saying we brought it on ourselves, flash through my mind.
‘You after a place to stay?’
‘No,’ I say quickly, and it alarms both him and Priscilla. ‘We are staying in a hotel,’ I say, softer this time. He nods once.
‘It’s closed.’
‘Sorry?’
‘This,’ he says, eyes rolling in irritation. ‘Cliff Acre. It’s closed. Season runs March through to October.’
‘Oh,’ says Priscilla. ‘We were hoping to get in.’
The man laughs and says, ‘You can’t. Ain’t no night life round here, girls. It’s shut.’ Then he steps away from the car, says, ‘Put your hazards on if you’re gonna stay here,’ taps the roof of the car and then mutters something about staying safe. When he drives off, he toots his horn twice and raises a hand, and disappears up the creeping hill at speed, as if he does this every day and doesn’t have to think twice about hill starts and how not to career off the sides into the blisteringly cold ocean beneath the roads.
There’s silence between Priscilla and I.
‘I can’t believe—’
‘Lizzie,’ says Priscilla. But I can see she is searching her head for words. ‘Look, this ain’t over, babe. We’ll sort it. We’ll sort something.’ Then she clicks open the car door. ‘I need a piss.’
