by Rachel Dann
But it was still sexy.
I spent the first year of university lusting after him discreetly from a few rows back, and impatiently plodding through the week until our Friday afternoon Spanish lecture. I don’t think we exchanged a single word in all that time, even though there were only ten people in the class, so he must have at least known my name.
Then one day Harry sidled up to me in the Student Union bar, set his beer down on the table in front of me, and asked what I was doing that night.
From then on, it was a whirlwind. Harry himself was a whirlwind. When we graduated, he took me to Rome. I never admitted to him it was the first time I had ever left the UK.
I also never got round to telling him he was my first proper boyfriend. I hadn’t been the most popular girl at school, nor the most unpopular, I had just kept myself to myself. A few boys had asked me out, but they always seemed so immature and boring. I was happier studying, going to the cinema with my friends and working at the café round the corner to help out my mum with the bills. I’d never seen any point in having a boyfriend until Harry.
As our university days passed, I got to know the man behind the traveller’s legend. To my surprise, and – if I’m honest – slight dismay, Harry was actually from a middle-class, prosperous family. Their renovated oast house in Kent was worlds apart from Mum’s little terraced property in the part of Essex that gives the whole county its reputation.
His family were very refined. My first dinner at his parents’ house was like that scene from Titanic where Leo sits down at the table and has no idea which set of cutlery to use first. Ashamed, I found myself wishing my mum spoke Italian or my dad could discuss my university essays with me, like Harry’s parents. In fact, I would have been happy for my dad to want to discuss anything with me, but that´s another story.
It was Harry’s parents who generously gave us half the deposit for the house, and I still remember with a pang that Dad didn’t even come with us on the morning we collected the keys.
‘You know what he’s like, love.’ Mum had tried to sound kind as she patted my shoulder, standing awkwardly removed from Harry and his family as we all waited for the estate agent to finish scrabbling around in drawers and find our keys. It hadn’t been much comfort, though. She had been able to separate from him years ago and rebuild her life at an amicable distance. It was different for me – you can hardly divorce your father.
Anyway, from the moment we finished uni it was as if life picked up speed. I landed a place at a London university to study for a year-long legal practice course – something I’d need to do before I could actually use the law degree I’d worked so hard for. Harry got a job as an art tutor at a prestigious private boys’ Academy, stopped wearing flip-flops and took out life insurance. I deferred my place at the university to move with Harry to the middle of nowhere in the South Downs, near the Academy. We both scrimped and saved and lived on pot noodles for two years, then stumped up the deposit on our little house in Fenbridge, the nearest village to the school and the very last stop on the southbound rail line offered by the southernmost railway service in the country.
It wasn’t all bad. Fenbridge was the kind of place where everyone knows and greets each other by name, and where there is no supermarket, just ‘Terry’s’ (the butcher’s), Raj’s (the newsagent’s) and ‘round Brenda’s’ (the pub). Within just a few weeks ‘Harry and Kirsty’ were welcomed unconditionally into the local village fold, and soon became regulars at the pub, coffee shop, and even sometimes the biweekly car-boot sale on the football green.
In many ways it made a nice change from the part of Essex where I spent my childhood, where you had to keep an eye not only on your lunch money but also your shoes, coat and scarf when running the danger-filled gauntlet between home and school. Here, you could literally leave the front door wide open and go out to do your week’s shopping, get the car washed, swing by the garden centre and stop off for a free coffee at Waitrose on the way back, and nothing would have happened. Plus the fact it was only one short, winding, country lane away from Harry’s school. It was important to live close by, we soon realised, as the school’s location at the bottom of a valley made it completely inaccessible by car after heavy rain or the slightest hint of snow. And it would be no good for a whole class to be cancelled just because the art teacher couldn’t make it in.
It just wasn’t the kind of place where very much happened. At all. It certainly wasn’t the kind of place where people regularly left their jobs and took off to go exploring South America.
So, for ‘Harry and Kirsty’, every day was pretty much the same, our daily routine overlapping with my growing ache to become a mother.
Every day except this one.
I’m distantly aware Harry has been talking the whole time I’ve been standing here, wine glass in suspended animation halfway to my mouth, watching the last six years of our life together flash before my eyes. Snippets of what he’s saying filter through, like the words ‘sabbatical’ and ‘mortgage holiday’ and ‘new horizons’. He seems to be pacing the kitchen and waving his arms around.
Finally, Harry remembers I’m here and stands still, flushed and bright-eyed, smiling expectantly at me. ‘Well, what do you think then, babe?’
Of all the things I want to say, everything I’ve kept inside, waiting for a moment like this when I have Harry’s undivided attention, what I actually say, in a small voice that doesn’t sound like my own, is:
‘I’ve forgotten all my Spanish.’
Harry’s laughing. Wrapping his arms around me. Spilling the wine.
‘Come on, Kirst, that’s rubbish! You were the hardest worker in our whole class – you used to memorise a new verb every night, remember?’
‘I did not! You make me sound like the most boring—’
‘Sure, you always got top marks in those vocabulary tests, too – photographic memory!’
‘Liar! I didn’t ever get top—’
‘Okay, okay! We’ll prove it. I bet you can recite ten Spanish verbs in the past tense, right here, right now.’ He’s frowning down at me now, arms crossed.
I slam my wine glass down on the counter, anger and pain and disappointment boiling over.
‘I fucking well CAN’T, actually! I can hardly remember the present tense for most of them! You’re so WRONG!’
I hurl myself out of the room, hot tears flowing, distantly aware of how ludicrous it is to argue over something like Spanish verbs when the things that really matter remain unspoken.
I feel Harry’s eyes boring into my back as I run upstairs, and don’t need to turn round to see the shocked expression on his face. I never, ever shout at him. And rarely cry. But right now, the grating disappointment of his Big Surprise and frustration at his comments about my Spanish combine to make my tears overflow. He’s right – maybe I did do well at university – but he should know better than anyone that there is more to me than that. I went through school being known as part of the nerdy crowd, and if the other kids noticed me at all, all they knew about me was that I was quiet and got good grades. They didn’t actually know me. They didn’t know, for example, that in the summer holidays before the end of upper sixth, I dragged my cousin halfway across the county to do a skydive – we took a weekend course and everything, then threw ourselves right out of a plane above the Essex countryside. I’d been so terrified on the way up that I almost threw myself out two stops early. But I still did it.
At university, I didn’t care what anyone thought except a few close friends who really knew me. A few close friends… and Harry. He should know better than to use my grades at university against me at a time like this. Just to convince me to go along with something he wants. Again…
I shut myself in the man-den. I know if I go into the bedroom he’ll follow me straight in to try and make up. We’ll sort it out before going to sleep, of course, we always do. But right now I just need a few moments alone.
Sitting down on the fl
oor among the gaming magazines, I wipe my tears away on my sleeve and pull myself together. Then, wedged on a shelf between an art textbook and a box of CDs, something catches my eye.
Lonely Planet Travel Guide to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, 2003.
Sniffing, I yank it open at a random page.
Riding the Devil’s Nose railcar in Ecuador is an experience that will stay in your memory for ever. Negotiating a series of heart-stoppingly deep ravines and spindly bridges, the train will take you over 1,000 metres down the Andean mountainside and show you truly spectacular views of the Ecuadorian landscape and distant volcanoes.
I slam it shut again, trying not to hear the voices of all my friends, reacting in disbelief when I told them I was buying the house with Harry: A mortgage? Aren’t we a bit young for all that… what about your training course? Not to mention all the holidays? Are you sure you want to do this before you’ve seen anything of the world? And then, inevitably, Why are you in such a hurry to settle down? That last question was one I had been asked many times by various friends and never felt able to answer out loud. I have my reasons, I would say, and tolerate with good humour the subsequent teasing about ‘Kirsty the serious one’ and the jokes about old married couples. I did have my reasons, and couldn’t expect any of my friends, with their happily married parents and stable home lives, to possibly understand.
Feeling a presence behind me I look over my shoulder to see Harry standing in the doorway, a stricken expression on his face, wordlessly holding his hands out to pull me to my feet. I reach up and take them. As I stand, he pulls me into his arms and my head tucks under his chin. Despite my residual anger I welcome the feeling of things sliding back into place, the universe aligning again. We haven’t had a row like that in a long time. I hug Harry back tightly and try to squeeze away the uncomfortable realisation that we haven’t actually talked to each other as much as that for a long time, either.
‘Kirsty, I’m so sorry,’ he murmurs into the top of my head. To my dismay I hear his voice crack with emotion.
I pull back to look at his face, and don’t recognise the pale, serious man staring intensely back at me.
‘Er… it’s okay. I’m sorry I reacted like that,’ I mutter, feeling increasingly alarmed by the fierce way he is staring into my eyes.
‘Please be patient with me,’ he whispers, holding on to my arms more tightly. ‘I know you want… more. And I want us to have that…’
This sudden outpouring of emotion is so unlike Harry, so unlike us, that all I can do is stare back at him with my breath held, waiting for whatever will come next.
‘…But I really need to do this. Just one more trip. We can see it as the last adventure before…’ His voice wavers alarmingly again. ‘Then, after this, Kirsty, I promise – I’ll be ready to move on to the next level with you.’
Somewhere on the outskirts of my surprise and alarm, it strikes me that even in a moment like this Harry can talk about our lives as if they were a game on his X-box.
‘It’s fine.’ I find the words springing from my mouth before my head has fully made its mind up. ‘Let’s do it.’ I try to smile convincingly. ‘Let’s have your adventure. But just a few months, okay? If we can get the time off work, that is—’ My voice is swallowed up in Harry’s jumper as he hugs me back so tightly I’m practically lifted off my feet.
‘Babe, you’re so amazing – I love you!’ His face is transformed, so lit up with relief and joy that I feel twinges of guilt for ever reacting so negatively. He leans down and plants a kiss on my mouth then turns to hurry out of the room. ‘Just gotta write an email quickly, then I’ll bring the rest of the wine up!’ he calls over his shoulder, and I can hear him thundering back downstairs, full of boyish energy, the Harry I met at university suddenly returned with full force. I sigh and slump back against the wall, looking down at the travel book still in my hands.
Taking two or three months out of our daily lives won’t make much difference, will it? We’ll get back older, wiser, the wanderlust well and truly out of our systems. Well, out of Harry’s system… I’m still not entirely sure it’s even in mine. After this, Kirsty, I promise… Harry’s words ring in my ears and I imagine him stepping gratefully back over the threshold of our home, scooping me into his arms and saying ‘That was crazy and fun, but this is where I want our family to grow up’.
As we get older, our travels will give us an edge; we’ll be cooler, more interesting, sophisticated.
Better parents.
In fact, there is no reason we can’t start trying for a family while travelling, right? I lose myself briefly in a daydream of falling asleep in Harry’s arms in a beach hammock, his hand resting contentedly on my newly rounded tummy as the sun sets behind us. We could even name our future son or daughter something exotic to forever remind ourselves of the moment. Something like… Rio. Or Havana.
No, that’s a ridiculous idea. Too… Posh Spice.
But maybe Harry really does have a point. If we’re going to see anything of the world, our time is now. Two years ago we didn’t have the money, and in two years’ time we’ll be stumbling around like the walking dead on three hours’ sleep a night with perma-vom splattered across our baggy, unfashionable sweaters, having conversations about poo consistency and bedtime routines. Well, I hope we will.
I tuck the travel book inside my jumper, planning to have a good read later. Something has to change… and if we’re not going to have a baby yet, then maybe we should have an adventure.
Chapter Two
The news that we’ve decided to go travelling is met with varying degrees of enthusiasm by our respective families.
Harry’s parents think it’s all marvellously exciting and jolly good fun. They’ve travelled all over the place, of course, and even lived in New York for a year when they first got married. A long Sunday afternoon passes with Harry and his dad hunched over a map of South America spread out on the kitchen table, saying things like ‘You could catch a direct flight to Cusco then hike south along the Inca trail’ and ‘If you can stay on the road until February you could make it to Rio for carnival season’, while Harry’s mum and I sit and make polite conversation over the Marks & Spencer biscuit selection.
I know my own family will have rather more realistic concerns, such as what will happen with our jobs and the house and whether we’ll come back alive. I don’t relish the thought of telling them at all, but after a fortnight has gone by and we’ve practically finished packing up our belongings, had all our travel injections and even persuaded our mortgage company to let us off the hook for three months (I don’t know what Harry told them, but decided the fewer questions asked, the better), I know I can’t put it off any longer. Before our scheduled Sunday dinner at my mother’s house, I phone my sister, Chloe, to test the waters.
‘Aren’t you a bit old for that sort of thing?’ she squeals indignantly, making the eight-year age gap between us sound like a whole generation. Chloe is in her final year studying drama at uni in London, but goes home almost every weekend to our mother and her father Steve’s house, to consume the entire contents of their fridge, do her laundry, and help herself to any clothes lingering in my old bedroom. I have deliberately timed our visit to coincide with one of these weekends, in the hope that her chaotic presence might somehow distract Mum from the bombshell Harry and I plan to drop.
‘If by that sort of thing you mean broadening our minds, experiencing new cultures and possibly even discovering career opportunities in the international field, then I would tell you age knows no boundaries,’ I reply smugly. I’m quite pleased with that one. Harry would be proud of me.
‘But… I thought you were desperate to get up the duff?’ Chloe sounds confused, as if she is trying to process some kind of new and unwelcome reality. ‘Knitting tiny woollen socks, swallowing tons of folic acid, keeping a spreadsheet of your ovulatory cycle…’ She trails off, sounding desolate.
I don’t know what to say.
‘It’s not actually a spreadsheet… just a notebook. And I don’t even know how to knit.’
The silence extends on the line between us.
‘Mum’s going to go totally mad, you know.’
‘Yeah. How’s she been lately?’
Chloe breathes an exaggerated sigh down the phone. ‘Worse than ever. She’s just watched some documentary about this kid in America who hacked the Pentagon computer system from his basement – you know, one of those nerd types – anyway, she’s going round making us all change our laptop passwords and close our internet banking accounts and amend our Facebook privacy settings. Driving everyone fucking potty, even Dad.’
I try to imagine patient, docile Steven losing his temper with Mum. Of everyone in the family, he is undoubtedly the most tolerant of her incessant anxiety.
‘Oh dear, it must be pretty bad this time.’
‘Yep. So good luck telling her you’re going backpacking. You’re basically dead.’
‘Well, let’s see about that, shall we?’ Just imagining my mother’s reaction floods me with annoyance and a new, perverse determination to plough on with our travel plans whatever the cost.
‘Sis?’ Chloe sounds unexpectedly serious. Well, more serious than usual. I notice the sudden absence of TV noise in the background, too.
‘What?’
‘Are you… do you really want to do this? Go off travelling? It’s just…’ She trails off awkwardly, not sounding at all like my carefree little sister. ‘Well, I’m guessing Harry’s behind it all, right? It must have been his idea.’
I feel myself bristle defensively at this. Must have been his idea. What does my whole family think I am, some kind of sheep? I realise I’m gritting my teeth and clasping the phone tightly. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
