by Larissa Vine
“Can you fill this for us?” He held the container out to her.
“Of course,” she said brightly. She was determined to prove that she was tough.
She took the container from him and walked out of the site and down the path, on the hunt for a tap. All the time, she kept a look out for bears, cougars, wolves, and velociraptors. In the next clearing, a couple stood over a gas burner on a picnic table, where they were heating up a kettle. They looked grim-faced and their raincoats were zipped up to their necks. And they were on vacation, April thought. They’d chosen to do this of their own free will.
She wandered on a few more paces until she came to a tap attached to a post. She unscrewed the lid of the container, placed it under the tap, and switched it on. Water splashed onto her shoes. She sighed. Now they were wet as well as dirty.
Once the container was full, she closed it and picked it up. Wow, it’s heavy. She staggered with it for a few steps then, with a grunt, she set it back down onto the dirt. Already, callouses were forming on her palms. And to think, she thought, some women did this every day of their lives when they fetched water from the wells. It was incredible. She would never use water so casually again.
She picked the container back up and soldiered on, walking and stopping and walking again until her arm muscles screamed out in pain. At long, long last, she staggered, panting, into the campsite, her hair sticking to the sweat on her face. Rory sauntered up to her, drinking a can of beer.
“Here, let me.” He took the container from her. Then, seemingly for fun, he swung the container like it weighed nothing.
April glared at him. “Which one’s mine?” she asked, pointing at the two tents that had been erected side-by-side next to the picnic tables.
Rory gestured to the blue tent. “We bought that one for you and Miranda. You’re not going to bed now, are you?”
She nodded.
“But you haven’t eaten.”
“I’m fine.” April stomach was close to rumbling, but she didn’t care. She wanted to sleep so this day from hell would end.
Rory led her to the jeep and found her a sleeping bag and a foam mattress, then handed her a torch.
“In case of bears?” she asked.
“No,” he said gently. “For the washrooms at night. And please don’t worry about bears or the cougars. We should never have gone on about them so much.”
April took the torch from him and felt a flash of gratitude, which she put down to tiredness. Her arms still ached from carrying the water container.
She went to the tent, unzipped it, and crawled inside. Then she laid out her foam mattress and her sleeping bag. Normally before she bed, she undertook an elaborate skincare routine. But not tonight. She folded the corset into a makeshift pillow, then crawled fully dressed into the sleeping bag. She was facing downhill but was long past caring. A rock dug into her hip. She closed her eyes and within a few minutes, she mercifully fell asleep.
Chapter Eight
Rory woke the next morning and stretched out in his sleeping bag. He’d had the sleep of angels. There were no damn mosquitoes buzzing around like there were in the Yukon, and it wasn’t crazy hot either.
He turned and glanced at Dan’s sleeping bag. It was empty. Rory slivered out of his own sleeping bag, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and ducked out of the tent. He stopped. April stood at the fire pit. She was so intent on what she was doing that she hadn’t noticed him. Her dark hair was tangled into knots and she had raccoon-eyes from her smeared makeup, but she still looked cute. In fact, he thought, it was hard to imagine a time when she wouldn’t look cute.
She was ripping pages out of a guide book to Canada and scrunching them into balls, which she placed in the fire pit. Rory guessed that she was going to try to lit a fire. Rip. She tore out another page from the guidebook. She seemed to be enjoying herself, like she was launching her own personal attack on his country.
He shifted position and stepped on a log, which cracked under his feet.
She whipped around, her eyes wide. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought you were a bear.”
Rory strolled over to the fire pit. “Need any help?”
She seemed about to refuse, then shrugged. “Oh, all right. Actually, I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.”
“I would never have guessed.”
She laughed, and at that moment, it felt like they’d reached some kind of truce between them.
He had an awesome time showing her what to do—how to build kindling around the balls of paper and how to arrange pieces of wood around the kindling in a pyramid shape. He handed her the lighter. This was her big moment. She crouched down, sparked the lighter, and held the flame to the paper balls. They went up at once. She kept watching. She seemed to be holding her breath like she was willing the fire to transfer to the wood. After several seconds, the wood caught fire.
She squealed. “Look.” She pointed at the fire. “Look, I did it. I’m a twisted firestarter.”
“Huh?”
She laughed. “It’s a line from an old song.”
He found himself smiling back at her. “Where are the others?” he asked.
“Dan’s taken Miranda to the beach. Apparently there’s a beach near here.”
“It’s called Long Beach. I’ll show you after breakfast.”
“Ooh, what’s for breakfast? I’m starving.” She seemed chirpy, not stuck-up at all.
“Bison burgers,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
He shook his head. “No, sausages from Safeway.”
Her eyes twinkled. “My first Canadian sausage.”
Rory was speechless.
Chapter Nine
Breakfast was okay, April thought. Although obviously the whole vacation was its own unique form of torture. They cooked sausages on roasting forks over the fire and ate them in a sandwich made from doorsteps of wholegrain bread and tomatoes that were so juicy it was like eating liquid sunshine.
Rory was acting quite nice now that he’d dropped his arrogant attitude, but things changed over their second sausage sandwich when he asked her if she had a boyfriend.
She shook her head. “Not at the moment. I only date famous people.”
Rory spluttered. He seemed in danger of spitting his sausage back into the fire. “Say that again,” he said.
“I only date famous people … footballers, fashion designers.”
“Why?”
“Well.” April hesitated. She was starting to feel uncomfortable. “It’s good for my brand.”
“Your brand?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “I write a fashion column. I have twenty-five thousand followers on Twitter, so yes, I am a brand. And it’s important for my brand to be connected to the right kind of person.”
Rory’s eyes glowed. He was listening very carefully. She was aware that she had a hundred and ten percent of his attention. “So,” he said. “Why haven’t you married one of these famous people? Why haven’t you had a famous baby yet? Surely that would also be good for your brand.”
“Because most famous people are dickheads.”
Rory laughed. “You’re priceless,” he gasped at last. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.
April glared at him. He was always laughing at her, the pig. And anyway, what did he know about brands?
They cleared away their breakfast things in silence. April vowed that she’d never speak to him again. Before they left for the beach, she reread the brochure from the ranger about being bear-aware. She put all of the cooking equipment and the food containers into the Range Rover. Then she scooped up the tea towels, as well as Miranda’s sweater—all of which, the leaflet warned, might have food smells on them that could attract bears—and threw them into the trunk.
They set off toward the beach, following a path through the trees, then stepped out onto a cliff. She stared down at the beach way below and gasped. It was the most amazing beach she’d ever seen. It was massive—no wonder peopl
e called it Long Beach. It stretched so far she could barely see the other end of the bay. The sheer scale of it was mesmerizing.
Mist came off the ocean. The waves rolled in, breaker after breaker, and crashed against the shore, flinging up columns of spray.
“Do you like it?” Rory asked.
April wrinkled her nose. Like? It wasn’t the right word for how she felt about the beach. It was so primal it had an unsettling effect on her.
“Now I get it,” she said.
“Get what?”
“The big deal about Canada.”
He smiled. “Oh, so you get my country now, do you?”
He reached out his hand. For a second she had no idea what he was doing. Then she laughed. He was trying to give her a high five. Talk about North American.
Chapter Ten
Of course Rory had been to Long Beach a bunch of times before, but it was kind of cool to see it through April’s eyes. They went for a walk along the sand, and she couldn’t get over the number of washed-up logs, bleached from the salt. She grabbed one of the meter-long strands of seaweed and twirled it around and around. When he pointed out the bald eagles circling above, she almost seemed to lose her mind.
She got out her phone and snapped hundreds of photos. Then she sulked because there was no cell phone coverage, so she couldn’t post them to Instagram or tweet about them. Rory suggested she do this later. But according to her, Tweets were only good if they were happening real time. The events had to be live. And even though he didn’t agree with her, it was hard not to get caught up in her enthusiasm.
They left the beach and hiked up the path to the cliff then headed into the forest. Rory stopped to use the pit latrine and waved April on ahead.
When he reached their campsite, she was already there. She rushed up to him, practically dancing. It was like she’d lucked out on the Lotto Max.
“Rory, look.” She was so excited she could barely get the words out. “Look what we’ve got.”
She held out a square of laminated paper. When Rory took it, he saw that it was a certificate from the ranger. It had been awarded to them for keeping their campsite clean and tidy, so that it didn’t attract bears
April pulled out of her phone and started taking photos of the certificate. “See, Rory,” she said. “We’re bear-aware. It says so right here. Would you believe it? We’re actually bear-aware.”
Chapter Eleven
April stood by Miranda at a large sink outside the toilet block with a tea towel at the ready. She’d elected to do the drying rather than the washing, because she decided it would be kinder on her manicure. As she waited for Miranda to pass her a plate, she breathed in the smell of grilling chicken and heard voices and caught snatches of laughter. Lights from the other campsites twinkled through the fronds of the pine trees.
They’d had a brilliant day—not that she’d ever admit it to Rory. First, there had been the high of the certificate. Then Rory had taken them all to Chesterman’s beach, where he and Dan had gone surfing. April had seen seals bobbing in the water and had picked a purple starfish out of the rock pools. The roar of the waves had mingled with the smell of salt from the ocean.
Miranda reached into the sink and pulled a tin plate out of the sudsy water. She wiped off steak fat with a cloth before handing the plate to April.
“Hey,” she said. “I’ve got a favor to ask. Mind if we switch tents tonight?”
April almost dropped the plate. “What? You want me to share with Rory? No way. No, don’t give me that look.”
Miranda’s eyes were big and round and pleading. It was the same look she’d given April all those years ago when she’d wanted them to skip school from Miss Taylor’s class. And it was the same look she’d used when she’d begged them to sneak, underage, into the Deptford nightclub. Even though the look was many years old, April realized—to her dismay—that it had lost none of its power.
April glanced away and busied herself with drying the plate. She was rubbing it so hard she was in danger of destroying the enamel.
“No,” she said, still rubbing. “I won’t share a tent with Rory. There’s absolutely no way.”
Chapter Twelve
Rory lay in his sleeping bag and listened to April’s exaggerated breathing as she lay next to him, rigid, in her own sleeping bag. She’d clearly stayed up as late as she could—long after Dan and Miranda had gone to bed and all of the wood had been used up and the flames in the fire pit had burned into embers.
She did another round of breathing.
“You’ve got it wrong,” he whispered. “People who are asleep don’t breathe that quickly.”
To his surprise, she giggled.
He loved the sound. It was like water bubbling down a stream. He tried to think of something funny to say so he could hear her giggle again, but he couldn’t come up with anything. Soon her breath slowed, then deepened.
He must have fallen asleep, too, because the next thing he knew, rain rattled against the sides of the tent.
April’s voice cut through the darkness. “Rory,” she hissed. “It’s raining.”
“I know,” Rory said.
“But it’s really raining.”
“It sounds worse than it is.”
“It feels like our tent is about to float away. Rory! The tent has a hole in it.”
Rory frowned. “It can’t. We just bought it.”
“Then you can’t have put it up properly.”
“Are you touching the side?” Rory asked. The second he said it, he knew the answer. Of course, she was touching the side.
“Rory! Rory! My sleeping bag’s wet.” Her voice had a hysterical edge.
“You can share mine if you like.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“I’ll unzip my sleeping bag and lay it across us.”
“No,” she said. But the “no” had lost its fervor.
Moments went by. All Rory could hear was the rain hammering onto the tent. The wind picked up and started to howl. He cursed himself. What an idiot. He should have put a tarp over the top. He knew what the weather could be like in Tofino.
He heard a rustling sound, then the squeal of a zipper. He smiled, unzipped his sleeping bag, and spread it out flat like a duvet. April shuffled beside him. She lay under the sleeping bag, not touching him, as far away from him as possible.
“You’re only wearing boxer shorts.” Her tone was accusing.
“That’s how I like to sleep.”
He pictured her inching closer and imagined her breasts pressed against his chest. His cock stirred beneath his shorts.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “Stupid jet lag. Can you tell me a story?”
“I don’t know any stories.”
“Dan said that you own a tree-planting company way in the country.”
Rory grinned. He’d never heard of the Yukon being referred to as “the country” before. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“What’s it like?”
“The Yukon?” Rory thought for a second.
Then he told her about the layers of permafrost that covered the ground, and about the locals who sat in cafés drinking endless cups of drip coffee. He spoke about the hot springs and the spawning Coho salmon, and about how in the summer, the days seemed to last forever because the sun hardly left the sky.
She listened and asked questions and she made him feel—shit it was crazy—like he was an adventurer, a voyager with tales of a mystical land.
“Do you think you’d like to visit?” he found himself asking.
“What would I wear?”
“The corset, of course.”
She laughed. “And you’d never come to London?”
Rory drew a breath. Was she inviting him to come? It half sounded like an invitation. “I’ve been to London a heap of times,” he said. “I’ve got relatives there on my mom’s side.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “So you’re practically English? Go on, let me hear you
r English accent.”
Rory laughed. And at that second, he wanted it to keep to raining forever because he liked lying next to this crazy British girl.
Chapter Thirteen
April crawled out of the tent onto the sodden soil, adding a new layer of dirt to her Stella McCartney trainers. She blinked. Sunlight cut through the branches and fell in patches onto the ground. The storm had blown away, and it was a glorious July day. Everything smelled like it had been washed clean.
She pulled her damp sleeping bag out of the tent and laid it out to dry on the moss in an area of sunshine. Then she wandered over to the others who stood around the barbecue on the picnic table where they watched Dan grill bacon.
Rory turned to her. His hair was rumpled, and blond stubble shadowed his face. “Hey,” he said.
She blushed. Suddenly, she felt awkward around him. Nothing had happened in the tent the previous night, but somehow the stories they’d shared had felt weirdly intimate.
Dan used the tongs to flip the bacon. The smell was so enticing that her stomach growled. “What should we do today?” he asked. “Go to the swimming holes?”
“That sounds like fun,” Miranda said.
Rory hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “They might have a lot of water after all that rain.”
“Oh, please,” Miranda said. “Go on, it’ll be a laugh and you’ll get to see April in her swimming costume.”
Rory’s eyes twinkled.
April blushed so hard, her earlobes burned.
****
Soon, they were driving up the road toward the swimming holes. April sat in the passenger seat of the jeep next to Rory. Miranda and Dan were in their usual position, snuggled together in the back. A heat haze shimmered up from the tarmac. The sky was an unwavering shade of indigo.
