Out of the Woods - 11. Chapelhill

An hour before the party I perched on the edge of the sink, staring into the mirror. In my hand was a bottle of hair mousse. According to the bottle, the instructions were simple: you washed your hair, conditioned it, rinsed it—and then, without retching, you simply squirted the mousse onto your hands and massaged it into your scalp for dark, shining, frizz-free curls.

Job done. And yet…

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to spray the mousse onto my palms. I couldn’t even bear the thought of rubbing my hands together knowing they were slathered in the stuff let alone, as if it was perfectly normal and I did it casually every other day, run my hands through my hair.

It would touch my face—the locks of my hair, coated with mousse, would touch my face. It would touch my head. It was on my head.

I looked pale in the mirror; I always looked pale, obviously, but I looked scared and pale. I looked terrified—who is terrified of hair mousse? Victoria does it all the time—Victoria doesn’t leave the house without hair mousse, won’t leave the house without hair mousse, can’t bring herself to do it—how did she come to be the complete opposite to me? Her preoccupation with looking attractive is a familial thing, so deeply ingrained as to be almost hereditary, everyone had it; so how did I develop this particular phobia? How is it even possible to feel nauseous at the thought of anything touching your head? Could it really be because my mother forced me to shave it until I turned seventeen?

Do they even have a word for such a fear?

I took a deep breath and squeezed the smallest amount onto my palm, wincing at the sound it made as it oozed through the nozzle. It wasn’t a mousse, really, so much as a cream. It was like moisturiser, really—just like moisturiser. I had watched my grandmother moisturise her hands throughout my childhood; surely, this was no different. Victoria did it all the time—if Victoria could do it then I could do it. I can do everything she can do, and more.

I squeezed more out. I rubbed it into my palms. I conditioned my hair, sometimes, the sort that you rub into your scalp after shampooing and wash off again; and this was the same, almost, except that you didn’t wash it off.

It just stayed there, unseen, invisible, coating every strand insidiously, without your knowledge, so subtle that you could forget about it for hours at a time and only remember when a brief lingering hint of the smell caught your nostrils at the sudden turn of your head; it stayed there, clinging to every lock and strand, lying against your forehead and over your ears and temples.

It wouldn’t feel any different. My hair was wet now, and lying against my forehead, lying over my ears and temples. And, in ten minutes when the deed was done, it would lie in the very same place, and it would feel exactly the same.

I stood up to Harry Stanley only that afternoon—Harry Stanley, who could easily reduce me to a boneless heap of bruises on the floor. This was surely nothing compared to that.

But it made squelching noises as I rubbed my hands together, and it was cold and sticky when I ran my fingers through my hair. Oh my god, it felt horrible. I couldn’t let it dry like that, I knew, or else I’d throw up.

I leaned over the bathtub and rinsed it off again, fighting the urge to retch. But rinsing wasn’t enough, I knew; and so I shampooed, and shampooed again, and conditioned, and wandered into my bedroom to sit for a while.

I sat until I stopped feeling shaky, and then I got dressed.

The party was in a part of town I rarely went to. It was the strangest, most contradictory place: it was full of beautiful old terraces, large and stately, its streets so tightly lined with venerable oaks that in summer it seemed almost shady to the point of being dark and the streets echoed with creaks and groans and whispers. If you judged it on the beauty of its buildings it ought to have been one of the most expensive parts of the city but, for some reason, it wasn’t. Crime was a big deal in Chapelhill, as was delinquency, drugs, and all manner of unsavoury antisocial behaviours.

It had been dark for hours when I left for the party. I had struggled to find something to wear, deciding from the address that I’d be sensible to avoid flashy labels; but more so was that I had felt horribly delicate, like crystal, teetering at the edge of a table and primed to fall and shatter, disturbed from that afternoon and from my experiment with the hair mousse.

Why had I thought to experiment at all?

The house I pulled up at was an end terrace, as beautiful as I had expected. Most of its windows were boarded with MDF rather than glass.

Someone had sprayed, not very imaginatively, the word cock on the door. But the music coming from inside sounded good and so, with only the slightest hesitation, I knocked; and when no answer came, I walked right in.

I could smell marijuana. I never smoked, but the smell always appealed more than cigarettes. Vodka bottles covered a floor so filthy it was difficult to see the tiled, chequerboard marble and, disregarding the bottles, the entrance hall was empty.

The living room was crowded. On the floor, pleasantly sprawled by the sofa, were the emo kids I’d met in town. One of them sat between Mark’s legs as he sat above on the sofa, sharing a joint around, and the kid between his legs nudged him and pointed to me, ushering me over.

‘Hey, it’s pretty-boy,’ he said, his voice slurry and his smile wide and slow.

Clearly he considered his nickname more imaginative than I did.

‘Hey, Elijah,’ said Mark with a grin. He fished behind him and pulled out a beer. ‘You want?’

I didn’t want—not even a little. I hate beer. And I could tell, from the way conversation amongst the group subtly quietened, that it was a test of sorts anyway. Not one of them drank anything weaker than vodka and mixers, and a bottle of what appeared to be absinthe lay on the floor, so green it appeared to glow with its own sickly light.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘What else have you got?’

Mark’s grin widened. They fetched a plastic cup from somewhere, though nobody seemed to move that I could tell, and they each poured some of their drink into it. By the time they were done I held in my hands a vague, murky substance that I supposed to be mostly vodka; to my dismay what hit me the most was gin. ‘Drinking game, drinking game!’ one of them cried, and Mark laughed. He slid off the sofa to join the circle beside me.

An empty cup was placed in the middle and around it a pack of cards arranged in a ring. The music thudded in my ears like a heartbeat, and I began to drink. When someone cried King’s Cup! I groaned, as everyone did; but I did so because it was simply what you do when someone suggests King’s Cup. It was an established social norm.

Secretly I was pleased.

Several kids from outside the group joined our circle, which swelled and widened; Tom found a pen and paper and devised the rules. Mark rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation and slung an arm over my shoulder.

‘I didn’t think you’d make it,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d have chickened out.’

I snorted. ‘These guys are no scarier than a pack of naked swimmers, right?’

He laughed. ‘Something like that.’

Even sober, I could scarcely keep up with the rules. The chaos of it was exhilarating; they laughed and screamed at each other, uninhibited and with fierce abandon. Someone pulled a four and everyone stood suddenly and lunged for the nearest wall, pressing themselves flat against it. I was the last to reach it and, amidst delighted chants of ‘down it, down it,’ I was forced to finish my drink. They laughed as I guttered and gasped, and before long I was laughing too.

To my left was a pale, slender girl that I had, through no fault of my own, taken for a boy that afternoon—it had nothing to do with her face and more to do with the fact that she was dressed exactly like the others. She was, in fact, very talkative and, later, very demonstrative. She spent most of the evening trying to stroke my curls, telling me that she’d never seen curls as adorable as mine.

They were friendly, and a world apart from the kids at my school. The kids that played King’s Cup that night were exactly that—kids, having fun.

There was something so refreshing about it.

Mark pulled a ten and frowned. ‘Felix, what are the rules for a ten?’

There was a pause as Felix and a friend pawed over the sticky paper. ‘Gimp,’ he said, grinning gleefully.

Oh, crap.

Mark laughed. ‘No way!’

‘Yup. Gimp.’

I watched the decision play out on his face. I saw, already knowing the outcome, his eyes as they flitted from each member of the circle, drawing ever closer; and then that final moment of realisation, as if the decision wasn’t a decision at all but an unwritten law that had always been, just waiting in aether since the night began—that, despite how it seemed, he had as little choice in choosing me as I had in being chosen. I watched the smile that pulled at his lips.

‘Him,’ he said, pointing at me. ‘He’s my gimp. You’re mine now, pretty-boy.’

And so early in the evening too.

‘Yes, gimp-master.’

‘You know what this mean, right?’

I sighed. ‘Yes. Gimp-master.’

His blue eyes twinkled wickedly. ‘Good. Then get naked.’

‘But he’s got a date!’ someone cried. ‘Doesn’t that mean if he gets naked, Chloe has to get naked too?’

Chloe, whose countless freckles made her seem almost tanned, looked horrified. ‘You can’t expect me to get naked!’

‘Oh, I think we can.’

‘I’ll go topless, but that’s it.’

‘Both of you down to your underwear,’ said Mark, grinning deliriously. He turned back to me and leered. ‘Strip, gimp-boy, strip!’

I sighed as they began to chant. The pale girl beside me roughly tugged at my top. It was cold—it was cold, and I was well aware that, disregarding my face, there wasn’t anything spectacular about my body except my arse, and I was sat on that. Personally I’d have rather it was Mark to get naked.

‘Strip,’ said Mark in a commanding voice. ‘And make it sexy.’

Before long I wasn’t the only one missing clothing, and those kids who weren’t playing, who talked instead over the music in corners or lounged against the sofa, began to notice. Our circle continued to swell. I could feel the heat coming from Mark’s body, his shoulder now bare and lightly touching mine; if I was subtle I could sneak glances at his chest, which was smooth and almost downy, his skin like golden silk. He was broader than me. He was perfect, and he’d catch me looking occasionally and smile.

Things were moving too fast; or rather, nothing was happening faster than the norm, but I had the impression of being slow, of standing still while the others gradually left me behind. I was entranced by the fine shimmering hair on his arms, lighter than the skin beneath it, and the heat that radiated from him as he leaned over to pick up a card; the alcohol, the hazy warmth, the delicious glowing nimbus of his proximity—all made me stupid, and I felt myself slipping into a languid, semi-dreaming state. He brushed my knee when he reached for his drink, and I sighed.

Someone drew a five, and everyone groaned. One by one, with much rolling of the eyes and muttering, each raised three fingers into the air.

‘Keep up,’ Mark whispered into my ear—and I barely heard him over the sensation of his breath on my skin, over the way it caused the dark locks of my hair to faintly flutter, over the way that I began to shiver, no longer conscious enough to prevent myself from leaning in towards him. I heard him laugh and felt him gently take hold of my shoulders, pushing me back upright; then he took one of my hands and raised it into the air, prising three fingers upwards. I silently reeled at the touch of his hand over mine.

How strange, I thought, that such a thing could have such an effect on me! Because it was all I could see, his hand around mine, and it was all I could feel. All else fell away until there was only that image in focus; and my vision sharpened around it, and my senses heightened on it, and the minute feel of the grooves of his fingerprint was sharp and excruciating against my skin, and the interplay of the twitching muscles of his fingers became the only rhythm to which I was really attuned, and it was all I could think of; and the heat of his pulse was burning.

It wasn’t love, I knew. It was desire, and alcohol, and warm air and lack of sleep. It was the unseen rush of hormones through my veins. But it was easy to believe that it might be something more—whatever it was it was new to me, and by its sweet and crippling nature I had very little choice in the matter.

‘We’re playing I Have Never,’ he said with a smile. ‘Andrew drew a five. You know how to play?’

‘Of course I know how to play,’ I managed to say.

Mark laughed. He let go of me after mussing my hair. Someone cleared their throat.

‘I have never… I have never used toys.’

The girl beside me rolled her eyes and lowered her finger. As did Felix. The boy beside him, with a rose tattoo on his neck, nudged Felix playfully on his side. Mark’s fingers stayed raised, and about half of the girls playing lowered theirs. For the longest moment I found myself repeating the question in my mind, unable to come upon the answer.

I had never used toys.

‘I have never cheated,’ said the pale girl next to me, looking as if, were anyone to dare lower a finger, she would pull out a gun and shoot them right where they stood.

I forced myself awake. I had cheated—I was aware enough to know that.

Even so, I didn’t lower a finger.

‘I have never had a threesome,’ said the next boy, apparently only so that he could lower his own finger with a wide, triumphant grin.

I had never had a threesome.

‘Hmm…’ said the boy with the rose tattoo. ‘I have never…’ He scrunched his eyes up tightly, as if doing so would help a slow brain move faster. ‘I have never… Done it in public.’

No. I had never done it in public. I looked around me, wondering how many of them had. Four out of the twelve of us. Felix had; the boy with the rose tattoo had; Mark hadn’t. One of the girls opposite me pouted.

‘That’s not very clear,’ she said seriously. ‘What do you mean? Do you mean, done it with other people around? Or done it in a public place?’

Actually, it was a valid question. Did a car count? I had done it in a car.

The boy with the rose tattoo rolled his eyes. ‘In a public place, of course. How many of us would actually do it with other people watching?’

‘Does a car count?’ I asked.

‘A car where?’

‘In a car park.’

He thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head.

Felix smiled. ‘My turn.’

A couple of people groaned.

‘Okay,’ he said, frowning as he feigned the process of thinking of a question. It was a shoddy attempt. It didn’t take any particular powers of deductive reasoning to guess at his question, when you considered that he'd been leering at me all night. ‘I have never…’

Another pause. And then—

‘I have never sucked off a boy.’

Felix lowered his own finger. The girls playing rolled their eyes and several obediently put down a finger. With Felix’s pretty blue eyes fixed on me, I lowered a finger too. One down, two fingers to go.

And when I turned to look at Mark, he had lowered a finger too.

Seeing my expression, he winked.

‘In a car park,’ he said with a smile.

I stood up, mildly surprised that I was still capable of doing so, and headed for the bathroom. The house was empty beyond the living room; it made a pleasant change from the headiness of the smoke and the sounds of laughter. I realised too late that I didn’t, in fact, know where the bathroom was; since I was reluctant to crawl back and ask I wondered a little, my head pleasantly buzzing, enjoying the comparative quiet. It was cooler here, without so many bodies.

I never did find the bathroom, but beyond the kitchen the back door was open. I felt the breeze first, a beautifully cold touch against my skin, like moonlight; I followed it, suddenly longing for the feel of fresh air on my face. It was windy and the tall trees that covered Chapelhill blew in unison, more heard than seen—great aching creaks and snaps and that deep, thunderous groan. The garden was long and narrow and overgrown. It was unlit and empty, but filled with movement as the long grasses swayed in the darkness; the night air smelled like winter. It was my favourite kind of night.

How long would it take for him to follow me? Because he would follow me, I knew. I had watched his head turn as I passed, as if pulled by unseen strings. It was only a matter of when.

And whether I froze to death first.

I found a corner somewhere and relieved myself. He waited for me by the back door, leaning against the wall. A joint glowed softly in his hands.

He held it out for me and smiled, and when I refused he only smiled wider.

‘I’m surprised,’ he said. ‘I always took you for a heavy drug user.’

I shrugged.

‘Weed just doesn’t do it for me.’

‘No?’

No. The idea of drugs revolts me.

‘Nope. Give me opium any day.’

‘Opium, huh?’

He moved closer until I could almost feel the heat from his body, and I could almost feel his breath against my cheek. ‘So what else does it for you?’

Sucking off boys in car parks, I thought. I almost said it. It was there, balanced on my lips, propelled by my ache for the touch of his skin and by the alcohol that tugged at my hold on my tongue; and I knew where it would lead, if I said it. I could almost see his smile widening, could almost see him move in closer; could almost feel the unbearable heat of his fingers on me; and I’d collapse against him and let him overwhelm me until I was swimming in him, drowning in the touch of his golden skin, awash with that sharp, blissful delirium—we’d fuck in one of the bedrooms, and tomorrow I’d hate myself.

I’m not sure what it was that made me change my mind, but suddenly I didn’t want it. Perhaps it was the breeze, which was so achingly clean and beautiful. I shrugged.

‘Nights like these,’ I said. ‘With that nighttime smell and the wind. That does it for me.’

I felt his focus intangibly shift. I felt the subtle change in his stance, although nothing really changed in itself, it was certainly nothing noticeable—nothing was different except that suddenly he stopped, and suddenly he was listening. He began to smile.

‘Do you like the wind?’

‘Yeah. I like the wind, and the rain, and thunder. All the bad weathers.’

‘How come?’

I snorted. ‘It’s stupid.’

‘Tell me.’

‘They…they make me feel small.’

‘Small?’

‘Yes. They make me realise that there’s bigger things than me in the world. It’s a nice feeling.’

His smile widened and he nodded. I didn’t know if he understood but I don’t suppose that really mattered. He lifted his head to the sky as if to experience the feeling I had described and, without turning back to look at me, his hand found my hand. ‘That’s a really nice thing you said.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes. I’m glad you told me.’

His hand was bigger than mine, and stronger, but his grip was as gentle as if he held a child or a butterfly—gentle and calm and solid, reassuringly present and unchanging. I held it too tightly but he didn’t notice—he wasn’t even aware of the turmoil that swept my mind. Why would he? Why would I open up to him like that? Because, now that I had, I hated that he knew—even though it was such a tiny, insignificant thing I had told him, a single thought in an endless ocean of thoughts, it felt like I had given him something too tender. The only thing preventing me from running was the gentle touch of his fingers over mine.

It was so windy: a fierce, feral roar.

‘It is a nice night,’ he said, still smiling, his hair blowing wildly, his eyes still turned towards the sky. He turned back to me suddenly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

My heart quickened. ‘Where?’

‘Over the street, behind the houses, there’s a big field where kids walk their dogs. Let’s go there.’

An empty field, in the dead of night. With no one around but the swaying trees.

It sounded wonderful.

I nodded. Of course, I was also practically naked and beginning to shiver. Mark grinned.

‘Wait right here.’

He fled back into the house and returned, not with my clothes, as I’d naively assumed, but a double duvet, stolen from one of the bedrooms. Laughing madly, we made our way around the house and over the street, wrapped in it, hearing the dogs bark out of sight; through an old broken gate where Mark hoisted me onto his shoulders and I clambered over the fence.

—And into the darkness. There was no moon, and the streetlights couldn’t penetrate here; my body was plunged into a black so opaque as to be a substance of itself, like water. I could feel the ground below me and I could feel the wind as it blew against me and whispered through the groaning trees but there was nothing else, no sun, no stars, no sky, not even the grass beneath my feet. The dizzying sense of space came only from the knowledge of its existence, despite that I couldn’t see it, and the wind—it filled me up with a fierce and explosive joy and the urge to run for miles through the dark, leaving the roads and the walls and the streetlights behind me.

And then Mark was there, his bare chest ghostly pale and his jean-clad lower half invisible. I opened the duvet for him and he wrapped himself around me, and we began to walk, my head on his shoulder.

He was so warm.

We walked in silence before settling under a creaking tree. The alcohol made my veins thrum and I was half-delirious with the darkness and the chill wind, the softness of the duvet and Mark’s bare shoulder against mine; and I found myself moved by the urge to touch him, not sexually, but rather to explore him and what it was to be him, in the same way that I’d wander the woods to learn my way through.

In the dark it was so easy to become overwhelmed by his closeness. It was so easy to believe, without any self-persuasion, that he was the only thing in existence.

‘I’m gay,’ he said.

I looked up at the vague, pale expanse of his face, surprised.

‘I guessed that.’

We were whispering.

He laughed. ‘No one knows in school. They all know back at the party, of course. They’re from my old school, and they’re great guys. I really liked it there.’

I thought of how strange it was that Mark had an entire life to himself, entirely disconnected to my own. Despite our little cotton-polyester-blend fort in the dark, and despite that we were so close, entwined limb by limb like the tangled roots of two separate trees, Mark hadn’t known of my existence until a few small months ago.

His hand was so warm on my neck.

‘My dad was fucking around. My mum found out and fleeced him for everything he had.’ I felt him shrug. ‘With all that money she decided to put me in a better school.’

‘Do you like it here?’

He thought for a minute. ‘It’s getting better.’

I reached over and kissed his cheek, which was soft and warm and smelled of him, despite never having been aware that he smelled before. There was no way to quantify it; he smelled of himself, as Chris smelled of Chris and Tom, whose smell I dreamed of even on those nights I didn’t dream of him, smelled of Tom. My lips were still against his cheek and I left them there, feeling him lean further into me, glad that he couldn’t seem me blushing in the darkness—because I was never demonstrative with guys I was intimate with. I was always the mute recipient of affection with everyone except Tom.

The sudden urge to kiss him left me confused.

‘That’s why I felt so bad about Jamie,’ he was saying. ‘That’s why I was so angry at myself that I didn’t do anything. I just stood around with all the others just…watching.’ He shuddered, his face contorted by it, the loathing in his voice very clear.

I found myself wondering, mildly, whether his similarity to Tom was the only reason I liked him—because they were similar. Their goodness seemed to shine through their skin. As his lips shifted along my jaw to kiss the hollow under my ear, I wondered whether Mark was nothing more than a strange replacement for Tom, who I could never have. I couldn’t see him in the dark, and the fact that I couldn’t irritated me—because I was suddenly convinced that if the answer was anywhere, it would be there. Surely if I saw him, I’d know.

‘That’s why I’m so grateful to you.’

I shook it off.

‘There’s nothing to be grateful for.’

‘No, there is. You’re a good guy, Laurence. Elijah.’

The darkness made it impossible to see the faint blush and the apologetic cringe that accompanied his ‘Elijah’—the lingering, insidious trace of a former school and a former life, a life without privileges and uniforms, long before I’d known him. I reached out to place a hand on his cheek, imagining I could feel the flush of his embarrassment radiating there; I couldn’t, but it was enough. A veil was lifted from my eyes, and Tom fell away, and I felt a rush of guilt that I’d ever thought Mark could be anything other than himself.

I crushed a kiss into the hollow under his jaw, above his Adam’s apple, and I rubbed at his nipple; I squirmed on his lap and slipped my tongue into his ear. He gasped. I ran my hands over his body, feeling the taut muscles under his skin, feeling his erection press against my ass through his jeans. He groaned against me; but he took hold of the roaming hand and kissed it chastely, and his fingers untwined from my waist to lie on my shoulder.

‘No, Elijah,’ he said. He sounded upset.

The agony of parting—of tearing, rending, the ripping of flesh from flesh. As he moved away from me it was like I was pulled apart.

‘I don’t fuck around,’ he said firmly.

Of course he didn’t. Now that he’d told me I realised nothing had ever made more sense—I suddenly wasn’t sure how I hadn’t seen it coming.

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged. ‘My… I just don’t want to be one of those people. When I find it, I want to keep it. It just seems empty any other way.’

Tentatively, it seemed to me, his hand began an infinite double-loop over the skin of my shoulder. There was a question in there somewhere.

It made me shiver. He wasn’t looking at me; he followed the trail around my shoulder intently, focused on the feel of my skin under his fingertips. His fingers traced infinity over my skin and he could easily have stayed there and watched, I knew, for as long as I let him—and I would let him, I knew, because if I didn’t I’d probably hurt him. I’d let him no matter how much his fingers were making me uncomfortable.

Only it wasn’t his fingers, of course. Obviously, it was what he had said.

Because it was empty any other way. I’d always known it.

‘But your chances of finding it…’

‘Are just as good as anyone else’s. And even if they weren’t, that’s no excuse. I’m not going to fuck every guy I meet just because there’s a chance I might end up alone.’

I’d often wondered how easy it might be to become a nymphomaniac—how far I’d have to twist myself from my current position to become addicted to sex. I’d always reached the same conclusion: not far, in theory, but in practice I’d have nothing to gain. There were clear similarities, of course. But while I was beautiful I wouldn’t need any other validation.

‘Sex feels good,’ I said, a pathetic interjection, even though I knew it was true on only the lowest of levels, and even though I knew how Mark would reply.

‘No, it doesn’t.’

Suddenly I was tired. It was cold, and it was windy, and I could feel the ache of it seeping into my head, numbing my ears—gone was the mystery, gone was the romance, gone was the fierce flow of life that the darkness had caused to thrum through my veins. Suddenly I no longer desired to feel small, because it felt too close to feeling lonely. On some strange impulse, I leaned over and pressed my lips into the skin of his neck. ‘I can’t have a relationship with you,’ I whispered against him. ‘I can’t do it.’

He nodded. ‘It’s okay.’

‘No, it’s not about that. You don’t want a relationship with me… I’m crazy.’

Once I’d said it I ached to snatch it back. But there was a sudden surge, a guttural, gasping release, that I realised too late to be my own breath—it mirrored a similar movement inside of me, of a terrible magnitude, a sudden upward rush like a sob; up through my chest, up through my throat, bringing a flush to my face and a spell of sickening dizziness. He didn’t know, I knew—he didn’t know what I meant. He had no idea, despite his knack for seeing through me. But how much more immediate it seemed now that I’d said it out loud! I tried to move away from him, but there wasn’t anywhere to go.

He didn’t say anything. His hand continued stroking my shoulder, and after a moment all tension in my body unravelled, and I collapsed into his chest.

‘We’re going to be friends,’ he said suddenly.

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I want to be friends with you.’

We fell silent.

‘There’s school tomorrow,’ I said.

He took my hand.

‘I’m going to have to face the swim team.’

‘Yes. But it’ll be over within the week, you’ll see.’

I had said the very same thing to Jamie not so long ago. How strange it seemed, to be hearing it from this direction!

‘…And you’ve still got Sophie. You really haven’t anything to worry about.’