He Said/She Said(96)

‘I’m sorry,’ I said feebly. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been wrong, that it had been beautiful, but I knew I was already in damage-limitation territory.

‘I’m sorry too.’ She bent down to angrily lace a silver shoe. ‘I don’t like being taken for a . . . I don’t know, what did you take me for? Actually, I’d rather you didn’t answer that. Thanks for ruining my festival.’

She had her clothes on and the tent unzipped while I was still barefoot in jeans. I followed her into the silvered field. Freezing grass spiked between my toes. I begged her for a mercy I didn’t deserve. ‘Beth!’ I shouted. ‘Please don’t leave it like this!’

But she was gone. The woods that she found so sinister had swallowed her whole. In the sky, clouds raked the ashes of dawn, reminding me why I was here. The coming eclipse seemed diminished by what I had done.

The loose tent flap slapped slowly against the wall in sarcastic applause. Back inside, I put my boots on and gave my clothes a forensic examination, extracting a single curly black hair from the fibres of my sweater. The red sleeping bag bore a faint wet silvery trail where we had been sleeping, the fever of last night reduced to a tawdry little stain. I couldn’t leave it there. I rolled it up again, ready to throw it in the back of the van. I felt like I was clearing up after someone else, someone I didn’t want to know. I felt like I was laundering a crime scene. I tucked the festering sleeping bag under my arm and walked back to our little camp. A few fires smouldered here and there and I thought about throwing the stained bedding on, but I knew it’d go up with a woof and a flare, attracting attention I couldn’t handle. Instead, I threw it into the back of the van, where I couldn’t see or smell it.

There were no sounds coming from the red tent. I unzipped the green one. Our sleeping bags were there, fastened together. The pillow I’d brought down for Laura smelled of her hair, clear as if she were sleeping there, and it seemed to conjure her face for me, but instead of picturing her smile I saw twisted hate. With a judder I understood what it would be like if the things everyone admired about Laura – her cleverness, her principles – were turned on me. She would know in one look what I was. She would leave me in a heartbeat.

It was not just her hurt but her fury that I feared.

I lay back on my bedroll, queasy morning light filtering through the canvas. The walls of my tent contracted and expanded with the breeze like a giant lung. I knew with utter certainty that I would never sleep again.

Mac woke me up what felt like ten seconds later, sticking his head through the zip. His eyes bulged like a cartoon character’s and his tongue was green. I checked my watch: 10 a.m.

‘Kit,’ he croaked. Twenty years of his goading balled inside me; a boast crouched on my tongue. It felt worth it, in those swimming seconds between sleep and consciousness and then, as my focus sharpened, quickly revealed itself to be the second worst idea I’d ever had. I gathered myself just in time.

‘I didn’t expect you up so early,’ I said. The sarcasm was lost on him.

‘Am I fuck. We’re just going to bed now.’ His breath was rank with old tobacco. ‘We went down to the clifftops. We got some really strong visuals. Lasers in the sky. Listen. Can you open up for us, catch the lunchtime crowd?’

‘You’re joking,’ I said. ‘I did a double shift yesterday.’

‘Please, Kit,’ he wheedled. ‘We’ll do the late one tonight. I’m going to actually physically die if I don’t sleep.’ I glared at him. ‘We’ll work the eclipse tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Go on.’

I didn’t go straight to the stall. I felt sheened all over in Beth, and would have paid fifty pounds, never mind five, to stand under hot water and scrub. In the tiny, mud-flecked bathroom up at the farmhouse, I turned the water up so high my skin went scarlet. I scrubbed until the last smear of gold was gone. On the way back, I bought a nondescript khaki top with a hood that covered most of my face, and only then moved with ease through the crowd.

At last the site was beginning to fill up. Burrito Jon was playing loud mariachi band music to drum up custom and it had brought people to our section of the festival. At the tea stall, I took seventy pounds for a morning’s work and pocketed ten for myself to spite Mac. From the moment I fired up the generator I was on full alert, expecting Beth to turn up. I didn’t see her until lunchtime. She’d changed into some weird purple flares and had her hair wrapped in a tatty brown towel. I wouldn’t have noticed her at all but her stillness was conspicuous in the milling crowd. When our eyes clicked together, she turned away. It was only later I realised she hadn’t been after me at all. She had wanted a look at Laura.



Laura walked across the field. I nearly dropped the bag of rubbish I was carrying. Because of her job interview, she’d done something different to her hair, making it hang straight and silky rather than the wiggling waves I was used to. I flashed forward into our future, Laura putting her keys on the table and kicking off work shoes, and me closing the laptop for the night. This unambitious domestic fantasy now seemed like all I wanted from my life, so why did I get the urge to fall at her feet and confess everything? I kissed Laura and tucked her hair behind one ear, because that was the kind of thing I normally did.

‘How’d the interview go?’

‘Ok, I think. We’ll see.’ I could tell by the way she searched me, her eyes cutting star shapes on my face, that she knew something was wrong. She tried to tease me out of myself, little kisses on my ears, her hands around my waist, but I only shrank away. For the first time I understood the compulsion people get, at the edge of a cliff, to throw themselves off. I dredged up small talk about the showers in the farmhouse and the weather forecast, and every forced word was a little hell.