Loveless(94)

And then she grinned back and shouted, ‘What the fuck?’

I turned to everyone on the boat. Sunil, Jess and Rooney had picked up their instruments, ready to begin. They were waiting for me.

‘Ready?’ I said.

They nodded. I counted them in.

And then, with three accompanists, I stood on a boat on the River Wear and sang ‘Your Song’ – the version specifically from Moulin Rouge – to Pip Quintana, who didn’t yet know me as well as I wished she did, but despite that, was one of my favourite people I had ever met.





We didn’t actually perform the full three minutes thirty-nine seconds of ‘Your Song’, instead keeping it to a safe ninety seconds so the whole thing didn’t become too embarrassing and awkward for anyone involved. But I was probably still going to look back on this and cringe for the rest of my life.

When the song ended, we’d drawn quite a large crowd of onlookers from Durham’s town centre, and Pip’s smile was so wide and bright that all I could think about was that she looked like the sun. Our performance had done its job.

Jason nudged me in the side.

I looked at him, feeling how much my face was burning. ‘What?’

‘You need to ask the question.’

Oh yeah.

I grabbed the megaphone we’d brought with us from the bottom of the rowing boat – carefully, so I didn’t just fall into the water, which was becoming an ever-increasing danger by this point – and held it up.

‘Pip Quintana,’ I said, and it came out so loud through the megaphone that I made myself jump.

Pip looked incredibly flustered and still did not seem to know what was going on. ‘Yes?’

‘Will you be my college wife?’

The look on her face told me that she was not expecting that question.

Then she smacked her palm on to her forehead. She realised.

‘YES!’ she shrieked at me. ‘AND I HATE YOU!’

And then people just started applauding. All the random people who’d paused on the bridge and by the river to watch – a lot of students, but also local residents of Durham too – clapped, and a few of them cheered. It was a whole thing. Like in a movie. I prayed none of them had filmed it.

And then Pip started to cry.

‘Oh fuck,’ I said. ‘Jason?’

‘Yes?’

‘She’s crying.’

‘Yes, she is.’

I started patting Jason on the arm. ‘We need to get to shore.’

Jason grabbed the oars. ‘On it.’

When we got to shore, Pip had already run down the steps from the bridge, made her way down the path and on to the grassy riverbank, and when I got out of the boat, she ran into me and hugged me so aggressively that I stumbled backwards, fell, and suddenly both of us were sitting waist-deep in the River Wear.

Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter at all.

‘Why are you like this?’ was the first thing Pip said to me, furiously rubbing tears from her eyes, new ones replacing them just as fast.

‘Like … what?’ I asked, genuinely confused.

Pip shook her head, sitting back from me a little. ‘This.’ She laughed. ‘I never would have done something like this. I’m too much of a dumbass.’

‘You’re not a dumbass.’

‘Oh, I am. Big, big dumbass.’

‘You’re talking to someone who is waist-deep in a river in February right now.’

She grinned. ‘Shall we continue this conversation elsewhere?’

‘That would be nice.’

We ended up getting back into the boat – with Pip, this time – and rowing all the way back to St John’s. Pip was so excited by this that she nearly capsized the boat and it took Jason and me quite a lot of effort to convince her to sit down and stay still, but we made it to college without any accidents.

Rooney sat right at the back, trying not to look at Pip. I noticed Pip glancing back a few times, almost like she might say something to her, but she didn’t.

Before we all disbanded on the college green, I thanked everyone for helping me.

‘All in the spirit of love,’ replied Sunil, slinging an arm round Jess.

He was right, I supposed.

All of this was for love, in one way or another.

Pip and Rooney finally acknowledged each other’s existence when Pip said, ‘You were good … on the tambourine.’

She’d meant it as a genuine compliment, but somehow it sounded like an insult. Rooney just said, ‘Thank you,’ and then mumbled something about having someone to meet in town, tore off her lifejacket, and left before Pip could say anything else.

The last person to say goodbye was Jason. He gave me a tight hug, then walked away, the bottom of his trousers damp and water droplets on his sleeves.

And then it was just Pip and me.

It didn’t even need to be said that Pip would stay and talk with me that afternoon. She just did.

It reminded me of the way we were the first year we met. Age eleven. That was the year we went everywhere with each other, trying to figure out if there was anyone else we could invite into our inner circle, and eventually realising that, for now, it was just us.

I took her up to my bedroom. Rooney wasn’t there – she really had gone into town, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t be back for a while – but our beds were still pushed together, the sheets unmade, and everything from last night came back in a sudden rush. Rooney’s confession. The tears.