We Own the Sky(7)

“So what did you think?” I said, as we hurried down the stairs toward the cinema bar.

“I hated it,” Anna said. “Every single minute of it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was absolutely awful.”

In the little lobby bar, we sat down at a table next to an antique piano. “It’s funny,” I said, “I thought you were enjoying it.”

“No, I hated it. I found him to be very unpleasant. Traveling all over the place, not letting his family know. He didn’t give two hoots about anyone but himself.”

Two hoots. I imagined for a moment introducing her to my friends back home.

“You didn’t think it was cool when he renounced all his possessions and

burned his money?” I said, enjoying egging her on. Anna took her glasses off, wiped the lenses with a small cloth, then put them in an ancient-looking case.

“What on earth was ‘cool’ about that?” she said, her cheeks flushing. Then she squinted a little, as if she needed to put her reading glasses back on. “Oh, you’re joking,” she said, smiling. “I see. But really, though. His family worked hard for what he had and he gave it all up, because of...because of what, some tedious teenage philosophy. He was utterly, utterly self-indulgent.” She suddenly seemed a little self-conscious and stopped speaking as the waitress brought over our drinks.

“Did you like it then, the movie?” she said, when we were alone again.

“No,” I said. “I absolutely hated it.”

Anna beamed. “Good. I’m so glad.”

“What was it he was always telling people? ‘Make each day a new horizon.’”

“God, yes,” Anna said. “Preachy New Age rubbish.”

“And you know what was funny?” I said.

“What?”

“The one thing—the only thing really—that he wanted to do, which was live in the wild, well, he wasn’t very good at it, was he? He failed.”

“Exactly,” Anna said, laughing, her blue eyes flashing in the dim orange light of the bar. “God, you’re right, he was even rubbish at that. The thing is, if he had actually listened to advice from those who knew better, people who had experience living in the wilderness—wilderness experts, for example—then he might still be alive.”

“Wilderness experts?”

“Yes, wilderness experts,” she said, looking at me sternly. “I believe that’s the official name for them.”

I looked at Anna as she took a sip of her drink. She really was beautiful, her mouth always on the cusp of a smile, her eyes sparkling like a promise. She was too good for me. She would go to London and end up with the type of guy who was invited to her high-school dances.

“And what about you, where do your parents live?” Anna said, and I realized I was staring at her.

“My dad still lives in Romford.”

Anna hesitated, took a sip of her drink. “Are your parents divorced?”

“My mom died. When I was fifteen.”

“Oh,” Anna said. “I’m very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “it’s not your fault.” It took her a moment to get my little joke, and I grinned and she smiled back, a little more at ease.

I didn’t like talking about that morning, when Dad was waiting for me outside the school gate. For some reason, he was wearing his best suit. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. Mom had collapsed at work, he said, a massive stroke.

They had always joked that he would be the one to go first.

“So where’s home?” I asked Anna.

“Oh, the main house is in Suffolk, but we’ve not really been there enough for it to feel like home.”

“Ah, the hard life, so many houses...” I didn’t know why I said it. It was meant to be flippant, a quip, but it just sounded petty and unkind.

Anna scowled at me and took a hurried sip of her drink as if she had to leave.

“Actually, Rob, if you must know, I was on scholarship at Roedean, and my parents don’t have two pennies to rub together.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I stammered. She was frowning, and I could see she found it hard to disguise her annoyance.

“And before you try to out-poor me, Rob, my parents were missionaries and I

spent most of my childhood living in Kenyan slums that would make your public housing complex look like Cheam.”

She angled her body away from me, and we both silently sipped our drinks.

“Sorry again. I didn’t mean it like that, I really didn’t,” I said.

Anna sighed and nervously fiddled with the menu. Then she smiled and

looked at me again. “Sorry, I probably overreacted a little. Evidently you’re not the only one to have a chip on your shoulder.”

That night we kissed as soon as we closed the bedroom door. After a few

breathless minutes, Anna stopped and I thought she was having second thoughts.

But then she started to undress, as if she was alone in her own room, and I watched her and I didn’t think she minded me watching her: the angular bones of her hips, her neat little breasts, her pale delicate arms. When she was naked, she folded her clothes and left them in a tidy pile on my desk.

Since I had been a teenager, sex had always been an exercise in caution. A gradual testing of the waters, a constant expectation that my probing hands would be quickly brushed away. Anna was nothing like that. She was hungry and uninhibited, so unlike the prim and proper way she carried herself. Her desire was single-minded—a quality then, not really knowing women, I found curiously masculine. We stayed awake until the early hours, shuttered behind hastily drawn curtains, our bodies wet with each other, until finally we slept.