Field Notes on Love(18)

He was completely and entirely free.

Instead of the Met, he went to the High Line. Instead of the fancy restaurant Margaret had booked, he ate a hot dog from one of those little carts with the umbrellas. Later he went for a pint at an old alehouse in the West Village but was promptly declined.

“Does it count if I’m English?” he asked hopefully.

“Does this look like England to you?” asked the scowling bartender, and that was the thing: it didn’t. It was all wonderfully, amazingly, heart-thuddingly new. And he loved it. All of it. Even the pigeons.

Now a text pops up from his mum: You still in one piece?

Hugo sighs. As if she can hear this, another one appears: I’m only asking. No tattoos or anything?


Hugo: No tattoos. But I did get my nose pierced last night.

Mum: Hugo!

Hugo: I’m just winding you up. Stop worrying.

Mum: You’ll take a picture of the ocean for me, won’t you?

Hugo: Too late. I’m about to head west.

Mum: I meant the Pacific. I’ve always wanted to see it.



    The gate for their train is announced, and the crowd around him begins to swirl again. Hugo squints up at the giant board, an alphabet soup of times and destinations.


Hugo: Mum, I’ve got to go. Train is here. Love you.

Mum: Love you too.

Hugo: And don’t worry, I’ve got my passport.

Mum: I wasn’t going to say a word.



He shoves his mobile back into his pocket and looks around for Mae, trying to call up the image from the video, but he doesn’t see her anywhere. It’s now ten past three, which means she’s officially late. The train is due to leave in exactly thirteen minutes, and he stands on his tiptoes and scans the station again. He’s so busy looking around that it takes him a second to realize she’s suddenly there, standing a few feet away from him.

He blinks at her, startled. She’s wearing a black cotton dress with a jean jacket, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her red trainers are scuffed and worn, and on her back there’s a green rucksack that looks about as tall as she is.

“Hugo,” she says, though it’s not exactly a question.

After she wrote back to his second email, he sent her a photo of himself so that she’d know he wasn’t some weirdo from the internet. (Although maybe he was now? It was hard to be sure.) For a while, he’d avoided giving his surname, because he wasn’t that keen on her stumbling across the many articles about his family, not to mention his mum’s blog, a treasure trove of embarrassing anecdotes. He wanted to start this trip as Hugo Wilkinson, not as one of the Surrey Six.

But as their volley of messages continued, she pressed him on this, and he didn’t blame her. If one of his sisters was mad enough to go on a trip with a stranger she’d met on the internet, he’d want her to find out every scrap of information she could. Still, he’d been bracing himself for the kind of thunderstruck reaction he always gets when people discover he’s a sextuplet. But from Mae, there was nothing. To his relief, her next reply was just a request for the full itinerary.

    Even so, he knows she must’ve done her homework on him. So it surprises him, at first, the way she’s staring, like she’s trying to decide whether or not it’s him. But then he realizes it’s not that at all. It’s more like she’s measuring something about him, and he stands up a little straighter as he waits for her verdict.

Finally, she takes a few steps toward him. “Hi.”

He smiles reflexively, still slightly flustered by the directness of her gaze. She’s a good foot shorter than him, but there’s a certainty that makes her seem anything but small.

“Hi,” he says.

“I’m Mae.” She reaches out to shake his hand. It’s an oddly formal gesture, but it sets a definite tone: they are partners in this. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just so glad you made it.”

“Me too,” she says, and there’s laughter in her eyes. “Guess it’s lucky I don’t have any bunions.”

“I guess so,” he says, feeling his cheeks flush, still a little guilty about rejecting and then inviting her. “So did you drive down or take the…”

He makes a gesture toward the giant board hanging in the middle of the station, and she looks amused.

“My parents drove me.”

“Oh,” Hugo says, looking around. “Are they…?”

    “No, they had to take my grandmother to her apartment. It’s sort of a long story. But we already said our goodbyes and everything.”

“Right, since you’re…”

“Going straight to school at the end of this, yeah. I’m a light packer,” she adds when she sees him glance at her bag; then she cracks a grin. “Just kidding. We shipped the rest.”

Above them, a final boarding announcement for the Lake Shore Limited comes over the loudspeakers, and Hugo hooks his thumbs beneath the straps of his rucksack.

“Well,” he says with a smile, “I suppose this is it.”

She smiles back, but there’s something steely about it, and he can almost see it then, the way this means something to her too. It isn’t simply a lark or a freebie or an adventure. It’s something bigger. And from nowhere, the thought pops into his head: This is going to be okay.