Field Notes on Love(34)

He glances over at her. “Do you still feel like you’re on a train?”

Until that moment, she didn’t notice, but now she realizes she can feel the phantom motion beneath her too. She nods.

“I wonder if tomorrow night we’ll feel like we’re on a hotel bed,” he says.

She smiles. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Who actually uses this many pillows?” He tosses a few of them off the edge, breaking down the barrier between them. “It’s like being stuck inside a marshmallow.”

Outside, the rain is still pinging against the window, but Mae is distracted by the newly empty space between them. She starts to run through her list of reminders again: He just broke up with his girlfriend. They won’t see each other after this week. He lives on the other side of an ocean. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But this kind of vigilance is exhausting, and already her eyelids are growing heavy in the flickering dark.

Sometime later in the night, she wakes to find their hands clasped between them.

Though it might just as easily have been a dream.





Hugo’s eyes flash open at the sound of his mobile.

It’s only after he’s pulled his hand from Mae’s to silence the ringing that it registers he was holding her hand at all. He blinks, still bleary eyed, wondering when that happened.

Across the room, the TV is still on, but it now features a man in an apron using a machine to blend vegetables, blaring on about all the many features in a flat American accent. Hugo rubs his eyes, then reaches for his mobile, and when he realizes the call came from his parents, he sighs.

It’s a little after two in the morning, which means it’s eight o’clock at home. For a second, he misses it fiercely: his brothers and sisters around the kitchen table, his dad frying bacon, and his mum already on her third cup of coffee. Then a heavy dread settles over him at the thought of actually ringing them back. He slips out of bed and into the bathroom, closing the door gently behind him.

“Haven’t you ever heard of time zones?” he says when their faces appear on the video chat. They always look slightly befuddled by this mode of communication, moving their heads in birdlike fashion as they both try to center themselves on the small screen.

“We got your message about the wallet,” his dad says, “and I have to say, I’m disappointed in you, son.”

    “Look,” Hugo says with a sigh, “it was an accident. I just—”

“Now I owe your mum five quid.”

“Frank,” his mum says, giving his shoulder a smack.

“And another five to Alfie.”

Hugo groans.

“This is why I told you to get a money belt,” his mum says, still glaring at his dad in a way that makes it clear she’s forgotten Hugo can see her too. She turns back to the screen. “I read an article that says everything is safer that way.”

“Right, but I wasn’t pickpocketed,” he says, though maybe it would’ve been better to be mugged than to be irresponsible. At least then it wouldn’t have been his fault. He sits down on the closed seat of the toilet. “I just forgot it. Stupid, I know.”

His mum simply nods, as if she’d been expecting as much. The lack of surprise on her face only makes it worse. “Are you okay, darling?” she asks, and for some reason, this makes him feel like crying.

“I’m fine,” he manages to say.

“Do you still have your passport?”

He nods. “It’s just my credit cards and the dollars I took out from the bank, and—”

“Are you in the loo?” his dad asks with a frown.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Because, Hugo thinks, I was in bed with a girl I only just met, and who I’m starting to suspect I might like, even though I only just broke up with another girl who happens to have the exact same name, and who was supposed to be here with me instead, which makes this all more than a little bit confusing.

    But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, his groggy brain works to catch up with the lies he’s already told them, and he says, “Because I couldn’t find the light switch in the room.”

Behind them, Hugo can see Alfie walk into the kitchen, still wearing pajamas. He grabs an apple from the bowl on the counter and squeezes his face between theirs. “Hugo,” he says, leaning forward. “Heard you lost your wallet on the first day.”

“Second,” Hugo says grimly.

“Well done, mate. Were you drunk?”

“Alfie,” says their mum.

Hugo shakes his head. “No.”

“Stoned?”

“Alfred,” their dad says with a look of shock.

“No,” Hugo says quickly.

“Just being yourself, then?” Alfie says with a good-natured grin, and when Hugo doesn’t say anything, only glowers at the screen, he laughs. “Well done, you. We miss having that sort of top-notch attention to detail around here. Hurry back, all right?”

Hugo lifts a hand to wave weakly as his brother disappears again. “Where’s everyone else?” he asks his parents, suddenly feeling homesick, and they exchange a look.

“Oscar is upstairs,” his dad says. “Poppy’s gone down to Brighton for the day with that McWalter boy, heaven help us. And Isla and George are…well…”