Authors: Liz Tipping
‘I need to tell you something.’ I said turning to face him.
‘Yeah?’ he said ‘What’s that then?’ and he kissed me on the cheek.
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you for a couple of days.’
‘Go on then, you can tell me.’
‘I had a row. At work.’
He laughed. ‘You’re always having rows at work. What was it this time? Someone nicked your milk out the fridge?’
I shook my head.
‘With the manager. I had a row with the manager.’
‘If I had a quid for every time you had a row with Doris, neither of us would need to go to work.’ He squeezed his arms tighter around my waist.
‘Yeah well it wasn’t Doris, it was the regional manager and I kind of flipped out and now I have to go to a disciplinary hearing and I might lose my job.’
Connor moved backwards and frowned.
‘Are you serious?’ he said.
I nodded, turned away from him and focused on Brian Harvey instead, patting him on the head.
‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ I said. ‘That’s what Sinead says, a blessing in disguise.’
‘Well, Sinead doesn’t want to move into the Millennium Apartments, does she?’
‘No, but I was thinking as well, you know I’ve always wanted to cook? Well I could go home and see if I could get a job in a café or a pub or something. It would be less money but…’
‘I can’t believe this Fiona,’ he said, standing up and startling Brian. ‘We could lose everything.’
‘What do you mean, lose everything? We haven’t even got anything yet. What do we have to lose?’ I said.
‘What were you rowing over anyway?’
‘A cup,’ I said, quietly.
‘A bloody cup?’ He was pacing up and down now and had caught the attention of Steph, Sinead and Kirk who were sat outside the yurt. ‘You’re unbelievable, you know that? Do you know how hard I’ve been working so we can have all the things we want?’
‘All the things who wants?’ I said. ‘It was you who decided you wanted to live in town. You didn’t ask me.’
‘Who wouldn’t want to live there?’ he said. He seemed unable to process the idea that I didn’t want the same as him.
I knew I shouldn’t have told him. I should have waited until we got back. And by some miracle, I thought, I might actually keep my job and then I’ll have caused an argument for no reason.
‘I wouldn’t,’ I said.
‘When exactly were you going to tell me?’ he said.
I shrugged ‘I wish I hadn’t now.’
He ran his fingers through his hundred pound haircut and breathed out slowly.
‘Look, I’m trying my best okay. I thought you might do the same too.’
‘I’ve worked every single Saturday for as long as I can remember, Connor. I’ve budgeted for every penny, hanging on in a place I hate in case they promote me to another job I hate, so I’ve been trying my best as well, so don’t come at me with that crap. I’ve even worked on my holidays, for God’s sake. This crappy free holiday that is going terribly.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose, seeming to consider what I said for a minute.
‘Maybe we should just leave it,’ I said. I couldn’t believe the words were coming out of my mouth.
‘Leave what?’ he said. He hadn’t grasped what I had meant at all and for a second or two I considered whether I should back track or not, but I went ahead.
‘Us.’ I said. ‘Let’s just leave us.’ As soon as I said the words I wanted to take them back. Being with Sam had taught me that it was okay to be afraid of the future, but this was all too terrifying. I was petrified. It would mean that everything,
everything
I had planned for was gone. My job, my future home, Connor. The scariest part was that I would have wasted all those years with Connor.
Connor was staring at me with his mouth open and it felt like an eternity before he answered.
‘Are you being serious?’ he said. ‘You want to break up with me. Now? After everything we’ve worked towards?’ He started pacing up and down again. ‘We can’t do that Fiona. We can’t.’
‘I thought…’ I started.
‘Thought what?’ he said, pacing back over and then kneeling on the ground in front of me.
‘I thought that was what you wanted?’
‘It’s not what I wanted at all. I want to be with you. Look I’m sorry, all right. Summer’s nearly over. We can’t break up. If the worst comes to the worst then you can always get another job. But hopefully it won’t come to that, yeah?’
I looked away from him. He pawed at me pleadingly and said ‘Yeah?’ again.
‘I suppose.’ I said. I didn’t know what to think, all I could think was that being with Connor was less scary than not being with Connor and I liked the idea of not being scared.
Then he put his arm round me and shuffled closer.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Everything will be okay.’
‘Will it?’ I said.
‘Yeah, course,’ he said. ‘In fact, I should be doing a deal tonight.’
‘Tonight? I thought you were staying here?’ I said, not even sure if I wanted him to.
‘In that?’ he said pointing to the tent and laughing. ‘No, I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow, give us a ring.’
He leant in and kissed me on the cheek and left.
As soon as he went, Steph and Sinead came over with some drinks and Kirk came and lifted Brian Harvey off my lap.
‘Everything all right?’ said Steph.
‘I don’t know.’ I said, not sure if anything was right at all.
I woke up to the smell of bacon sizzling and coffee. The wood stove was crackling. I rubbed my eyes, not really wanting to move from the gloriously comfortable bed. Steph was spooning sugar into the pretty cups.
‘Morning.’ She was chirpy and bright and brought me a tea over in one of the pretty cups as I sat up in bed. She bounced back over to the dresser and delivered another to Sinead’s bedside cabinet. ‘Come on sleepy head.’
‘Thanks Steph,’ I said, slurping my tea. I did not want to move out of that bed. We hadn’t had a late night. Apart from briefly sitting with the Moonfaces and Crazy Trousers, who were talking about their feelings, we’d stayed in the yurt and played with all the board games before we booted Kirk out to the three-quarters-of-a-man tent.
‘So, I was thinking,’ said Steph leaning on the counter, hugging her mug. ‘Seeing as this holiday hasn’t got off to the best start. How about I ditch Weird Beard for the day and we get ready and go down to the music festival. You can see Connor, if you want to that is, and we can try and pry Sinead away from the man with the silly trousers.’
‘I heard that,’ said Sinead from under the covers.
‘Unless,’ said Steph, ‘you are spending another day of your holidays working?’
‘Unlikely,’ I said. While I could think of nothing I would like better than to spend another day in Sam’s kitchen completely lost in what I was doing and being with him, it was for the best I didn’t see him at all. The whole thing was clouding my judgement about what to do with Connor and it wasn’t fair on me, Connor or Sam. After I had seen Connor so passionate about us staying together last night, I had decided to put any decisions on hold. I’d wait until we got home. I could find another job and I was grateful to Sam for making me realise that at least. I resisted thinking about Sam when thoughts of him popped into my head and they were doing so with frequency. Seeing Connor had brought me back down to earth and stopped me thinking with my holiday head. I wanted to be more rational, instead of losing my focus. Holidays got you like that sometimes, all the promise of being somewhere where no one knows you can make you feel like you can do anything, almost like you are invincible.
‘But first we have to have a whip round so we can buy a shower from the mad woman.’ I groaned. I took a look at my phone which for several days running had had no calendar notifications. No bleeping telling me what I was about to do next. I liked Steph’s plan to go to the festival. A fun day out with my friends was such a normal bank holiday thing to do.
After eating a delicious crispy bacon sarnie in bed and throwing loads more tea down our necks, we scrabbled together some pound coins and felt ready to face some negotiations with the crazy shower lady. She agreed to let us have a twenty minute shower between us so we dived in and out of the same shower, leaving time to condition our hair. I needed extra time for more conditioner so I had to cough up another fifty pence – my hair still not having fully recovered from the dehydrated night in the tent the day before.
We made our way back over to Kirk’s tent where he and Brian Harvey were surfacing. There was no sign of Crazy Trousers or Weird Beard and the Moonfaces hadn’t surfaced yet either. The couple opposite were leaving for the day; it looked like they were going out walking.
Back at the yurt, we lounged around in the comfy beds and played with the all the vintage board games, sitting outside enjoying the sunshine while all the time I tried to stop myself thinking about the future.
Steph interrupted our idleness by insisting we get ready, and picking mine and Sinead’s clothes out for us. She used millions of products on our hair, all in an attempt to make it look natural. She preened mine until the curls were a lot looser and took some flowers from the dresser in the yurt and wove one of them into my hair. I admired her work in the mirror while Steph got to work on Sinead – she used gallons of sea salt spray and twisted it into loose curls around her face. It felt nice, normal, how a holiday should be.
Then she plastered us in more make-up than I’ve ever worn in my life to achieve the natural look. My designated ‘festival look’ was meant to include my Stella McCartney shorts, but seeing as the arse was covered in grass stains after yesterday’s mishap, that was out of the question so there was some swapping around of clothes until finally I decided on a short denim skirt.
Sinead was, according to Steph, at great risk of going ‘feral’ and getting too much into the swing of things with the hippies. Steph insisted on putting a halt to this and dressed Sinead up in more suitable attire, whilst Steph herself chose a simple white vest and cut off denim shorts –accessorising with necklaces.
Steph of course paid no attention to my advice about the ‘terrain’ or the hill up to the pub and down to the festival and put on her spikiest highest heels before I persuaded her to wear a pair of trainers. Kirk didn’t want to play dressing up with us, but Steph clocked he was wearing one of Gav’s T-shirt so she insisted he change it and picked him out a shirt.
‘Come on then. Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Still time to turn this into a great bank holiday weekend,’ Steph said. I nodded, even though the best day I’d had was yesterday. Then Crazy Trousers turned up.
‘All ready for the chakra cleansing?’ he said bobbing up and down excitedly.
‘Excuse me?’ I asked. ‘The chakra what, the who what?’
‘That sounds painful,’ said Kirk.
Crazy Trousers laughed. ‘Quite the opposite, my friend.’
As far as I was concerned, you can never trust people who said ‘my friend’ to people who they hardly knew. What kind of maniac was he?
‘We’re heading down to the music festival actually, so we’ll give it a miss if that’s all right?’ asked Steph, avoiding making eye contact with him.
‘Ah yes, you see well we were hoping to get some shots for the publicity. Got the photographer here for a bit, to do some shots for the site. It’s really our last chance. So…’ he took a big breath in ‘… and that
is
kind of why we invited you guys along’.
We flicked looks back and forth with each other.
‘Look we wouldn’t need all of you. If a couple of you could make it. That would be a real help.’
‘How long will it take?’ asked Sinead, trying to keep everyone happy. ‘We could go down to the main festival afterwards?’ she offered to us.
‘Okay’ said Steph, flicking her hair back. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
*
‘You want us to stand
in
here?
In
this river?’ I said. ‘This freezing cold river? This one here.’ I said, looking down at the stream. Having nearly ended up in there already once, I didn’t like the look of it.
We had all agreed we would stick together but I found myself trailing behind Steph, Weird Beard and Crazy Trousers. Steph was getting really into it and flirting with Weird Beard again – what was the matter with her?
‘It’s all about grounding yourself. Come on, take off your shoes and come in.’ Weird Beard beckoned us in off the side. I dipped one toe in and screamed my head off.
‘Sod this,’ I said. ‘He said he only needed two of us to do it. You two stay here. Kirk, are you coming?’
‘I would do, but I don’t think it would do any harm to get Brian Harvey’s chakras cleared.’
‘Fine, I’ll go by myself then.’
I was so cross, just when I thought we were going to have a day all together, those stupid flipping hippies had intervened again. I had wanted to keep busy so I didn’t have to think.
I was over the brow of the hill, when I saw Sam hadn’t opened the back yet, maybe he thought he’d have the day off. A day of hard work might have finished him off, perhaps that was him sorted for the week. I wondered if I had better go in and apologise for leaving so abruptly last night and for how massively awkward it had been – but I also didn’t want to see him at all. I was relieved I could see no sign of him from the back so wandered around the front to the bus stop when I saw there were crowds of people at the door. Sam was waving them away, saying the pub was closed, when he caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye and waved me over.
‘Fiona,’ he shouted as he ran over towards me. ‘You couldn’t help me out again, could you? It would only be for a couple of hours, I promise. They’re all asking for food. Seems that word has got out about your food.’
‘Oh my God. Seriously?’
‘Yes. You’d be helping me out massively. With another day’s takings like yesterday, I’ll be able to stay afloat for another few months.’
The thought of spending another day like yesterday appealed to me massively. I couldn’t think of anything I would rather do. If it was only for a few hours, the others would be free by then and we could go ahead with the rest of the day as planned. I also didn’t feel I could say no to helping Sam, when it could save his business.