“Effort,” he says now. “Your mum seems super nice. She seems kind of nervous of you, to be honest. Like she’s walking on eggshells,” he says, peeling his T-shirt off and changing it for a fresh one. I feel myself start to tense up at that flash of skin. For a moment, I feel the pull toward him, a desire to be drawn into his arms. A distraction.
“I know,” I say, plonking down on the bed, brushing my fringe back out of my eyes. “I revert back into an angsty teenager around her.”
“You need to get over it,” Ash says, and then he sits on the edge of my bed and touches the thin cotton of my bedspread. “I pretended I was happy to give up studying for years around my parents. It took a long time to build up the courage to tell them the truth. And, you know, they were great. I really think parents just want you to be happy.”
“Exactly,” I say. “ ‘We just want you to be happy, Mara.’Only Ithink their version of happy is living in Corbridge and working at a travel agency and marrying one of Dad’s employees. No offense.”
“Tell them about the lido that you’re working on saving. Tell them about the amazing floating cinema night, and how you made the place more than three grand in one night. All the stuff you’re doing is really cool,” he says.
I consider it for a moment. But then the thought of a heart-to-heart with my mother fills me with shame and dread.
“No. Please, let’s go. Like, let’s go for an hour or so; then we can come back.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Let’s go to the dark park.”
“Won’t they be pissed off?”
“There’s plenty of people down there. I’ve done my bit. I drove all day to be here.” I pull off my shoes and toss them under my bed and fish around in my bag for my sneakers.
“Are you sure, sure?” he says. “We’ve come all this way.”
“Now,” I say, feeling tears start to come.
“I’ve got a head torch,” he says.
“You’ve got a head torch?”
“Yes.”
“A head torch?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, let’s go.”
22
We park andwalk along a well-worn little pathway toward Hadrian’s Wall. “There it is,” I whisper, as we can just make out the edges of the ancient stone wall that stretches ahead of us in the near darkness. “Mind your feet.”
There is very little sound, except for the gentle breeze rustling some nearby trees that we can’t see, and the occasional hoot of a night bird.
“I used to come here badger watching with my dad,” I say. “You’d need a little moon, though. We’d come and we’d pitch a tent and stay up all night watching badgers and field mice.”
It was one of my purer childhood memories. A time filled with Twix bars and baked beans cold from tins and flasks of hot milky tea.
“Your dad seems really nice,” Ash says, turning, his head torch shining right into my face.
“Careful. It’s like looking into the sun,” I say. “Can you just point it ahead?”
“Sorry,” he says, as I rub my eyes and wait for them to readjust.
“You really can’t see much of the wall at night.”
“Waxing moon,” he says, looking at the slither of crescent in the sky, low on the horizon.
“You mean waning,” I reply.
