Rachel opens the two porridge pots, fills them up with water and stirs. The oats float limply on the surface alongside flecks of milk powder and red bits that may in another life have resembled dried fruit.
‘Apparently, it’s summer berries flavour,’ Rachel says as she passes a pot to Tilly. Rachel takes a mouthful of hers, grimacing. ‘It’s not … so bad …’ It takes her a long time to swallow.
Tilly takes a spoonful, cold, wet oats clogging her mouth.
‘I’m not getting summer berries. I taste desperation.’
Rachel drops her porridge pot down on the ground, lifting her knees up to her chest and rocking back and forth. ‘ARGH! I HATE CAMPING! This is bloody awful!’
‘I thought you didn’t mind camping! You said it would be an adventure.’
‘I was lying. Who actuallylikescamping? Bloody sadists, that’s who. No offence to Joe.’
‘Then why did you offer to come with me?’
Rachel stops rocking.
‘It seemed important to you. I worried you might regret it if you didn’t go.’
‘I could have gone on my own. You didn’t have to come with me.’
‘And now I’m seriously questioning my choices,’ Rachel replies, teeth chattering.
Tilly is shivering and damp and her mouth tastes of cold oats. Something inside her snaps.
‘So why did you, Rachel?’ Tilly shouts. ‘I didn’t force you! Why did you want to come with me if you hate camping so bloody much?’
‘Why do you think?’ Rachel shouts back. ‘The same reason I wanted to take the Esmerelda Love job. Because I wanted to spend time with you! Because I wanted to make up for –’
‘For the fact that when Joe got sick you completely disappeared?’
They stare at each other across the tent. Tilly can’t quite believe she’s actually said it. Their faces are both flushed from the cold, hair bedraggled and wet.
Rachel dips her head, fiddling with the zip on her sleeping bag.
‘I was shit, I know.’
Tilly freezes, her head snapping around to look at Rachel, cowering in her sleeping bag, chin tilted. After so long tiptoeing around the issue Tilly wasn’t expecting to actually have this conversation. But their problems now feel impossible to ignore, sat brooding like a third person in the confines of the tent.
‘What happened, Rachel?’
Rachel lets out a breath and her voice is softer when she replies. ‘I don’t think I ever told you that my dad died when I was a teenager.’
The words hit Tilly hard in the chest.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
Rachel shrugs. ‘How could you have? I didn’t tell you.’
‘But I could have asked. You always talked about your mum and stepdad, so I just assumed you weren’t close with your biological dad.’
‘We were close. He was my favourite person. But he died when I was nineteen. From pancreatic cancer.’
‘Shit.’
A silence hangs between them for a moment, broken only by the rain on the tent roof.
‘So when Joe got his diagnosis, I knew what was ahead for you both and I just didn’t know how to be around you, knowing what I knew. It was like I could see you were heading for this awful car crash and there was nothing I could do to stop it. But the one thing I could do was not be there to see it happen.’
