So I ended it. Came up with something painfully ironic about being unable to envisage a future. It was an odd feeling, apologizing for breaking her heart when it was fated to be the other way around.
Getting over Kate wasn’t easy. It took me a while to stop dreaming about her. For the flames of what I felt for her to burn fully out. But five years on I met Vicky. She was the lead in a play I went to see, and we got chatting in the bar afterward. Quite how we ended up back at my place that night, I still don’t know. The competition was stiff, and much more cultured than me.
At the start I tried to hide who I was. Live up to the man Vicky must have mistaken me for. And for a while I succeeded, until the day we moved in together. The proximity was like a grand reveal of the person she’d really met, and Vicky quickly grew impatient. Of my edginess and sleeping habits, the early-morning note-taking. Of my emotional restraint and tendency toward distraction. We started to bicker. Passive-aggression kicked in as we began detoxing from the drug of newly knowing each other. The torch beam was dimming, the air sneaking free from the neck of the balloon.
The whole time we were together, I didn’t dream about Vicky once. After just six months I knew what that meant, and a part of me was relieved. A relationship without love was pointless, yes, but wasn’t it better that way? No love meant no added complications. No agonizing dreams, no lose-lose scenarios to sweat over. No premonitions of infidelity. I didn’t love Vicky, and it almost felt more reassuring than if I had.
Who knows? Perhaps on some level, the whole thing was a master class in self-sabotage.
Anyway. After she left, I made a decision, beautiful in its simplicity.
I would never fall in love again.
13.
Callie
I’m sitting alone at Waterfen, thinking about Grace.
We first came here as children, scampering like rabbits across the wooden bridge linking public park to nature reserve. Clattering along its boardwalks and meandering sandy footpaths, we would sink our feet into marshy pools, scoop up damselflies with glistening wet hands. Grace would talk while I wandered in her wake, floating through clouds of frothing white meadowsweet, drunk as a bee on nature’s sumptuous song. We’d roam our private jungle of sedge and reed, the green bejeweled with magenta blazes of rosebay willowherb, staying out till dusk while the landscape cooled around us. And our chatter would always blossom with jokes and school and dreams.
Back then Grace loved Waterfen for what it represented—illusory freedom, putting off her homework. But I loved Waterfen for what it was—something raw and unhewn, the way the world was meant to be. An immersive theater of wilderness, paradise on a stage.
It was at Waterfen that we discovered our tree. A majestic old willow by the reserve’s farthest boundary, its boughs bent over the water’s edge like the heads of watchful herons. We scaled its furrowed trunk, became mermaids behind its leafy waterfall, smiled to each other as beneath the soles of our dangling feet, walkers wandered unknowingly on. We carved our initials into the rugged rivets of its bark.
I climb the tree now, just as we always used to, even though it’s wet,even though it’s cold. The initials are still here, mossy and rain-smoothed. I run my finger through the dint of them, trying not to picture the engraving on Grace’s headstone.
Ben and I came up with it together.
Grace Garvey. Adored wife, daughter, niece, and granddaughter. Lover of life. Uncompromisingly unique.
I never told anyone about our tree. It was just for Grace and me, always.
After uni, when I moved back to Eversford, I was directionless at first. Grace was still traveling and Esther was in London temporarily, having just met Gavin. And my parents couldn’t fill the gap my friends had left. It was coming to Waterfen that kept me going—surrounding myself with greenery and things with wings.
I think again about the reserve job Gavin mentioned all those weeks back. I’ve been checking the Waterfen website daily—but nothing. Still, I know how slowly things can move forward in charities, that it can take an age for the simplest of outlays to get approved.
But even if a job did come up, I’m not completely sure I could give Ben my notice. Could I really hand Grace’s dream to someone else, discard it like an heirloom I no longer wanted?
And yet... I have dreams of my own. Like working here at Waterfen, smelling the earthy sweetness of rain on a reed bed as corvids call and starlings swarm the sky. Getting wet and hot and muddy, breathless with hard work and happiness. Giving back just a little of what this place gives me.
I’m sorry, I whisper to Grace’s ghost.I know the café was your dream. But I’m just not sure it will ever be mine.
•••
As I’m walking home, I feel all at once emboldened—maybe from thinking about Grace, or about moving on from the coffee shop somehow. I want to seize the moment and ask Joel up to my flat for a drink. After all, we’ve been neighbors for a whole week now. He can always say no.
•••
“This is homey,” Joel says, as I show him into the living room.
Unwinding my scarf, I’m about to discard it as I always do on the arm of the sofa before changing my mind, rolling it up neatly on the console table by the door instead. Because, realistically,homeycould be code forpigsty. I still haven’t finished emptying boxes, and I should have tidied, of course, before asking him up.
He appeared to deliberate, earlier, before saying yes. Instantly I panicked, afraid I’d made him feel awkward, obliged him to be polite. So I opened my mouth to attempt an excruciating backtrack—but before I could crucify myself, he said yes.
I hope he wasn’t expecting my flat to look stylish or sophisticated. I have no furniture that didn’t come flat-packed, no artwork I didn’t pluck from a rack, no shiny ornaments or coordinated accessories. Just a muddle of mismatched items I’ve collected over the years, like the futon with the patchwork throw hiding coffee and red wine stains, a scattering of ring-marked cork coasters, and a variety of nature-themed mugs, courtesy of my friends and family. There are two bookcases in clashing shades of veneer stuffed with books on wildlife and nature, someveryuncool trinkets—birds and woodland creatures, my loved ones running with a theme again—and a ramshackle jungle of plants on the inside windowsill. Nothing that says I’m an adult, successful, or remotely winning at life. And that’s before Joel’s tripped over any of the untouched boxes I have yet to deal with, half blocking the kitchen doorway.
I make a sixty-second diversion to the bedroom to change, hyperventilate, smooth down my hair, and apply a swift rub of nude lipstick. Then I head back to the living room, offer Joel a drink. “I have coffee, tea, or... midrange wine.”
