“I never told anyone.” I knew more about each individual member of my family and close friends than a miser knew about his bank accounts. I also knew how to keep a secret.
“You’re getting itchy feet though?” The sky was darkening, the Dubai day coming to an end. I knew part of this section of the trip was about making Wren and I look a little more camera friendly, a little less pale.
I’d known Amelie forever. She’d grown up in the big house next door to ours in Oxfordshire, never truly fitting in with her family who were typical Oxbridge, never trodden in shit types. She was half-wild and untameable and she’d been in love with Maxwell since I could remember. She also no longer spoke to her family.
“It’s time for a change. I think I’m sick of the city. I need fresh air and the sea.”
She needed away from Max. Amelie was too good to resent Victoria, and she, like the rest of us, could see that he’d found his perfect woman, if such a thing existed, but the last year or so had been hard.
“Where are you thinking and what will you do?” It was good to talk about something other than Africa and the programme.
“I was talking to a friend of Ava’s who’s an architect. He lives on Anglesey – the island off the coast of North Wales. There’s a pub that needs renovating and then re-establishing in the main tourist town there.” She sounded firm. I knew her mind was made up.
Any normal person would start to persuade her to stay in London, to remain close, but I’d never been that kind of normal. “It sounds exciting. What’s your next step?”
“I’m taking off there for a week. Spec it out. Then put in an offer and we’re good to go.”
“Have you told the rest?”
She laughed. “No, course not. I’ll tell them when it’s all signed for.” Then they couldn’t try to persuade her otherwise or put her on a guilt trip, even if they didn’t mean it. “Callum – how are things with Wren?”
She was the one person who knew, or kind of knew. When I returned home after that night, I’d been more broken than ever, a broken boy as well as a lost boy. I gave her the outline and, of course, she worked out the full story because Amelie was an author in our lives, she could fill in the adjectives when the rest of us were too caught up in the verbs to take in the scenery.
“Weird. I doubt she’s thought twice about me since we graduated.”
“But you’ve thought about her?”
Wren was never the one that got away because I never had her in the first place. She was the top of the class, perfect student, polite, charming, the girl-next-door who everyone wanted to be or to marry, whatever their gender.
Too good for me.
“Too much.” No point lying to Amelie. I’d thought about Wren when I’d been lying alone in bed at night with no one to talk to and no one to hear. It had just me and my fucking self in the darkness, the ticking of a clock the only thing making a noise. It was then the night-pirates would get me, take my common sense hostage and I’d need someone to save me from myself.
When I was younger it had been Marie. She developed a sixth sense after living with us for about six weeks, finding me staring aimlessly into the fridge at about two o’clock one morning.
Back to bed with you,she’d said.You should be asleep now. Ready for lots of playing tomorrow. Getting out of bed – I should tan your hide.
She never did. But for the first time, we had someone there to save us since our mother died, the mother I didn’t remember a fucking thing about. I only knew she’d died because of me.
“You should talk to her. Move passed what happened.”
“I’m not sure she wants to, Am.”
“It’s been ten years. I’m pretty sure that makes suggestions a possibility. Shit, I should go. The dickhead from next door’s here.”
The dickhead from next door had been trying to get Amelie to go on a date with him for about four months and didn’t know how to interpret the word ‘no’ correctly. I’d offered to do a demonstration, but Amelie had turned it down.
“Knee him in the balls.”
“It might come to that. Remember to keep in touch with your family.”
They’re yours too. I knew that I should tell her that because it was true, but it wasn’t me to say things like that. I didn’t know how to make the sounds that translated as that meaning.
“I’ll send some photos of me near the pool later.”
“Do it. Love you.”
I hung up before saying the words.
