Clara:That’s why I said do it quietly!
I stare at the message thread while my brain replays the kiss again. The way his hands tightened on my waist. The way he looked at me afterwards. The fact that he clearly wanted it just as much as I did.
Clara:You like him.
Freya:I know.
Clara:He likes you.
Freya:I know.
Clara:So maybe… stop overthinking it and see what happens.
I lie there staring at the words. Because that is both the simplest and the most terrifying suggestion imaginable. My brain immediately tries to produce seventeen reasons why that is a terrible idea. Friendship. History. Children. The possibility that we ruin everything and end up awkwardly avoiding each other at school events for the rest of our lives. But underneath all of that… There’s another thought. A quieter one. Maybe Clara is right. Maybe the reason this feels so big is because we’ve been pretending it isn’t there for too long. Maybe I’m not going to march across the campsite tonight and climb into his tent like some sort of woodland temptress. But the next time we’re alone? The next time the moment appears again? Next time… I’m not running from it. Next time I’m going to see what happens with Rory. Which is probably a terrible idea. But apparently terrible ideas are becoming a bit of a theme this week.
Chapter forty-one
Freya
The final day of the trip begins with mud. Not the charming, pastoral sort of mud people put in brochures for places like this either, where a child has one tasteful smudge on one welly and everyone looks wholesome and rosy and like they’ve just discovered the value of the outdoors. No. Proper Welsh hillside mud. The kind that sucks at your boots like it’s trying to claim you for the earth and coats the knees of children who swear blind they “definitely didn’t fall over” while standing there in a state that strongly suggests they’ve been body-slammed by the countryside itself.
By nine o’clock I have already wiped twelve noses, redistributed three missing gloves, located Theo’s torch in someone else’s sleeping bag, and explained to him for the fourth time that survival whistles are not, in fact, to be tested indoors, near people, near breakfast, or ideally at all unless he is dangling off the side of a mountain and even then I’d like prior notice.
The campsite hums with that strange, low-level chaos that only exists when thirty children are preparing for another round of activities and all of the adults are trying very hard to look like this is manageable. Instructors call out group numbers. Teachers clutch clipboards. Somebody is handing outwaterproof trousers. And Rory is avoiding me. Not subtly either. Not in a way that could be generously interpreted as coincidence or busyness or him simply being caught up with Isla and the rest of the group. No. He is avoiding me with the sort of commitment that would probably be admirable if it were not making me feel vaguely sick.
He speaks to Isla. To Theo. To the instructors. To the dads. To one of the teachers about tent pegs. To another parent about the route for the morning activity. To an eight-year-old called Max about why his compass is not, in fact, broken just because north is not upwards. Just not to me. The first time it happens, I tell myself it’s nothing. The second time, I notice. By the third, it is so painfully obvious I start to feel a bit embarrassed for him. Because if you are going to blank a woman you kissed against a kitchen counter less than twenty-four hours ago, you should at least try to make it less obvious. He doesn’t even look at me. Not once.
The kitchen flashes into my mind anyway, because my brain is cruel and likes to keep things fresh. His mouth on mine. His hands gripping my waist. The way he looked at me afterwards like he’d forgotten every reason not to. Apparently it did not mean something after all. Love that for me.
“Freya?”
I blink and realise one of the instructors is talking to me and I have been staring into the middle distance. “Yes. Sorry.”
“You’re on canoe duty this morning.”
“Perfect,” I say, with a smile that I hope reads as cheerful and outdoorsy rather than I have just been mentally eviscerated before breakfast.
Theo and Isla are already bouncing beside the equipment shed with the kind of intensity usually reserved for theme parks and Christmas morning.
“WE GET BOATS,” Theo shouts.
“They’re canoes,” I correct automatically.
“BOATS.”
“Close enough.”
The lake is a ten-minute walk from the campsite, tucked between two low hills and so still when we arrive that it looks fake, like someone has painted the sky twice and forgotten to make the second one ripple. The children are issued life jackets that are all slightly too big and paddles they immediately begin using as swords despite being told not to within roughly three seconds.
Theo and Isla are in the same canoe, because apparently I have done something in a previous life to deserve this level of stress. Rory helps push them off the bank while one of the instructors explains steering and basic safety for the fifth time to children who have already decided they are seasoned explorers. I watch him crouch near the water’s edge, watching them paddle away. He says something to her that makes her laugh. His whole body has that relaxed, capable thing about it that men really should have to declare in advance, like allergens. And when he stands, he turns. Just slightly. And for one pathetic, deeply irritating second, I think he might look at me. He doesn’t. Instead he steps back toward the group of dads on the other side of the dock like I am not standing there at all, like the kitchen never happened, like I did not spend half the night awake in a tent wondering whether I’d finally decided to stop running from this thing between us only for him to wake up the next day and apparently choose celibate eye contact exile.
Fine.Absolutely fine.
I definitely do not spend the rest of the morning noticing how carefully he positions himself on the opposite side of every activity. Not in a deranged way. Not in a woman-on-the-edge way. Just in the totally normal, casual way one notices that a man is going out of his way to avoid standing within four feetof her. Every time I glance up he is somewhere else, talking to someone else, lifting something, carrying something, helping someone tie a knot as though he has personally committed himself to being useful to absolutely everyone except me. I hate how much it bothers me. I hate, more specifically, that it bothers me because for one stupid, shining moment in that kitchen I thought maybe Clara was right. Maybe this wasn’t something to keep shoving back into the dark every time it reared its head. Maybe Rory and I had finally blundered our way into the sort of honesty normal adults manage all the time without requiring a residential trip to Wales and a near miss with a stack of plastic cups. Apparently not. Apparently what we actually had was one very intense lapse in judgement followed by him acting like I don’t exist.
By mid-afternoon the children are filthy, exhausted and happier than they’ve been all year. Theo has mud on his forehead and absolutely no memory of how it got there, which feels both implausible and deeply on brand. Isla has apparently become “an expert navigator,” despite the fact that at one point she led her group confidently in the wrong direction for eleven minutes and only changed course because another child pointed out they were heading toward the main house. The teachers look like they require a lie down in a darkened room and possibly a medicinal gin.
Dinner that evening is cooked over the fire again. The sky is clear tonight, the sort of hard blue that turns quickly once the sun slips behind the hills, and the cold arrives all at once.
