Tessa in Love

  ‘You’ve been doing the work,’ she said. ‘A day off may help it to settle in your head. And you can revise tomorrow. But by now you need to take it a little easier, he’s right. You want to be making sure you’re healthy, mentally healthy, not cramming more in.’

  So books were banned, as was listing history dates and physics formulas. It was hard to get my head to stop at that point. I was dreaming English quotations. Equations rolled in front of my eyes as I was falling asleep. Wolfie turned up at nine a.m. and chatted to my brother while I got my things together. He’d been trying to get Jack into one of the bands he liked, and Jack was asking him about their latest album.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I shouted, wondering whether I should wear sandals or trainers.

  I heard them laughing at me.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Wolfie shouted.

  ‘Well, will there be walking involved?’

  ‘No, I planned to pull you everywhere on a skateboard,’ Wolfie shouted again. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘But what sort of walking?’ I called again.

  Wolfie came upstairs, and shut my bedroom door behind him. He folded his arms and stared hard at me.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said, turning back to my wardrobe. ‘Girls don’t just have one pair of shoes. We have shoes that look good but hurt. We have shoes that don’t hurt but don’t look good …’ He didn’t say anything, and I looked at him again. ‘What?’

  He lowered his chin and looked up at me. ‘Hi, you,’ he said.

  I smiled. ‘What?’

  He took a step towards me.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, mock-innocent. ‘What do you want?’

  He slid his hand around the small of my back. We kissed. We kissed a lot.

  As we walked together towards the bus stop, I asked Wolfie what he wanted to do today.

  ‘Well, you’ve got a few choices,’ he said. ‘We could get a train to York, and go wandering around the little streets there – the Shambles. It’s very cute and olde worlde. Nice tea shops. We could see a film. There’s a photography exhibition in …’

  ‘You know what?’ I said, looking up at him. ‘Can we do nothing? We’re both studied stupid. How about we just walk and talk rubbish and hold on to each other? I don’t have you here for very much longer.’

  ‘Good plan,’ he said.

  And we really talked. We’d both been under so much pressure that we hadn’t just let ourselves go for such a long time – both of us had been too worried about upsetting the other or making things hard. Even more, we were both worried about making our last weeks together sad. Neither of us wanted that – we were both desperately trying to make sure we had a good time during every minute. But, in trying so hard, we’d started to kind of lose sight of enjoying ourselves. Wolfie and Chunk had been trying to organise their time around revision, research, contacting universities to ask about deferral, and talking to Adam about how they’d get to Peru and where they’d stay. Wolfie’s mum had agreed to pay Wolfie’s air fare.

  ‘How did that go?’ I asked him. He smiled a bit too bravely.

  ‘Really good,’ he said, nodding. Then he sighed. ‘Ah, you know, me and my mum, we never quite match up. I don’t think she really thinks of me as hers. And I sort of worry that every time we let a year go by without seeing each other, like we just have, that it makes it easier for her to let go. One day I’m going to be thirty and she’s going to have missed, you know, my whole life. And it’s not a bad life. There are some bits of it I’m sort of proud of. Everything that’s happened this year ...’

  ‘If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t be helping you,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t have to, you know.’

  ‘Yeah …’ Wolfie said thoughtfully. ‘I want you to meet her, sometime.’ He squeezed my sides. ‘Not to … I mean, just so you know where I’m from. The thing is, I think you would like her.’

  ‘When you get back, maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know how much I’m going to miss you?’ Wolfie said. ‘I’m going to stay up late every night talking to Chunk about you, and wish he was you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, forcing my mouth into a smile. I didn’t want him to see me upset about this today.

  We bought lollies from an ice cream van, that turned our tongues bright pink. We read the jokes on the sticks to each other. We made up stories about people who walked past. We played guessing games with film and music clues. We found a little bench in the garden of a churchyard, and I rested my head on his shoulder, and we sat quietly for ages until the sky started to turn pink. And, on this day of doing nothing, I thought I’d never felt so old and so young before. In some ways, I didn’t feel ready for everything that was happening around me, but at the same time I wanted desperately to move on to the next level, where – it seemed to me – I’d have some space to relax. What I mean by this is, where I was now it felt like everyone else was making all my decisions for me, and for the first time in my life I felt ready to make those choices myself.

  As he walked me back home, we went down a street I never usually walked down, and I told him a story about when I was really little and I followed a marching band or street procession or something, I didn’t really remember who they were, only that they were going past my house, and I got lost and knocked on someone’s door to ask them if I could call my mum, and a horrible old man answered, and just stared at me for a minute and then shouted, ‘BOO!’ and I ran all the way home in tears, somehow finding the right way back. But, ever since then, I’d been scared of that door, although I was only half sure it was the same one.

  ‘This door? Do you want me to tell the old man off for you?’ Wolfie said.

  ‘No! You can’t go bullying old men!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, sure …’ he teased. ‘He made you cry. I’ll sort him out.’ He mimed going to knock on the door, and I pulled him back by the arm, balancing on my heels and giggling hysterically. At last he stopped, and we carried on going home, leaning on each other.

  ‘I suppose he might be dead by now,’ I said, feeling sad – sometimes when I felt most happy I felt sad at the same time. ‘I never told my mum, because I knew she’d go mad if she found out I’d knocked on a stranger’s door. But I used to pull her away when she tried to take me down here.’

  ‘I love it when you tell me things you haven’t told anyone else,’ Wolfie said.

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. It’s like you’ve let me know the real you,’ Wolfie said. ‘You know, it’s kind of really special… that you trust me, that you feel you can tell me anything or talk about anything – you’re not holding part of yourself back.’

  ‘Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.’

  ‘I love you.’

  The end of exams brought a lot of parties and I went to all the official ones with my year. I stayed up through all the late nights and celebration, although I was used to being quiet and coupley now, and a lot of the time I just wanted to be home alone with Wolfie. But not everyone in my year would be staying on for A-levels, and this was precious time for us. The fact that we would be going in different directions made all my friendships feel suddenly closer. In the future, the truth was, we’d have to make an effort to stay in touch, which was something we’d never had to do before. There was a lot of crying and hugging and promising to be friends for ever, and I thought that, as painful as this was, it was nothing compared to what would be happening in a week between me and Wolfie. One important difference would soften the blow: we knew we’d be together again before the year was over – he would be back in the autumn. But I found the thought of separating from my new friends, Lara and Jane, very painful too. When I was growing up, I often sort of felt I was in the wrong crowd. I had some good friends, but I never felt right at the centre of the gang; I wasn’t quite, you know, settled with them. I sometimes felt myself pretending to laugh at things I didn’t find funny, or making out I liked bands or TV programmes more than I really did. But, with Lara and Jane, although I
’d been intimidated by them to begin with, I felt they were much more on my wavelength; we had more interests in common and seemed to think the same things mattered. I knew we’d stay in touch because of Wolfie, but, in a way, I hoped they thought of themselves as my friends – because of who I was, not because I was their friend’s girlfriend. As they were going straight to university, not taking a year off like Chunk and Wolfie, they wanted to spend as much time with the boys as they could and, although Wolfie and I wanted to spend time on our own, we wanted to see them too. That was how we ended up spending our last night together with everyone.

  It was Jane’s idea to go camping. It would just be the five of us – Matty didn’t want to go. In the after-exam parties, Matty and Jim Fisk had started to become a sort of item -perhaps it was more like friendship to begin with, when Matty was still getting over Lee, but lately it hadn’t been looking all that platonic. I hadn’t seen this coming and I was really pleased for both of them. Jim seemed to be happier about it than anyone I’d ever seen. When they were out together, he couldn’t stop looking at her – he was absolutely devoted. Matty, who’d been going out with Lee for too long, and had got used to him comparing her to other girls, was swept off her feet by Jim’s sweetness. I didn’t have much hope of attracting a girl like Matty to a night of lying in a rock hard field being eaten by flies, and Matty’s mum was dead against it anyway. Really, I just wanted to make sure she didn’t feel left out, because a few months before, when Wolfie and I were just starting out and she was coming to the end of her relationship with Lee, we’d sometimes found it hard to understand each other. It had shaken us both up. Now, we were beginning to get back on track – but more than that, we’d really started getting each other more and growing closer. Because I’d never had a boyfriend before, we’d always had the kind of friendship where Matty seemed to do all the living, and I advised her and loved hearing her stories, but didn’t really take part in the same way. These days we learned from each other and supported each other, and our friendship was once again one of the best and the most important things in my life.

  ‘You and I have all summer,’ Matty said. ‘You’ll be sick of me soon enough. Make sure you and Wolfie get away from the others, though. He’s your boyfriend, and you need some time. And give him my love.’

  Chunk was allowed to borrow his dad’s car to take us to the field we were camping in, which was in the Peak District. My mum knew everyone, but she wasn’t mad about us being driven by someone so young and inexperienced, and demanded to have a word with him before we went – this involved her practically testing him on the entire Highway Code. I was incredibly embarrassed – Wolfie and the girls were making fun of him behind her back, as he stuttered his way through stopping distances. She also gave us a big stack of tupperware boxes of food, told me about thirty times to phone if we had any problems, and kissed me a lot. On the surface, she was so much cooler than Matty’s mum, but when it came down to it, mums were mums. Eventually, I just resigned myself to it, and let her go ahead, realising there was no point shrugging off her affection just to try to look cool.

  ‘My mum used to be the same,’ Lara whispered, when the car doors were shut.

  The boys put up the tents. They wanted to. Lara, who’d been a Girl Guide and who, she revealed wickedly, had put up Wolfie’s tent for him the night he and I got back together, laughed quietly at them for doing it wrong and predicted the point when they’d admit they needed our help. The three of us girls were giggly and close, lying on our backs and watching the sun turning gold as it started to set, and I didn’t feel nervous at all with them, or young, the way I once had.

  ‘Thanks for letting us share him tonight, Tessa,’ Jane said. ‘You could have dragged him off for a private romantic evening. We’re going to miss him too. Both of them.’

  ‘No, we’ve really been looking forward to tonight,’ I said. ‘And how lucky are we with the weather? It’s the most beautiful night of the year. It’s perfect.’

  ‘You’ll still hang out with us this summer, without Wolfie, though?’ Lara said.

  I paused before answering.

  ‘I know I’ve sometimes been a bit frosty with you,’ Lara went on, ‘but I was just annoyed with you for really pathetic reasons. I... Jane?’

  ‘Well . . . we’ve got a bit of a confession. And it’s definitely not true any more, so don’t worry. Lara was sort of annoyed at you for stealing Wolfie from me for a tiny bit,’ Jane said. ‘But he and I were never going to make a go of it.’

  ‘Before we knew you, though!’ Lara said quickly.

  ‘You fancied Wolfie?’ I asked Jane. I was feeling sort of sick and scared, because everything I’d believed about Lara had been true – she really hadn’t liked me much for a while, though I’d thought it was because she’d liked Wolfie, not Jane. I sort of wanted to curl up and die, all my early fears of annoying them flooding back. More importantly, if Wolfie had known how Jane felt, would he have fancied her? Might we never have gone out? But I knew he loved me and these were crazy insecure things to think.

  ‘Well, for a bit,’ Jane said. ‘But you know, in a really stupid way. I didn’t do anything about it, and he always thought of me as a sister, and I feel the same about him now. He’s like my brother, I mean. And I’ve fancied other people since him and I ... but you know, Lara just thought you came out of nowhere, and she ...’

  Lara took over. ‘I just thought you were a bit of a twinkie, you know? Sort of an airhead.’ I didn’t feel insulted, because she was grinning, her voice ready to crack up, and Jane was starting to giggle. ‘Because you’re so pretty and trendy, and I always thought Wolfie and Jane would end up together. I was totally wrong – you’re fab. And Wolfie’s so into you. God, I was stupid.’

  Because she was making fun of me, I felt better. Do you know what I mean? She was relaxed enough to not come over all sugary and apologetic. I did like Lara’s bluntness. When people are straightforward, it’s easier to tell when they really mean something. She propped herself up, raising her eyebrows as she looked at me, careful to make sure I knew she wasn’t being hurtful. She was smiling and laughing, and soon, so was I.

  ‘Pretty and trendy, me? Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘Have you seen Jane?’

  ‘Yes, Jane’s beautiful, but I always knew how deep Jane was ... you, I thought...’ Lara laughed. ‘I’m actually insulting you again. Look, I get it now. I was an idiot.’

  ‘Hey, even I thought I was an airhead,’ I said, laughing. ‘God knows what Wolfie saw in me.’

  ‘We all know what Wolfie saw in you,’ Lara said. ‘You’re great.’

  ‘Yep,’ Jane said, nodding. ‘I always liked you anyway,’ she joked, looking pointedly at Lara.

  ‘Well, you’re both great too,’ I said. ‘And if Wolfie really thought of you like a sister, he’s stupider than even Lara thinks.’

  Right on cue, one of their tents collapsed, and we all looked up and saw the two boys hidden in its folds, and laughed again.

  ‘No, but he and I have always just been friends,’ Jane said, taking my hand and squeezing it. ‘I swear.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I told her.

  ***

  The guys joined us for the sunset, which was spectacular. We lay side by side watching it deepen and soften, then the stars began to show, then the sliver of a new moon. Chunk talked about how he was terrified of flying, and Wolfie talked about how much he’d miss all of us. He kind of choked up when he mentioned me, and stopped talking and rubbed my neck. Chunk and Jane and Lara kept on talking, and Wolfie and I looked at each other, and right at that moment I believed we knew exactly what the other was thinking. My eyes filled with tears. I suddenly had this horrible feeling of falling. I felt lost and sad and afraid of losing him forever, and I could see the same thing in his eyes. It was just incredibly intense: we wanted to hold each other really tightly, but we were still with everyone else, and we couldn’t. I thought about the way we’d spent that day together doing nothing and still not wanting it to en
d, and how for months and months to come, I’d be doing nothing without him.

  ‘I’m not worried about us,’ I said to him later, when we slipped off for a walk over the hillside on our own. ‘Remember Silver Day? I didn’t mention this at the time, but actually I consulted a fortune-teller, and ...’

  ‘When? Oh, not that creepy machine in the penny arcade?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw you looking at that. I thought you were afraid of it.’

  ‘I was. That’s why what she said must be real,’ I said. ‘She was too scary to be just a machine.’

  ‘So what did she tell you?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ I said, smiling up at him. I looked for the crumpled little slip in my purse, but it wasn’t there. I’d lost it sometime without realising it.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s gone!’ I said. ‘It said our love would last. Honestly it did. Oh no, do you think that’s a bad omen?’

  ‘Well,’ Wolfie said, putting his palms out, pretending to weigh up the possibilities in his hands. ‘On the one hand, you had that very important piece of documentation saying our love would last. . . but you’ve lost it. That is pretty serious. On the other hand ... I’m completely nuts about you, you superstitious looney!’ He put his hands on my face and kissed me. ‘I think we’re safe.’

  The others fell asleep: we stayed up all night and watched the sunrise together. The birds went a little crazy beforehand, swirling and chirping in the navy blue sky. I closed my eyes, and leaned against him, the tiredness beginning to weigh my head down at last.

  ‘Are you really going to wait around for me?’ Wolfie asked.

  ‘Hm?’ I said, not opening my eyes.

  ‘I suppose it’s just started to occur to me that you may meet someone in the summer and forget what you feel about me right now,’ Wolfie said, sort of smiling, but without a trace of a joke in his voice. ‘And I suppose it’s just started to occur to me that I’m quite worried about that.’