Tessa in Love

  By the evening, I started to believe we must be over. Wolfie still hadn’t e-mailed or called me, so what else was I supposed to think? A simple phone call to him would have set my mind at rest, but it could also give me the very worst news of all, so I just put it off. I chickened out. I spent a quiet night in, actually studying and exchanging e-mails with Matty. Every time my e-mail bleeped to say there was a new message, my heart did somersaults. I could hardly tell Matty to stop e-mailing me, and I liked the breaks that reading her messages gave me. I hadn’t told her that the situation with Wolfie had worsened, because she was upbeat and happier today, and it was great to see her starting to try to put Lee behind her. I didn’t want to bring her down again, when even I didn’t know where I stood. I still hoped there was another reason for him not being in touch. And the last time Matty had seen Wolfie had been that time, when his friends made fun of her, and she was in an ‘all men are bad’ state of mind, so she might not have given me the kind of advice I wanted.

  On Wednesday morning, I’d just about given up. I didn’t see him at all and he made no effort to come and find me. I felt everyone was looking at me – that they all knew what had happened, and they all thought I was a loser. I understood more deeply how Matty must have felt to have half the school talking about her and judging her, even though my situation was nothing like as bad as hers. Matty’s private life had been everyone’s business. In my case, the truth was that almost certainly no one knew anything about me or even knew I existed. I made a decision to keep it from Matty for another day, and to e-mail Wolfie when I got home. If he thought we should break up, Matty and I could be heartbroken together. But Matty was defiantly upbeat and had been flirting with Jim Fisk all lunch-break. Lee came round the corner when Jim and Matty were laughing, opened his mouth to say something and then skulked off. Ha! I thought. You can see what you’ve lost, and you’re sorry, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then I thought about how I could say the same thing to myself, and felt depressed.

  When we were queuing for the bus home, I got a text from an unknown number.

  COME TO CADEBY WOOD TONIGHT AT 7. PLEASE. W

  But it couldn’t be from Wolfie. He didn’t have a mobile. He hated mobiles. Was someone setting me up for some horrible joke? I texted back:

  IS IT YOU?

  The reply came ten minutes later, when I was actually on the bus.

  YES . . . PLEASE COME.

  Well, there was proof. Good thinking, Tess – ‘Is it you?’ – because if someone was playing a trick on me they wouldn’t dare lie, would they? Duh. Sometimes I amazed myself with my own stupidity.

  But who would play a trick? And there was something about the plainness of his texts, the non-text-speak, that I trusted. He e-mailed like that too, without using abbreviations and numbers – it was one of the things I liked about him. At quarter to seven I told my mum I was going to meet Wolfie. I’d told her a little about our argument and she’d reassured me, telling me that I’d been right to challenge him.

  ‘The fact that you have principles is probably one of the things he loves about you,’ she’d said. ‘If he’s got anything about him, and I think he has, he’ll be grateful that you stand up to him.’

  ‘Grateful?’ I said. ‘And I’m not sure I stood up to him. I think I went crazy on him.’

  ‘Matty’s your best friend,’ Mum said, ‘and she came first.’

  This had made me feel better: stronger. I might have been overreacting, but I was doing it for the right reasons.

  ‘Why isn’t he coming here to pick you up?’ she said, when I was putting my jacket on.

  ‘Oh, I . . . it’s still light, Mum.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s light,’ Mum said. ‘Be careful. Have you got your phone?’

  Of course I had my phone. The mysterious texter could text back any minute. But I knew it was him – I just knew. When I got to the edge of the wood, I sent another message.

  WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO GO, ANYWAY?

  The reply came faster this time.

  YOU’LL SEE ME. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH.

  I started writing another message.

  SINCE WHEN HAVE YOU HAD A PHONE? WHOSE PHONE IS THIS?

  But before I could press send, I saw lights twinkling through the trees, and then a little tent surrounded by a circle of tiny tea-light candles in little terracotta holders, set in a clearing. I held my breath: I was afraid to approach. I didn’t know whose tent it was. Then I heard music, my wolf songs compilation, and I walked with confidence and love and my heart beating so fast I thought I might faint.

  ‘Since when have you had a phone?’ I said.

  Wolfie stuck his head out of the tent.

  ‘Trust you to spoil the mood,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

  I stayed still where I was.

  ‘Please?’ he said. ‘I know I’ve blown it with you, but come and sit down and tell me. Face to face. Let me have a chance to look at you one more time while you tell me what a jerk I am. We’ve been through too much for you to just break up with me by running away.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘I haven’t broken up with you,’ I said.

  Wolfie came out of the tent and walked closer.

  ‘You turned your back on me,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know whether you’d want to talk to me.’

  ‘I always want to talk to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know what you wanted.’

  ‘I was an idiot,’ he said. ‘I let my friends let your friend feel bad. Why wouldn’t you turn your back on me? For all I know you hate me. Do you?’

  ‘You’re not angry with me?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Me? King of the Jerks?’

  ‘Well, I was mad with you, yes . . . ’ I said.

  ‘Of course you were,’ Wolfie said. ‘And? Go on? Let me have it. I deserve it. But first, wait . . . I bought you dinner . . . ’

  He reached back into his tent and presented me with a little foil-wrapped parcel.

  ‘Dinner?’ I said. I opened the parcel and it was a lukewarm bacon sandwich, the bread soaked through with grease. It looked kind of delicious.

  I’ll do whatever you want if you forgive me, Tess,’ Wolfie said. ‘Look at me: I’m wired up to a mobile phone network – Pay as You Go. Lara explained it to me – Lara feels quite bad, by the way – and I want you to eat meat. I don’t want you to change anything about yourself, and I want you to know I’m willing to change everything to get you back. I’m all new now. I’m modern!’

  I poked the sandwich.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘My dad made it.’

  ‘Your dad’s a good man. How is your dad?’

  ‘He’s very well, thank you. How’s the sandwich?’

  I took a bite.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re not really going to eat it?’ he said, pretending to be horrified.

  I mock-glared at him. ‘You brought it for me!’

  ‘Just kidding.’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I’m glad. Pig-eater.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s good pig,’ I said.

  ‘Well, if you can put that pig in your mouth, I’m hoping you might consider kissing this one,’ Wolfie said.

  ‘You’re not a pig,’ I said. ‘You’re a wolf.’ He pulled

  me close to him, and I felt my knees start to tremble and my head kind of cave in on itself, and suddenly he was kissing me, and I was holding him tighter, and he was stroking my hair and whispering that he loved me in the curve of my neck, and I was so happy I wanted to cry. A love song swelled in the background, and we danced slowly and kissed in the candlelit woods.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ Wolfie said.

  ‘I thought you never wanted to see me again,’ I said.

  ‘I always want to see you,’ he said. ‘I want to see you always. Please, Tess, let me make it up to you.’

  ‘But I was never . . . ’ I paused. ‘And I don’t want you wired up and pig-eating . . .’


  ‘Aiding and abetting pig-eating. I’m not eating it.’

  ‘. . . I just want you. So . . . why don’t you show me around your tent?’

  If I could choose one month of my life and live in it forever, it would be that month, from that moment in the woods. As summer drew nearer, the revision schedule brought us close to cracking. I was studying for GCSEs and Wolfie for his A-levels. The overworking made us tired and stupid and giggly, but we were so close – not just me and Wolfie but everyone. Chunk, Jane, Lara and Wolfie were writing long A-level course pieces and panicking about getting their grades for university. Their work was hard because it really really counted. Ours was hard because, apart from its importance, there was such a gigantic spread of subjects to revise. At the weekends, or in the early evenings, Matty and I had started working at my kitchen table with a large jug of freshly squeezed lemonade, if we were feeling sunny and swish, or a six-pack of Diet Cokes, if we were feeling tired and lazy. Other days I’d work in the Wood, where I read propped up on my elbows on a rug, wearing a jumper because it wasn’t that warm yet. Wolfie would lie on his side next to me, occasionally interrupting my concentration to talk about something in his book that bugged him or made him laugh, or lazily tugging at my hair when he wanted to be kissed. I started to love the routine as much as I hated the work. I liked being so focused and having someone there to support me. Sometimes we barely said a word all day, but it was always easy, and tender, and perfect.

  It was a real relationship. I’d somehow managed to fall into this on my first time out. There was so much ahead and so much to look forward to. I used to wake up in the morning, my head hurting from the coffee and the concentration, and I’d remember everything that was good about my life and a lovely warm feeling would spread over me.

  But there were things we didn’t like to talk about. Wolfie was close to finishing school. His friends would be going to uni. He would be going to uni. He’d applied to do a degree in politics, but he’d started to doubt whether it was what he really wanted to do, and we both worried about what it would mean for us. Depending on where he got into, could I apply to the same place, and would I do that, when he’d already have been there for two years? Would my mum ever let me make such an important decision on the basis of a romance, no matter how much she understood that I cared about Wolfie? I didn’t dare risk asking her yet: I just said Wolfie and I were working things out and wanted to do everything we could to stay together. And Wolfie and I didn’t discuss it much: I held back, because I didn’t want him to think of me as hard work, and I was scared that just maybe I was the one who thought it would be for ever, and he was more practical and see-what-happens about us. It was impossible to be totally rational, though. These choices would really change our lives, and it was the worst, most horrible luck that we had to make them now, when we were brand new and all we wanted was to be together.

  But when Wolfie talked about us, the things he said gave me hope. He talked about random events in the future – like holidays we’d take together. Once we were on a bus, and he whispered, ‘Look at that kid!’

  I looked. A ten-year-old boy with chin-length hair and tatty jeans had sat down with a bigger kid on the seats opposite us.

  ‘He’s our son,’ Wolfie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If we had a kid, that’s how he’d turn out.’

  I looked again. I saw what he meant. He had Wolfie’s soft, full lips, and my flat, silky hair. My round face and Wolfie’s scruffy dress sense. And just a look about him that made the idea funny and true. I elbowed Wolfie, who was shaking with laughter.

  ‘Not yet, thank you,’ I said.

  Is it possible to meet the love of your life at sixteen?

  On your very first go? Some girls at school were engaged, or had made plans with their boyfriends to get engaged on their eighteenth birthdays. They believed it would work. People of my parents’ generation got married early and sometimes stayed together. True, most people I knew expected to have lots of boyfriends before they settled down, and I had always thought the same way. If there was such a thing as true love and one special person, though, why shouldn’t he be as likely to come walking into my life this year?

  And what if he walked straight out again?

  The first I heard about Peru was from Chunk, who was joke-flirting with Jane and asking if she’d wait for him. She played along, but I thought maybe, underneath it all, he wished she wasn’t joking.

  I said, ‘What’s this about?’ and, when he told me, it became obvious that he’d talked about it to Wolfie before then. This was the plan: Chunk and Wolfie had kept in touch with someone called Adam, who used to work at Chunk’s dad’s paper. Adam had left the paper, gone to work

  down south and was now a freelance foreign correspondent for national newspapers. He wasn’t much older than Chunk and Wolfie; he’d left school at sixteen and hadn’t gone to university. He was involved with a bunch of independent charily workers who had been working in South America. He was so good, but as far as I was concerned he was a bad influence. Chunk and Wolfie loved him – they thought he was the coolest. I met him a few times: he was quite sophisticated and dry and patronising, and he’d lost his northern accent. He was going to leave for Peru in the summer and stay a few months there, writing about and working with people in an area that had been hit by natural disasters – there had been flooding and mudslides that had devastated communities. He suggested to Chunk and Wolfie that they could go with him. They’d be spending time helping people who were trying to rebuild their destroyed villages with actual physical labour, and at the same time he’d said Wolfie would be able to get invaluable photojournalism experience, if he was really interested in doing something like that. And of course Adam had the contacts.

  ‘The whole summer?’ I asked Wolfie later, hoping it would just be a couple of weeks. My heart sank: this summer might be all I had left with him. If he went to uni at the end of September, I’d barely spend any time with

  him from now until Christmas, and by then everything could be different.

  ‘I need to find out more about it,’ Wolfie said. ‘But I was thinking, maybe it might turn out to be a good thing for you and me if I did go.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Chunk’s been thinking of deferring going to uni and I think I should do the same. It might be possible for us to stay on longer with Adam, which would make it a real reason to take time out before university. I could make it a proper gap and take the whole year out – stay in town, get a job, and hang around annoying you all year.’

  ‘But I’ll lose you now!’

  ‘Yeah. That’s the thing,’ Wolfie said, and rested his head on my shoulder. I started to cry and hoped he couldn’t tell. It wasn’t just the thought of the immediate future; it was about everything that made me worry so much, about us changing. With the pressure of the exams higher than it had ever been, this was all too much for me. I stayed silent, because I didn’t want my voice to crack.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Wolfie said. ‘Talk to me.’

  T don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen. I wish we could just go on the way we are now.’

  ‘Me too,’ Wolfie said. ‘If I could take a year off just to follow you around, I’d have the time of my life.’ He

  scraped his hand back from his forehead, flattening his hair. ‘But I have to think about what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to be a photo-journalist, but I didn’t think people like me got to do stuff like that. But if I had A-levels already and a ... like a portfolio, and I turned out to be any good at it, maybe I could apply next year for something like that. I never had any idea what I’d do with a politics degree.’

  ‘Your dad’s never going to let you go, though, is he?’ I said, hoping this might be the barrier I secretly wanted.

  ‘Maybe,’ Wolfie said. ‘Probably. You know my
family – they’re a lot more hands-off than yours.’

  The idea was there and it was all I could think about, although Wolfie had told me to try to get back into revision, and not worry too much. He forced me to work an extra hour every time I was ready to give in and snog him and he was really sweet to Matty, taking time to get to know her, and apologising to me for having underestimated her.

  ‘She’s fantastic,’ he said. ‘Like you. She knows everything about music and films – I feel quite stupid when I talk to her. She has, in fact, taught me that people from that, you know, “super-cool” crowd can be actually cool.’

  ‘Well, she’s in my crowd. Did you used to think she was shallow or something?’ I said, narrowing my eyes, but inside I was smiling all over. They were the two most important people in my life, and I’d always wanted them to really get each other, and had always worried that they wouldn’t.

  ‘Oh, she’s incredibly shallow,’ he joked, ‘but she’s a good egg. She’d cancel a hair appointment if you needed her. She’d give you her last Prada lip balm.’

  I hit him playfully. ‘But she would!’

  ‘I know,’ Wolfie said. ‘I mean it. And I don’t really think she’s shallow – I think she’s really funny. Intentionally and unintentionally funny. You and she are going to have a fantastic summer.’

  I knew he hadn’t meant to say it, but I knew that it meant he’d decided. He saw my face and understood.

  ‘It’ll go like that,’ Wolfie said desperately, snapping his fingers. ‘We’ll be in touch the whole time. But I’ll miss you like I’d miss breathing.’

  I looked deep into his brown eyes, and he frowned and smiled at the same time. And I suddenly got it: I knew why he wanted to go, and I knew how proud I’d be when he came back.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you have this chance and I want you to take it.’

  ‘I love you,’ Wolfie said. ‘Love like this lasts.’

  We had two mid-week days off together halfway through our exams and Wolfie said we needed to take a full day’s break to clear our heads. I thought my mum would just say no, but to my amazement she agreed.