‘It’s not that long?’ I query, incredulous. ‘Google Maps says sixteen hours’ driving.’
‘I can’t drive that far in one day.’
‘I…’ I don’t know where to start. I look at her beautiful, still-so-familiar, but also now in many ways quite unfamiliar features. I don’t know whether I want to shout at her or shout at myself or just walk away.
For the time being, I decide that shouting is a bad idea.
‘I’m going to go and see if I can get a signal on my phone,’ I tell her.
‘Okay. I have an umbrella. Let me find it for you.’
‘I’m good, thanks.’
As I walk out of the clearing and down the lane, I wonder whether I should just keep on walking, right back out of her life.
4
EMMA
As Callum marches himself away from me (hooray), I take my own phone out, and if I’m honest can’t help smirking a bit when I see that, unlike him, I have reception (four bars).
I should call him right now (or as soon as he’s moved enough to have reception) and tell him, so that he doesn’t have to walk too far in the rain.
He must already be soaking, though, so a little bit more rain won’t make any difference. And he’s clearlyreallyannoyed with me so I’m sure he could do with the walk. Plus, it’s very weird being around him and I would like a little (long) break from his company.
I’m switching between three different weather forecast apps and they’re all telling me that this rain is set in for the rest of the day. (I cannotbelievewhat an idiot I was to assume it wouldn’t rain; Callum’s obviously right about forecasts being unreliable and it being ridiculously dangerous to have no windscreen wipers in a downpour.)
I need to make a plan and I’d rather do that without Callum here so I can think straight.
Also, I want to think about Callum because something’s niggling at me.
So I’m going to take his lack of phone reception as a gift and sit down on a log – lovely and dry due to the tree canopy – and enjoy some blissful Callum-free peace and quiet.
The log’s surprisingly comfortable actually, and it’s extremely peaceful here, definitely conducive to good thinking.
Practical things first: are we anywhere near a garage and, if we aren’t, are we anywhere near a hotel?
It looks like the nearest garage is about ten kilometres away. It would have to bereallyclose, I realise, for me to be able to drive safely there right now. Outside this cosy forest shelter it’s bucketing down; in fact some of it’s even starting to seep in here through the branches above, and, going by how dry the ground is, even beneath the bed of brown needles at my feet, that isn’t something that happens very often. So basically I can’t drive anywhere without new wipers and I can’t get new wipers until it stops raining.
Or can I? Maybe I could get a taxi to the garage. But could someone from the garage transport all their wiper-fixing tools here? And would it cost a fortune to pay them to come out? It would still probably be less than the cost of an extra night in a hotel, though.
It looks like there are a couple of small hotels about three or four kilometres away. That’s quite a long way to carry a bag in this weather, and there’s the cost of an extra night added to the trip to consider. Except I really don’t fancy camping here by myself and I really don’t fancy camping here with Callum. Walking in the rain would be better and I’d pay good money to avoid him.
I stretch my legs out in front of me and stare at my feet. I like the colour I painted my toenails yesterday. I was choosing between an orangey one and a greeny-blue one. I went orangeand that was a good decision. By contrast, my decision to wait until getting to France to get my wipers fixed wasbad, as was my decision to agree to give a lift to a person who I thought was just a friend-of-a-friend called Callum.
Okay, so maybe my best approach is to see if I can get a taxi from here to the garage and from there to a hotel if they can’t fix the wipers. I wonder if you can get Ubers in the middle of the countryside an hour outside Rome during a European-wide no-flight crisis.
I’m going to have to wait for Callum to come back, I realise, or at least call him and tell him that I’m going. Otherwise when he gets back here he might think something terrible’s happened to me and call the police or something.
Having Callum with me is definitely the worst part about this.
I mean, okay, yes, if I’mactuallystranded in the middle of nowhere there are people (my mum, my sister, my friends, basically everyone I know) who would say that it’s alotbetter for me to have Callum aroundjust in case.(Honestly, when you embark on a trip like this there’s alotof ‘just in case’ chat from people who care about you, which is obviously lovely but also a teensy bit annoying at times.)
However, I have not been enjoying his company today.
He was the love of my life. Until I met Dev. Who I think I thought had become the love of my life until he asked me to marry him and I realised that I couldn’t imagine pottering around a garden and doing crosswords and hopefully still having sex with him when I’m eighty, so I said no very regretfully and we broke up.
When I think about it, it never felt as breathtakingly all-consuming with Dev as it did with Callum, but that’s probably – almost certainly – because I was a lot older when I met Dev. Obviously you don’t love – or think you love – someone in thesame way when you’re more mature. I probably wouldn’t fall in love with Callum in the same way now had we only just met.
