‘I’m a five, so I think maybe a six if you can find any? Or a seven?’
Off he goes, and I sit myself down again, a lot happier now.
* * *
About ten minutes later we’re on our way, me with my feet wedged into pink and navy polka dot (I quite like the design, not joking), size-eight wellingtons with tissues wedged all round the front of my feet.
It is not comfortable.
By the end of the road I slightly want to cry.
By the end of the next road I want to swear.
By the mini roundabout a couple of hundred metres later I do start swearing.
‘Should we go back?’ Tom asks.
‘Are we about halfway to the station?’
‘Yes.’
‘Might as well carry on then.’
And on we go with me going, ‘One, two, three,fuck, one, two, three,fuuuuuck.’ Swearing does help. It’s scientifically proven. It doesn’t help enough, though. It’s really fecking painful. It’s also a bit disgusting; too much information but the wellies are making my feet sweat and I feel like the tissues are shredding and balling so they’ve gone into hard but irregular little bits so the effect is a foot-surround of gravel rather than the cotton wool that I was aiming for.
When we get to the station, there are steps. I stupidly take the first step as though it’s just a regular, easy, human undertaking.
It is excruciating agony because it pushes my blisters against the gravelly tissues and the rigid boot upper. There is really not a lot of give in these wellies.
I hover on the second step from the top and perform an incredible feat and do not howl in pain, I just do a littleouchand cling onto the handrail and wait for the pain to subside to a level where I can think aboutanythingelse.
‘You okay?’ asks Tom from the bottom of the steps.
Such a stupid question. I am incredibly un-okay.
‘Yes, fine,’ I say, in a pretty normal voice, actually.
I wait a few more seconds and then I decide to go for it. I turn my foot sideways and take a second step down.
No. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. That isnotthe way forward. That is terrible agony.
‘Are yousureyou’re okay?’ Tom asks.
‘I think I’m just going to have to make a couple of adjustments to the wellies. I need to take them off and get the tissues out.’ How am I going to sit down, though? I feel like I can’t do that without more serious pain. And I’ll be in the way of everyone going in and out.
‘Maybe do it down here?’ Tom clearly has no idea whatsoever of the incredible and impossible challenge that getting down the steps would entail.
‘I can’t get down there. I can’t do another step like this. It’s too painful.’ I’m aware that I sound ridiculous but there are nine more steps to go and honestly I don’t think Hercules had bigger challenges than that. And I am not Hercules.
‘Okay, simple solution: what about if I carry you down these few steps and then you can sort your boots out here.’
I say, ‘Thank you,’ miserably, because, yes, that is a good plan, but, no, I don’t want to be an adult carried down some steps by another adult because that’s quite weird.
Tom blithely double-steps his way back up, apparently completely taking his unblistered feet for granted, and swings me up into his arms.
And it’s so weird. He has me cradled, his left arm under my thighs and knees, his right round my waist. It would be kind of boyfriend-girlfriendy, except I’m clutching my bag to my chest and staring straight ahead at the tiled wall opposite like a very proper Victorian spinster.
I’m incredibly aware of how wide and solid his chest is and how hard and capable his arms are and of where he’s touching me. I glance towards his face and nearly gasp out loud when I realise how very close it is to my head. His jaw is so perfectly square. And, oh God, there’s something very, very intimate-seeming about being this close to his Adam’s apple.
