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I wonder what she’d be thinking if she knew I was on a school trip with a guy she didn’t approve of.

Sighing, I put the phone away. This is exactly why things didn’t work out before, and why they wouldn’t do again. It hurts though, because I’ve had fun today, even if I’m pretending to myself that I’m not.

The sound of the unmistakeable squeal-whisper combo that only teenage girls can produce interrupts me from my thoughts. The whole group has set up tents in a flat clearing in the woodland. I recognise Tom’s one from the years we would sleep in it during hot summer weekends on pretend camping trips his parents organised in their garden, where me and Kath would mainly get in the way whilst trying to help pitch the tent.

A memory sneaks up on me. There was a night when Kath and I had insisted on camping in the living room instead. We’d strung fairy lights across the bookshelves and called it “glamping”. Around midnight we’d decided we were starving and had “snuck” into the kitchen for snacks, only to discover that Tom had gone to the shops and bought marshmallows without us realising. He’d left them on the counter with a note that they were for the “glampers”. I wonder whether that was the first night my crush on him truly began.

As pasta and boil in the bag meals are assembled around the campsite, a few teachers supervise to ensure no one causes a campsite cooking disaster. I sip my water, eat my sandwich, and watch James and Tom set up their stove. James teases him that pasta is the only meal he knows how to cook, and Tom just rolls his eyes. I catch myself smiling at their conversation, and then immediately have to look away.

As the sky starts threatening to drizzle, Tom glances up from the stove and instinctively starts checking that everyone’s tents are secured properly.

Of course he does.

And of course some inconvenient part of me finds competence wildly attractive.

Chapter 25

Claire

It’s only about thirty minutes into the downpour that I discover my tent did not make it through the Reading festival in the unscathed way I initially imagined. I find the first hole when water starts dripping onto my nose. Scanning the tent I identify a second, then a third, and slowly but surely a puddle starts to creep its way up the tent. I look for duct tape, and of course I didn’t pack it, and anyway there are probably more holes than the three I can see.

Fuck.

It turns out, my trusty old tent is less “adventure-ready” and more “lightly perforated sponge”. Fumbling for my torch, I shine it at at my feet.

Oh no.

There’s a big puddle.

“Double fuck,” I mutter, scrambling upright, smacking my head into the canvas roof in the process.

My sleeping bag is getting damp. At least my clothes are all protected by multiple layers of bin bags within the backpack. But that’s not much of a comfort when the rest of me is slowly getting soggier.

I weigh my options. Option one: accept my fate and slowly sink into the shallow puddle forming under my roll matt, hope that my camera stays dry, and accept that I will turn into a wrinkled prune. Option two: find someone, anyone, with a dry tent. Option three: see if there is a space to sleep on the bathroom floor, given the only building still unlocked is the bathroom.

I shake my head. Option three isn’t an option. A communal toilet as a bedroom. That really is a low.

As another raindrop hits me directly in the eye I know that it has to be option two if I want to get any sleep. Unfortunately, I remember who the only teacher with a two-man tent is.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom.

Brilliant.

I try to unzip the tent as quietly as possible and scout out the area for any students. I don’t want to fuel rumours, and a midnight camping rendezvous would keep them amused for weeks. I move my backpack to the dry square at the top of the tent, and triple-check that everything in it is water tight. Then I make sure I have my camera, wrapped in a plastic bag, and half-run, half-squelch my way to Tom’s tent. The rain is hammering down, drumming steadily onto the campsite.

I pause at the entrance to his tent, suddenly frozen by indecision. Maybe option one would be better. The rain pelts against my skin, soaking me to the bones. No, option two. Definitely option two.

This is ridiculous. I’m an adult. I have a career. I own a food processor. Surely I can handle this.

Except now I’m standing outside his tent, looking like a wet woodland creature, and I have absolutely no idea what the etiquette is here. Do I knock? Is that… a thing? Do you tap on the flap? Gently unzip? Announce yourself like some medieval messenger?

I hover for a second longer, shivering, before settling on a cautious two-finger tap against the side. Like an idiot.

Nothing happens.

I’m about to tap again, but then I hear some shifting, a muffled grunt, and the unmistakeable sound of someone trying to extract themselves from a sleeping bag without unzipping it all the way.

Finally, the entrance of the tent pulls back, and Tom’s face appears in the gap, hair sticking up messily, blinking against the light of my torch.