Wales

They talked as they walked, it was about nothing in particular, just names and places, things that had happened, things that might, days gone past, lives that didn’t concern them; they walked and talked, hands in pockets, shoulders together. They had left the house without a goodbye to the others, just took the keys and picked up Lilly’s coat, not hiding their intentions of going for a walk, but pointedly not wishing for any other company.

It was a quiet, tired morning. When Chris had woken, Lilly had not been there. The bed was made on her side, his arm still stretched out to where she ought to have been as he lay on his back and looked at the blank, white ceiling. Tom breathed heavily into the silence. Chris turned on his side and closed his eyes again. He remembered the smell of her skin, her cold feet tucked between his, her small hands pushing back the hair falling on his forehead as she lay on her stomach, weight on her elbows, stroking the light across his brow, sketching his face, unsure where to look without his eyes open. She had laughed and apologised for keeping him awake, but she just couldn’t sleep. She said he was breathing too loudly, constantly breathing, it was so inconsiderate of him, living like that, breathing so heavily like every breath was a great effort, sighing his life away. She felt every rise and fall of his chest. They watched the dawn seep in through the hesitant blind stretched across the sky light.

He had slept longer than he had thought. Dragging the covers back and pulling himself out of the bed, he reached for the half empty can of Stella he’d left from the night before and drank slowly.

She was in the boat outside, sitting alone in that old grey hoodie someone once lent her on a cold summer’s day. They never let her give it back. It had lived for a year or so in the bottom of her wardrobe, folded neatly, brought out every once in a while, once uncertainly gestured towards the recycling bag, but then dropped back in the floordrobe amidst all the high heeled brogues and sequined clutch bags that this new life needed. She wore the hoodie again now because it didn’t mean anything anymore.

She was sitting hunched slightly, hugging her arms around her, a glass of water cold against the palm of her right hand. She touched her face and shook her head, dropping it down, setting the glass on the seat of the boat and letting her face fall into her hands. It was cold here.

She didn’t immediately turn at the sound of the patio door being opened. Chris stood on the decking for a moment, watching her from a few feet away. Her fingers clutched at the bare skin on the back of her neck. He knew that her eyes were on the horizon.

The world over her shoulders was too vast to hold them together.

And that was why they needed this walk now, he had to tell her that again. He had to tell her that this was how things ought to be, resigned to a dead friendship. He didn’t know if she would accept it again, whether she’d protest again. He remembered what she’d said last night. I can’t forget about you. He remembered her face as she drew a glass of water from the tap when she’d come back inside with him that morning. It was that blank, deadened expression that she wore, resigned. And yet when she sighed, elbows against the edges of the sink, her face broke into a smile. She reached out to him, it was always her who was reaching out, and she buried her face in his neck, because at least for that morning, here was home. He let her stay there a little while, the two of them standing in the tiny white polished kitchen, leaning against the gas stove, next to the box of a dozen eggs. Faces had been drawn on all twelve of their speckled shelves, the combined artwork of Lilly and Chris and two green sharpies, a happier morning – laughing bald heads, tucked safely away, but teetering a little too close to the edge of the counter.

This was never how things ought to have been, thought Lilly as they walked the way to the beach. They walked side by side, hands determinedly in pockets, just talking casually, even laughing as they stumbled down the sloping gravel footpath, not once even tripping on the subject of the night before, the lives that might have been. It was a while before they braced themselves and addressed the question of that night, just talking about little, trivial things first – favourite colours, what they’d cook for tea that night. But the important matter did lurk portentously before them, like the final problem on an already difficult maths paper, just waiting to dash them on the rocks.

The beach was a postcard that morning, all painted blue sky, streaming with sunlight on sandy skin. There was no ceiling, no clouds – the beach poured into the sea, and the sea stretched round the earth, dropping down, opening out. It was a spiteful day, as if life could be hopeful, as if they were free. They walked across the beach to the rocks, which they climbed together, hopping across their scaly surfaces before finally finding a seat, hunched together, but not touching. That was over. That was what had brought them here, to their serious chat on the beach – touching. A night in each other’s arms, not sleeping, limbs stretching into hands and fingers, sleepless eyes. And that wasn’t what they wanted, not what he wanted, he couldn’t let himself do that to her again, keep pushing her away now, that was the only way to turn this around. She was leaving soon. And he was too, even further, to hot sands and the sound of bullets, worlds away from her library fines and rain pecked single glazing. Her life of songs and bells – the laughter of guns.

And so Lilly sat on the rocks with Chris, and found that she had no words. The loud, laughing girl, the speaker of three languages, the winner of Scrabble, the articulate, expressive essay writer. She had no words. Because what do you say when your whole lifehangs on the choice of someone else? Here he was telling her, perfectly reasonably, perfectly kindly, that they didn’t have a shot. Chris was the rational one. Lilly was only his capsizing counterpart, choking on her superlatives – her whole life in jeopardy this morning on the beach. But it was her whole life, she was seventeen – who could blame her for talking always in terms of forever, big dreams, simple truths. She loved him.

There are certain facts that we all know about ourselves, things that we cling to when everything else is a little uncertain, a little hazy. Unalterable, solid facts – dictionary definitions. Lilly Cheriton knew that she was born on 25th November, one month before Christmas, St Catherine’s feast day. She hated cucumber and fish fingers. She’d been to New York for her sixteenth birthday. She liked to draw heart shaped balloons and cottages in the margins of her history notes. She loved Christian Pembroke more in a day than she could love anyone else in eighty years. She loved him.

And however much she tried to convince herself that he was right, he wasn’t being reasonable. No, not at all. He kept saying words and speaking sentences whilst she was mute, but that didn’t mean he was right. She had to protest, she had to tell him he was wrong. We do have a shot Chris, you’re just too scared to put your neck on the line. The voices in her head clawed up her throat. Am I just the girl you turn to when you’re a bit bored? When no one else is entertaining you? The words hammered their fists against her teeth, mouth clenched shut. Did you ever care, or was this all just a game? That’s what she was most scared about – the question of if he actually cared, truly. But her voice could only manage three words at a time, and she couldn’t say the three words she wanted to so desperately, so all that was said was ‘I don’t know’. I don’t know if I’ll be okay, I don’t know if I’ll let you go, I don’t know if I agree with you. And so everything she said was a lie, because she wouldn’t be okay, not ever, and she’d never let him go, and he knew she didn’t agree, because he was wrong, and he knew he was wrong, however much he talked about protecting her, however much he supposedly wanted to be with her, it simply wasn’t the case that they didn’t have a shot. They always would. And so it was all lies on the beach, wasn’t it. Pretending.

She was still on his side though. She was always on his side, sticking up for him even when she knew he was wrong, because for him to be wrong, she had to be wrong too. Surely it would be the ruin of her. A couple of months’ time on from this day on the beach, she’ll fall into his arms, three in the morning, sitting in wet grass in a crop top and bare legs and she’ll say to him ‘It’s all my fault, everything, it’s all my fault.’ But truth be told, she wasn’t to blame, she was never to blame.

Fault and blame, they’re not the same. She had learnt that. It wasn’t her fault that she’d broken her last boyfriend’s heart, nor the heart of that other boy, the friend without the prefix. But she was still the one to blame. Chris was the one to blame this time, but was it Lilly’s fault? Or was it a shared disaster that they let play on for months and months? Maybe neither were to blame – maybe the simple fact was that the world was too vast to hold them together, and when they had collided, they had been thrown far, far apart by the force of it, expounding the boundaries of the child sized world they knew before. That’s all they were – a collision. Two exceptionally lucky, liked, beautiful, young people brought together and flung apart because together fate thought they were too strong.

They finished talking and got up from the rocks to follow the curve of the beach round the cliff, the sea at their heels. God knows it was the most beautiful, lonely day maybe they’ll ever know. She’ll know warmer seas and hot sands once this is all over – give it a few months and she’ll be sitting on some other guy’s shoulders, raised up above the horizon, gorgeous tanned skin glittering in the fading light of a summer holiday. But this day was a more beautiful day, when she stood in his arms, burying her face in his coat, squinting against the sunlight that burst from his face. And that beach was theirs. Every beach was theirs. And she was his, always his. Even after she walked away.

Back in the house, Lilly simply took her coat off and walked upstairs. She closed the bedroom door behind her, and the door of its ensuite too, locking it tight. And she sat down on the bathroom floor and tried to cry, because life wasn’t fair. It had been the most cruel, exhausting day, smiling through photographs and nodding along to empty words, promising that she could live quietly with him, side by side, but not touching. She was seventeen. She cried on the bathroom floor. She had believed this was a forever deal, this was it. Her life. She still believed. She still believes. That’s why she couldn’t put her heart into crying. Hope always lived, like the beam of a lighthouse on stormy seas, revolving and running, something to chase. Hope, the vibrato violin to play one phrase over the top of a sad, misty piano – the light at the end of the tunnel.

Lilly crawled into bed and shut her eyes. The boys went out and got a KFC. The chips they brought back for her grew cold and unhappy downstairs. She slept until dark, before once more putting on her face in the mirror and softly treading down the stairs to start life over again. She had always known she was staring down the barrel of a gun. It was a narrow view, that black abyss of the future contained in the slender rifle that fate held to her face. But she stared it out. She wouldn’t change their story for anything, and she wouldn’t bail, not ever.

© Cecelia Turing and ceceliatee, 2014.