Because I could never have stayed fourteen.
He points to a Blue darting in and out of the thyme. He picks up his net. He models how to wait, how to swipe. She bites her bottom lip when he offers it to her. Gives him a shy smile when he encourages her. She wipes her hands on her jeans before taking the handle. She’s nervous. I was nervous my first time, too.
She catches one, first time, better than me, she has it against the ground. She calls to him. He extracts it deftly, elegantly from the gauze, cups it in his expert palms. He lifts his chin. She opens her hands.
I shut my eyes, turn round, rush back through the woods, sending squirrels scurrying, pine cones flying, I wish I was brave but I am not, I cannot bear to see the flutter of wings light up her face. How could I not have realised he’s caught me, when I’ve watched him catch so many things? Needles fill my trainers but I don’t care, I want to hurt. Stab through my soft stupidity, puncture my vanity, peel my foolishness back to the bone. The no-carb diet. The teenage clothes. The shampoo. I thought it might have been enough. It would never have been enough.
Something sends me stumbling to the ground, a tree root perhaps or a fallen branch, my hands scrabble for a trunk or some bark to stop my fall but find nothing. My chin rakes across the ground. I am sprawled out on the forest floor. I let myself weep then. For the clump of soil melting on my tongue, the beetle that runs over my hand. This is what loving him has got me.
Bracken canopies over me, huge and ancient, filtering the light green. I reach out, touch the underside of the fronded leaves, brush my fingertips across scored rows of beaded spore cases. Distantly, I remember a fact from my botany days – when insects, like butterflies, damage the fronds, the bracken releases a poison that breaks open their exoskeletons, turns them inside out.
Nothing is defenceless. Nothing.
I spit soil from my mouth. Sit up.
62
Candlelight
Now
I’m waiting for him when he comes in from the field, I open the door. He stares at me, surprised, rests his nets carefully on the floor of the porch. ‘Lolly?’
I am wearing a black dress. It is the only formal thing Daniel bought me, it has ridiculously thin straps, a soft, billowing skirt. If Kit saw me in this, he’d give a low whistle. But Daniel isn’t Kit. He stops abruptly in front of me, takes excruciating seconds running his eyes over the scrubbed planes of my cheeks, my clavicles, my thinner arms. He swallows. I go up on my tiptoes, kiss his cheek so he can feel how small I am next to him, like he loves.
‘You look—’ He cannot finish.
‘Do you like?’ When I got back, I prepared myself very carefully, conditioning my hair, brushing it out, blow-drying it, applying the slightest hint of make-up. The pine needles, the mud are all gone.
‘I do.’ He shuts his eyes, inhales. The apple shampoo. I used it all over.
‘Come, sit.’
‘You’ve made dinner?’ He glances at the small, round dining table. In the shadow of twilight, he takes in the cutlery carefully placed on folded, checked napkins, the bowls of olives and artichokes, the enormous salad with quartered heirloom tomatoes. A smile plays on his lips. He’s taught me well. I’ve done it exactly as he would.
I strike a match to light the candles, then snuff out the burning end. A vein of smoke drifts over the table. ‘I thought we could celebrate.’
‘What are we celebrating?’ He shrugs off his jacket, sits while I pour water.
‘Us.’
‘I thought perhaps, after yesterday—’
‘—Oh, don’t worry about that. You were right. I just needed to think things through.’
‘I knew you’d come around! You just needed to see the potential, how much we can make, when you see it in those terms, it would be insanity not to. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how I contact the buyers, the kind of quality they want, it’s easy really—’
‘—Tomorrow,’ I cut him off. ‘Tonight, I want to celebrate.’
‘Of course.’ He’s smiling at me, he takes his water glass, waits for me to lift mine.
‘Oh. We can’t toast like this.’
‘Can’t we?’
‘It’s bad luck. Everyone knows that.’ My heart is racing very fast. ‘Can you get something from the wine cellar?’
‘There’s not much good stuff down there anymore.’