Page 14 of The Lucky Escape

He was right – I had been pretty precocious growing up. I saw a lot of myself in Freddie and how she behaved. I suppose I was so protective over her because I didn’t want her to lose her edge, like I had done. Huh. That was a horrible thought to have. I’d lost my edge? When had that happened? I immediately changed the subject.

‘What about you?’ I said, tipping the straw of my cup in Patrick’s direction. ‘What kind of man did Patrick Hummingbird grow up to be?’

He considered it. He sat with his chunky, muscled legs sprawled apart and his elbows on his knees, easy in his own body and happy to take up space. ‘I grew up to be … a bit lost, I think.’

‘Lost?’

‘I think that’s the word. But I don’t mean it in a bad way. I just don’t have a plan. And that’s unusual for a lot of people.Makes them anxious. But I’m cool just … ambling.’ He swirled the straw around his cup pensively. ‘Does that make sense?’ he asked, looking at me. ‘That I actually find a lot of comfort in not having a plan?’

I thought about the last ten days. I thought about the last fifteen years. ‘I think it takes strength of character not to plan,’ I decided. ‘I feel so much pressure – and I don’t even really know where it comes from. Myself, probably. Society? The patriarchy? My mother?’

‘You’re afraid of disappointing people,’ he said.

Was that a statement or a question? For some reason it landed like an accusation. Afraid of disappointing people? I think that was my default setting. Mum, Dad, Freddie, work, Alexander, the Core Four, Adzo – I didn’t for a second want to do anything that displeased them or made them think less of me. If everyone around me was okay, then I was okay. On the list of priorities in my life, I came at the bottom, because that’s what good, selfless women did, wasn’t it? They looked after everyone else to prove their goodness. Nice women found their worth in that, and I wanted to be nice. I wanted to be considered good.

I sighed. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Something like that.’

‘There’s this writer called Glennon Doyle who says that it’s not worth disappointing yourself to please somebody else. She says life is the opposite, in fact. That you have to make a game out of disappointing other people for as long as it takes toneverdisappoint yourself.’

The notion of that was outrageous to me.

‘That sounds … selfish,’ I said, a tiny voice in the very back of my head contradicting me as it roared:That sounds AMAZING, actually!

‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘Think about it: if we are alldisappointing ourselves over and over in order to never upset anybody else, aren’t we putting the same pressure on them? If we all put ourselves first, wouldn’t that give permission for other people to putthemselvesfirst? Wouldn’t we all be happier?’

I thought about what he was saying, but it sounded suspicious to me.

‘Is that how you live? Honestly?’

He shrugged. ‘The way I see it, we’re all looking to each other for permission to be free, so I’m happy to go first and give it. Nobody knows how much time they have left, so there’s no point wasting it trying to be good when it’s so much more fun to keep having fun.’

‘Your life sounds nice.’

He hit his shoulder against mine good-humouredly.

‘Your life isn’t?’

I glugged at the last of my smoothie, the sound of the last bit of liquid going up my straw making a loud and very unladylike noise.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and he shook his head.

‘What for?’

I’d meant my bad table manners, but it was obvious he didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t even noticed.

‘You could teach me a few things,’ I disclosed. ‘I am having a very physical reaction to everything you are saying right now.’

‘You’re flirting with me!’ he said, making his voice high-pitched and silly.

‘Nooooo,’ I said, embarrassed at the accusation. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

His face flickered roguishly. ‘How disappointing.’

I must have been light-headed because of the class, or because I hadn’t eaten properly yet, because suddenly I wasdry in the throat and a little bit woozy. I went from watching his understanding, playful mouth talking, to the room closing in on me,bam,just like that.

‘Offft,’ I said, closing my eyes and leaning my head back against the wall behind us. ‘I think I might have pushed too hard in there. Wow.’

I inhaled and exhaled deeply for a few breaths.

---