Page 55 of The Lucky Escape

‘What?’ I said, colouring up. See! I knew he could tell I was thinking about his lips!

‘Annie,’ he said. ‘I was kidding. No need to look so horrified.’

If only he knew.

Everything about Patrick was amplified now I knew that I’d somehow – whilst nobody was looking – developed feelings. I couldn’t do anything about it, and so I kept my distance physically as we navigated our way to the car. I steered conversation to the things we could see as we drove to the drop-off point, about thirty minutes away, so that we didn’t dance around anything that could be accused of being flirtatious. That was hard because we did naturally bounce off one another – exactly why it had been so great to see him at bootcamp, and how I’d ended up with the ill-advised crush in the first place – but now it was a minefield where I could embarrass myself at any moment by stepping over the line when it wasn’t warranted. I couldn’t figure out if the things he was doing were friendly or flirty. He’d open a car door for me and I’d think:Oh. Friendly.But then he’d do the thing where he saved a secret smile just for me, and I’d think:Flirty.Then he’d smile at our taxi driver or waiter or a randomperson with a nice dog on the street and I’d change my mind again:Friendly. He’s just friendly.

We headed upstream in our separate canoes from the launch spot the taxi dropped us at, gliding across the water past limestone cliffs that glistened, illuminated by the late-afternoon sun. The estuary was wide and quiet, lined with leafy vegetation and the low hum of insects.

My canoe was dark green, and the tip of it cut into the deep water like a knife through butter, parting it and pushing through with ease, making me feel like the Amelia Earhart of the backwaters, breaking new ground. For every one loaded, intensified moment I’d had with Patrick so far on the trip, there’d been ten more moments like this – quiet reflections and private re-centrings, flashes of perfection that made me feel like everything really would be okay. I knew London existed as a concept, that home was real and there was loads to figure out on my return, but it didn’t matter when the sun was burnt orange, the middle of a Guy Fawkes Night bonfire, nature putting on her best show just for me. How spoiled I was to have that. How lucky I was to be gifted such a radically fancy experience so that I could heal. Fernanda had wanted this for me all along. I was starting to want it for myself. I was whole. I was enough.

By the time we got to a tiny private beach, the sun dropping behind the trees seductively and ice clinking in the glasses waiting for us on the shore, osprey fishing in the water, we’d lulled ourselves into the intimate silence that came with being in total awe of the moment.

‘Crikey,’ said Patrick, eventually, absorbing the new dusty twinge to the light, the stillness of the water. We were clocking up a lot of sunsets together.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘I think this might be the most peaceful I’ve ever been in my life.’

I wiggled my toes in the sand at the bottom of the huge throw we were lounging on. It was colder underneath, where it hadn’t been exposed to the sun. My skin was sunbaked, my hair wild around my shoulders, my smile involuntary but undoubtedly there.

‘I don’t want to go back to my real life as it was,’ I said. I don’t know where it came from – mostly that I didn’t think it was possible to feel this way once we left Australia, and I wanted to feel like this always. Suspended in time and cocooned by nature. I wanted to examine every cloud in the sky and each leaf of the trees so that I could commit it to memory.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

I made a noise that signified he could.

‘Why aren’t you happy at home?’

‘Just a small question, then,’ I joked. ‘What’s the meaning of life? Are you happy? Why is the sky blue?’

‘Love. Yes. Science.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got an answer for everything.’

‘Only because I spend so much time asking questions.’

His body was close to mine. Was he leaning into it too? Maybe I was imagining it because of his kindness. Maybe I was hoping for something absurd.

No, this is real,a voice from inside me said.You’re safe to feel this.

‘Go on,’ he prompted. His voice was lowered, a priest pacifying me into revelation.

‘Why aren’t I happy at home?’

It was his turn to make murmurs of encouragement.

I continued. ‘Honestly? I feel like I’m too much. Or, no, not enough.’

I kept moving my toes in the sand.

My body angled towards him a little more, responding to him doing the same. More and more we inched in the other’s direction.

I wanted to believe he might have a crush too.

‘I was bullied at school. I didn’t come back to drama camp because … It was when I got back after that last summer there and went into year ten, suddenly the popular girls didn’t like that I’d done something. It was as if they decided to hate me because I was excited about this thing that I loved. And for a whole school year they tormented me, and when the school finally called my parents because they were worried that I’d become withdrawn and stopped participating, Dad was really nice about it but Mum … wasn’t.

‘She made out that if other girls thought I was awful then I must be doing something wrong. She didn’t push for me to go back to drama camp and about halfway through that summer I came up with this plan to be the girl everyone said I should be. I know it sounds unreasonable but it had been such a horrible and lonely year when I was myself that I thought being somebody else wasn’t a bad little plot. Now I think about it, I realize I’d basically been pretending to be that person right up until the wedding.’

‘Annie, that’s horrible.’

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