Page 2 of The Promise of Tomorrow
Falling in love wasn’t an option, not for Elena, not until after her thirtieth birthday, in six weeks’ time. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck because of the reckless promise she’d made, twenty years ago, that foreboding night, on the common near her parents’ house; the promise that guaranteed terrible repercussions for her big three-o.
A shiver ran down her spine.
When they arrived, the pub was packed. Rory ordered two hot chocolates, Elena declining a shot of rum in hers. Whilst fact-lover Rory chatted to the server, passing on the essential information of how drinking chocolate had been traced way back to 1700BC in Mexico, she sipped her drink, enjoying the cosy atmosphere. They headed outside and found a space right at the front, directly behind a thin line of rope at the edge of the field. Elena breathed in the sweet cocoa steam. Most people avoided the wintry air until the giant bonfire was lit. It stood a car length away, with gnarled branches sticking out next to straight, manmade furniture scraps.
‘That glass tank…’ Elena stared Rory straight in the face and raised one eyebrow.
‘Brandy and Snap live inside.’
‘Who? All I saw was a bundle of twigs.’
‘Two Indian stick insects. Female. You should be impressed – they don’t need men to reproduce. How’s that for women’s empowerment?’
Slowly Elena looked him up and down. ‘More like wishful thinking.’
He laughed, softly.
‘No one told methreeof you would be moving in, and that’s aside from the prospect of dozens of babies. What if they get out?’ Her brow furrowed.
‘Julian, my neighbour, who you met when I had those drinks at mine to celebrate joining the company permanently…’
‘The vet? Hasn’t he been ill? How’s he doing now?’
‘Yeah, much better. Well, someone abandoned over a hundred of them on his surgery’s doorstep… Imagine having to re-home that many? He showed me the tanks. I put my hand in one to straighten a twig and these two crawled onto my fingers. They swayed from side to side and clung on tight, as if their lives depended on me. I swear they gave me puppy eyes.’
‘Emotional manipulation of the highest degree? Brandy and Snap have gone up in my estimation. But wouldn’t it have been kinder to release them into the wild?’
‘Nope. Indian stick insects are non-native to the UK.’
‘Do they bite? Release poison?’
‘Elena! Thousands of children across the country look after them. They are more likely to sing nursery rhymes or knit booties. In any case, Julian’s illness was stress-related, so if I could help in any way…’
She lifted up her mug, took another sip, and the smoothchocolate froth stroked her taste buds. ‘How did you arrive at those names? Talk about having the biscuit business on the brain.’
‘Because they kind of look like brandy snaps,’ he said.
‘Rory, stick insectssodon’t.’
He shrugged and smiled like he did, at work, when they disagreed over something small. ‘In all my twenty-seven years, I’ve never done pets, although I’ve always thought an insect would be cool. These can even grow back broken legs. Snap is missing one at the moment. At least they won’t be scared by all the noise tonight, like a dog would.’
A bang went off in the distance and Elena jumped.
‘Elena Swan, my gutsy colleague, full of drive, known for never giving up on a pitch…’
Too right. Neither did Rory. Derek, their boss, said it was great to have two team members coming at projects from different angles, as it meant they covered all the bases.
‘The office’s appointed first aider who doesn’t faint at the sight of blood,’ he continued, ‘the organiser of many a staff trip out to a noisy nightclub – don’t go pretending thatyou’rescared of fireworks?’
Deep breaths. He was right, even though those booming dance nights out were more for her hardworking colleagues’ sake – she preferred the quiet. Elena stood taller. Her thirtieth birthday was looming, but a woman like her surely had nothing to fear? She swallowed. That promise would never be called in. It wouldn’t. She’d made it as a child. Adult Elena wouldn’t have to keep her side of the deal. She was being stupid still worrying about it, all these years later. She took a large gulp of reassuring hot chocolate as Rory swayed to music pumped out by a local DJ. He transitioned smoothly from one move to the other, not spilling so much as a sip of his drink, in a world of his own for amoment, or so it seemed. Rory lived his life as if no one was watching.
Whereas the nearer her big birthday came, Elena lived hers under the close gaze of the past.
It was tough working alongside someone who reflected back at you the type of life you might have led if it hadn’t been for one chance meeting, when you were ten, with a stranger in a purple shawl.
The bonfire blazed, releasing soot, as if sending a smoke signal to ticket holders to gather around. Rory tapped into his phone, reeling off event-appropriate statistics to the family standing next to him, their faces glazed, such as the average sparkler burns at one thousand degrees centigrade and fireworks are able to travel up to one hundred and fifty miles per hour. Didn’t he realise how much he sounded like a mansplainer? His commentary was halted by a loud cheer as the organisers announced the display was about to begin. Elena drained her mug and gave hers and Rory’s to one of the bar servers trudging past with a tray.
Bouquets of colour, bursting stars, falling fireflies… Elena was rapt, as if she was little again and lost in a Disney movie – unlike numbers man Rory, who was googling how light travels faster than sound and that’s why the sky lights up before you hear the pop. As the show came to an end, she went to suggest they dart off early, to avoid queues at the bar and then…
