“Toby?” I say, crawling back into the bush outside my house.
He’s sitting inside it, just as I suspected he would be, reading a battered copy of Don Juan. He looks up, sniffs and then lifts the green torch he’s holding so that it shines directly in my face like a sort of Halloween-themed Gestapo. “Harriet!” he says in astonishment. “What an unexpected surprise! I didn’t expect you for – ” and he clicks the red light on his watch – “another twenty-eight minutes. Did you not get any laundry done? Or did I miscalculate the dryer times?”
OK, Toby is much, much better at this stalking malarkey than I thought he was.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask, clambering in next to him.
“Not at all. This flask prevents the energy loss of the vibrating molecules of my soup and thus is still nice and toasty.” Toby sniffs again. “Sadly, I think I may need a flask for my nose, as it is suspiciously icy and may be about to fall off, if that is a physical possibility.”
I laugh. “Not at this temperature.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Toby looks around the inside of the bush with an embarrassed expression. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up. Honestly, it’s not always like this.”
“It’s OK. Isn’t it my bush anyway?”
“Which makes me your tenant, I suppose.” Toby fiddles with the volume button on the radio, which is now playing Vivaldi. “I shall try and keep it down so as not to disturb the neighbours.”
“I’m your neighbour, Toby.” I laugh again and make myself a little bit more comfortable on the blanket. The entire time I was running/wheeling here, I knew I had to ask him something – something important – but I didn’t know quite what it was.
Suddenly I do.
I look at Toby’s skeleton gloves, and the hat with the little bear ears built into it, and the trainers with the laces that look like piano keys, and the battered copy of a book he’ll never have to read, not even for university. I look at his flask and his blanket and his face, with the slightly shiny, drippy, wet-looking nose. I look at his simple, transparent happiness that I’m here. And then I take a deep breath.
“Toby,” I say, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Toby thinks about it. “Was that it? Did I just answer it?”
“No.”
“Then sure, go right ahead.”
“OK.” I close my eyes, swirl the question around my mouth a few times, take a deep breath and spit it out. “Toby, do you ever feel like a polar bear, lost in a rainforest?”
Toby narrows his eyes thoughtfully. “What kind of rainforest?”
“Does it matter?”
“Absolutely, Harriet. Different rainforests have totally different vegetation. It will dramatically affect how easy it is to be found again. Some have significantly more ground foliage and then it will be mainly cutting at plants with the paws.” Toby waves his hands in front of his face to illustrate this.
There’s silence again as I stare at him. “It’s a metaphor, Toby. I’m speaking metaphorically.”
“Right. Gotcha.” Toby thinks about it for a few minutes. “In that case, sure I do, Harriet.”
My stomach flips over. He knows? “And then do you ever feel as if…” I pause, trying to think of how to put it. “As if no matter what we do, we’re made of the wrong stuff and everyone can see it?”
Toby nods knowingly. “And we just want to get back again…”
“…to somewhere snowy, where the other polar bears must be…”
“…but we don’t know how to…”
“…so we just wander around on our own.”
Toby and I stare at each other for a few seconds and I can feel my entire body vibrating.
Not with romance. Just to make that clear. It’s not a romantic vibrating. To make the point separately, Toby’s nose chooses that moment to drip on to his scarf. But still: he understands.
“So what do we do?” I finally manage to blurt. “How do we get out, Toby?”
Perhaps there’s a map I don’t know about. Or – at the very least – a signpost.
Toby pulls a face, shrugs and wipes his nose with his finger. “Polar bears are awesome.” He wipes his finger on his coat. “They’re the largest land carnivores in the world, and did you know their skin is actually black and their hair is translucent, but looks white because it reflects light?”
I stare at him and my stomach is sinking already. So close and yet so far. “Metaphorically, Toby,” I sigh. “We’re still talking about metaphorical polar bears.”
“I know. That’s what I’m trying to say. We’re awesome, Harriet.” Toby picks up his flask and unscrews the lid. “We’ve got big paws so we can catch tropical fish out of rivers. And as we’re genetically related to European brown bears, I think with a bit of practice we could climb trees too. Even the really tall ones.”
“But…” And I pause. “We still don’t fit in, Toby. Doesn’t that bother you?”