It was not just her hurt but her fury that I feared.
I lay back on my bedroll, queasy morning light filtering through the canvas. The walls of my tent contracted and expanded with the breeze like a giant lung. I knew with utter certainty that I would never sleep again.
Mac woke me up what felt like ten seconds later, sticking his head through the zip. His eyes bulged like a cartoon character’s and his tongue was green. I checked my watch: 10 a.m.
‘Kit,’ he croaked. Twenty years of his goading balled inside me; a boast crouched on my tongue. It felt worth it, in those swimming seconds between sleep and consciousness and then, as my focus sharpened, quickly revealed itself to be the second worst idea I’d ever had. I gathered myself just in time.
‘I didn’t expect you up so early,’ I said. The sarcasm was lost on him.
‘Am I fuck. We’re just going to bed now.’ His breath was rank with old tobacco. ‘We went down to the clifftops. We got some really strong visuals. Lasers in the sky. Listen. Can you open up for us, catch the lunchtime crowd?’
‘You’re joking,’ I said. ‘I did a double shift yesterday.’
‘Please, Kit,’ he wheedled. ‘We’ll do the late one tonight. I’m going to actually physically die if I don’t sleep.’ I glared at him. ‘We’ll work the eclipse tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
I didn’t go straight to the stall. I felt sheened all over in Beth, and would have paid fifty pounds, never mind five, to stand under hot water and scrub. In the tiny, mud-flecked bathroom up at the farmhouse, I turned the water up so high my skin went scarlet. I scrubbed until the last smear of gold was gone. On the way back, I bought a nondescript khaki top with a hood that covered most of my face, and only then moved with ease through the crowd.
At last the site was beginning to fill up. Burrito Jon was playing loud mariachi band music to drum up custom and it had brought people to our section of the festival. At the tea stall, I took seventy pounds for a morning’s work and pocketed ten for myself to spite Mac. From the moment I fired up the generator I was on full alert, expecting Beth to turn up. I didn’t see her until lunchtime. She’d changed into some weird purple flares and had her hair wrapped in a tatty brown towel. I wouldn’t have noticed her at all but her stillness was conspicuous in the milling crowd. When our eyes clicked together, she turned away. It was only later I realised she hadn’t been after me at all. She had wanted a look at Laura.
Laura walked across the field. I nearly dropped the bag of rubbish I was carrying. Because of her job interview, she’d done something different to her hair, making it hang straight and silky rather than the wiggling waves I was used to. I flashed forward into our future, Laura putting her keys on the table and kicking off work shoes, and me closing the laptop for the night. This unambitious domestic fantasy now seemed like all I wanted from my life, so why did I get the urge to fall at her feet and confess everything? I kissed Laura and tucked her hair behind one ear, because that was the kind of thing I normally did.
‘How’d the interview go?’
‘Ok, I think. We’ll see.’ I could tell by the way she searched me, her eyes cutting star shapes on my face, that she knew something was wrong. She tried to tease me out of myself, little kisses on my ears, her hands around my waist, but I only shrank away. For the first time I understood the compulsion people get, at the edge of a cliff, to throw themselves off. I dredged up small talk about the showers in the farmhouse and the weather forecast, and every forced word was a little hell.
‘You never know,’ she said. ‘The weather forecasters get it wrong all the time.’ Her assumption almost made me glad of the cloud.
I’d always scorned the idea of extra-sensory perception but I swear at that moment I felt Beth behind me, and I turned slowly away from Laura to see her leaning against a tree, looking for all the world like just another hippy soaking up the vibe. I shook my head at her, and in response she made a tiny backwards nod that I interpreted as a summons.
Tapping into my newly emerging creative streak, I swivelled to look at the perfectly functioning tea urn. ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ I twiddled the temperature knob as Beth slunk behind the tent. ‘It’s buggered again, there’s a loose connection round the back. You stay here, have your drink, while I fix this.’ I kissed the top of Laura’s head again.
The trees at the back of the tent dripped with wind chimes that jangled like scraped nerves. I had a sudden urge to round up every wind chime ever made and bash them all flat with a hammer. Beth’s hair had dried in long black snakes and thread veins burned scarlet against the greens and whites of her eyes. There was intimacy between us but she was a stranger, and it didn’t seem right that the two states could co-exist.
‘That her?’ Her arms were folded but her foot was repeatedly scuffing the forest floor, gouging a trench in the dirt.
I was indignant. ‘Of course it’s her. I don’t go around . . .’ but I trailed off. Why should Beth believe me, going on available evidence? ‘I’ve never been unfaithful to her apart from you.’
She snarled a bitter laugh. ‘You’re saying I’m special? You’re saying I should be flattered?’ That was, in fact, exactly what I meant; it had sounded better in my head. ‘No – I don’t know – I’m just saying, please don’t say anything to Laura. I’m so sorry I wasn’t straight with you, but this isn’t her fault, this would break her heart.’ My legs buckled with a primitive compulsion to drop to my knees.
A sudden gust of wind shook the trees around us; leaves roared like the sea and bells rang out of time.
Beth let her arms drop to her sides. ‘Are you in love with her?’