just a blurring of the edges, and I could tell the edges were already blurred because we were getting onto fundamentals.
‘So … relationships,’ said Joe. ‘You got some nice guy to look after you?’
‘We just ended, actually.’
‘Oh, shit. Sorry. Why?’ There was a pause, where I knew what Joe was going to say next. Such a mix of self-absorption and selflessness, I haven’t seen in anyone since. ‘Was he just not as good as me?’
‘No, he was just still married to another woman …’
‘Robyn King,’ he said, ‘a marriage-wrecker?’
‘Oh, no, he was separated. He had been for a long time. He was just eking out the longest, most painful divorce in the history of divorces, and I was his therapist. It was never going to work.’
‘There you go, you see – I said you always liked the underdog.’
‘I forgot how the only time you’re sarcastic is when you’re drunk.’
‘It is my mother’s funeral.’
‘Like that’s an excuse.’
We got to the stile that takes you over the fields to the other end of the village.
‘So, what about you?’ I asked. We were trapped in the stile, so were facing each other, our faces inches apart. ‘You were with a girl called Kate, last time I saw you. What happened? Not as good as me?’ I said grinning.
He’d been drinking from the flask again and he laughed, coughed.
Stop flirting, shut up.
‘Nice girl,’ he said, ‘but she had thick ankles and I just couldn’t get over it.
‘See, I told you she wasn’t as good as me,’ I said, flashing my dainty ankles (my body improves as it peters to the ends) and resolving, really, to stop the flirting. I was getting carried away.
We stayed sitting on the stile for a bit, passing the flask to and fro. Beyond the fields, were the cliffs, and beyond the cliffs, you could hear the sea.
‘You could be seventeen in this light,’ said Joe. He had his hand over mine, and all I could feel was that hand, as though that warm area of skin was all that existed.
‘Don’t say that,’ I said.
‘Kiss me,’ he said suddenly, and I laughed.
‘Joe, I can’t kiss you!’
‘Who cares? Why not?’
‘That’s why.’ Because you don’t care, I thought, because why would you? On a day like today? Whereas for me, I was thinking to myself as I looked at the lovely shape of his mouth, it’s not that simple, Robyn, and you know it.
He groaned. ‘Come on,’ he said, and we carried on walking over the fields. A pale disc moon was now intensifying in the sky. The poor old trees, after centuries of being blown mercilessly by North Sea gales, now leaned permanently over.
I leaned over, too.
‘What are you doing?’ said Joe.
‘Checking they’re really like that, or if I’m actually that drunk.’
‘You’re actually that drunk. Now give me some of that,’ and he took the flask from me. It was much colder now and we held onto one another, for warmth as much as anything else, dodging the turf-covered rocks and the sheep shit. Now and again, one of us would trip spectacularly, the other hoisting them up, and then we’d carry on, oblivious, conversation rolling like the fields themselves.
‘You heard me talking to my mum,’ said Joe. ‘That’s a bit embarrassing.’
‘Joe, I used to go into my mum’s wardrobe, put on her clothes, then prance around the house, pretending to be her. How’s that for embarrassing?’
‘And did it help?’
I loved that Joe didn’t bat an eyelid. Andy would have given me that look, the one that said, ‘Robyn, I really like you, but sometimes you scare me.’
‘At the time, yes, and if chucking things at the wall helps you, or getting paralytic, or dressing up in your mum’s clothes, then you should do that, too.’
‘Excellent. I’ll think of you when I’m wearing one of my mum’s skirts and maybe a nice blouse.’ He was holding out his hand for me to take it. ‘Shall we go through the farm, like old times?’
The cold air and the walk had made the booze go more to my head now, and I didn’t really care where we went or what we did. I just knew I didn’t want to go home yet.
We trudged up the lane. The farmhouse had most of its lights on and there were sheets hanging on the washing line, billowing against the sky, like a child’s idea of a ghost. Chickens were roaming around outside, doing their odd little jerking movements, like clockwork toys, and to our left, behind the milking shed, was the barn, the one that all the kids used to play in, much to the annoyance of Mr Fry, who’d come and shine his great big torch in your eyes and swear his head off.
‘Come on,’ said Joe, pulling me towards it. ‘It’s bloody freezing, let’s go inside.’
‘We’ll get done,’ I said.
Joe grabbed hold of my face; he was laughing. He put his forehead so it was touching mine.
‘Done? You’re so sweet,’ he said. Then he kissed me once, hard on the lips, and I startled – Joe’s face, that mouth, suddenly right there, like the last sixteen years hadn’t happened at all. I lifted my face instinctively for more, but he was pulling me by the hand. ‘We’re not sixteen any more, you know,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what happened to the naughty Robyn King I know and love?’
‘She grew up,’ I said, not knowing if he heard me. He took me inside anyway. The bales were piled right up to the ceiling, then graduated like steps to a cluster on the floor. There was an old wardrobe, timber stacked up on one side of it; to the right, there was a tractor – or the skeleton of a tractor – about to be mended or tended to, with all its doors and metalwork removed. It was huge and looming and really quite sinister. It reminded me of a prehistoric creature, about to stir and let out a deafening roar.
We leaned back on the bottom rung of hay, and finished what was in the flask. I wasn’t wearing tights, and my legs were goose-pimpled. Joe took off his suit jacket and lay it over them. We lay back like that for a while, next to one another, just looking up at the stars that throbbed in the gaps of the corrugated-iron roof.
Then Joe said, ‘I found her, you know.’
I turned my head to him. ‘Your mum?’
‘Yes. She’d stayed up after Dad went to bed. I got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and the light was still on in the front room. She was sitting in the chair, but sort of half sitting on it, half slumped over, and I thought, that’s a funny position for anyone to go to sleep in –
