On the flight, I fall into a heavy sleep. When I wake up, my head is on Mike’s shoulder. He is awake, flicking through the in-flight magazine.
‘Beer?’ he asks, offering me his cup.
I shake my head drowsily. I feel as though I’ve been drugged. I think through why I’m on a flight. I remember rushing to leave Joel’s house in Italy, and I can feel a pull to home, to my parents’ house in Yorkshire. But I can’t see through the thick confusion to understand why. Italy was fine. There was no reason to take a risk, make a big change, was there? I didn’t like working at the cafe, but I was going to try and get a job somewhere else. Money wasn’t a massive issue because I have savings and I’d been living rent free at Joel’s house for the last few months. He said we could stay until October, when some friends of his parents are going to come and stay at the cottage with their grandchildren. Mike got impatient a few months ago and moved somewhere new because he hates staying in one country for too long. But I’m not like that, am I? I feel a faint anxiety pulse through me. Why can’t I remember anything?
‘We’ll be landing soon,’ Mike says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘You’ve slept the whole way.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, although I don’t know why I’m apologising.
He shrugs. ‘So what’s the plan? Are you really going to do Blackpool? I don’t think I want it to be the first place I go. But we can catch up there at some point, maybe. For like, a day.’
‘I’m going to go home first,’ I tell him. I remember before, when we were in the airport and I brought up his home town of Blackpool without really knowing why. I wonder if Mike thinks I want to go there because I want to meet his family, to make us more serious. I wonder if it is because of that. I can’t think of any other reason. I visited my grandmother there a few times when I was young, and I know that my mum went to school there but I’ve never felt a pull to visit before.
If Mike is thinking any of this, he doesn’t say it. ‘So we can catch up in a few months? Do Blackpool then?’ He turns to look at me, and I look into his eyes. They are a murky brown – not a particularly nice colour, I realise guiltily.
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘A few months.’
***
Mum seems changed, somehow, but I can’t put my finger on why. The confusion I felt at the airport, about something I can’t even define, follows me like a fog.
‘Have you changed your hair or something?’ I ask, trying to reach a feeling where I know what’s missing, what’s different. ‘You seem different.’ I reach forward and hug her and she hugs me back. She smells the same – of honey shampoo and washing powder.
‘Nope. It’s probably you. Maybe you’re seeing things through new eyes after all your adventures,’ she says, smiling as she puts on the kettle. We sit down at the table, and I stare down at it, at the place where I once scratched my initials as a child.
‘So, tell me everything. What’s the latest with Mike?’
I think of Mike, his natural charm and bold laugh. The casual way he kissed me briefly on the lips when we left for different trains after we landed in London. ‘I don’t really know. He’s nice. We have a laugh, and get on well. But he’s in London now. He has issues with the north,’ I tell her, and she smiles. ‘We’ll see each other again soon though. I want to go to Blackpool for a few days at some point, and that’s where his family’s from so we might meet up.’ My words are casual, but I feel underneath them the sting of my usual unease that I am taking the easy option with Mike. I know he encourages me to avoid commitment, falling into a comfortable love that trudges along the same track for so long that the road becomes rutted, impossible to deviate from. I never thought I wanted that, but spending time with Mike sometimes leaves me feeling a bit lacking, and it makes me wonder if the bits I’m trying to skip out of my life are somehow more important than I always gave them credit for.
‘It’s small world,’ Mum says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘You might have even seen Mike around when we went to visit Grandma in Blackpool when you were small.’
‘Well, even if we did see each other years before we met, I don’t think it means anything. I definitely don’t think we’re soulmates.’
Mum looks at me sharply. ‘Since when have you ever wanted a soulmate?’
I frown at her. ‘I don’t. I just wonder sometimes if I should push for something a bit more,’ I admit.
‘I think you know the answer to that, Erica. You’ve spouted since you first were old enough to form an opinion that you don’t ever want to end up boring and married like me and your dad.’ Mum stands up and clanks about making the tea. ‘You even said yourself before you went off travelling that we had made you realize everything you didn’t want. That’s obviously what you see in Mike. He’s big on travelling about and having fun, isn’t he? Things will never get serious and boring with him. You won’t end up old miseries like us. Grab the biscuits, will you?’
I think about this as I go to the cupboard where the biscuits are. Maybe she’s right. Maybe pushing for more will end in having less: a soulless house, a man I don’t particularly like after all, messy children who take up all my time and money and a battered old table with secrets scrawls carved into the wood. I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted that. Mike is enough, I tell myself firmly.
‘Erica? The biscuits,’ Mum says, breaking into my thoughts. ‘They’re not in there. You haven’t been away for so long that you’ve forgotten the most important cupboard in the house, surely?’
I stare into the cupboard I’ve just opened. I could have sworn it would contain a tin of chocolate biscuits. But a bread bin and cereal are in there. I swing round.
‘You moved things round.’
Mum shakes her head. ‘Nope. Not since the nineties,’ she laughs. She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You seem a bit … off.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Mike said the same. But it’s probably just the flight.’
‘I hope your room’s as you remember it. I’ve used it as a bit of a dumping ground for my washing but I’ve cleared it all away since you said you were coming home. Not that you gave us much notice.’
‘I know,’ I say, taking a chocolate digestive from her. ‘I think I’d just had enough of being away.’
I think. But I don’t know for sure.
***
My bedroom is as I left it, which, after knowing I’m not behaving quite normally for some reason, is a relief. Photographs line the walls, their edges curling, and the ones near the window are yellowing after too much sunlight. Me and Nicholas, me at my graduation, with my backpack on our drive the first time I went travelling with Claire, my friend from school, who got married and then had a little boy a few years after we returned.
I sit on my bed, then take out my phone and type a message to Claire.
She replies straight away.
I grin. I saw Claire just before I left for Italy and I speak to her about once a week. But it suddenly feels as though I haven’t spoken to her in years.
An image from Claire flashes up on my phone then: her little boy, Freddie, in his highchair, his chubby face stained orange with spaghetti sauce.
And there is a flash, a tiny chink of light in the darkness of the strange confusion I’ve felt over the last few days. But it’s gone before I can reach out to touch it and pull myself towards it.