Sadie is on the verge of buying a tent. She doesn’t need or want a tent, and she is not aware that she is standing on a verge. The idea of sleeping under polyester in the wild outdoors is, quite frankly, preposterous. Why would anyone want to do that? Hotels were invented for a reason. But sometimes a tent is not a tent: it is a justification for being where you are—for just happening (how strange) to be (after all these years) in a particular (oh God, is that her?) spot.
The spot: Grab&Go Camping.
As in: Grabowski.
As in: Alison.
The woman who was going to live in Manhattan, walk her small dog through Central Park, fall in love with someone who liked street art, Japanese food, James Joyce. So what happened? Bessie is what happened. Bessie Bryant. Otherwise known as Elizabeth Jennifer Bryant. Lover of the great outdoors. Professional camper. Bought Alison a pair of waterproof trousers for their anniversary. Romance isn’t dead, it’s alive and well, you just have to grab it—Grab&Go Camping!
Sadie peers through the window, looking for a woman in a Smiths T-shirt, suede jacket and black jeans, smoking a roll-up. There is no woman of that description here. Her stomach hurts. She has eaten too many Werther’s Originals on the journey. She has skipped lunch too, which always makes her murderous or depressed. And she’s nervous. Will it feel like seeing a ghost? Will her beaten-up love for Alison spring from its crookedness like an old wooden doll coming back to life? Oh déjà vu. Scared of my feelings again. Déjà fucking vu! Might as well be at university. Have I learnt nothing?
And then
oh God,
is that her?
Sadie presses her nose against the glass.
It is, isn’t it?
She is not wearing a Smiths T-shirt, suede jacket, black jeans. She is not smoking a roll-up. She is blowing up an airbed. Kneeling on the floor, blowing. Her hair is different (straight bob). Her body is different (less curvy). She is wearing combat trousers (green, practical, hi-tech) and a grey short-sleeved shirt with a tiny cartoon bear on the front (probably a logo, possibly Canadian, unless it’s a badge, and let’s hope it isn’t, because what kind of woman wears a badge like that?). She is blowing and blowing and a young man walks over, he laughs and says something and hands Alison what looks like a foot pump, which she connects to the airbed, and now she’s standing upright, pumping air with her foot, and all that’s left for Sadie to do is assess Alison Grabowski’s bottom, which is still the same bottom and not the same bottom at all.
They are dancing to the Wonder Stuff. I’m so dizzy, my head is spinnin’. Alison is jumping around in a ropey kind of jumper, denim shorts, black leggings, cherry Doc Martens. Her name is not Alison, it’s Allie. She is drunk and laughing and dancing to the Wonder Stuff with Sadie Peterson, who is here with Ralph Swoon, who is chivalrous and thoughtful but not Allie Grabowski. It has taken Sadie several months to realize that Ralph is not Allie, despite the obvious anatomical differences, their contrasting dreams for the future, the fact that one has a fondness for melodrama and the other for pot plants. She watches Allie dancing, thinks oh shit, I really want you, puts her hand on her stomach, starts to cry.
Sadie Peterson is pregnant.
“You’d actually marry him? Ralph Swoon?” Allie says, a week later, in the art gallery’s vegetarian cafe. Her eyeliner is smudged. Her face is pale. She hasn’t touched any of her houmous and pitta bread.
“What choice do I have?”
“Do you love him?”
“I think so.”
“Well you’d better marry him then, hadn’t you? You can buy a nice house in the suburbs.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Jealous.”
Allie tears her pitta bread and dunks it in the houmous. “I’m not jealous, I’m disappointed. There’s a big difference.”
“Is there?”
Oh for God’s sake, just spit it out. Tell each other how you feel. Turn this around. Make plans that involve talking to Ralph, finishing your degrees, moving into a terraced house with a tiny garden, just the two of you, asking the grandparents to babysit, getting by somehow, finding a way to be two mothers to two children who also have a father, three grandmothers, three grandfathers.
Sadie leans forward and wipes houmous from the side of Allie’s mouth. They sit in silence, listening to Kirsty MacColl, drinking Diet Coke, waiting for something to happen. Months pass and Sadie grows bigger and Ralph proposes and Sadie says yes. They sit and drink Diet Coke and wait for something to happen. The caffeinated twins become fidgety. Someone says those lads are gonna be footballers, just you wait. When they are born, Ralph cries and Sadie screams and Allie goes to the cinema alone to see a subtitled French film about death, where she meets a woman called Bessie, who is also alone.
“Are you sure it’s me you want?” Bessie says, six months into their relationship.
“Why are you saying that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
“Well I don’t, all right? I don’t know why I just said that. Shall we go for a long walk?”
There is a limit to how long someone can stand outside a camping shop, peering through the window, without attracting attention or becoming self-conscious. Sadie has a growling stomach and a confusing appetite. Old passions are stirring, but are they just that—old passions? Two figures stand beside her: Yearning on the left, Wistfulness on the right. She is the jam in a nostalgia sandwich, looking through the window and aching for what has gone. It’s a satisfying ache, which is curious, because the ache is a symptom of dissatisfaction. Paradoxical longing. What has gone is still here, but only because it was never here at all. Unrequited love: the love that goes on and on because it didn’t, it couldn’t, it must. Its existence thrives on non-existence.
Sadie opens the door and enters the shop. A bell rings. She strolls in, head high. Marches past the woman blowing up an airbed. Marches until she arrives at a wide selection of tents, fully erect. Hears footsteps behind her. Rushes into one of the tents, a dome all set up and ready for two happy campers to crawl into after a hard day of (what, exactly? What do campers do? Sadie has no idea) being outdoors. The sleeping bags have frogs all over them, lime-green smiley frogs, sitting on a black background. Is this a child’s tent?
“Can I help you at all?”
Here goes nothing. Sadie doesn’t turn around. She wants to, but it doesn’t happen. Déjà vu…
Silence. The smell of plastic and perfume and—
Sadie can feel the woman’s presence behind her in the tent. She is just standing there saying nothing, which, Sadie decides, is a rather invasive approach for a salesperson to take: I watch over you, I take over you. Are they lyrics from a song? She can hear them being sung by a woman—is it Juliana Hatfield? She wonders if tents always feel this erotic (maybe that’s where the phrase happy camper comes from) or if it’s the sudden memory of walking into a bathroom and seeing Alison in the bath, surrounded by candles, reading D.H. Lawrence and listening to Juliana Hatfield.
“This one’s on offer,” the woman says.
Sadie turns around. She exhales. The exhalation lasts for ever. She has been holding her breath.
Raised eyebrows and an open mouth. Shock reddens the woman’s cheeks. She blinks, just once. Then she says one word. This word was on her lips before it fell from her lips. She says Sadie. It is a question.
“Sadie?”
“Hello, Alison.”
She says it again, as if the first answer wasn’t good enough, as if this woman called Sadie can’t hear her and isn’t really this close, because how can she be this close? “Sadie?”
“Yes.” (It’s me, I’m here.)
“Bloody hell.”
“I know.” (What do I know?)
“I can’t believe it.”
Sadie sighs. She has never been so full of air.
Alison is shaking her head. “Are you?—”
“Am I?—”
“Looking for a tent?”
Is she really going to talk about tents?
“Yes.”
Yes?
“You don’t live around here, do you?” Alison looks slightly afraid as she says this.
“Passing through.”
Oh come on!
In Sadie’s mind, high-speed deliberation. Two opposing sentences: Actually, I came here to see you versus I need a two-man tent for my sons. The truth versus a lie. Risk versus safety. Free versus £250. Instead of a tent, she decides to buy some time.
“Are you by any chance free for a drink after work?”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I have plans.”
Time is not for sale. It has sold out. Sadie remembers when it was free and all theirs. She wants to cry, but as usual this urge doesn’t produce any tears. ‘Songbird’ by Eva Cassidy is playing in the shop, which isn’t helping, because it always makes her emotional and it’s strange, she doesn’t even like the song, it’s—
“But I could postpone,” Alison says.
“Could you?” Sadie says.