Dear Zoe,
I have tried to stop writing these stupid messages and not sending them. But here we are. I’m doing it again. It doesn’t matter much, does it? I hope you liked the one I did actually send. The very short and breezy one.
I also hope you’re having a nice summer. Are you still in Winchester? The weather here is very hot, and I’m spending most of my time watering the garden or swimming in the pool. I’m a recluse. I’m not exactly living my best life but it’s … lovely. It feels safe, although that’s a ridiculous thing to say right now. It’s hot, and getting hotter, and we’re hurtling towards destruction, but apart from that my summer is going fine.
It is totally beautiful here. We’ve rented a house that has a high wall all round it, with a garden that’s overflowing with flowers and fruit and vegetables and trees. And a swimming pool: it’s a tiny one but it’s just right for me. Sometimes it hits forty-three degrees, but I just jump in the pool.
Oh my God, I wish you were with me. This would be the very best place in the world to wait it out with the love of your life. To hide away and look at the flowers and swim in the water and feel the air on your skin and savour every moment while you can.
And that, I suppose, is what Mum and Sean are doing. Ick.
They would be fine with the idea of me going away and having adventures – I know that, because Mum says it all the time. She went travelling when she was young, and she wants me to do it quick while I can.
I could get a bus into Madrid and a train to anywhere, but I won’t. I don’t even like going to the shops on my own. I thought that playing Juliet would be the start of my new self, and I couldn’t believe it when you were cast as Romeo. I know you know this (or you would if you read my drafts folder).
But now I might never see you again.
Let me know if you want to do something mad. There are trains running all over Europe. I could meet you in … Paris?
Borrow Cupid’s wings, and soar with them above a common bound.
Libby xxx
I saved it into my drafts along with all the others and looked around the house. I was sitting on the little sofa, my legs curled up under me, hiding from the midday heat. I was brilliantly relaxed here. The walls were thick stone, and the inside of the house felt like a bunker, a place to hide from everything out there.
I was back to treating my unsent messages to Zoe as a diary, and every now and then I would send her a real message too. I’d sent one a couple of days ago, just asking how she was, and telling her a more condensed version of my life in Spain than the diary messages had said. She’d replied with a couple of lines. Everything was casual and breezy; we’d never mentioned the thing that hadn’t quite happened between us at the party. All I wanted to do was to keep up enough of a friendship to allow me to suggest we meet up when I was home at the very end of August.
I was writing to Max too. He had travelled overland to Singapore. I’m currently trying to work out how to upload myself digitally so I don’t need air, he’d written earlier today.
Everyone’s doing that, so why not me? For what that’s worth. I’m also having my cheeks pinched by aunts trying to fatten me up, and I’m eating so much that I’m now twenty stone, but I’ll soon be casting off this meat suit, so whatever.
My messages with Natasha, on the other hand, had dropped right off. I was relieved she’d stopped giving me homework. I was happy hiding away here. It was a good place to be and I did not, right now, feel that I needed to be challenged with numbered tasks at random moments.
I decided to write to my dad.
How are the babies? I wrote, smiling, as I knew how Sofie would react if she heard me saying that. It would be an indignant ‘I aren’t a baby!’ Please send photos. I miss them.
I wandered over to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. As I was about to put some ice into it I heard the sound of a new email landing and rushed back to my phone just in case it was Zoe. But it wasn’t.
LIBBY, GUESS WHAT?
I’m coming to Europe. I’m on my way. I am writing this ON THE FREAKING SHIP!!!
Natasha xxxx
I sat and stared at it. I had a feeling that my quiet summer was about to change.