‘You grab that end.’
‘But this is huge. It’s gotta be for two people, right? Can’t I go out on my own?’
‘You’re kidding? You know how much trouble I’d get into if I let a novice out on a single. Sorry, but this morning you’re stuck in a double with me!’ And he actually winks. Like, proper shuts his left eye, cocks his head and makes that weird clicking sound people who wink make when they’re actually winking.
‘Can you not?’
‘Can I not what? Wink?’ And he winks again. ‘What?’ Harry’s voice is an oar in the water, stirring things up. ‘You don’t like that?’ So he does it again, obviously. And again. And then all the way down to the jetty, which is good, really, cos maybe if he’s got one eye closed most of the way he’ll be less likely to notice how puffed I am just lugging the bloody thing, and I haven’t even started rowing yet.
‘It’s sculling, actually,’ Harry says when I ask when he first started rowing.
‘Huh?’
‘What we’re doing – it’s sculling.’
‘Oh, that’s what we’re doing, is it? Sculling?’
‘What else would we be doing, Izzy?’ And he can’t help it, can he? He winks again, silently this time, with this giant grin across his face which I know he’d say isn’t as cute as Harry Styles’s but…
‘Nothing. Like you said, we’re just sculling.’ I’m glad for the fact that my back’s to him as I climb into the boat – it makes me bolder, I guess. ‘Definitely not flirting.’
‘God, no,’ Harry says, his voice like those lines people get round their eyes when they smile. ‘Definitely not that. And definitely not wondering whether you’re single.’
‘No. That’d be awful, right? But I am, even though you’re definitely not wondering. I am. Single, I mean.’
‘Good to know. Had I been wondering, which I definitely wasn’t. But if I was, that would definitely be good because I’m definitely single too.’
‘I wasn’t wondering.’
‘Obviously.’
‘But if I were.’ And maybe this not facing someone is the answer. I swear this kind of talk’s never come so easily. Or maybe it’s the river – like yesterday, when it released that wild tongue in me.
Do not even think about wild tongue right now, Izzy.
‘Woaaaahhhh!’ And Harry’s hands are in full body contact with my shoulders as he climbs in and the boat rocks and I’m one hundred percent sure we’re going in. ‘Sorry ’bout that,’ he says, when the boat comes to a wobbly kind of peace on the water.
‘Should I be worried, Harry? I mean, you’re supposed to be the expert here, and yet I – the “novice”, I think it was you called me – managed to get in the boat without nearly drowning us in the process.’
‘It was all that definitely not flirting.’
My skin’s kind of tingling from where his palms have been.
‘You got me a bit Stevie Wonder there for a moment,’ Harry says.
‘Blind?!’
‘No, “Knocks Me Off My Feet”!’
And my back or my still-tingling shoulders must be, like, what?
‘The song?’ Then he only goes and sings it. Terribly, but perfectly terribly if you know what I mean. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s top of my rom list.’
‘Your what?’
‘My rom list.’
‘As I said before, your what?’
‘My rom list, Izzy. You know, romantic playlist?’ And he sounds it out really slowly like I’m some kind of moron who obviously should have assumed a hot rower in Shropshire would have a romantic playlist topped by Stevie Wonder’s ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’.
‘You have a romantic playlist?’
‘Yeah, what of it? I spend my life on the river – I’m bound to be soppy.’
I grin so hard I swear the glee in it will cause some kind of refraction in the sunlight on the water.
‘Don’t judge me, Izzy. I have playlists for every occasion. There’s the rom list, the rage list, the Monday morning list, the I Can’t Stand My Parents list and, of course, the XXX list.’
There’s a kaleidoscopic flash of Jacob’s laptop, the XXX list of videos he had on there.
‘Huh? Yeah, I’m good,’ I say, feeling a surge in the embers as I imagine chucking that MacBook in the Severn. ‘Just thinking I might need an I Can’t Stand Mega Dicks list.’
‘Ha! Those mega dicks could rap their rap and we could play our list louder and prouder on the opposite bank.’
‘Our list?’
‘Well, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous but —’
‘Let’s see how well this morning goes before we commit to a joint list, Harry. I mean, that’s serious stuff! Come on, let’s row.’
‘Scull, Izzy! Let’s scull!’
‘Whatever,’ I say, hoping it’s not just the river because I want this feeling everywhere. ‘Go on then.’ I dare to turn around and smile. ‘Tell me what I’ve got to do.’
So he does, and I try, and I’m not totally fall-in-the-water kind of rubbish, just oars-bashing-into-my-knees kind of clumsy.
‘Blades!’ Harry says. ‘You keep calling them oars, but they’re blades.’
‘They’re bloody painful is what they are.’
We keep going. My legs sliding back and forth, back and forth, and my arms pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, and I know everything will ache, but my body feels good. Almost powerful even.
And I don’t want to, but I wonder what Grace would say if she could see me here on the water. Ignoring for a moment the fact that I’m with a boy – a really, really nice but I-must-not-fancy-him boy – and focusing instead on the fact that I’m moving, properly using my muscles in an exercising sort of way. She might faint, like, literally drop down on the riverbank. Cos I swear she’s been telling me to do it for years. Not row – sorry, scull – exactly. But something.
‘Our bodies are goddamn miracles!’ she told me from a forearm stand a few months back. ‘You need to love your body, Izzy.’
‘I love McVitie’s.’
‘You can love both.’
I didn’t mention how loving my body seemed impossible when I didn’t even like it.
She’d be double thumbs up, I reckon. If she saw me now, I mean. But I can’t do it, carry on thinking of her without bursting into a million tears, and today is a good day so I push all thoughts of her away and focus on my rhythm. Or complete lack of it.
‘You’re not bad!’ Harry says.
I make this snuffly, snorty sound of disbelief, cos his voice is a nine-for-effort, three-for-actual-skill.
‘Honestly,’ he says, ‘you’ve got potential.’
And I wonder if it could be true. Whether this body of mine could actually be OK at something.
‘Let’s hope you’re right, otherwise you’ll have been up at this ridiculous hour for nothing! What time do you have to be at college?’
‘I don’t,’ Harry says, quick and maybe a little defensive. ‘I don’t go to college.’
‘Sorry, I just assu—’
‘What? That I wouldn’t waste my fancy education and while my life away on the river?’
‘Harry!’ I let the blades rest in the water so I can turn to face him.
‘Sorry.’ Unlike that emoji-ish sad face of yesterday, today’s is the real deal. ‘Long story.’
‘How long’s the river?’
‘It’s actually the longest in the UK. People often make the mistake of thinking the Thames is the —’
‘You know, I don’t really care how long the river is, Harry. I was just suggesting you tell me that long story of yours.’
‘It’s honestly not that interesting.’
‘And the debate around the UK’s longest river is?!’
‘I like you, Izzy,’ he says. ‘You say it how it is.’
I don’t correct him because, if I’m honest, which Harry totally thinks I am, him believing I’m tough and straight-talking feels as good as Harry thinking my body has potential as a sculler.
‘So…’
‘What?’ He manoeuvres the boat towards the bank, where he holds us in place as we bob up and down on the water.
‘Why so touchy?’
‘I’m a dropout.’ Harry’s voice is a week-old balloon someone’s forgotten to untie from a tree after a party.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I quit my A levels last year. Mum’s still not over it. You don’t go to that school –’ he points up the hill to this huge red-brick building with its own clock tower – ‘or your parents don’t send you to that school, don’t spend all that money, Harry, all those thousands of pounds, Harry on that school for you to then tell them there are more important things in life than Greek and the Hunt!’
‘You went hunting? At school? My god, how posh are you exactly?! Did you catch your own dinner – or supper? I bet you called it supper there, right?’
‘We didn’t hunt, not that kind of hunt anyway. But yes, we called the food we ate in the evening supper.’
‘Ha! So pretty posh then.’
‘The Hunt’s actually cross-country running.’
‘Ugh. I might literally prefer to go actual hunting and shoot a fox than go cross-country running through the woods!’
‘It’s not so bad really.’
‘I’m kidding about the fox, right?!’
‘I liked most of it really, but I didn’t love it.’
‘I love foxes.’
‘And I thought, What’s the point, you know, in Mum and Dad spending all that money if I don’t love it?’
‘Some of my best friends are foxes.’
Harry looks at me like, I’m trying to be serious here.
‘Sorry, I am listening. I just didn’t want you thinking I’m some kind of crazy fox killer. I would never kill a fox, not even to get out of cross-country!’
‘OK, fox-lover, thanks for the clarification.’
‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘So after the first term of A levels, I told them I wasn’t going back.’
‘Did they freak out?’
‘Well, if you count throwing my lacrosse stick on the fire freaking out, then yeah, they freaked out.’
‘Hold on a minute? They threw your what on the fire?’
‘My lacrosse stick.’
‘Bloody hell, Harry. Like, seriously, how did you cope? I’m not sure what I’d do without my lacrosse stick.’
‘Funny.’
‘Sorry.’
‘’S all right,’ he says, smiling properly. ‘Dad pulled it out before too much damage was done.’
‘Thank god. You had me worried then. A boy without his lacrosse stick doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘I know, right!’
‘And what about your mum and dad – are they recovering as well as the lacrosse stick?’
‘Who knows?’ He pushes us away from the bank and nods at the boat like I should crack on with my training. ‘They’re not exactly proud telling their mates I’m gonna be an apprentice, but they’re no longer setting my possessions on fire.’
‘An apprentice?’
‘Painting and decorating.’ He pauses then, like he’s waiting for me to make a joke of it.
‘Cool.’
‘It is actually. Or it will be. I’m labouring at the moment. Got to wait till September for the apprenticeship. Mum’s hoping I’ll change my mind by then, go to uni or something. She doesn’t get it at all, thought her clever little boy was going to grow up saving people’s lives in a hospital, not stocking up on Dulux at B&Q.’
Harry pushes us away from the bank, gives me a nod to turn back into position and get my arms moving.
‘What do you like about it? The painting, I mean.’
‘The change. How in the space of a few days a place can go from looking and feeling a total mess to somewhere that’s the opposite of that. To know I’ve helped make it happen. Stupid, right?’
‘Not at all. Sounds great.’ Sounds familiar.
It occurs to me I haven’t thought about the blades and when to twist them, when to drop them into the water – I’ve just done it. For a few seconds at least, my body didn’t feel awkward – it just worked.
‘It’s all very Desert Island Discs by the way,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘Desert Island Discs. It’s a radio programme. You’d love it. It’s like your playlists. The guests have to pick eight songs to soundtrack their life. So you learn about their favourite music but through that you learn about the people too. And the best guests are the mavericks. Like you! You know, quitting your A levels, abandoning what was expected of you and finding something totally different that you love.’
‘You reckon?’
‘God, yeah! Those mavericks are the reason I listen! Even if they’re already set up for massive success, they haven’t been scared to screw it and have a go at something they think will bring them more joy.’
‘So I’m a maverick?’
‘Sounds better than dropout.’
‘I’ll tell my mum.’
‘You totally should. And you should total—’
‘Oh crap. You got something I can tell my boss to get him off my back too? I’m gonna be late. Put some sweat into it, Izzy. I’ve got to go.’
We make it back. Dry. Smiling. Looking forward to tomorrow at six A.M.