Page 17 of The Love of Our Lives

Later that evening, I wait for Adam on the street outside our building.

He called me in the afternoon while I was buying a few things for dinner, told me he’d catch me after work around seven.

He also told me to wear something warm on the top, which confused me – it turned into quite a warm day after I spoke to Fran, the air practically balmy.

But I forced myself to find an internet café first so I could do a little digging on Fran and Emily, just so I know what I’m talking about next time.

It turned out Fran’s family was based in Kent while Emily was raised in London, but the wider family is all Italian and living in Rome.

They went to the same elite school together, then Oxford, before ending up at the same company back in London.

The best of friends as well as cousins it appears.

Once I’d ticked that off, I took a blanket from the cupboard to the Meadows and whiled away the rest of the afternoon simply soaking up the sunshine.

Now, as I stand on the pavement outside the building, I think about where we’ll walk. Maybe around the area? Into town?

A white van drives along the road and I’m surprised when it pulls up right beside me. Adam grins out of the open window at me.

‘Jump in.’

I frown. ‘I thought we were going on a walk.’

‘We are,’ he says, arching one eyebrow at me and I shake my head lightly in amusement.

As I walk around to the passenger seat, I think about how he keeps surprising me and yet I have this remarkably safe feeling around him at the same time.

The van smells of wood and old leather seats, and him. He’s wearing a scraggly charcoal sweater, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing those strong forearms and that tattoo again. Something twinges in my stomach, and I turn sharply to put my seatbelt on.

We’re just friends.

For a moment though, I wonder about Emily. Did she speak to Adam too? Or would she have been out that Friday night he came by?

‘So, where are we headed?’ I say, as he pulls out on to the road.

‘Out of the city I thought,’ he says, looking ahead at the road, ‘The Pentlands.’

‘Sounds good, though I haven’t been up a hill in years.’

He glances across at me. ‘How is that possible?’

I think about all the things I stopped doing, all the places I ruled out across my life; too many to count really.

‘Well, my parents weren’t really “hill walking” people,’ I say finally.

He just laughs. ‘OK, well, I’m glad we’re doing this then.’

We breeze up through Bruntsfield, through Morningside, the sky a burnished coral above us.

The streetlamps are starting to come on below, like tiny suns trying to keep the day going.

People are still wandering around, dipping in and out of bars and restaurants, laughing, talking, calling to each other.

‘Hey, I noticed you don’t have a car,’ he says, ‘so feel free to use this if you need it.’

I pause, and he glances at me again.

‘What is it?’ he says.

‘Oh, just that I don’t drive.’

‘How come?’

I don’t say anything immediately. How can I explain that I never drove – despite the doctors saying it was fine. Because what if I had a heart attack at the wheel? Or blacked out? Or hurt someone else.

‘I suppose there probably wasn’t much need to in London with the underground,’ Adam says absently, ‘but if you ever want me to teach you then just say the word, though of course I’m always happy to take you anywhere you want to go.’

The enthusiasm behind his words makes me smile, even though I think it’s unlikely I’ll try. Any time I’ve got behind the wheel I’ve frozen up and got straight back out again.

‘Do you miss your old life?’ he asks now. I know he’s speaking about London, but the words still ring inside me somewhere.

My old life.

‘Sometimes,’ I say, thinking of the wanders outside my parents’ house, the calls I make to Jess, this feeling of being completely cut off from the people I love.

They’re all I’ve ever known.

‘Must be hard,’ Adam says, ‘leaving everything you know like that . . .’

I pause at his words.

‘It’s not all bad.’ I recall the run this morning, that energy coursing through me. ‘And I certainly don’t miss working around the clock at a desk.’

He grins. ‘Too right, and for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing really well. Just give it a bit of time, and soon you’ll feel like this life is all completely normal. Change is only jarring right before you do it.’

I let the thought settle as I stare out the window, and I wonder if this is how Emily felt at this stage – a little bit wobbly, a little bit good, just a few weeks after a big move. Alone and far from everything she’d ever known.

Adam sticks the radio on, and a Vance Joy song trickles out into the van around us, soothing my anxious thoughts.

We eventually settle back in a comfortable silence as we cruise out of the city, and after about ten minutes, the rolling hills of the Pentlands rise up ahead of us.

The sky is lit up like a fire tonight, all reds and pinks threaded through each other like joint hands in the vastness above.

Eventually Adam turns off down a track, towards a gravelly car park with tall trees at the end.

We’re not the only people here for a walk; couples and families and lone walkers all seem to be milling around, and there’s something lovely about that, knowing that other people had the same urge to seize this beautiful evening.

Adam turns to me as we jump out. ‘I’ll grab you a sweater from the car before we go. The weather can get pretty hairy at the top.’

I smile but really I’m nervous, uncertain what he means by hairy .

After I’ve pulled on the soft green sweater, we head on to the same dirt pathway as another few people, which cuts into the grass and stretches off into the rising hills. It smells of summer grass and bonfire smoke, and I think of how autumn is actually just around the corner.

What if I’m still stuck here?

‘Penny for your ponies,’ Adam says, and I turn, confused.

‘Sorry, it’s something Lilly says to me sometimes.’

‘Who’s Lilly?’

‘My mum.’

‘You call your mum Lilly?’

‘Well, that’s her name.’ He raises one eyebrow, then grins. ‘Don’t worry, I know it’s a bit weird, but my mum’s always been a bit like that.’

I can’t help noticing the slight stiffness in his jaw as he says it.

‘She’s probably what you would call a hippy,’ he goes on after a moment, ‘but I tend to think of her more as a woman with alternative views.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask carefully.

He shrugs. ‘Well, I was raised pretty much everywhere and anywhere. I was born in Canada, but Mum had a bucket list, you see, and she didn’t really think that having a child should get in the way of it,’ his jaw stiffening again, ‘so, in between getting dumped at my grandparents’ cabin from time to time, I had my third birthday in Nepal, my fifth in Papa New Guinea, my eighth in Kenya . . . I could go on.’

‘It sounds amazing,’ I say, thinking of how much I would have loved to have had those experiences and seen those places too.

‘Amazing in some ways, yes,’ Adam says with a half-smile, ‘but a little disruptive for a child too. She had some mental health problems, you see, and never really addressed it, so I never quite knew if I was going to get happy Lilly, who would take me places, or the Lilly who would leave me. But it was fun too, I guess, getting to see the world like that. There were no rules, really. She even let me start this tattoo when I was fourteen.’ He laughs, indicating at his arm.

‘Yes, I was wondering,’ I say, glad to look more closely now, and he pulls his sweater sleeve up a bit higher. ‘It’s really different.’

‘Well, it’s basically a big old mess of some places I’ve been, and stuff I’ve done.

’ He points to his forearm. ‘That little river right there’s from this beautiful little spot I was in in Venezuela, and that spiky tree twisted into it is from when I was in New Zealand, that horse was from when I was fifteen and went bareback riding in Belize.

There is zero design to it, as you can see,’ he says with a laugh.

‘Just stuff I’ve enjoyed, or things that have stuck with me. ’

‘And what about this one?’ I say, touching the badly drawn moose above his elbow. He flinches slightly.

‘That,’ he says, his eyes twinkling at me, ‘was one of the mistakes. A drunken decision when I was eighteen and I was missing Canada.’

‘It sort of looks like a small child drew it,’ I say, looking at the mismatched antlers and large saucer eyes. I can’t help laughing.

He examines it afresh and starts laughing too.

‘Yeah, OK, it really does,’ he says eventually, wiping a tear from his eye, ‘but I promise my furniture is better than my animal drawings.’

I smile. ‘I believe you.’

He grins back at me, and finally pulls down his sleeve.

‘And what about school?’ I ask after a moment, curious how it all worked.

‘There were lots,’ he says. ‘But we’d stay on in a place a little longer sometimes, enough to keep my grandparents from flying out to get me anyway. And I’d usually make some friends, only to be dragged away again. I’ve kept in touch with a few around the globe though.’

I try to imagine it all, that level of uncertainty – that level of freedom too.

It’s all just so very different from my own cosseted life with Mum.

She would never have let me ride horses bareback in Belize and miss school, and she certainly wouldn’t leave me.

I feel guilty to admit that I sort of wish she would have. Just sometimes.

‘And do you still see your grandparents then?’

Adam pauses, looks straight ahead. ‘No, they died a few years back now.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say softly. ‘What about your dad?’ I query before I can help myself, because he just seems very alone in the world suddenly, and it makes me sad to think of.