Page 18 of The Love of Our Lives

‘My dad has never been in the picture,’ Adam says steadily as he walks on in his well-trodden boots. ‘All I know is that he took off before I was even born. Lilly has always been a bit unlucky in love. There was always some guy who would hang around with us for a bit, then disappear again.’

I can’t help thinking it’s not the most stable situation for a child, but then he did get to see all those places and do all those things that I didn’t.

‘And where is she now?’ I ask. ‘Your mum, I mean?’

Adam looks up to the sky, as though considering it.

‘Fiji, I think. I don’t hear from her all that much, but when she does call, it’s usually at some god-awful time for me,’ he says with a half laugh.

‘Occasionally I’ve managed to run into her on my own travels but the world is a big place.

We’ve met up the odd time back at my grandparents’ cabin, but it’s probably more me that uses it when I’m passing through. ’

I pause. ‘So . . .’

‘So why am I in Edinburgh now?’

‘Yeah.’

He pauses. ‘I went off the rails a bit, when I was nineteen or so. My grandparents both died within months of each other around then, which for some teenagers wouldn’t be a big thing, I guess, but for me, well, it was hard.

Suddenly I had no stable people in my life, no job, no . . .’ He glances at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say softly.

He shakes his head. ‘Don’t be, it was a long time ago.’

‘But it must have been difficult,’ I say, ‘coping with that at such a young age.’

He smiles, the setting sun throwing gold across his ridiculously handsome face, but there’s a dark shadow there too, and his expression falters slightly.

‘Truthfully, I didn’t really cope with it at all,’ he says. ‘I sort of shut down, pushed everyone away – Mum, friends. I drank too much . . . did everything too much. I was a real dick, quite honestly.’

Now I understand what that pause was in the beer garden that night, when he spoke about the time before he met Sven.

‘I think losing someone important to you can do strange things like that,’ I say as we walk, and he looks at me almost hopefully. ‘Perhaps some people get a bit scared . . . and others get angry at the world, for taking it all away.’

He nods quietly at that, some relief on his face, and I realise that perhaps he’s not quite as done with it all as he thinks.

‘And you seem to be doing pretty well now,’ I say, nudging him lightly.

He nudges me back. ‘I guess it did make me open my eyes to everything, made me think about what I actually wanted from life after they passed. I’d always lived in this really chaotic way, like Mum did.’

‘And that wasn’t what you wanted?’

‘Well, I wanted to keep seeing the world, of course,’ he says, ‘but I also realised I needed an actual job – a way to make money, or at least enough of it to allow me to travel. My grandfather was a carpenter, so it made sense to do something with furniture. I knew Sven was enjoying Edinburgh so I thought – why not set up camp here? I had a British passport through my grandmother, so I decided to do a course in Scotland, keep travelling from there.’

I find myself hesitating. ‘Have you got another trip lined up soon?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I usually plan something last minute, see where the wind takes me.’

I can’t help it but my stomach sort of sinks at the idea of him just taking off like that, like Nick did. Maybe it’s a good thing nothing happened between us after all. As well as the fact this isn’t even my life, I remind myself.

‘But enough about me,’ he says, ‘I’d much rather hear about you.’

My stomach skips. I know he’s not prying for answers but after how open he’s been with me, I find I want to share something with him too.

‘The thing I was thinking about earlier,’ I say, ‘was that I was worried about me coming here in the first place; whether it’s the right thing. I might be needed at home.’

We round in the grass now, and the incline really begins.

Oh god, my heart , I can’t help thinking, even though it’s a ridiculous thought and clearly doesn’t apply in Emily’s body. But I’m starting to see that some habits are hard to change when you’ve been a certain way for so long.

‘I just think you’ve come here for a reason, Emily,’ Adam says eventually, ‘and you owe it to yourself to make the most of it, surely?’

We catch each other’s eyes and start smiling.

‘Shit,’ Adam says, ‘that chat got intense pretty quickly, didn’t it?’

I laugh. ‘Just a bit.’

But I let what he’s said roll quietly around my mind. Because for the first time in a long while, I’ve actually got a healthy body and money in the bank, and I don’t have to worry about being careful or think about how I might affect everyone around me.

Not like before.

We’re walking up the hill now, becoming more out of breath by the second, but in that good way again; little bolts of electricity are shooting through my body and my legs work harder.

Wind whips past me suddenly, almost knocking me over with its force, and I take a moment to right myself.

Then suddenly we’re there, at the highest point.

I stop and look out all around us, at the soft sloping greens and browns and the steadily reddening sky, and I can’t help thinking how stunning it is from this angle.

I’m so used to looking up at everything.

I feel this healthy new heart pumping inside this strong body, and an unexpected wave of something close to joy comes over me.

A second later, and another huge gust of wind hurtles at us, pushing me into Adam. We both start laughing as it howls in our ears and gallops across our faces. It blows so hard, I can barely take a breath, but this time, it doesn’t feel scary.

It feels sort of good.

The wind drops again and the two of us grin at each other, our faces so close I can see the amber around his irises, feel the energy that comes from just being near him.

‘Well, that was quite something, wasn’t it?’ he says, still holding on to me.

My skin is tingling from his touch, even through the woolly sweater.

We stand there for a moment, his eyes trained on mine, my stomach flipping like crazy.

‘We should get back,’ he murmurs after a moment, letting his hands drop.

My hands spark where he touched them. ‘OK.’

He smiles at me and, together, we head back down the hill. The light fades on the horizon, turning the world shades of never-ending gold, chilling the balmy air.

But all I feel right now is warm, from the inside out.