I give a reluctant smile. “I can’t afford it right now,” I admit. “I have thirteen quid in my bank, all of which I’m hoping to spend on food on the way home for the fridge, and I thought the bus would be far cheaper.”
Eliot nods. “Well, Lucas should’ve left you some money if—”
“He didn’t know,” I cut in. “I know he’d feel bad that he asked me to come out here with so little, but I wanted to. He needed me. And I don’t want charity or to borrow, so…” I trail off, catch a look outside the passenger window. The sky is so blue, it’s as if we’ve been tipped upside down, and the ocean is now high above us. No clouds, not even a tuft. Just endless, still blue. The sort of sky, I imagine, that helped my balloon make it all this way, intact.
“Sorry to hear that, Emmie,” says Eliot. “Is it… work troubles?”
“It’s not really work troubles,” I say. “Just… life stuff, really. I got in a little debt a couple of years ago, trying to keep a flat I couldn’t afford. But I moved into a cheaper place, which really helps, and my job at the hotel doesn’t exactly pay well, but there’re always extra shifts, so I’ve gradually been able to get back on my feet. I’m just not left with much at the end of the month. But it’s fine. Much better than it was.”
“Well, that’s good,” Eliot says gently. “Life’s a dick sometimes. Creeps up on us while we’re not looking. Throws us a curveball, chucks us off track…”
“Sounds about right.” I smile. “But I think that happens for a reason.”
“Seriously?”
I pause, raise my eyebrows with surprise. “Yeah. Don’t you?”
Eliot laughs, rubs the stubble on his chin with his hand. “Um, no. Definitely not,” he says, his smile lopsided. “It’s all just—life, isn’t it? Disordered and chaotic and out-of-nowhere, and we have to plan and navigate our way around it the best we can.”
I look at Eliot over my sunglasses. “So you don’t believe in chance, then? At all?”
“Oh God, no,” he says, pulling a face, pink lips stretched into a grimace. “I mean, maybe I used to. When I was young, a kid. But… life happens, and you learn you sort of just have to roll with it, right? Make the best of it. That’s all we can do, really. Thinking some divine power has our back. I mean, seriously, how stupid do you have to be to—what?”
“How do you know there’s no divine power?” I ask.
Eliot gives a heavy shrug, hand on the wheel, forearm resting on the open car window. “I’m just saying, I think if you don’t take charge of your own stuff and instead, sit back and wait for someone—something—to handle it for you, you’re sort of doomed.”
I stare at him. “So it’s all on us. All of it.”
“I reckon so,” he says confidently. Then he looks at me, a little smirk on his face, and says, “Mind you, I’m not sure I’d fancy having you in charge of my stuff. You planned your way to Calais, and look what happened there. You planned your bus route, too. I saw the little Post-it you were carrying…” Eliot laughs, biting his lip, and it surprises me that my back goes up, defenses clinking into gear. “Faith didn’t make the buses run, did it, Emmie B—”
“I suppose your life is perfect, then,” I barge in.
Eliot hesitates. “No. Not really,” he says. “But it’s nice, yeah.”
“Well,” I say, giving a harsh nod. “Good. Good for you.”
Eliot opens his mouth, pink lips parted, and gives me a double take, as if he can’t quite work out if I’m joking or actually offended, but he thinks better of speaking any more on the subject.
“Let’s, er, have some more music,” he says, then he turns up the radio once again.
I lean my head against the window and watch greens drift by in all the colors of the ocean, and will for the journey to speed by. “It must be nice to be you,” I want to say to Eliot. But faith is how I got to be sitting right here. If I hadn’t believed better things were coming, that all that pain would be for a reason, to make me stronger, I would have disappeared the night of the Summer Ball. Mr. Morgan would have won, after what he did to me that night in the IT room. Georgia and all her friends would have won—pushed me out of college before the first year was out, with their stories about me lying and home-wrecking, about me crying assault—and then where would I have been? Faith kept me going—probably kept me alive. And silly old chance dropped my balloon in Lucas’s path. Chance brought me my best friend.
“Food?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you hungry?” asks Eliot. “We could stop here. We have plenty of time.” He motions with a quick, lazy hand to a string of shops, a café, and a KFC. “Coffee? Almond croissant? You still like those, right?” Then he lowers his voice and says, “A bargain bucket?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I say, despite the hunger bubbling in my stomach. “I’ll eat on the ferry.”
“Sure? Jean did say the food was comparable to eating human flesh, this morning, remember?” Eliot pulls the handle of the driver’s door. It clicks open. “But then again, he said that about the one and only Beefeater restaurant we ever visited.”
“I’m sure I’ll survive. My expectations are far lower than Jean’s. I like a ferry sandwich.”
“Suit yourself,” Eliot says, and slides out of the car, shutting the door behind him.
Twenty minutes later we are pulling up at Calais, in a busy taxi rank. Eliot keeps the engine running and circles the van to retrieve my bag from the back as I unbuckle my seat belt.
“Have a safe journey, Emmie,” he says, handing it over, and jumps back into the driver’s seat. A taxi driver presses hard on his horn as Eliot pulls away, and I hold my hand in a wave as he drives off.
On the ferry, I text Lucas.
* * *
Me: This is a message for Curly-Haired Screech: I am about to get on the ferry!
Lucas: Hey! Good!
Lucas: Curly-Haired Screech is really sorry he couldn’t take you himself.
Me: I accept his apology (but never his suit).
Lucas: hahahaha
Lucas: Text when you’re home safe, Em.
Me: I will x
Lucas: xxx
* * *
The ferry judders as it pulls away from the port, and in almost-synchronization, my stomach rumbles with hunger. I unzip the side pocket of my bag for my purse. Sitting on the top is a white paper bag, folded at the top like a seam. Inside: two still-warm almond croissants.
There is one lovely thing about living here, at Two Fishers Way, with Louise, my of-few-words landlady. It’s waking to the comforting sound of a day that has already begun. I am in no way a late riser, but Louise is always up at six, or before, and I wake most mornings to the chink of cutlery, the scrape of a broom against the patio, the muffled sounds of the radio from the kitchen—BBC Radio 4 usually, sometimes Magic FM—or the smell of warm food. Louise cooks a lot of soups and marmalades. Things in big pots with handles, which she stands by, unmoving except for her skinny hand, which stirs. After Adam moved out, the last place I’d wanted to end up was in a rented room in an old, cluttered, dusty house like this, but most things in life have their plus points, and waking up in Shire Sand, this close to the beach, knowing I’m not alone, is one for living here.