“Already in the truck, Emmie,” he says. “Can you see anything where you are?”
I swing around. “No. No. Just trees and bushes and fields and…”
“Cows. Yeah, you said. Anything else? Remember seeing anything of interest on your walk down, so I know roughly where you are?”
I look up and down the winding country lane. “No,” I say. “Just trees and—”
“Don’t tell me about the cows again,” laughs Eliot. “Look, I’ll be there soon, okay? Just don’t move, no more walking, stay back from the road—”
“Turbine!”
“What?”
“A-About five minutes ago I walked past a massive wind turbine. Three of them. Massive, fuck-off wind turbines, and they were on my… my left. Yes, my left.”
“Okay, stay put. I’ll be as fast as I can. Put your phone away. It’ll get wet.”
Only two cars pass me in the twenty minutes it takes Eliot to get to me. I could have sunk to my knees with relief at the sight of his truck speeding down the narrow country lane, if I wasn’t so soaked to the bone, my legs shaking. He pulls up, braking sharply, and leans to throw open the passenger door. I jump in, sinking against the seat. Warm air that smells of old dust, like the old electric fire Mum would put on in the winter, pumps through the fans on the dash, and an Oasis song hums softly through the radio. I look up at Eliot. He pulls his face into a sad grimace, deep brown eyes on me. “What’re we going to do with you, eh, Emmie Blue?”
I lift my shoulders weakly to my ears. “Put me in the dryer?” I sniff, my voice tiny and pathetic. Eliot smiles, leans down, and pulls two fluffy white towels from a gym bag at my feet.
“The next best thing,” he says, unfolding them with one hand and gesturing for me to lean forward. I do. He tucks one around me and wraps it around my shoulders.
“Get as dry as you can,” he says, and I simply nod as he begins to drive.
Neither of us says much for a good ten minutes. Eliot fiddles with the heaters in the car, placing his hand over them to test the temperature, and sings softly along to the radio, not breaking out of the song even when waving to give way to people, fingers tapping the wheel. I am enveloped in towels, my head leaning back on the truck’s soft, sawdust-speckled seat. I like Eliot’s truck. It reminds me of Den’s jumpers. Always dotted with crusts of wood and debris from work. The jumpers he’d lift at the hem to put his hand in his pocket and pull out a Picnic bar or a seaside fudge.
Eliot drives and drives, and I warm, quickly, beside him on the passenger seat. I’m exhausted, and my head doesn’t feel as light now that the cold and rainy light of day has sobered me up.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I say into the quiet of the truck. We are pulled up in a car park now, a takeaway coffee thawing my hands, the rain still pinging against the glass of the windshield.
Eliot nods slowly. “Anytime.”
“Were you busy?”
He shrugs and gives a smile, a flash of straight teeth. “I was only at Mum’s. Working on the bandstand.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It started raining anyway, so your timing was actually on the nose.” He turns to me. “What happened? Shit party?”
I give a laugh, look down at my lap. “No. No, it wasn’t a shit party. It just… I dunno…” I trail off, remembering Ana. Eliot’s Ana. And I look at him. His handsome face, those confident brown eyes, the towel at my shoulders he wrapped around me caringly, and I can’t help but feel bafflement that they are together. Ana, so cold, so unfriendly. And Eliot… he’s kind. He’s funny. Warm. Safe. One of those people who would be really nice to have around if the world suddenly got the news of an imminent apocalypse. I trust him. I do. I suppose I’d have to, at least a little, to call him, to ask him to come and pick me up today, over Lucas.
“Do you ever feel like—like everyone else has it figured out and you don’t?”
Eliot hesitates, thinks, tapping the wheel with the heel of his hand.
“Do you mean Luke?” he asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Why would I mean Lucas?”
He gives a gentle shrug, looks down at his hands on the wheel. “I guess because you two are so close, and, well, he’s getting married. That must be… hard for you.”
I say nothing, lift a shoulder to my ear.
Eliot takes a deep breath. “Look, I remember I used to be one of those people. That appeared to have it all. Perfect life, perfect wife, perfect plans.” He looks at me then, a little smirk. “And I didn’t actually have any of that. Sure looked like it, though. But all of it—it was over in a heartbeat. Shit, I even had to piss off to Canada to sort my life out. Shut off. Heal.”
“Pull your head out of your arse,” I say, remembering the conversation we had at the dessert party, and he smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “And that’s what a lot of it is. How it appears. They’re probably just as lost as everyone else is behind closed doors.”
I look at him. “I wish I could feel sure about that.”
“Take it from me, Emmie,” he says softly.
I look at him, and he starts to laugh. “What?”
Eliot stretches to pull down my sun visor, to reveal a tiny, blurred mirror with a little pointless light above it. I look into it. There are black smudges all over my eyes, and little dots of mascara hanging off my lashes. “Oh my God. I look like Ozzy Osbourne.”
Eliot laughs, elbow resting on the armrest between us, hand at his chin. “I mean, I’m not one to usually agree with you on this stuff, but you actually do. Feeling a bit starstruck here.”
“Shut up.”
Eliot hesitates, looks at me. There’s a beat of silence. “Sort of wanna ask you where you came up with the concept for the Technical Ecstasy album—hey!”
“Shut up or I’ll hit you again,” I laugh, wetting my finger and smudging it under my eyes. It does nothing but make it worse. I stare at my reflection. “Oh, I give up,” I say, pushing the sun visor back up and slouching back in my chair, the side of my face resting on the fabric of the headrest. “God,” I sigh, looking at him. “If the girls in that room could see me now, they would be thinking what the fuck.”
Eliot smiles gently, eyelids closing momentarily, then opening. “Who cares?”
“And then I’m sure someone would chime in about how that was when her boyfriend first knew he was in love with her. When she had makeup smudged all over her face like Ozzy Osbourne and looked like a wet spaniel after fleeing a birthday party.”
Eliot’s dark eyebrows knit together. “Is that the sort of stuff that’s discussed at parties these days, then?”
“It was at this one,” I say, sniffing, nose still running from the cold, wet weather I was caught in. “Your Ana was there. She instigated it actually, that conversation, so she is clearly very happy with you. Nice work on the candles and the bath last Sunday, by the way. Very eighties music video.” Even I am shocked by the bitter twang in my voice.
“Well,” Eliot says, ever cool, ever calm, his mouth opening as if to speak, but instead, his lips turning into a smile of disbelief. “Not sure I remember this romantic, eighties-music-video bath, but do go on. The party sounds like a fuckin’ hoot.”