So the other people in this chain – Sophie and Win and Ryan – these are people who won’t demand as much from you as Kellan, people who’ll have your back if you feel like saying no. (Yes. I know. Ryan is a hard sell on this, but he’s the only other person I know who won’t put up with Kellan’s bullshit. You need someone like that.)
And they all need someone like you. When I said I miss working at Rabscuttle, what I really meant was that I miss you.
Freya x
WIN
By the time Sunny went to her own room, it was well beyond midnight. At one point, Win thought that she might actually fall asleep curled up at the end of her bed like she had when they were little, on the nights Dad read them stories at least half an hour longer than Mama would usually allow. Back then, Win hadn’t been in possession of a letter that she was increasingly curious to open.
In all the joy about Lucas (and the word-vomit that inevitably went with it) Sunny seemed to have forgotten why they’d gone up to the church in the first place.
Once she’d left, when the landing light was off and there was no hint of activity from the water pipes in the bathroom, Win went and got the letter from where she’d left it folded safely in the pocket of her trousers. Back under the covers, she angled the lamp next to her bed a little better and finally settled down to read whatever Freya had thought was so important it had to be buried inside the middle of a mystery parcel.
Dear Win,
I never fully appreciated how lucky I was to have you as a neighbour until I moved in with Dad. On one side it’s Sky Sports WITH THE VOLUME TURNED UP where they cheer every time a United player so much as looks at the ball. On the other it’s a toddler who spends every evening banging a wooden spoon on the shared wall while I try and revise.
If I’d known how noisy it was living here would I have moved???
Well. OK, yes.
I had to go. My life was full of a louder noise than any my new neighbours make. Escaping like this seemed the healthiest way to silence it. My counsellor seems to think I did the right thing, but lately I’ve been worrying that the right thing for me might be wrong for everyone else. The people that matter, anyway.
I know you probably don’t think you are – but you’re one of them. I admire you. Always have – my intimidatingly cool neighbour who I never thought would talk to me!
I admire you for how well you know your own mind. For being patient with your parents. For having the strength to divide yourself into different bits and each bit be as much you as the next.
When I tried to do that, all that happened was that I kept getting smaller. Thinner, like squash watered down too far to have any flavour.
But not you.
At least, that’s what I think until I remember Pride. One of the best days of my life. I’d never done anything like that before – a day with someone I was still getting to know, meeting your friends (send Felix my love), all in a city so far from home… (Mum still thinks we went on a shopping trip to York.) Kind of weird how there’s no record of it anywhere other than my camera reel. There’s a photo on there that I love. Of you wearing that rainbow flag – like all the parts of you have come together. You look glorious, like you could conquer the world.
You once said that telling people took effort. That it wasn’t easy. I understand some of that, a bit. Telling people what you’re feeling is scary, but if I had, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up as lonely as I got? Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to only give out the bits of me that I thought would fit, forgetting that I need to be whole.
That Win I got to see, she looked pretty whole. I think she could take on the world and make it look easy.
I think not letting her out can make you feel trapped.
So in case you want somewhere to start, I thought maybe here would be good: Sophie and Lucas and Ryan. All the people I gave bits of my heart to when I should have given them the whole.
Freya xxx
Win read it again, jaw clenching harder with every word until her face ached by the end of it. If the parcel had irritated her, then this pile of patronising nonsense had pissed her off so much she felt like setting the whole thing on fire and hurling it out the window.
Instead, Win folded it over, again and again and again, until it was nothing but a fat little wodge of paper and stuffed it into the pocket of the jeans she’d left lying over the end of the bed.
Maybe tomorrow she would burn it.
RYAN
Ryan had read his letter on the way home. Re-read it sitting on the bottom of the stairs. And then again, sitting on his bed, soaking up every word Freya had written, beyond caring whether or not it was good for him. Not. Almost certainly not. But that was how it had been when she was here. He’d craved being with her and hated himself for it. Hated being needy, for wanting more of her than he was allowed to have. Hated that he could never tell her anything truly nice, in case she believed it and wondered why she was wasting even a second longer hanging out with him.
When she left, he’d tried to convince himself that she’d done him a favour.
In bed, the sheet wrinkling under him and the duvet knotted round his legs because he couldn’t get comfy, Ryan gave in one more time. Rolling over, he flicked the switch on the shitty little lamp that had been beside his bed since he was a kid, a massive domed lampshade painted to look like half a football that he had to pile up on a stack of books and boxes.
Freya’s letter sat scrumpled on top of the tissue box and Ryan reached across to get it.
Dear Ryan,
This is the hardest letter to write. Maybe that’s why it’s taken so long for me to write it? I’m a bit of a coward like that – easier to play the part that people want. The one where I’m supposed to be interesting and cool and perfect.
That’s why I liked you. Both of us were pretending – but not to each other.
I could just ask for what I wanted and you gave it:
A place to hang out.
Someone to waste time with.
Someone to keep me safe, to keep me secret.
And then I started liking that secrecy thing a little too much, became swept up in the idea that I could ask for more and you’d give it…
I wish I could rewrite the last year as many times as I’ve rewritten this letter. Find a better order to put things in. Lose the bits that got too messy. But I can’t. You mess things up, you just have to live with them, right? But living with them doesn’t mean ignoring them. So this is me, not ignoring the fact that you were exactly the right friend when I really really needed one. And I am not ignoring the fact that I should have told you I was leaving.
For a few weeks, I thought you would be a good enough reason to stay.
Until I ruined things.
Some days, when I think about what happened, I wonder if I ruined things on purpose. If I had to burn all my bridges to force me into leaving because what I needed was to be away from everyone and everything and as long as there was anything I wanted to hold on to, letting go was harder.
So that month we didn’t talk? That was actually what I needed. And I hated it.
But I’m glad we made up. In the end.
Of all the changes I’d make to our story, it would be that I shouldn’t have been with Kellan when I wanted to be with you. But just to be clear, even though there’s a ton of stuff I regret, I absolutely do not regret having sex with you. I really really regret the timing, though.