Something Hidden (20 page)

Andrew burst out laughing. ‘Are we remembering the same thing?’

Keira bit her bottom lip. ‘Okay, you were rubbish – we both were – but I’m a bit stuck. I’m organising this outdoor living demonstration tomorrow—’

‘In this weather?’

‘It’s complicated. It’s an outdoor demonstration but we’re hosting most of it
indoors
.’

‘Right . . .’

‘It’s things like how to collect condensation to use as drinking water . . .’

‘I have no idea how to do that.’

‘Me neither but we’ve got groups of young people attending. There’s someone else showing them how to start a fire from twigs—’

‘Indoors?’

Keira shook her head. ‘That bit’s outdoors.’

‘So it’s an outdoors demonstration that’s indoors, but with some bits outdoors.’

‘Right. We’ve got a survivalist, someone else talking about trails, this plant expert to talk about what’s edible, that sort of thing.’

Andrew was confused. ‘What do you think I can do? Show the kids where to buy a big coat?’

Keira giggled. ‘I’ve got something you can do.’

‘Brewing up?’

‘You can do that too if you want.’ She reached forward, tugging on his sleeve, fingers brushing his, making eye contact. ‘It’d mean a lot if you can help. I know
it’s short notice . . .’

How could he refuse now?

Andrew had no idea what it was she thought he was capable of. Of all the words people might use to describe him, ‘outdoorsman’ would be somewhere near the bottom of the list, close
to ‘optimist’, ‘action hero’ and ‘astronaut’.

He started to reply and then saw the truth. She
wanted
to spend time with him. They’d been making excuses for why meeting up wasn’t a ‘date’ and this was another.
They could spend an entire Saturday together and not have to call it anything other than one friend helping out another.

Andrew linked his fingers through hers and squeezed gently. ‘It’s not as if I’ve got anything else on tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’

Andrew was delicately treading the boundary between being awake and asleep. The gentle in-out breathing next to him was almost certainly Keira’s; the dragon he’d
been fighting was probably imagined. Only probably, though. His calling could come at any time, just look at St George – and he had an entire flag named after him in the end.

He rolled over slightly, trying to rid his right arm of the pins and needles, without nudging Keira awake. His face was freezing but the rest of him was deliciously toasty. If any zen
philosopher wanted to hear the sound of one hand clapping, then Andrew was giving him or her a demonstration, patting his fingers into his palm in an unsuccessful attempt to get some feeling into
them.

Bloody hell, it was cold.

What was he thinking? The problem with the world was definitely pretty girls. If any of his male friends had asked if he wanted to spend four days in a field in order to see some bands he
wasn’t fussed about, he would have definitely said no. Keira batted her eyelids, put on that girlish voice of hers, and he crumbled in under a minute. ‘Yes, of course I want to
go.’ Mud? No problem. A hundred and fifty quid I don’t have? Don’t worry – I’ll find it. Sleeping in a tent? Of course – it’s not as if we have a perfectly
nice flat to stay in. He really should have built up some resistance to her by now.

Andrew opened his eyes properly and propped himself up on an elbow to watch her sleep, which
definitely
wasn’t weird. Her nose twitched each time she breathed in, eyelids fluttering
as she dreamed. The morning light was fighting through the heavy dark green canvas, but even in that dimness, she looked incredible.

And she liked him!

The cramped space suddenly became darker as something passed across the early morning sun, the shadow joined almost instantly by the tinkle of rain on tent. Wonderful – they were going to
spend the day dodging showers. Even if they managed to do that, the ground would be a swamp by the evening – and they had two more days of this after today. The rain sploshed noisily before
easing off and then starting again . . . which didn’t sound like rain at all. Andrew stared at the left side of the tent where the sun-blocking cloud looked distinctly human-shaped.

Hang on a minute . . .

Andrew scrambled out of his sleeping bag like a drunken caterpillar with vertigo, trying to wriggle from its cocoon. He shivered his way into the area at the back of the tent where they’d
dumped all of their stuff and undid the main zip, exposing his pasty bare chest and tatty pyjama bottoms to the field beyond. There was a kaleidoscope of coloured tents stretching as far as he
could see, with smoke rising in the distance and the smell of barbecuing sausages drifting on the gentle breeze. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and it wasn’t raining. Instead a lad
with ruffled curly black hair was standing a metre away from Andrew, eyes closed, off his head, having a piss.

On their tent.

The young man was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, which were currently around his ankles. His feet were covered in muddy sludge, with ‘BeNDeR’ written on his forehead in
fluorescent orange ink and ‘I love cock’ sprawled across his chest. He’d certainly had a rougher night than Andrew, with friends who were clearly comedy geniuses, and had been
sent off into the wild to find the toilets.

It was a difficult one to judge. On the one hand, Andrew
did
want to stop him from emptying his bladder over the place where they slept, he just didn’t want to risk splashback by
getting any closer. It didn’t appear as if the teenager was going to finish any time soon.

‘Er, mate . . .’ Andrew muttered.

Mr Piss’s eyes fluttered open, as if he’d sleepwalked his way here and had just woken up. ‘Whuuugh?’

‘Can you stop weeing on our tent?’

The lad glanced down at his lower half, apparently realising for the first time what he was doing. ‘Oh . . .’

He didn’t stop.

‘Sometime soon would be nice.’

‘Er . . . yeah.’ He started to crouch, trying to pull up his boxers, simultaneously giving Andrew a perfect view of his hairy arse and all the while continuing to urinate. He must
have a bladder like a watermelon.

Eventually, Mr Piss’s evacuation became a dribble. He mumbled something that might have been an apology, yanked his pants up, turned, and stumbled away, only to trip over a nearby guy rope
and fall face-first into the muck. Because he wasn’t covered in enough filth, he rolled onto his back, struggling to haul himself up, like an upside-down tortoise. It took almost a minute
before he found his feet again, by which time he was splattered head to toe in mud. He turned in a circle, scratching his head, before pointing towards the nearby burger van and faltering in its
general direction.

This was day two!

The early morning sun tickled Andrew’s bare skin but he was still cold. Someone was playing a guitar in the distance, and a radio blared nearby. He checked his watch – quarter
past-six – and wondered if guitar man had just woken up, or if he’d been pissing everyone off through the night. Any requests from the audience? Yes – shut the hell up.

Everywhere Andrew looked there was something going on: a line of dishevelled-looking girls padding their way towards the showers, towels and wash bags in hand; a drunken lad following them,
hoisting a toilet roll in the air as he shouted ‘I’m going for a shit!’ A few tents over, a young man was slumped in a fold-up canvas chair, can of John Smith’s in his lap,
as a foil barbecue tray steamed on the dew-soaked grass in front of him.

Since Andrew and Keira had gone to bed in the early hours, tents had popped up on almost every patch of clear land – huge domes wedged into impossibly small spaces, with even tinier pop-up
shelters next to them.

A seething heap of people living in squalor on top of one another, all because a band they’d barely heard of was going to belt out a song they wouldn’t like from a stage they’d
never get anywhere near.

Andrew felt a shuffling behind him and then Keira appeared, yawning and stretching. Her hair was all over the place, but, with the spaghetti strap of her teddy bear pyjama top hanging limply
around her upper arm to expose a tantalising amount of tanned flesh, Andrew was still left open-mouthed.

She rubbed her eyes, managing half a smile, before rearranging her clothes.

Spoil sport.

‘What time is it?’ she asked through a yawn.

‘Six fifteen.’

‘Ugh. How long have you been up?’

‘Not long.’

Andrew put on his hoody and unfolded their camp chairs, setting them outside, away from the puddle of urine. Keira joined him, still yawning, as she placed their camp stove on the ground, trying
to find a flat patch of land.

‘It looks like a refugee camp out here,’ she said.

‘Only we’ve paid a hundred and fifty quid for the privilege.’

She smiled and yawned again, taking in the rest of the enveloping scene around them. All across the campsite, the masses were beginning to wake, disturbed by the simmering noise and increasing
light. The queue for the showers was already a dozen people long, with three times the number of people waiting for the toilets, each with a bog roll in hand. The wind changed slightly, wafting a
light grey cloud over the top of the trees and sending the smell of burgers across to them. Andrew’s stomach grumbled.

Keira was pouring water into the camping kettle they’d bought from Oxfam for three quid the previous weekend. ‘Brew?’ she asked.

‘I think I need some food.’

She shrugged and set the kettle boiling. With the pitiful heat of the stove, it’d probably be around fifteen minutes before the water was anything like hot enough. She dropped two teabags
into mugs and left them on the ground.

They relaxed in their seats, starting an impromptu yawning competition, before giggling themselves stupid.

‘Are you going to cook?’ she asked.

Andrew nodded at the tiny stove. ‘I can barely manage beans on toast at home with a proper oven, let alone on that thing.’

‘I thought you were an outdoors guru?’

‘When did I ever say that?’

Keira snuggled into his arm, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘That must be my other boyfriend, then.’

‘Har-de-har.’

The lad with the John Smith’s in his lap jumped awake as his sausages started to burn, sending dark smoke clouding into his face, and the whiff of charcoal drifting across the nearby
tents. He jabbed at the tin-foil barbecue with a stick, rolling his breakfast onto a paper plate before noticing he was being watched.

He nodded at Andrew and Keira, grinning, before holding up his can of bitter. ‘Want one?’

‘Bit early for me,’ Keira replied.

Andrew waved a sympathetic hand as the other lad tried to eat with his fingers, dropping a sausage into his lap with a clamour of oohing and aahing.

From nowhere, the grey cloud started to deposit a gentle patter of rain. There was blue sky in all four directions, the weather so localised that it seemed like it was only their field being
dumped on. Andrew and Keira shuffled into the open flap of their tent, sitting on the matting inside as the tempo increased.

‘Whatcha thinking about?’ Keira asked, still holding onto Andrew’s arm, head on his shoulder.

‘I dunno . . . nothing really.’

‘It must be something.’

‘I suppose . . . I was just thinking that I’m happy. Everything here is ridiculous – it’s filthy, there are people everywhere, it’s noisy, I’ve hardly slept,
the food’s awful, it’s going to rain on and off all day, but I don’t really mind. It’s nice.’

Keira didn’t reply for a moment but he could feel her breathing. When she answered, her voice was soft, almost inaudible over the rain.

‘Do you think we should get married?’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Not right now. I’ve got to do that rearranged exam in two weeks. After that.’

‘Straight away?’

‘More or less.’

‘Where are we going to go?’

‘I don’t know. Gretna? Vegas? Somewhere easy. I can get us flights if we go abroad.’

‘What about—?’

‘I won’t tell them. My mum will understand and my dad will get used to it eventually. Your parents will be fine. If we do it any other way, we’ll spend ages trying to get mine
on board and then haggling over the stupid things. Even if my dad is all right with it, which he won’t be, he’d want to take over because he’d insist on paying.’

‘I . . .’

Andrew didn’t know what to say but Keira cut in anyway. ‘It was only an idea.’ She giggled, releasing his arm. ‘I’ve just realised that this was the worst proposal
in the history of proposals.’

‘Is that what it was?’

‘I suppose. I woke up and it was on my mind.’

Andrew put an arm around her as Keira nibbled on his ear, breath fluttering across his lobe. ‘Well, in answer to your question, yes, I do think we should get married,’ he said.

‘I think you should ask me properly,’ Keira replied.

‘
Here?
’

‘Why not?’

Well, there was the puddle of piss, but . . .

Without thinking, Andrew shuffled himself down, one foot on the canvas of the tent, his knee in the mud, rain sprinkling down his back. He took Keira’s hand but she instantly burst out
laughing.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I don’t know . . . it’s just . . . okay, go on.’

Keira’s short blonde hair was tucked behind her ear on one side, with a clump poking out at a sharp angle on the other. Her pyjama-top strap had slipped again and there was a smudge of
dirt on her cheek that must have been there all night. She was biting her bottom lip, trying to stop herself from giggling, which only made Andrew want to laugh too.

Okay, deep breath, not a big deal, it’s only the rest of your life. Go!

‘Will you marry me?’

Andrew got the words out in one go, which was just as well because his heart suddenly lurched into action as it realised what he’d done.

‘Of course I will.’

Keira hunched forward and pecked him on the lips. There was no ring, no joyous explosion of worlds colliding. Instead, in a muddy field, surrounded by half-asleep strangers clutching toilet
rolls and cans of John Smith’s, barely a metre from a puddle of urine, they got engaged. Andrew felt the spark surging across him as they kissed, knowing they were going to spend the rest of
their lives together – and nothing was going to change that.