I should be having the summer of my life, but wherever we are, I’m lost. With Addie, for those beautiful, sun-soaked weeks in Provence, I felt myself take shape – falling in love with Addie took the whole of me, and for once I felt completely happy with where and who I was.
I thought I’d leave France and take that with me, but I left it there with her. Some days, once again, to my disgust, I struggle to even get out of bed; I’m as formless and fretful as ever, always one line away from a finished poem, always a step behind Marcus. Always disappointing my father.
He rings me when I’m at Phnom Penh airport. Addie will be going home to Chichester in three days; Marcus has gone off somewhere in search of bottled water, and I’m staring at the departures board. We’re due to leave for Preah Sihanouk for our last week before heading home, but . . . perhaps I could just leave now. Be waiting for Addie at the airport when she returns, see the joy on her face when she catches sight of me in the waiting crowd and sets off at a run to throw herself into my arms.
‘You better be coming home,’ Dad says, when I pick up.
It’s late August. According to our original plan, we should have been home weeks ago – but what was the point of going back to the UK while Addie was still in France?
‘Nice to hear from you, Dad,’ I say. The tone is less sharp than I’d intended – I cop out at the last minute and end up sounding quite pleasant.
‘Enough nonsense. This trip to Europe has escalated ridiculously.’
I scowl. ‘I only stayed a few extra weeks.’
‘You’ve missed all the deadlines for graduate schemes. What are you doing, Dylan? When are you going to grow up?’
I lift my gaze to the ceiling. The criss-crossed strip lights leave a garish tartan pattern on the inside of my eyelids. There’s no need for me to say anything – Dad will say what he wants to say, irrespective of my responses, or lack thereof.
‘You’re planning on living at home, I presume. As much as you’re planning anything. Your mother says it’s no use buying you a flat in London yet, and I’m inclined to agree with her. You haven’t earned it, frankly.’
Mum wants me to decide for myself if London is where I want to be. In some ways, her quiet faith that I’ll figure my life out is almost worse than my father’s absolute conviction that I won’t.
‘We’ll talk it all through properly once you’re back, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find you something in the business – though you’ll have to commute to London, which won’t be easy.’
I feel the life eking out of me as the call goes on. I’m a toy version of a man, flopped in my seat, waiting for someone to lift my strings and jerk me into life.
Marcus ambles back to me with two water bottles; his hair is longer than ever, dry and sun-streaked, and his clothes badly need washing. He grins at me and throws me a bottle from too far away – I can’t catch it with the phone to my ear, and it hits me in the stomach.
I do know, on some level, that this problem of mine is not real. I have a whole world of opportunities in front of me. I can do anything I want, more so than almost any other being on this planet, probably.
But the dread doesn’t seem to know it. The dread just knows that the future is enormous, and awful, because, inevitably, no matter what I do, I’ll fail at it.
‘I’m actually going to stay out here a while longer,’ I say, when there’s a break in my father’s monologue.
I sit through the silence. It’s a relief, like the moment when you scratch at a scab. From the second I saw Dad’s name on my phone screen, I knew this silence was coming; everything leading up to this has just been a horrible means of building suspense. Once it’s done – once I’ve let him down – it’s perversely easy.
‘I don’t know why I bother,’ Dad says, voice already rising into a shout. ‘This is useless. You’re useless.’
And so begins the usual diatribe: waste of space features heavily, as does the question of what he ever did to deserve such disappointing sons, which I have heard enough times not to attempt to answer, tempting as it might be. I stay quiet, that miserable dreadful weight sitting heavy on my chest. Marcus taps his watch and nods at the departures board – the flight to Sihanouk International Airport is boarding.
Dad hangs up when he’s run out of unpleasantness to shout at me. The sharp beep makes my eyes prick. As I follow Marcus to the gate, I think suddenly of holding Addie, my hands splayed against the tight muscle of her back, and I physically falter, half stumbling for a step, as if my feet are trying to tell me I’m walking the wrong way.