Free The Story of You by Katy Regan Page B

the floor. There was an old wardrobe, timber stacked up on one side of it; to the right, there was a tractor – or the skeleton of a tractor – about to be mended or tended to, with all its doors and metalwork removed. It was huge and looming and really quite sinister. It reminded me of a prehistoric creature, about to stir and let out a deafening roar.
    We leaned back on the bottom rung of hay, and finished what was in the flask. I wasn’t wearing tights, and my legs were goose-pimpled. Joe took off his suit jacket and lay it over them. We lay back like that for a while, next to one another, just looking up at the stars that throbbed in the gaps of the corrugated-iron roof.
    Then Joe said, ‘I found her, you know.’
    I turned my head to him. ‘Your mum?’
    ‘Yes. She’d stayed up after Dad went to bed. I got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and the light was still on in the front room. She was sitting in the chair, but sort of half sitting on it, half slumped over, and I thought, that’s a funny position for anyone to go to sleep in – with her body all twisted, half her bum on the seat. And then I moved her hair from her face. God, it was horrible, Robbie. Her skin was grey, it looked like putty, and it had, like, slid off her face. And she was just absent, gone. All that was left was this shell …’
    I took Joe’s hand and stroked it with my thumb.
    ‘I’m so scared I’ll never be able to get that picture out of my mind,’ he said.
    I leaned over and I hugged him then. ‘You will,’ I said. ‘It takes time, but you will.’
    ‘Promise?’
    ‘It’s evolution, not revolution, remember?’
    He nudged me and gave a little laugh.
    ‘It
is
,’ I said.
    We stayed like that, lying down, our arms wrapped around each other, my cheek against his. I inhaled his smell. I already knew.
    What did it matter? Who did care, anyway? Wasn’t this what it was about, life? Seizing the day, just being; not thinking so much all the time? It was funny, I thought, how sometimes there was nothing like death to make you feel so alive.
    He pulled away from me and we hesitated, then I lifted my hands to his face. He lifted his eyes to mine. I couldn’t stop staring at that face, seeing how his eyes, or rather the person inside those eyes – his gaze – was the same. Did he see the same thing in me? Does that ever change?
    ‘You’re strong,’ I said. ‘Stronger than you know.’
    ‘Not stronger than you, everything you’ve been through, all of that.’
    ‘
We’ve
been through,’
I said.
‘You
are
strong.’
    Silence, except for somewhere in the distance I could hear a chicken squawking. It was incongruous, a rude interruption.
    ‘What did we do to each other?’ he said, the words toppling out, ‘that means nothing, nobody …’ I kissed him then and the curve of his lips, the way it moved with mine, the little dance we did, it was so familiar, it shocked me; and when I looked at his face, his lovely face, I recognized it so much, it was like looking at myself. We lay back on the straw: it scratched and prickled the backs of my thighs and my arms like anything, but I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t care about anything, I wasn’t thinking anything – that was the beauty of it. And I looked into Joe’s eyes and told myself that he didn’t want to think either – not today. We kissed, but in a frenzy, as if we had no control over our movements because we were in shock, in shock that this was happening at all; at least, that’s what it felt like. Involuntary. A brilliant, beautiful shock. I turned on my back, Joe was next to me and I wriggled my bum, so I could lift my skirt up, and started to take off my knickers.
    ‘What are you doing?’ whispered Joe.
    ‘What?’ I said, pausing.
    He ran a finger down my arm.
    ‘I want to savour you more than that yet,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots more kissing to get through yet. Lift up your bum, come on.’
    I shifted so I could do as I was