PRIMROSE [H.S]

nine

I had returned to Manchester a few days before, to spend time with my family and also meet my friends again. It was mid-November so my days consisted of studying, helping my mother prepare dinner and visiting a pub from time to time with Charlotte and the rest of the girls. I had always felt that life there, was going much slower than in London, that hours didn't pass at the same speed and there was practically nothing to do; but that was what I needed at that moment. Just having a cup of tea while reading one of my Virginia Wolff's books, listening to the sound of the rain impacting the glass of my room. Sometimes I missed it, that little space in the world that was only mine; my bed, much more comfortable than the one I had in Hammersmith, with that duvet in pink tones that my mother had given me when we did the renovation at home. The small fairy lights that adorned the headboard, and all the candles that were scattered around the window ledge. I felt that this was the place I belonged to, that it had always been that way even if I wanted to deny it. I loved my life in London, my flat, the girls, that continuous coming and going of the tube, having to do something at all times; but nothing like home.

"What are you going to do today, honey?" asked my mother, as she put the Yorkshire pudding back in the oven. It was my favourite Sunday meal, while we all gathered around the table.

"Probably go downtown with Charlotte, she returns tomorrow to London and she has to give me back some heels that I lent her this weekend."

"And why don't you go with her? "she paused. -It's not that you want to leave, I just have the feeling that you get bored in here.

"I'm not bored, sometimes I need to escape from the city to return with more strength."

"But if you've always wanted to be there, why have you decided to stay here for so long? Don't you want to continue studying there?"

"Of course I want mom, I just don't feel like going back tomorrow, I'm fine here with you. It have been months without seeing you and dad."

"I know, I'm also very happy to have you here" she added while giving me a hug. "You're okay, right?"

"Why are you asking?"

"I feel that you are not the same since it happened. You know" she hesitated a few seconds while sitting in a chair, before she could say it. "Harry."

I stared at her without being able to say anything, it had been a long time since anyone asked me about him. Her look of compassion was breaking my heart, I didn't want anyone's compassion and less my mother's, but the truth was that I wasn't having a good time. I had returned to Manchester because it was the only place where memories didn't invade me constantly. The only place I came back to when everything went wrong. Where my friends were not continuously talking about their problems with boys; that looked incredibly small compared to mine. I kept thinking "What are they complaining about? At least those lads live in South London, they don't spend months travelling around the world, without knowing anything about them". I couldn't bear to recognize it, but there were nights under my duvet, where I still remembered the smell of his hair. While I was listening to that song that he had shown me. Never been released, but that he had written years ago.

Don't let me. Don't let me go, cause I'm tired of feeling alone

"It's been three months now" I said trying to downplay the issue.

"You are not answering my question Lacie. I know you more than enough, and I know perfectly well that you are still here because of him."

"I promise you that I've tried, but I haven't been able" I replied while putting one hand on my head, the tears were on the edge of my eyes, waiting for the right word to fall.

She took my other hand and held it tight.

"You have done it because you didn't want to harm your heart. Never regret being like that."

"I have the feeling that I've hurt myself more. I loved him, you know?" I couldn't suppress the tears. In the last weeks I had cried more than in all my life, it had been in that retrospective space that time had given me, in which I had realized things. That everything we had lived had not been a dream, and that despite not being perfect we loved each other. But now it was too late.

"And he did it too, you told me he said it. But sometimes that's not enough honey, and you can't be blaming yourself for it continuously."

"But it was my fault."

"And that is why you do not want to return to London? At some point you will have to do it."

"Because I don't want to meet him again" I snapped.

It had been the day before catching the train, near Chalk Farm. In November it was early night, and about half past four it was almost dark. I had gone to Camden to visit India and on my way back home I thought about visiting a fruit shop where they had the best strawberries in the city. Although the season was over, they were still selling them, I had never tried strawberries like those ones. I was completely lost in my thoughts when I saw him walking on the opposite sidewalk. He wore one of his hats and those brown boots, completely broken and worn since I had last seen him. Something shuddered inside me, I thought I was fine, that time had healed everything, but I was wrong. Trying to pretend that I was alright for all these months just made the wound bigger. 

In the end she managed to convince me, and the next morning I was on a train to London. Charlotte had spent the first hour of the trip telling me everything she had done that weekend: her trip to Leeds with her parents to visit one of her aunts, the hairdressing session and all the problems she was having with the painter in her flat in London. I was honestly tired of listening to her, so I put on my headphones and tried to sleep at least the time we had left.

"Could you please listen to me?" she said while removing one of the headphones from my ear.

"I was almost sleeping, how do you expect me to listen to you with them on?"

"I was talking about Glaston, tickets will be realeased in just a few days and we must be quick to buy them on time. Will you come, right?"

"Yes, of course I will go" we had always dreamed of going to Glaston, it was one of our dreams and finally that year we had decided to organize it in advance.

"Lewis will come" she said jokingly while patting my arm enthusiastically.

"Wow."

"I don't understand how nothing could happen at the party, he was really into you."

Florence did a party at her home on Halloween, to which she had invited many people from the faculty. Lewis was a boy from Liverpool, quite tall and kind, who tried to be stuck next to me all night, while asking me absurd and meaningless things, all because of my friends. They were crazy to find me someone new.

"Because I've told you a thousand times, I just didn't want to be with him."

She looked at me for a few seconds.

"It's for Harry, right?"

"Oh my god, not again. This morning my mother, and now you. Could you please shut the fuck up and mind your own business? Of course it's because of Harry. I can't  forget him, is that what you wanted to hear? There you go."

And suddenly silence invaded the train.

Hope you like this chapter!! Thank you so much for all the support. Sorry if it's a short one but I have a lot of work to do from uni :(

Lucy xx.