Darcy Loch and the Last Midnight Walk

Darcy sent me an email. ‘We’ve got to talk.’ It was damn near three in the morning, but we were obviously both awake. I went over, post haste.

It had been a curious few weeks of half-pleasant exchanges. It’s not like we didn’t see each other, in fucking St. Andrews. But we didn’t talk to each other – or quite ignore each other either.

‘Hi,’ she’d mumble, and move right on down the street.

‘You OK?’ I’d ask.

‘Just need some space, some time,’ she might say.

It was pregnant, like it always was with us. First one tension, then another.

This time we were expecting to finish something, and we’d be doing it at her leisure. She was well-prepared when I arrived: house was empty, throw was all tidy on the couch, couple of mugs of tea on the lounge table. It could have been a date, but it so obviously wasn’t.

‘It’s been a rough few weeks,’ she said, as if for both of us.

‘Has it?’ I asked. ‘I’m sorry.’

I wanted out, but I stood my ground. She sat, so I sat. Opposite ends of the couch. Just like the tea on the table, come to think of it. I took mine, cradled it in my cold palms.

‘I’m still really angry about what happened,’ she said. ‘But I realise that I was responsible, too.’

‘Well,’ I said, diplomatically. ‘We were both there.’

‘I think we need to get it out in the open,’ she said. ‘I’m ready now.’

‘I don’t mind talking,’ I said. ‘How’s Euan taken it?’

‘I told him,’ she said.

‘I know. It was the right thing.’

‘He thought I was going to leave him.’

‘No,’ I said, looking at my feet.

‘Of course not.’

‘So what now?’

‘I don’t like things being like this, with us.’

‘Awkwardness always fades,’ I said. ‘I should fucking know.’

‘It is awkward,’ she said.

‘It won’t last.’

‘It won’t be the same again, either.’

‘No. You’ve always been right about that.’

‘I’ve lost so many friends.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t want us not to be friends.’

‘What is this to you?’ I asked.

‘It’s just...’

She broke, as if to cry.

‘So, we’ll be friends,’ I said.

‘Why did you kiss me?’

‘I loved you.’

‘Do you know for sure?’

‘In the end. You must have known, too.’

‘Well, I suppose I always wondered.’

She ran her hand up her arm, as if it were cold.

‘I’m not expecting some grand happy ending,’ I said.

‘I just don’t think of you like that,’ she said.

‘You did, though,’ I said. ‘It was your kiss, first.’

‘That’s not why.’

‘Why then?’ I asked.

‘Because I trusted you.’

She crossed her legs, put her feet up onto the couch, grabbed one in each hand. She fidgeted with her toes. We sat there, quietly, taking in what meanings we could snatch from the cloud of our half sentences.

‘How could a feeling like that be a bad thing?’ I said, at last.

‘It depends on who you are,’ she told me.

‘How do you think of me?’ I asked her.

She shrugged, and took a sip of tea. Looked into the mug.

‘You said loved,’ she said.

‘I think that kiss broke a kind of balance,’ I told her.

‘Yes.’

‘We needed different things, from different directions.’

‘We’ve passed each other by,’ she said. ‘It’s over, maybe.’

‘We’re friends,’ I said. ‘We’re going to be, still.’

‘It’s never going to mend completely,’ she said.

‘It’s not really about being mended,’ I told her.

Somewhere in it all was the truth that I didn’t spot for years to come. I walked back to Fife Park as the horizon rolled over and turned blue again. The sky is so large in St. Andrews.