Page 33 of Under a Dancing Star

“Of course you were.” Ben sighs, leaning back on his elbows.

“Charles Darwin called it the most peculiar and most human of expressions,” I say, biting into bread filled with sweet, roasted peppers and cured ham. I make a sound of deep approval. “This is amazing.”

“I know,” Ben says, turning his attention to his own lunch. “I think it is Rosa I will miss most of all when the summer is over.”

My mouth is suddenly dry. “Don’t even speak of it,” I say. “It seems impossible that it can all come to an end.”

Ben must be able to read some of the sadness on my face. “What will you do, do you think?” he asks lightly. “When you are home again?”

“Do?” I repeat, my voice dull. “Nothing really. Nothing at all.”

“What a waste.” Ben dips his fingers into a jar of black olives that shine like slick chips of magnetite.

I force a smile. “I don’t have a huge amount of choice in the matter.”

“Rubbish,” Ben says succinctly. “For someone who’s such a loud-mouthed, antagonistic trouble-maker, you come over all meek and mild-mannered when you talk about going home.”

“Thanks a lot,” I say.

“It was actually supposed to be a compliment,” Ben replies. “I just don’t understand why you’re trying to make yourself all … all small and docile when that’s not who you are at all.”

“That,” I say, “is because you have the privilege of being a man and because you obviously don’t have parents like mine.” Suddenly the words are spilling out of me. “If you’d spent seventeen years being told to make yourself smaller and to stay quiet and out of the way, that everything you loved and enjoyed was wrong, and unladylike; if you’d been greeted by recriminations and angry words and floods of tears every time you failed to meet the standards that were set, which you did over and over again despite all your best efforts, your endless good intentions and your desperate longing to make them happy, to win some crumb of approval… Well, then you’d realize it takes more than a couple of weeks in the sun to change the way you see yourself.”

There is silence as I get to the end of this little speech. I can feel the heat in my face, the judder of my unsteady pulse. I am trembling, as though I’ve unleashed something that I have been holding in check for as long as I can remember.

Ben is frozen, his hand still in the jar of olives and a look of surprise on his face.

“Feel better?” he asks at last.

“A bit,” I admit with a shaky laugh. I do, but I also feel an immediate pang of disloyalty, as if even that outburst is just another way that I’ve failed my parents.

“I don’t want to think about the summer ending already,” I say quietly. “Not when it’s only just begun.”

Silence stretches out between us and I pluck at a piece of grass.

Ben is quiet for a moment.

“You’re right that I don’t have parents like yours,” he says. “But I know what you mean, at least a little bit, about feeling in the way. I – well, I took matters into my own hands, I suppose. I ran away from home when I was fourteen.”

“Fourteen is very young to be on your own.”

“It is,” he agrees, and one side of his mouth lifts in a humourless smile.

“Only the same age as Hero.”

“Oh, but I was much more of a tearaway than Hero.” Ben grins. “Just ask Filomena.”

“You knew Filomena back then?” I am startled. I hadn’t really given much thought to how she and Ben knew each other. I suppose it always seemed that Filomena picked up interesting people in the same careless way one might collect shells on a beach.

Ben nods, his gaze inscrutable. “Yes, I knew her,” he says.

I’m distracted after a moment by a buzzing in my ear. I brush something away with my hand and notice it’s a flying ant.

“So,” Ben says, his voice suddenly brisk. “Back to romance.”

“I’m ready.” I try to match his tone. “I am actually very intrigued to hear your outlined suggestions about the parameters of the experiment and its projected outcomes.” Another ant flies past my face.

Ben stares at me. “We don’t need an outline,” he says gently, but with some exasperation in his voice. “This is a romantic picnic, Bea. Parameters and projected outcomes are not romantic.”