Annie Christie's To Die For:
Episode Six
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Colourblind.
_____________________________________________________________________
It was the morning after the longest day. After the night that should have been… and I was more confused than ever. Freddie barely seemed to notice I existed. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong but I didn’t want to disturb him while he painted. It was a long morning.
Eventually I made some more tea and plucked up the courage to ask him if he wanted one.
He turned to look at me, and it was as if he’d never seen me before.
‘Tea?’ he said as if it was the strangest thing in the world.
‘Or coffee,’ I said, ‘or… mum gave me some sachets of hot chocolate. Would you like that instead?’
He looked at me like it was an impossible question to answer.
‘It’s all just shades of brown,’ I said, trying to be funny.
Again. Nothing. I took the bull between the horns.
‘Freddie,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean to be funny, but would you rather I wasn’t here?’
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It’s just that I seem to have upset you in some way,’ I said. ‘Have I done something?’
He looked bemused. Then his face lightened for a moment.
‘Heather,’ he said, ‘you have not upset me. I’m sorry. It is that…’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to explain. I just wanted to know.’
‘You are a nice girl,’ he said, ‘I am happy to know you…’
And I couldn’t bear to wait for the but. So I brought it up myself.
‘I know you’re just here for a short time,’ I said, ‘I’m not asking you to…’ then I ran out of words. Just in time. Because that was when he kissed me. And it’s true, the world does stop spinning for as long as that first passionate kiss lasts. The world would never, it seemed, spin quite the same again. Life is made up, so they say, of moments. And that was the longest and best moment of my seventeen years.
And after, we sat and drank hot chocolate. He put his arm round me and said, ‘Heather, you know I came here to look for something…’
And I almost hoped he was going to say that he’d found it, and that what he’d found was me. Life’s not that perfect though, is it?
‘This place?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but it is more than this place. And you have helped me find it. I will always be grateful.’
I was beginning to see a future. But as I said, things don’t go as you plan in your head, do they? He continued.
‘When I’m gone and you remember me…’
Which made it very clear this was not going to be an 0n-going thing.
‘Let’s not talk about that now,’ I said. ‘We’re here now, we have the rest of the day, and I should let you paint.’
He told me that his painting was over for the day. It was the light, the inspiration, the moment had passed. I felt just the slightest bit guilty that I had broken the spell, but more than that I felt just a little bit smug that I’d drawn him out of his painterly world, into mine, a world where a kiss spoke for more than all the artwork in humanity.
‘Shall we walk?’ he said, and we did.
Once more he talked to me. It started off reticent but soon he was in full flow. I’d not expected the moment of passion in his kiss, but it was nothing compared to the passion with which he talked about art. He told me more about his life in Dresden… and then I started to click. There was another girl involved in this story.
‘Do you have a girlfriend back home?’ I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I didn’t want to be kept guessing either.
‘Have you read The Sorrows?’ he said.
‘Werther?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Uh, yes,’ I said, though I hadn’t really paid much attention to it, if I’m honest. It wasn’t my kind of story. Young Werther struck me as a bit selfish.
‘Then you may understand,’ he said.
I didn’t like to probe any more, it would just make me look an idiot for saying I’d read the book which still lay, half-finished on my bedside table.
‘I’d like you to explain it to me, though,’ I said.
He sighed.
‘There is nothing to explain in love,’ he said. ‘But please, don’t you be sad for me. You have been so kind…’ and he gave me that smile. It shut me up.
The sun was high in the sky when he decided it was time for us to go. We ate a picnic lunch, more or less in silence. I couldn’t fathom him. One minute he was distant, then he was kissing me, then… and I felt close and distant all at the same time. I felt like I was trying to capture a cloud on a camera. Maybe I was beginning to understand his need to paint. I wanted, more than anything, to hold onto a moment. And you can’t. I wanted to be close to him for more than a moment. And I couldn’t. I stood on the brink of the adult world and was beginning to think life was a lot easier when you were my brother Duggie’s age.
Before I had a chance to pack up the picnic and ask what we were going to do that afternoon, he broke the silence.
‘I must paint at sunset,’ he said, ‘and I promised to your parents to have you back…’
‘Sure you don’t want to come for dinner?’ I asked, desperate to hold onto him for a moment longer.
‘You have been all so kind,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, ‘I… we like you.’ I nearly said I love you but I still had the uneasy feeling that it would rock the boat. I resolved to go back and read the rest of Young Werther before I raised the subject. I needed help wherever I could get it – even from some daft German novel, which clearly had depths beyond my ken – or had lost something important in the translation.
‘Let’s go,’ he said and we packed up, got back on the bike and made our way back to Kirkcudbright.
He dropped me at the door like it was any other day. No kiss, no big deal, no big goodbye.
I didn’t want to sound needy so I didn’t say ‘When will I see you again?’ which was what I really wanted to know. I just said, ‘Enjoy the light. See you soon.’
He never even took his helmet off, so I couldn’t kiss him again. He just smiled and waved and said, ‘Thank you.’ And that was it.
Everyone at home was full of questions, none of which I wanted to answer. I got my head into my Goethe, hoping I’d find some answers there.
Initially I was hopeful. It seemed as if, if I was reading it right and Freddie saw himself as a latter day Werther, that he’d had a bad relationship in Germany and come over here to escape. The big question I couldn’t resolve was, was I Lotte? Sometimes I thought I was, sometimes not. I wanted to talk to Freddie about it. I just wanted to talk to Freddie. But the only person there to talk to was Christy.
I spilled the beans. First Christy couldn’t believe I hadn’t slept with him. ‘A lot of fuss over a kiss,’ was her response. She continued to tell me all manner of details about her ‘progress’ with Ian the Janny, details I really didn’t want to know about. It seemed to me she was playing with fire, and I felt heart sorry for his wife.
‘Do you love him?’ I asked her. She laughed.
‘Don’t be daft, Heather,’ she said. ‘We’re too young for love.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I love Freddie.’
‘You don’t,’ she said, ‘you don’t even know him. You love the idea of him.’
She was right of course. But I did believe in romance and love at first sight and…
…and I had no one to talk to. A week passed.
‘He’ll be back,’ mum said.
‘You’ll never see him again,’ Christy said.
‘I think I saw him at the art shop,’ Duggie said, but I think he was just trying to wind me up.
‘Do you want me to go to the campsite and look for him?’ dad asked.
‘No, dad, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,’ I said.
I held to the soppy poster idea – if you love something let it go free… but every day it became harder to believe.
It was a lovely warm summer, just how I’d imagined it. But there was no sign of Freddie. Warm days counted for nothing.
One day I was listening to the radio and a song came on. I’d forgotten it, it had been the big song of the previous summer. I remember Christy and me used to jump around singing it, without a real thought to the words. It was by Darius. I remember Christy drooling over him – he’s to die for – she said. Nothing unusual there. But this year the song seemed so much more apposite to me. I really listened to the words and they seemed to speak right out to me. The song was Colourblind. The lyrics became my mantra:
Feeling Blue, When I’m trying to forget the feeling that I miss you,
Feeling Green, When the jealousy swells and it won’t go away and dreams,
Feeling Yellow, I’m confused inside a little hazy but mellow.
When I feel your eyes on me, Feeling fine, its sublime,
When that smile of yours creeps into my mind.
They just seemed to sum up everything I felt. I cried every time I listened to the song, and I listened to it just about non-stop for a week.
But as is the nature of sentiment, as well as the pain, it offers elation. The chorus did that for me:
Nobody told me it feels so good,
Nobody said you would be so beautiful,
Nobody warned me about your smile,
You're the light, You're the light,
When I close my eyes, I’m colourblind.
It was like the perfect artist’s song. The perfect song to explain my love. I might not know Freddie, but I did love him. I knew it. Why else would I feel this sense of loss?
The second verse did and didn’t help. It goes:
Feeling Red, When you spend all your time with your friends and not me instead,
Feeling Black, When I think about all of the things that I feel I lack,
Feeling Jaded, When it’s not gone right, all the colours are faded.
Then I feel your eyes on me, Feelin' fine, sublime,
When that smile of yours creeps into my mind.
I realised that I was jealous, not of some girl in Dresden, but of his art. And that made me feel disloyal and hopeless. Freddie was his art, I got that much. How could I be jealous of it and love him. I felt despondent. Red and Black. I played the song again. The next chorus banked me up with hope again. Feelin’ fine, sublime…’
I just needed to do something. I decided I’d go out to the caravan park and tell him. Play him the song. See what he said.
I took a bus to Newton Stewart and I walked. I didn’t tell anyone. It was no one’s business but my own. Like some daft scene out of the Sound of Music, I was singing the song all the way along the narrow road to the campsite. I had it on a Walkman and somehow was convinced that if I could just get Freddie to listen to it, he’d understand everything. You're the light, you're the light, When I close my eyes I'm colourblind, You make me colourblind.
My only hope lay in trying to explain how I felt about him. To him. And Darius would help me. I was no artist. I couldn’t paint my love. I couldn’t write it. So music would have to do it for me. Blinded by the light you shine, The colours fade completely Blinded by you every time I feel your smile defeat me I'm colourblind I just can't deny this feeling.
I knew he was sad, and I knew it was because people didn’t believe in his art. I was going to tell him that I did believe. In him and his painting. That I’d be happy just to sit watching him. I didn’t need to talk, I didn’t need him to talk to me, but I was colourblind without him. I felt sure he’d understand.
And he might have done. But he wasn’t there. The camp-site people told me he’d left a couple of days ago. They had no idea where he’d gone. So we all assumed he’d headed back to Germany. I needed to find a way through this without my parents working out how badly hurt I was. I didn’t expect they would say ‘I told you so,’ but I did expect sympathy, and I couldn’t deal with that. It’s hard to wallow in self-pity and loathing when loved ones come through for you. I turned to Christy. She was my friend after all.
‘He got what he wanted and he left,’ Christy said. There was an irony, of course, in that what Christy assumed men wanted wasn’t what Freddie got. I pointed it out to her. She was not in the mood to listen. Ian the Janny had told her it was over. He was not leaving his wife.
‘Did you ever think he would?’ I asked.
‘I never wanted him to,’ she said. ‘It was just a bit of fun.’
So there we were, me and Christy. Me in love with a boy I barely knew who had left without saying goodbye, and Christy denying she was in love with a man who had nevertheless broken her heart. What a pair.
I hatched a plan. Christy and I were fed up with Kirkcudbright. Summer tourists and still nothing doing, and we were itching to be away. It was my parents that gave me the idea really. I just adapted it to suit me and Christy.
My parents didn’t do summer holidays, they’d never had the money before, but after that Lottery win… dad suggested that we all take a fortnight’s break. While I was desperate to be away from Kirkcudbright, I also didn’t want to go, just in case Freddie came back. Pathetic, I know. But I stuck to my guns. I went back to working in the shop for Rupert. It was the only way I could think of getting out of the family holiday. So as June passed into July, I missed out on a two week trip to Greece.
When they came back, all full of the great time they’d had, and I had still seen no sign of Freddie, I decided it was time to put my plan into action. This was it: I had my own money from the Lottery and I had saved some from being back working nearly full time for Rupert. I had Christy for company and an alibi. The plan was to go Inter-railing through Europe. That was how I was selling it to my parents at any rate. I had one idea on my mind, of course, which was to go to Dresden and track down Freddie. Christy just wanted to get into Europe and see what other boys there were to die for.
It was agreed that we wouldn’t go until after the exam results came out. Then it could be a great celebration, an adventure before heading off to uni. July segued into August and the exam results became the most pressing thing on our minds. It was all starting to get a little bit too real. The future was so near and yet so far.
I was still colourblind, despite all the time spent in the relatively colourful atmosphere of Rupert’s shop. But I hadn’t given up hope. I was sure that I could turn things round if only I could find Freddie and tell him how I felt. I just had to get the exam results out of the way. I just had to wait a few weeks more.
The deal with my parents was that if we passed and were going to Uni, we could take three weeks to travel Europe before it started. If not, we’d be back to school. So no tickets were bought in advance. To be honest, Christy wasn’t that confident she would be leaving school. She’d half-heartedly started looking for jobs locally, but there was nothing for school-leavers. Her parents were keen that she get good grades. As were mine, of course. I was pretty sure I’d get enough to go to Stirling at least, and if it meant Stirling and a chance to find Freddie, or back to school and another year of Kirkcudbright, I knew which I’d choose. We waited. Not patiently, but waited because there was nothing else we could do.
As always, when you stop focussing on the boiling kettle, it boils. A week before the exam results were due, I got a postcard. I say a postcard, and it was one, but it was in an envelope so it was obviously private. And it was from Freddie. I noted, with a little chagrin, that it had a local postmark. Had he been here all the time and been avoiding me? I ripped open the envelope.
It was a postcard of ‘Chasseur in the Snow’ and he had written. ‘Dear Heather, I ask you to do one thing for me. Please come and bring your camera. I will be there. Take me a photograph. I’m sorry. Love, Freddie.’
I couldn’t take it all in. My heart sang. I managed to turn ‘Love, Freddie’ into ‘I love you, Freddie’ and all the colours came back into my heart. He was sorry. That must mean he was sorry that he’d left without saying goodbye. He wanted me to take a photograph. That seemed strange. But I thought it was him trying to make it up to me. I fully expected that I’d go to ‘our’ place and he’d be there waiting for me. That he’d allow me to take a photograph of him. I knew he’d probably then be going back to Germany, but I reckoned he must feel something for me too, to have got back in touch. It was an odd wee message, of course, but I was, as the song said, blinded by the light that shone from my image of him in my teenage heart.
I had no idea what I was walking into. I just knew that I had to get to the Forest. Dad had been giving me driving lessons that summer – I think it was his way to try and take my mind off Freddie. I was due a test the same week my exam results came out – how bad timing was that? Or as mum said, ‘Get it all out the way in one fell swoop.’ I felt reasonably comfortable in driving. There was just the small matter that it was illegal to drive a car alone. I decided to be a criminal. My parents were both at work and I didn’t want Christy to spoil my big reunion. I knew it was wrong, but… I was blinded. Love, after all, I reasoned, was above the law. I knew I was lying to myself, but I didn’t care. Nothing was going to stop me finding Freddie.
I got in the car, and I drove – very carefully I’ll hasten to add – to the exact spot we’d spent our Solstice Weekend.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Colourblind.
_____________________________________________________________________
It was the morning after the longest day. After the night that should have been… and I was more confused than ever. Freddie barely seemed to notice I existed. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong but I didn’t want to disturb him while he painted. It was a long morning.
Eventually I made some more tea and plucked up the courage to ask him if he wanted one.
He turned to look at me, and it was as if he’d never seen me before.
‘Tea?’ he said as if it was the strangest thing in the world.
‘Or coffee,’ I said, ‘or… mum gave me some sachets of hot chocolate. Would you like that instead?’
He looked at me like it was an impossible question to answer.
‘It’s all just shades of brown,’ I said, trying to be funny.
Again. Nothing. I took the bull between the horns.
‘Freddie,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean to be funny, but would you rather I wasn’t here?’
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It’s just that I seem to have upset you in some way,’ I said. ‘Have I done something?’
He looked bemused. Then his face lightened for a moment.
‘Heather,’ he said, ‘you have not upset me. I’m sorry. It is that…’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to explain. I just wanted to know.’
‘You are a nice girl,’ he said, ‘I am happy to know you…’
And I couldn’t bear to wait for the but. So I brought it up myself.
‘I know you’re just here for a short time,’ I said, ‘I’m not asking you to…’ then I ran out of words. Just in time. Because that was when he kissed me. And it’s true, the world does stop spinning for as long as that first passionate kiss lasts. The world would never, it seemed, spin quite the same again. Life is made up, so they say, of moments. And that was the longest and best moment of my seventeen years.
And after, we sat and drank hot chocolate. He put his arm round me and said, ‘Heather, you know I came here to look for something…’
And I almost hoped he was going to say that he’d found it, and that what he’d found was me. Life’s not that perfect though, is it?
‘This place?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but it is more than this place. And you have helped me find it. I will always be grateful.’
I was beginning to see a future. But as I said, things don’t go as you plan in your head, do they? He continued.
‘When I’m gone and you remember me…’
Which made it very clear this was not going to be an 0n-going thing.
‘Let’s not talk about that now,’ I said. ‘We’re here now, we have the rest of the day, and I should let you paint.’
He told me that his painting was over for the day. It was the light, the inspiration, the moment had passed. I felt just the slightest bit guilty that I had broken the spell, but more than that I felt just a little bit smug that I’d drawn him out of his painterly world, into mine, a world where a kiss spoke for more than all the artwork in humanity.
‘Shall we walk?’ he said, and we did.
Once more he talked to me. It started off reticent but soon he was in full flow. I’d not expected the moment of passion in his kiss, but it was nothing compared to the passion with which he talked about art. He told me more about his life in Dresden… and then I started to click. There was another girl involved in this story.
‘Do you have a girlfriend back home?’ I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I didn’t want to be kept guessing either.
‘Have you read The Sorrows?’ he said.
‘Werther?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Uh, yes,’ I said, though I hadn’t really paid much attention to it, if I’m honest. It wasn’t my kind of story. Young Werther struck me as a bit selfish.
‘Then you may understand,’ he said.
I didn’t like to probe any more, it would just make me look an idiot for saying I’d read the book which still lay, half-finished on my bedside table.
‘I’d like you to explain it to me, though,’ I said.
He sighed.
‘There is nothing to explain in love,’ he said. ‘But please, don’t you be sad for me. You have been so kind…’ and he gave me that smile. It shut me up.
The sun was high in the sky when he decided it was time for us to go. We ate a picnic lunch, more or less in silence. I couldn’t fathom him. One minute he was distant, then he was kissing me, then… and I felt close and distant all at the same time. I felt like I was trying to capture a cloud on a camera. Maybe I was beginning to understand his need to paint. I wanted, more than anything, to hold onto a moment. And you can’t. I wanted to be close to him for more than a moment. And I couldn’t. I stood on the brink of the adult world and was beginning to think life was a lot easier when you were my brother Duggie’s age.
Before I had a chance to pack up the picnic and ask what we were going to do that afternoon, he broke the silence.
‘I must paint at sunset,’ he said, ‘and I promised to your parents to have you back…’
‘Sure you don’t want to come for dinner?’ I asked, desperate to hold onto him for a moment longer.
‘You have been all so kind,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, ‘I… we like you.’ I nearly said I love you but I still had the uneasy feeling that it would rock the boat. I resolved to go back and read the rest of Young Werther before I raised the subject. I needed help wherever I could get it – even from some daft German novel, which clearly had depths beyond my ken – or had lost something important in the translation.
‘Let’s go,’ he said and we packed up, got back on the bike and made our way back to Kirkcudbright.
He dropped me at the door like it was any other day. No kiss, no big deal, no big goodbye.
I didn’t want to sound needy so I didn’t say ‘When will I see you again?’ which was what I really wanted to know. I just said, ‘Enjoy the light. See you soon.’
He never even took his helmet off, so I couldn’t kiss him again. He just smiled and waved and said, ‘Thank you.’ And that was it.
Everyone at home was full of questions, none of which I wanted to answer. I got my head into my Goethe, hoping I’d find some answers there.
Initially I was hopeful. It seemed as if, if I was reading it right and Freddie saw himself as a latter day Werther, that he’d had a bad relationship in Germany and come over here to escape. The big question I couldn’t resolve was, was I Lotte? Sometimes I thought I was, sometimes not. I wanted to talk to Freddie about it. I just wanted to talk to Freddie. But the only person there to talk to was Christy.
I spilled the beans. First Christy couldn’t believe I hadn’t slept with him. ‘A lot of fuss over a kiss,’ was her response. She continued to tell me all manner of details about her ‘progress’ with Ian the Janny, details I really didn’t want to know about. It seemed to me she was playing with fire, and I felt heart sorry for his wife.
‘Do you love him?’ I asked her. She laughed.
‘Don’t be daft, Heather,’ she said. ‘We’re too young for love.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I love Freddie.’
‘You don’t,’ she said, ‘you don’t even know him. You love the idea of him.’
She was right of course. But I did believe in romance and love at first sight and…
…and I had no one to talk to. A week passed.
‘He’ll be back,’ mum said.
‘You’ll never see him again,’ Christy said.
‘I think I saw him at the art shop,’ Duggie said, but I think he was just trying to wind me up.
‘Do you want me to go to the campsite and look for him?’ dad asked.
‘No, dad, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,’ I said.
I held to the soppy poster idea – if you love something let it go free… but every day it became harder to believe.
It was a lovely warm summer, just how I’d imagined it. But there was no sign of Freddie. Warm days counted for nothing.
One day I was listening to the radio and a song came on. I’d forgotten it, it had been the big song of the previous summer. I remember Christy and me used to jump around singing it, without a real thought to the words. It was by Darius. I remember Christy drooling over him – he’s to die for – she said. Nothing unusual there. But this year the song seemed so much more apposite to me. I really listened to the words and they seemed to speak right out to me. The song was Colourblind. The lyrics became my mantra:
Feeling Blue, When I’m trying to forget the feeling that I miss you,
Feeling Green, When the jealousy swells and it won’t go away and dreams,
Feeling Yellow, I’m confused inside a little hazy but mellow.
When I feel your eyes on me, Feeling fine, its sublime,
When that smile of yours creeps into my mind.
They just seemed to sum up everything I felt. I cried every time I listened to the song, and I listened to it just about non-stop for a week.
But as is the nature of sentiment, as well as the pain, it offers elation. The chorus did that for me:
Nobody told me it feels so good,
Nobody said you would be so beautiful,
Nobody warned me about your smile,
You're the light, You're the light,
When I close my eyes, I’m colourblind.
It was like the perfect artist’s song. The perfect song to explain my love. I might not know Freddie, but I did love him. I knew it. Why else would I feel this sense of loss?
The second verse did and didn’t help. It goes:
Feeling Red, When you spend all your time with your friends and not me instead,
Feeling Black, When I think about all of the things that I feel I lack,
Feeling Jaded, When it’s not gone right, all the colours are faded.
Then I feel your eyes on me, Feelin' fine, sublime,
When that smile of yours creeps into my mind.
I realised that I was jealous, not of some girl in Dresden, but of his art. And that made me feel disloyal and hopeless. Freddie was his art, I got that much. How could I be jealous of it and love him. I felt despondent. Red and Black. I played the song again. The next chorus banked me up with hope again. Feelin’ fine, sublime…’
I just needed to do something. I decided I’d go out to the caravan park and tell him. Play him the song. See what he said.
I took a bus to Newton Stewart and I walked. I didn’t tell anyone. It was no one’s business but my own. Like some daft scene out of the Sound of Music, I was singing the song all the way along the narrow road to the campsite. I had it on a Walkman and somehow was convinced that if I could just get Freddie to listen to it, he’d understand everything. You're the light, you're the light, When I close my eyes I'm colourblind, You make me colourblind.
My only hope lay in trying to explain how I felt about him. To him. And Darius would help me. I was no artist. I couldn’t paint my love. I couldn’t write it. So music would have to do it for me. Blinded by the light you shine, The colours fade completely Blinded by you every time I feel your smile defeat me I'm colourblind I just can't deny this feeling.
I knew he was sad, and I knew it was because people didn’t believe in his art. I was going to tell him that I did believe. In him and his painting. That I’d be happy just to sit watching him. I didn’t need to talk, I didn’t need him to talk to me, but I was colourblind without him. I felt sure he’d understand.
And he might have done. But he wasn’t there. The camp-site people told me he’d left a couple of days ago. They had no idea where he’d gone. So we all assumed he’d headed back to Germany. I needed to find a way through this without my parents working out how badly hurt I was. I didn’t expect they would say ‘I told you so,’ but I did expect sympathy, and I couldn’t deal with that. It’s hard to wallow in self-pity and loathing when loved ones come through for you. I turned to Christy. She was my friend after all.
‘He got what he wanted and he left,’ Christy said. There was an irony, of course, in that what Christy assumed men wanted wasn’t what Freddie got. I pointed it out to her. She was not in the mood to listen. Ian the Janny had told her it was over. He was not leaving his wife.
‘Did you ever think he would?’ I asked.
‘I never wanted him to,’ she said. ‘It was just a bit of fun.’
So there we were, me and Christy. Me in love with a boy I barely knew who had left without saying goodbye, and Christy denying she was in love with a man who had nevertheless broken her heart. What a pair.
I hatched a plan. Christy and I were fed up with Kirkcudbright. Summer tourists and still nothing doing, and we were itching to be away. It was my parents that gave me the idea really. I just adapted it to suit me and Christy.
My parents didn’t do summer holidays, they’d never had the money before, but after that Lottery win… dad suggested that we all take a fortnight’s break. While I was desperate to be away from Kirkcudbright, I also didn’t want to go, just in case Freddie came back. Pathetic, I know. But I stuck to my guns. I went back to working in the shop for Rupert. It was the only way I could think of getting out of the family holiday. So as June passed into July, I missed out on a two week trip to Greece.
When they came back, all full of the great time they’d had, and I had still seen no sign of Freddie, I decided it was time to put my plan into action. This was it: I had my own money from the Lottery and I had saved some from being back working nearly full time for Rupert. I had Christy for company and an alibi. The plan was to go Inter-railing through Europe. That was how I was selling it to my parents at any rate. I had one idea on my mind, of course, which was to go to Dresden and track down Freddie. Christy just wanted to get into Europe and see what other boys there were to die for.
It was agreed that we wouldn’t go until after the exam results came out. Then it could be a great celebration, an adventure before heading off to uni. July segued into August and the exam results became the most pressing thing on our minds. It was all starting to get a little bit too real. The future was so near and yet so far.
I was still colourblind, despite all the time spent in the relatively colourful atmosphere of Rupert’s shop. But I hadn’t given up hope. I was sure that I could turn things round if only I could find Freddie and tell him how I felt. I just had to get the exam results out of the way. I just had to wait a few weeks more.
The deal with my parents was that if we passed and were going to Uni, we could take three weeks to travel Europe before it started. If not, we’d be back to school. So no tickets were bought in advance. To be honest, Christy wasn’t that confident she would be leaving school. She’d half-heartedly started looking for jobs locally, but there was nothing for school-leavers. Her parents were keen that she get good grades. As were mine, of course. I was pretty sure I’d get enough to go to Stirling at least, and if it meant Stirling and a chance to find Freddie, or back to school and another year of Kirkcudbright, I knew which I’d choose. We waited. Not patiently, but waited because there was nothing else we could do.
As always, when you stop focussing on the boiling kettle, it boils. A week before the exam results were due, I got a postcard. I say a postcard, and it was one, but it was in an envelope so it was obviously private. And it was from Freddie. I noted, with a little chagrin, that it had a local postmark. Had he been here all the time and been avoiding me? I ripped open the envelope.
It was a postcard of ‘Chasseur in the Snow’ and he had written. ‘Dear Heather, I ask you to do one thing for me. Please come and bring your camera. I will be there. Take me a photograph. I’m sorry. Love, Freddie.’
I couldn’t take it all in. My heart sang. I managed to turn ‘Love, Freddie’ into ‘I love you, Freddie’ and all the colours came back into my heart. He was sorry. That must mean he was sorry that he’d left without saying goodbye. He wanted me to take a photograph. That seemed strange. But I thought it was him trying to make it up to me. I fully expected that I’d go to ‘our’ place and he’d be there waiting for me. That he’d allow me to take a photograph of him. I knew he’d probably then be going back to Germany, but I reckoned he must feel something for me too, to have got back in touch. It was an odd wee message, of course, but I was, as the song said, blinded by the light that shone from my image of him in my teenage heart.
I had no idea what I was walking into. I just knew that I had to get to the Forest. Dad had been giving me driving lessons that summer – I think it was his way to try and take my mind off Freddie. I was due a test the same week my exam results came out – how bad timing was that? Or as mum said, ‘Get it all out the way in one fell swoop.’ I felt reasonably comfortable in driving. There was just the small matter that it was illegal to drive a car alone. I decided to be a criminal. My parents were both at work and I didn’t want Christy to spoil my big reunion. I knew it was wrong, but… I was blinded. Love, after all, I reasoned, was above the law. I knew I was lying to myself, but I didn’t care. Nothing was going to stop me finding Freddie.
I got in the car, and I drove – very carefully I’ll hasten to add – to the exact spot we’d spent our Solstice Weekend.
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
To Die For is Annie's second McSerial written for McStorytellers.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
To Die For is Annie's second McSerial written for McStorytellers.