Page 51 of The Wake-Up Call

“I didn’t expect that,” she says, nodding to it. “You don’t strike me as the tattoo type.”

I’m not, really. But when I made the choice to move to the UK, I suddenly understood the impulse people have to mark something permanently, to say,This will never change.

“What does it mean?” Izzy asks. “Sow... da-day?”

“Saudade.Sow-da-dee.”

Izzy has another go. She doesn’t quite get the final syllable right, but still, I like the sound of Portuguese on her tongue.

“It means... missing. Longing. There’s no English word like it. I got the tattoo when I knew I would be moving away from my family—my mum, my sister, and my grandmother. And my grandfather, too, who passed away not long before. That side of my family are very close, and I knew I would miss them so much. I wanted to mark how important that is to me—how important they are.”

She tilts her head. “Why did you move?”

It’s such a complicated, layered question. The reasons I wanted to live in England as a child are different from the reasons I moved here as an adult; the reasons I’ve stayed are different from those, too. And I don’t want to tell Izzy about the course, which was a huge factor in why I moved to this part of the UK.

The only people who know I’m studying for a degree are my family. Even Pedro doesn’t know. He thinks when I am working at the smoothie bar, I am doing hotel business. I always thought I would feel comfortable talking about it once I got into the course. Then I thought I would feel comfortable once I passed my first term. But the moment I think of telling a friend or colleague about it, I imagine having to confess that I’ve failed or dropped out or couldn’t afford this term’s fees, and my mouth just snaps shut.

I know I’m too proud—I shouldn’t care so much what others will think if I can’t complete the course. But it’s hard to shake my uncle’s voice, even after all these years, and he has never tolerated failure.

“I’ve always had a fascination with the UK,” I say. “And staying at home didn’t seem right for me. Working in hospitality, I felt it even more—everyone was travelling from somewhere exciting, andI was just where I’d started. I never felt I was in quite the right place.”

“And now?”

I run my fingers across the backs of my cards. “I don’t know. I think maybe it wasn’t a place that I was looking for. But I like it here. I like the job. I like the countryside.” I like that I’m doing my degree at one of the best places in the world to study hotel management, and that I’m doing it forme. “What about you? The tattoo on your spine?”

Her eyes snap to mine, searching my face. “Umm... When have you seen my tattoo?”

I go hot. I’ve just confessed to looking at her in a bikini when her back was turned.

“When you were... When you swam with Louis.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“You turned around when I was... I just... saw it. Accidentally.”

She smiles slowly and lifts a hand to her back, tracing the spot in the centre of her spine where I saw the tattoo. “And how longwereyou ‘accidentally’ checking me out in my swimwear? Did you see anything else of interest? Shall I quiz you on freckle locations?”

“It was a very brief moment,” I say, immediately thinking about the perfect little mole on the curve of her hip.

“Mm-hmm. Well. It’s a treble clef.”

I wait.

“For my parents. It was always just the three of us. My dad was estranged from his family, and my mum was an only child, so we didn’t have that big aunts-and-uncles, loads-of-cousins type vibe—it was just us three. Trouble trebled, Dad used to say. Hence... treble.” She shrugs. “It’s a stupid play on words. I was twenty-one and thought it was clever.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid. It’s creative.”

She gives me a small smile at that. A different sort of smile from usual.

“I cannot imagine how hard it was for you to lose them.”

“No,” she says simply. “It changed me completely.”

“What were you like before?”

She pauses as if she wasn’t expecting that question. “Quiet, actually,” she says. “I held myself back a lot. Now I go full-out because—like I said—life’s too short for having regrets.”

I hesitate before answering. I’m not sure Izzydoesgo “full-out.” She’s certainly spontaneous, and she works hard. But her life does not seem to me to be built on taking chances. Just look at the inferior men she dates. The job she’s been in for eight years without promotion. The friends she has all over the world, and how rarely she takes time off to visit them.

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