From England, With Love

Tents In Two Places

I freeze for a second until I realise Brandon's tone isn't accusatory.

"I- I'm just looking at Pete's back. Look at it!" I stammer, trying to divert the blonde's attention from my sheepish expression. Thankfully, it works as he turns his gaze to Pete and grimaces.

"Christ, you okay?" He asks and Pete nods solemnly. "At least tomorrow you won't have the weight of food in there," he adds, pointing to the emptied rucksack, "speaking of which I beg everyone comes out and cooks now before I starve." With that, he ducks back out of the tent.

"Will you really be alright?" I ask softly as Pete slides his shirt back over his head.

"I'll be okay, Ae, don't worry about me."

I don't respond, knowing that I won't stop worrying until I, personally, have tucked him into bed in his own bedroom in his own apartment; safe and sound. For now, the least I can do is help get some food in him.

We collect our gas canisters, mini hobs and food and leave the tent. The others have already started to cook so we join them at the other end of the field where there's a wooden covered area that's considerably less flammable than grass. We set ourselves down on the floor, and I connect both our equipment.

Luke, following the diet of a real British teenager stuck in the middle of nowhere, is emptying several cans of tinned hot dog sausages into a pan, a grin plastered over his face. Owain, attempting to cook burgers on a small frying pan, looks at him in disgust.

"Luke, mate, I know you're weird but that's just minging." He says, and Kieran laughs.

"Don't try and tell me I'm weird when you stood in the middle of the road with a big stick and shouted, 'you shall not pass'. Knob." Luke retorts, evoking sniggering from the whole group, including myself.

I turn my attention back to my food and pour the contents of two soup tins into the pan in front of me and the pan in front of Pete. My logic, quite fairly, is that soup requires no recognisable cooking skill and is highly unlikely to give you food poisoning. I'm clearly not alone in that train of thought as I can see Tabitha, sat in the corner, calmly stirring soup and watching Paige get increasingly annoyed at her pasta.

About an hour later, I had made sure to watch Pete finish all the soup in his pan, even though after a few sips he had insisted he was full, to which I turned a selectively deaf ear. Everyone had cleaned, to the best of their ability and limited resources, their cooking utensils and had returned to sit outside their tents on top of roll mats or hoodies.. The sun had gone down a while ago, and I couldn't help but shiver in mid-October air.

"Is anyone else cold?" I ask, hugging my knees with my arms.

The general response is that everyone else just feels "a bit chilly", and that both Pete and I will get used to the "lovely" British weather.

At the mention of his name, Pete shuffles closer to me, our shoulders meeting and body heat reducing the numbing cold attacking my body. If I'm cold, he's probably half frozen. I reach behind me into the tent and feel around for the spare jacket I brought, and hand it to him. He looks me in the eye, as if unsure, so I force it into his hands.

He wraps it around his shoulders as a small smile plays on his pale, cold-bitten lips.

The conversation soon turns to school, and many names of students and staff I don't recognise are chucked into the air. I don't know what I'll do with the information that Mrs Stevens didn't actually quit but was fired for smoking weed in the staff toilets, but maybe it will come in handy one day... or maybe not.

Brandon turns his attention to Pete.

"So then, Pete, you're pretty popular with the ladies. Any ones you fancy." He asks, in an entirely light-hearted and comedic tone, but I feel a strong urge to reply on his behalf. However surprisingly, Pete speaks before me.