The sandwiches had turned to mush. Only hours earlier, they were impressive, hefty carriages of tuna steak in homemade mayonnaise, beside sprigs of washed rocket, lining sliced thick baguette. Saskia liked to pretend to herself that she had eaten five quid, artisanal loaves her entire life, even though I knew her well enough to know she’d in fact been dragged up on stolen, budget loaves of duck food from Safeway. Scooped from the bottom of her damp ultramarine rucksack, beside a canister of insect repellant, beneath a handful of loose batteries and a small carton of semi-skimmed already on the turn, they were no more than two inedible, limp, clingfilmed bricks. They were like disappointing fossils, fit only for landfill, after epochs of sheer darkness.

As we stood there beneath the outspread arms of a large oak at the edge of a thicket, waiting out the spontaneous downpour that blotted the land as far as the eye could see, my stomach rumbled. I watched Saskia's creased face, her mouth drooping downward like a rainbow as she attempted to free the grey lumps from their plastic skins. Her face was a sight that I was getting slowly used to seeing once again. Her matted, bunched hair made her look as feral as a cavewoman. She’d grown it out during our time apart, and I was still working out if it suited her or not, along with the new piercings and the pseudo-therapy speak, and the drug-dusted anecdotes thrown into conversations, tinted with the smuggest of brags. I half expected her to burst into tears; a tantrum, perhaps a long time coming over the past turbulent six weeks, yet, she didn’t. The smirk, however, that dented her cheeks and lifted her lobes, felt both impish and judgemental. In that moment, I wanted to feel in love; to fall in love. Amongst the disappointment and disarray, I wanted to feel something. Perhaps, love could save us, if only I could find it. A robin landed on a twig above us, inquisitively looking on as if ready to observe my longing. Not a single word had been uttered between us since I slammed the car door shut, two hours earlier, and my tongue was parched with the burden of the labouring silence.

‘Just our luck, I guess,’ she said over the din. ‘Anyway, I know tuna’s not your thing.’ I gestured not having heard her, so she repeated.

‘Tuna?’ I insisted. ‘Sask— it’s my favourite.’

‘Oh? Right, sure. Yeah. That’s what I said: it’s your thing.’

I watched as each slab fell, thudding down onto the network of puddles, each with a splash. The desire to argue had already dissipated, leaving my body in the rain, like vapour. Every time that it became apparent that another small detail of our previous life together had been forgotten, it felt like a flame-red poker straight to my heart. It felt as though her two-year sojourn to Paris, with its three-day-long house parties, and bisexual lovers, and charmingly bohemian picnics had tippex-ed out our story that came before. Despite what her mother had to say about me, I took no pleasure in us breaking up when she upped and left for chef school. Never in a million years did I think that two years later, we’d be stranded in the Peak District on a Friday evening, attempting to rekindle something that I was increasingly unsure we ever had in the first place. In many ways, I doubted I’d ever see her again.

‘Campsite’s only three more miles, you know Sask,’ I found myself pointing out. She nodded defensively.

‘Yeah, alright mate. Chill out.’

Neither of us was dressed for the weather. Shorts and waterlogged Chuck Taylors; a faded T-shirt for me, and a short strappy top for her, parading her new belly piercing. Although only hours into our trip, it quickly felt as though the real endurance test was not us somehow reaching Matlock by Sunday as per our schedule, but instead, refusing to admit whenever either of us had made a glaring mistake. I had insisted the weather would be fair and mild. Saskia had assured me that everybody knew that French bread was as sturdy as brick. It was a stalemate already.

Since reuniting, Saskia hadn’t asked me a single question about my life in her absence. Although we had made love half a dozen times, for reasons I was unable to decipher, she refused to kiss me. I tried to remind myself that these things take time because they sometimes do, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

‘Horrible weather, isn’t it?’ I said, tipping the conversational see-saw. Saskia puffed out her cheeks.

‘Hey, you know, this reminds me of this trip we all took down to Nice. God— so, we packed ourselves into this dusty old Renault estate, and the weather was foul the entire weekend. I mean: rain for two days straight. In the middle of July! Emme was having a fit. Honestly, we did so much Ket, just to pass the time, and she fucking vommed! Woke up in a hedge— honest to God. It was so jokes, honestly.’

‘You know,’ I said, smoothing her segue’s crease, ‘this is really when the Peaks come into their own. It’s beautiful. You’ll see. Reminds me of Brontë. The Moors.’

‘You what?’

‘The Moors? You know— like Heathcliff?’

She squinted, before finally clicking her tongue.

‘Right. Hey, you know, I think that’s Emme’s favourite book: Heathcliff. Or is it Pride and Prejudice? I always get them two muddled.’

‘Heathcliff isn’t the name of the book, Sask,’ I seethed whilst, admiring the aerial performance from a crowd of bats above us, as they cautiously swooped beneath rival, elegant swallows.

‘What, now?’

‘Nothing. Forget it, Sask. Forget it.’

We hadn’t seen any sign of civilisation, or another soul for around two hours. Even if Saskia was sick of me (which I suspected she was), and wanted to escape; if she felt laboured with regret at having agreed to the idea of a camping weekend, or if she was full of desire to reunite with one of the many lovers-in-waiting across the channel, it wasn’t as though she would have been able to run off. I didn’t want her to feel trapped, yet I was starting to feel a little myself.

When the rain slowed to a misty patter, we continued up the craggy trail, sliding against the boggy mud. Awkwardly, our hands swung at our sides, with narrow misses, each as slippery as flippers. After half a dozen times, I watched her quickly speed up, just enough to act as pacemaker. She clutched her rucksack’s straps with her thumbs, leaning forward as if preparing to take off into flight. Originally, I’d met Saskia back when I was twenty-one years old. It was a chance encounter, entirely. At the time, I was unemployed, and leaving one of those run-of-the-mill job fairs at the local library, spotted this short-haired woman, pushing a yellow VW Beetle, willing it to start with the passion of a priest performing an exorcism. When we finally got it working again, we began chatting, concluding by exchanging telephone numbers. I’d asked her on a date for the following evening, and she’d accepted. The broadness of her accent suggested she was a local— a real one, or at least was at some point in her early life, yet the gleam of her shoes suggested she’d settled in a far smarter part of town, like a hermit crab who’d strategically upgraded. The duality of the classes in her had a strange effect on me, and I thought of her all the way home. Later that afternoon, visiting a charity shop on the high road, I searched high and low for a suit to wear, with the intention of impressing her. On that first date, we drank glasses of sparkling wine like real adults. She told me about her family holidays to Devon, and I ate something called scamorza for the first time in my life— an act that impressed her in a way that made her head lop to the side, and her tongue lap over her large, shapely teeth. Six and a half weeks later, she moved in with me. The day she unpacked her boxes, I distinctly remember Googling: ways to avoid heartbreak, on my computer.

‘Looks like we’ve got company.’

Sure enough, the neighbouring fields flanking either side were occupied with grazing herds of cattle. Shapely, white, with large patches of earthy, reddish brown, they were conspicuous even in the evening light. A few nodded their heads inquisitively as we walked across their home of thick swathing green, Saskia leading the way with trademark confidence.

‘What sort of cows do you think they are?’ she asked.

‘Milking cows, probably.’

‘Well, aren’t all cows technically milking cows? I mean: what kind.’ As she laughed, I sensed in her, a bubbling satisfaction. ‘You know that sort of thing, usually, baba.’

‘I guess we can check at the campsite. If they have reception.’

She absorbed my answer like a beached sponge.

‘You mean, they might not have reception at this farm then?’ she said, after a long pause. I exhaled. I rolled my eyes.

‘It’s a farm, Sask. I literally don’t know what to tell you.’

Slowly, I outstretched my forearm towards a nosey cow’s leering neck, receiving the lick of a long, purple tongue in response.

The day that Saskia was officially accepted into chef school, was more of a shock for me because she hadn’t told me she’d applied in the first place, despite working on her application for a month, in secrecy. Still, I did what I felt the right thing to do was. I smiled wide smiles, and laughed along with her dad’s galloping gourmet dinner-table jokes. I shopped with her for chef whites, and sat with her as she researched Japanese knives, and paid half of the security deposit on her new pokey attic apartment in the 13th arrondissement. It was funny, but all the while I felt a sense of rising relief, like the approaching ending of a stuffy book that was a lot thicker than it looked on the shelf in the store.

Crooking her neck, Saskia shot a look, her rainswept face as stony as a gargoyle.

‘Remember to take your hayfever pills tonight, please, baba. I need a good night’s sleep. You know how your allergies get. Alright?’

The silence that fell back between us felt as stodgy as porridge; as congealed as cold gravy. I wanted, with all my might to comment on her snoring, but the moment passed. Sure enough, the rain started back up. By the time we reached the campsite, night had fallen and we were both shivering, in agony, soles already blistering. With only a solitary, bulb atop an outhouse as a guide for assembling our musty tent, lifted from her mother’s attic, I watched as moths did their rounds of the light obsessively, hypnotised by the filament’s crackling, solar glow, us driving tent pegs into damp earth.

***