“How can you make such a promise? How can you decide such a thing, without even caring what it might do?”
“Because I am decided,” she replied with coldness.
“You shouldn’t be doing this, Anwen. You are too young and you are punishing yourself...for what? People die. You are chasing ghosts around here.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She erupted, a tornado of rage and hurt overcoming the sweet woman I had come to know.
“You don’t know me! You do not get to tell me what I am supposed to feel! You do not get to decide. Do you know why I came here? Because I was sick and tired of men who think they know best. My dad, my shrink, my ex, my professors, a bunch of silly men who think they can decide what women are supposed to feel. What I am supposed to do.” She stopped to take a breath.
“I didn’t mean…” I tried to defend myself, to calm her down, but her monstrous rage turned beyond salvaging.
“To what? To assume you know best? To think that a poor defenceless woman in a forest needs a man to take care of her? Is that your assumption?” she screamed, her voice resounding in the woods.
“Please let me speak!” It was my turn to raise my voice, if only to make myself heard over her reverberating accusations.
“No! You do not get to have an opinion on my life, and you do not get to bring your sexy self in here and frolic in this forest like it belongs to you. I loved my brother. I owe this to him! If I see you again roaming around, I will call the guard and report you. And if you interfere with my search, I will make sure you get arrested.” The wind scattered her threat as she turned and, without another word, went back inside, slamming the door.
I remained grounded, immobilised by what had happened and the sheer force of this woman, eyes wide and too shocked to move a muscle. No one had scolded me in such a way in my entire existence and I did not know how to react. At least one of the words she used to describe me wassexy, I consoled my wounded ego.
Chapter Thirteen
The utter nerve on that man! I rushed back into the house, abandoning my pack by the door and regretting my poor lack of judgement. Not a mistake to be repeated in the future, I promised myself. Huffing with anger, I took the laptop from the kitchen and removed it from the cloud decorated cover, then flipped it and glared at the desktop image.
A notification beeped and an email from Cressida popped up on the screen. Grinding my teeth with anger, I clicked it open and started to read.
Girl, that's what I want to hear!
Kudos my love, you finally became a woman! Masturbating at the thought of a guy you just met? Who are you and what have you done with my friend?
Just kidding, don’t freak out. DO NOT FREAK OUT, seriously, you didn’t do anything worth telling. You held hands with a guy and he carried you up and down the stairs, big deal! If you were eighty and a young gorgeous man held your hand and carried you up and down the stairs it would be considered civic duty.
It is what ten year olds do and they don’t tell their parents! So a twenty-five-year-old woman doing the same thing is a cute vanilla moment and nothing more.
Love you, text me if you want to chat tonight!
If only I had waited another hour to send this to my friend, I would have known what a liar Ansgar was and could have avoided all this mess. He was hiding something. I knew it even though I couldn’t prove it. The only thing I believed from our conversation was that he did not know my brother. So any hope of finding out more about Erik vanished, along with any trepidations my heart had felt in Ansgar’s presence.
I clicked the reply button and typed:
All sorted,
He turned out to be a prick. He came to see me this morning to return something I left in the woods and we went for a walk. Ten minutes in, he started judging me and telling me what I should feel. Honestly, he may be freaking sexy but he seems to be living in the middle ages.
I’m fine, I’ll keep busy, no need to chat tonight, I know you have a thousand things to do, the last thing you need right now is to virtually babysit my silly self.
Love you too.
After pressing the send button, I scrolled through instagram and checked new photos and the company socials, lingered for a while on pinterest and searched youtube for curious things. When I checked the time, I realised that part of my bad mood was because I hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was 3pm already, so I stood up and headed back to the kitchen, flip flops trotting as I walked.
The fridge brimmed with choices, as always, there were all kinds of fruits and veggies, cheese, marmalade, delicatessen, even Jell-O. None of them caught my attention since the void in my stomach had persisted even at the thought of food. I regretted walking away when he tried to explain his meaning, a part of me regretted not giving him a chance to speak, to defend himself and his point of view, yet I was proud with the rush of adrenaline that had pulsated through me in that moment of pure passion. One very silly part of my brain, the one that I was trying to shut down the most, worried about hurting his feelings.
In the end, all he wanted was to enjoy a walk and ended up with a crazy woman defending a crazy mission her deceased brother might have sent her on. It must have sounded mad. I must have sounded like a lunatic.
My insides twisted again, trying to choke down the guilt that creeped up into me as I closed the fridge door and opened the freezer. Another frozen pizza it is. Lately it had become my food of choice and even though I knew it would make my mother furious, I did not care. I had always been proud of my curves and every time I had to pose for a magazine, they would use photoshop and adjust my figure anyway. So what was the harm in another frozen pizza with garlic dip? Nothing drowned sorrow better than melting mozzarella.
I chose a mushroom pizza and placed it in the oven, setting the timer, then I opened the second fridge and started rummaging for any kind of cold alcohol. I never had anything straight, except for tequila and caramel vodka, but those didn’t count, so I tried to find something refreshing and alcoholic, settling for a can of ready mixed cosmopolitan. It would not get me drunk but maybe it would give me the slight buzz to help me relax.
Waiting for the oven to sound, I went back to the laptop, the only constant companion I had these days, and opened my research file to check some of the information from the videos I had previously watched about the forest. Another knock interrupted the quiet and made me startle. This time, choosing curiosity over caution, I leaped from the chair and ran towards the entrance, losing one of my green flip flops along the way.
