‘Well?’ Annabelle sounds impatient. ‘Why think of her now?’
‘I don’t know.’ He pauses. ‘What are we both turning into?’
‘Speak for yourself, I’m not turning into anything.’
He is not talking about her looks, but presumably she knows this. And if so, why this resistance to change? Change can be good, if you remain vigilant about the direction you are moving in. His problem is a lack of vigilance. He hates to admit it, but he sometimes feels as though he’s lost his bearings.
‘You look like you’re drifting off again.’ Annabelle claps her hands. ‘Hello, anybody there?’
‘The other day I found that Grover Washington CD that we used to listen to at university. Well, cassette tape back then. We pretty much lived together for our second and third years.’
‘Is that why you’re asking about living abroad?’
He nods. ‘Probably. When we finally got to go Inter-Railing at the end of that second year, I felt happy. Charging around all over the place. One day we’re in southern Spain, then we’re riding a funicular in Norway, then we’re in the red light district in Amsterdam. I worried the whole time about going back and having to deal with your father. I thought he might make you change your mind.’
‘You’re not serious, are you?’
‘Well, he’d sent you that letter about your “irregular liaison” and how he wasn’t in favour of colour prejudice in England, he just wanted an end to the thing that caused colour prejudice. In other words, immigration. So bloody clever.’
‘And you thought I’d fall for that?’
‘I didn’t want to lose you, and everything seemed so perfect just riding the trains. We were free, whatever that means.’
‘Yes, well the sustaining fiction was that we were somehow escaping the problem, wasn’t it?’
‘Is that all it meant to you?’
‘It was the best holiday of my life.’ She pauses. ‘Ever.’
‘Really?’
‘Keith, my parents used to go on Christian group holidays, if they bothered to go anywhere at all. To the Isle of Man, or looking at churches in Austria. I hated it. And when I was a small girl, and Daddy was stationed overseas, you know how it was. Just me and Mummy, trapped in some stupid little seaside town. Travelling around Europe with you was amazing, and you were so careful and thoughtful.’ She stands up and begins to clear the cups and saucers from the table. Then she laughs. ‘What happened to that sensitive boy?’
‘Very funny.’ He stands and picks up a tea towel, and as she washes the dishes he begins to dry them. ‘Remember the chef at the posada near Lisbon where we arrived really late that night? He made us tomato soup with an egg in it, and then carried the two bowls from the kitchen to our table. And later, I remember when we were taking the ferry from Boulogne back across the Channel towards Dover. You were asleep on a bench downstairs, but I stood up on deck and watched as the ship edged closer to England and I knew that we both had to go back to Bristol and do our third year, but I didn’t want to come back. I didn’t feel like I had any reason to come back to England, aside from the degree that is. If you’d have come upstairs on deck and said, “Keith, let’s not bother with our final year,” I’d have taken the next boat back to France with you, no questions asked. But you continued to sleep, and you didn’t come up on deck, and I just kept watching England come closer and closer, and I kind of knew that it was going to get bad with your parents, but what could we do?’ He pauses. ‘I suppose that Grover Washington cassette helped a bit. Winelight, that’s what it was called. We really wore it out.’