In the taxi, I sent my mum a message saying I’d phone her in half an hour. Then, as an afterthought, I sent another to Fran telling her she’d done a very good job organizing the funeral. It wasn’t snipey; it was something I knew she’d like to hear. As a further afterthought, I then sent Fran a second message saying we should meet up soon – go for a drink or something.
I couldn’t decide if being back at our building felt strange or not. Probably both; a mild case of cognitive dissonance. Nothing had changed, of course – or very little. We passed a woman I didn’t recognize on the stairs. She was moving at a pace, carrying two reusable shopping bags and plugged into her iPod, but she smiled and nodded at Beck as she passed.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked him.
He shrugged. ‘New neighbour. Well, not that new any more. They moved in a few months ago.’
‘They?’
‘She and her husband. They’re Polish.’
‘What do they do?’
‘No idea.’
‘Right.’
I’m surprised how easy it is.
We go inside, we drink coffee, we talk. I tell him about the conversation with Marie, but apart from that, it’s nothing too heavy. We don’t talk about us. We talk about work, Lindisfarne, London. And then, at some point, with no discussion beyond a couple of exchanged glances, we go into the bedroom and have reconciliation sex.
Reconciliation sex is a sub-genre I’ve always enjoyed very much. It feels like wounds being instantly healed, or like a work of art restored so its colours glow afresh. Yet now, despite this, I find myself hoping that I won’t have to go through it again, or not too often.
Afterwards, I realize that my phone is ringing once more, back in the other room, past a small trail of discarded funeral clothes.
‘I think I’d better get that,’ I say.
Of course, I don’t want to get it; I want to stay exactly where I am now. But it will probably be my mother, and there’s a good chance she’ll be worried. The phone rings for at least a minute before I manage to get to it.
‘Abby, where are you? You said you’d call me.’
‘I’m sorry. I . . . lost track of time.’
I stifle a giggle, which I think my mum mistakes for a sob, because her voice becomes much gentler.
‘Darling, where are you?’
‘It’s okay, Mum. I’m fine. I’m still with Beck. We went home.’
‘You went home?’
‘Yes.’
There’s a small pause down the line. ‘Darling, please don’t take this the wrong way, but nothing would make me happier right now than to hear you say you’re not coming back to Exeter with me.’
And now I do laugh. ‘Mum, I’m not coming back.’
After we’ve said goodbye, I switch off my phone and head back into the bedroom.
‘So, what next?’ Beck asks.
‘Have we got wine?’
‘Er, no. Beer in the fridge, but that’s about it.’
‘Fine. So we’ll go to the shops. We’ll need two bottles.’
‘Two? You know, I still have to work tomorrow.’
I smile and throw him his trousers. ‘One bottle’s for the neighbours. I think we should go over and introduce ourselves.’
27
TWO GIRLS IN THE PARK
It’s early March, but it already feels like summer. Hot pavement smell, sunglasses everywhere, not a cloud in the sky. The weather forecast said temperatures could tip twenty-one degrees by early afternoon, but that sounded very implausible when I got dressed at eight this morning. Now, the cardigan I was wearing when I left the flat is looped over my shoulder bag, and I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have brought the sun cream after all.
When I check my phone, not far from the statue of Achilles, the clock shows it’s just coming up to eleven thirty. I’ve arrived half an hour early, mainly because the alternative was to spend that half-hour fidgeting at home. So now I have plenty of time to spare, and, inevitably, I find myself walking out onto the broad, shady expanse of Park Lane. I don’t really make the decision; my feet make the decision, and before I know it, they’ve taken me all the way to the Dorchester – or to the stretch of pavement opposite the Dorchester, on the other side of the road. Thankfully, they don’t take me any further than that. It’s not that I don’t want to go inside; I do want to – that’s the problem. I have this notion that it would be nice to go in and find out if they ever got my letter. And if they didn’t, it would be nice to explain to someone in there that the night staff are on a list in my purse entitled ‘People who Saved my Life’. As if that’s a perfectly normal list to have.
Fortunately, I’m getting better at distinguishing the good ideas from the bad ideas. So I don’t cross the road and walk into the foyer and start gushing emotional nonsense that only I can understand. I stay where I am, safely separated from any social awkwardness by eight lanes of traffic.
Dr Barbara tops the list, of course, and she’s the only person who knows of the list’s existence. I showed it to her a couple of weeks ago, explaining that I’d felt the sudden need to write it on the Tube one morning, and the Metro was the only paper I had available. Which is why it’s incongruously scribbled on the back of an article about a crime-solving parrot.
I felt pretty certain, when I handed Dr Barbara that sheet of crumpled paper, that she would straight away tell me how silly – how ridiculously melodramatic – I was being. But she didn’t. She just looked at it for a few seconds, her expression neutral, and then passed it back with a shrug.
‘I think it was worth saving,’ she told me.
I nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, I think it was.’
I assumed we were talking about my life, not the article about the parrot, but who knows. Either way, the list has stayed in my purse ever since, and I haven’t shown it to anyone else. I can’t really imagine a sensible context in which that would happen.
We’ve arranged to meet at the bandstand, but when I get there, I’m still ten minutes early, so there’s time enough to feel apprehensive. Not that there’s anything in particular I need to worry about, I tell myself. We’ve exchanged a couple of emails now, and she wouldn’t have agreed to see me if she didn’t want to.
Still, when the clock creeps past midday, I start to worry afresh, and when it gets to ten past, I have myself half convinced that she has changed her mind and isn’t going to show. I do a couple of circuits of the bandstand just in case – because it’s almost feasible that I could miss her if she happened to turn up on the exact opposite side. It’s not as crowded here as in other parts of the park, but it’s busy enough. Lots of couples and families, dog-walkers, kids on scooters.
And then I see her. She’s about twenty metres away, just coming into the clearing from one of the paths that heads across to the Serpentine, but impossible to miss. She’s wearing the dress, which is every bit as astonishing as I remember. I raise my hand, and, after a few seconds, she sees me and smiles broadly. Then she stops and does a little twirl, and for the briefest moment, I experience a sharp pang of something that feels like loss. But it’s there and gone in an instant, and after that, there’s only a warm rush of relief.
‘You look beautiful,’ I say.
She shrugs, still smiling. ‘I think I’m a bit overdressed for a Sunday lunchtime. I got some right looks on the Tube.’
‘It’s perfect,’ I tell her. ‘You know, I’d pretty much assumed it would end up in a charity bin. Dr Hadley didn’t seem too keen to pass it on. She thought it might upset you.’
‘She gave it to me the week before I got out. By then, I was quite a lot better, obviously. Not totally better, but . . .’ She shrugs again, and for a few moments we’re silent, neither of us sure how to proceed. Then we hug. I don’t think that either of us instigates it; it just happens, and after a few seconds, I’m glad of my sunglasses because I can feel my eyes beginning to prickle.