Chapter 5
Monday 2 October
It was almost closing time at St Luke’s Road Community Library, and business was, as usual, slow. There were three A-level students busy on the computer terminals, a couple of uniformed Year Seven girls from nearby Pennington School browsing in the Teenzone, a man with a broken nose checking out Kay’s newly installed Mystery section, a mother and her food-stained toddler at the toy box, and old Colonel Lonsdale snoozing over his copy of the Daily Telegraph .
Kay, seated on a swivel chair behind the big circulation desk near the entrance, was on the phone to her mum. She wouldn’t normally take personal phone calls at work, but Sondra wasn’t around for once – she had to leave early for a vet appointment for Clint, her elderly Maine Coon – something to do with his irritable bowels. If Sondra had been here, Kay would have busied herself reshelving the stack of returned books currently piled up on her desk, but she wasn’t, so they could stay where they were for now .
Kay’s mother was a GP with her own practice, and Kay had always been slightly intimidated by her.
“How is your sciatica, Mother?” she asked. She would have loved to call her Mum , but her mother insisted on being addressed as Mother or Barbara . At least she’d never asked Kay to call her Doctor .
“Bearable,” Barbara replied, and she began listing the various treatments she was undergoing – cold therapy, heat therapy, physical exercise, anti-inflammatories. Kay wanted to tell her mother about her photography and her new passion for photographing access ways – that was why she had called. As she listened to Barbara drone on about the pros and cons of ibuprofen, naproxen, oxycodone and tramodol, she felt the urge to speak as a tightness in her throat and chest. It was the same need she’d had since girlhood to win her mother’s approval, and it never went away despite Barbara’s unyielding indifference to almost everything she said or did. Kay kept on banging her head against the same brick wall with the absurd idea that one day she might break through it and discover a garden of motherly love on the other side.
At last Barbara exhausted the topic of her sciatica and asked in a voice already tinged with the anticipation of disappointment, “And how’s life with you, Kay?” It was never dear or even Kay dear , just Kay , that dull, monosyllabic name she’d cursed her with, which had always sounded to Kay quite a lot like a contraction of okay , as in adequate , tolerable , passable .
“Actually, Mother, I’ve found a new subject for my photography. I’m no longer taking pictures of empty car parks.”
“Well that’s a relief,” said Barbara, in an uncanny echo of Sondra’s reaction. Before Kay could say any more, she continued: “I assume you’re now going to turn your camera to more commercial pursuits, like weddings and portraiture. Let’s not forget I paid for half of that Nikon and I expect to see you make some profitable use of it.”
“Well no, Mother. That’s not quite what I had in mind actually…” Kay was about to go on, when she realised there was no point. She would never understand, unless she could somehow make it more impressive.
“Actually I’ve been approached by a gallery, Mother. They said they loved my photos of car parks and want to commission me to take a new series of photos on access ways for a forthcoming exhibition.”
“Really?” She loved the trembling shock and disbelief in her mother’s voice. She could have played that sound on a loop for a hundred years and never got sick of it.
“No Mother. That was a lie.”
“Oh, Kay.”
“I have lots of fans on Flickr.”
“And do these fans pay you? ”
“Not yet. Maybe one day. I am talented though, Mother. You do realise that I’m talented, don’t you?”
“You may have some talent. I’m hardly qualified to judge.”
Barbara had never been lavish with her praise. Maybe she feared her daughter would turn out like her late, ne’er-do-well father, and she sought to squash any incipient vanity at every opportunity by disparaging her and diminishing her achievements. If so, the strategy had worked, and Kay grew up with the expectation that she would fail at everything she attempted.
“I know one thing though, Kay: you’d have made a very talented doctor.”
Barbara had always assumed that Kay would follow in her footsteps and study medicine with the expectation of one day taking over her practice. However, thanks to her successful demolition job on her daughter’s ego, Kay had never believed herself clever enough to be a doctor, despite doing well at science in her A-levels. Instead, she decided to study librarianship at university. What Barbara saw as an act of betrayal was for Kay merely a rational acknowledgement of her own academic abilities. Although she loved books, she had no great passion to be a librarian, it just seemed like something she could do.
Her relationship with her mother had never recovered from this. Barbara would endlessly repeat the same complaint: “How could you have renounced a medical career for a lifetime of handing out books?” That was how she described Kay’s job. No matter how much Kay talked about the complexities of cataloguing, organising and managing bibliographic collections, to her mother it was always just handing out books.
The conversation had reached its usual end point: a dry, airless place of regret and stalemate. There seemed little point in continuing, especially as Kay’s attention had been caught by a new entrant to the library – a young man in his mid-twenties who looked vaguely familiar.
“Are you still there, Kay?”
Another man, the broken-nosed one, approached her with a book.
“I’d better go, Mother. I’ll speak to you later.”
She switched off her phone and dealt with the customer, then started going through the pile of returns, sorting them by their Dewey numbers ready for reshelving. While she was doing this, she sneaked another glance at the young man, trying to place him.
He was tall and broad-shouldered with a fleshy, boyish face, dark blond hair and innocent blue eyes. There was a grass stain on the knee of his jeans, and his tummy bulged a little over the top of his belt buckle. He was browsing the sports section, or pretending to. Kay had developed a talent over the years for differentiating the serious bookworms from the loiterers. He was running his eyes over the spines without any real interest. She wondered if he’d come in here to meet someone or simply to pass the time before the pubs opened.
There was something slightly forlorn about him – that was the word that occurred to her. It was the same feeling she got when she stood in an almost-empty car park. He looked lost and sad and she wondered if someone had hurt him.
As she was watching him, he suddenly took a deep breath as if summoning up his courage, and turned towards her. Kay quickly returned her attention to the pile of books, embarrassed to have been caught staring. She sensed him approaching the desk and looked up with her professional face fixed back on. He had mustered a smile, and it was this that caused her, in a flash of panic, to recognise him. She tried nevertheless to maintain the professional facade as warm blood pulsed into her neck and cheeks.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Maybe you can,” he said. “I was looking for someone who I think works here. Her name is Kay. Do you know her?” His eyes were eager, desperate almost, his smile already crumbling at the edges.
You fool! You absolute fool! she groaned to herself in her mental scolding voice, which sounded a lot like her mother. He found you. Of course he did. You were too loose with your flirty chat. You must have left him a clue. What now then Kay? How are you going to get yourself out of this fine little mess?
And then she remembered that earlier thought she’d had, the one about killing off her Serendipity self. She’d even toyed with the idea of visiting him at his pitch & putt course one day, posing as “Kay’s friend” and telling him she’d died, but she’d never got up the nerve to do it.
So maybe she ought to look upon this as a slice of luck – her chance to give closure to this poor man, this victim of her callous online behaviour. She would do it sweetly, tenderly. She’d send him on his way a little sadder perhaps, but mentally much more at ease. She couldn’t have done it, of course, if Sondra had been here – her presence would have meant instant exposure and ignominy for Kay – and she gave a silent prayer of thanks to Clint and his irritable bowels.
Aware that the young man – Jeremy, he’d called himself – was still awaiting a response, Kay quickly slipped into character. She allowed her lower lip to tremble and made a small, dry sobbing sound in her throat. “I did know Kay,” she said huskily, wiping a fake tear from her eye. “She was a very dear colleague. It’s so tragic what happened. So deeply, deeply tragic.”
“What happened?” Jeremy asked, his face suddenly so pale and waxen it scarcely looked alive.
“It was a tragic accident,” said Kay. “A hit and run. And she died, tragically.”
Jeremy put his hand to his mouth and started shaking his head while his eyes stared at her in horror .
Kay was scared he was about to start screaming or bawling his eyes out. Had she overdone it? She was such a drama queen. She should have just said she’d left the country. But no. This was for the best. This would give him closure, allow him to stop blaming himself.
The young man did begin to cry, but luckily not too loudly. His pretty eyes had started blinking and with each blink, fresh tears flowed out of them and rolled down his cheeks. He lowered his hand from his mouth and asked shakily: “Did she suffer?”
“No,” said Kay. “Not at all. It was instant death, so don’t worry about that.”
But his tears kept falling. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “It’s just so sad, after everything else.”
Kay was worried they were causing a scene. The mother, toddler and two girls were looking curiously in their direction. Only Colonel Lonsdale remained dozily oblivious. There was also a good chance that Sondra might decide to pop back here in the next ten minutes to help Kay close up – it was the sort of conscientious thing she’d do. It was therefore imperative that Kay got Jeremy out of here as quickly as possible, but without being too mean or rude about it. The poor man had suffered enough. She did not like the sound of that last thing he’d said about after everything else .
“Listen,” she said. “I’ll be finished for the day in half an hour. There’s a Starbucks I often go to in Enfield Town. Why don’t I meet you there at ten past six and we can talk about Kay.”
This wasn’t an arrangement she’d make with any old stranger who pitched up at the library, but Jeremy was no stranger. She knew he had a good and pure heart. She only wished she fancied him half as much as she did his brother because she was sure he’d make a very loyal and dependable boyfriend. The problem wasn’t his looks – he was actually more handsome in the flesh than he was in his photos – it was his emotional fragility and his immaturity. This was something she’d picked up quite early on in their acquaintance. Kay wasn’t looking to be anyone’s carer – she had enough baggage of her own.
He sniffed and nodded, trying to reassemble his mouth into a smile, while his chest continued to heave with sobs. “Alright, let’s do that,” he said. “I’m Jeremy by the way. What’s your name?”
My name! she thought. Shit! Why didn’t I think about that?
In her consternation, she found she had somehow forgotten all female names. Catching sight of the top book on the pile of returns – The Graduate by Charles Webb – she very nearly called herself Benjamin after the main character, but managed to stop her mouth just in time. Damn! What were the female characters called in that novel? She couldn’t very well name herself after that cougar, Mrs Robinson. Coo, coo, ca-choo Mrs Robinson. That was a banger of a song. Stop these irrelevant thoughts Kay! Who else was there? Finally, her careening mind latched onto the name of Mrs R’s daughter.
“Elaine,” she said, only about five or maybe six seconds later than most normal people would take to recall and say their name. Then she repeated it with pride. “I’m Elaine.” She discovered she liked it very much.