Chapter 6
At seventeen minutes past six, Kay walked into the Starbucks in Enfield. She joined the queue and picked out Jeremy, who had parked himself at a tiny corner table. She waved at him to attract his attention and mimed a drinking motion. He smiled, shook his head and held up his mug. He looked, she was relieved to say, a bit calmer than earlier. He would have questions, of course, so she had to be ready with answers that didn’t sound made up on the spot. Her tendency when making stuff up, a bit like her flirting, was to overdo it. Her imagination always liked to jump to the most melodramatic possibilities. She would have to watch that.
While waiting for the barista to prepare her Pumpkin Spice Latte, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the scene of Serendipity Kay’s death. A red car killed her, she decided. No, a white van. It was usually a white van in hit and runs. It came charging down Lincoln Road. Scratch that – too close to the library. She was crossing Poynter Crescent – that’s better – when a white van leapt out at her .
But what if he decides to investigate her death? He’d quickly find out she was lying. Better to keep it vague. She’ll tell him she doesn’t know exactly where it happened or the type of vehicle, or even the date. That way, she can render Serendipity Kay anonymous, just another sad statistic. It’s terrible isn’t it, Jeremy? So random! A life tragically snuffed out in the blink of an eye. There but for the grace of God, right? And if he asks to see her grave, what then? She’ll simply have to retreat once more into vagueness. I’m afraid I don’t know, Jeremy. It was a very small event. Strictly close friends and family. I was only her colleague. I barely knew her in fact.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to worry about any of that, for Jeremy was not the forensic or inquisitive type – he was just plain old romantic to his core. When she got to the table and put her mug down, he reached across and placed a hand on her sleeve. His eyes were melancholy but filled with gratitude. In a hoarse voice he said, “Thank you for meeting me, Elaine. It means an awful lot.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m sorry I had to be the bearer of such tragic news. Did you know her well?”
“No, not well. But we’d been corresponding for a while on a dating site and I think I’d fallen a little bit in love with her. A lot of a bit in fact.”
“Oh,” said Kay, hiding her discomfiture by sipping some of the whipped cream from the top of her Pumpkin Spice Latte. “Well, it can happen I suppose. ”
“Too easily for me, I’m sad to say. I’ve been hurt before and I’m sure I will be again. I can’t help it. But with Kay, it felt different from the other times. I thought it was the real thing. She really was a lovely woman.”
“Was she?” said Kay, suddenly quite eager to hear more and forgetting she was supposed to have known this woman. “I–I mean she was, of course she was. But I’m interested to know, in what ways exactly did you think she was lovely?”
“She was warm and funny and sweet and…” He looked around as if searching for inspiration, before alighting on Kay’s drink. “She was like the whipped cream at the top of your latte.”
“Light and frothy you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“Sort of airy fairy, without any substance?”
“Well, no, not exactly…” he began.
“It’s alright,” Kay said a little self-pityingly. “You should be honest. That’s how you saw her, so that’s what she is – I mean, was.”
“She was an artist,” said Jeremy. “She had dreams of being a great photographer.”
“The car parks you mean?” said Kay. “That was just nonsense though, wasn’t it?” She stared miserably out of the window at the rain that had started spattering the glass.
“Not at all. I thought they were beautiful. They made me feel peaceful and happy and sad all at the same time.”
“Really?” Kay looked him carefully in the eye and was reassured. He appeared incapable of dishonesty.
“So much talent gone to waste,” he said wistfully.
“Yeah,” she sighed, matching his own dispirited tone, but inside she felt a smile starting. She had one real-life fan at least then (she didn’t really trust the Flickr ones), so maybe she wasn’t completely rubbish.
“When did it happen – the accident?” Jeremy asked.
“Oh…” said Kay in surprise – so he wasn’t entirely uninquisitive then! She cranked the cogs in her brain, trying to remember when she’d last messaged him. “About three weeks ago I think.” She made a mental note to delete any images she’d posted in the last three weeks. She’d have to create a new Flickr account for Places in Between and any future pics.
“Really?” He looked relieved, happy even. “That was exactly the time I stopped hearing from her. It all makes sense now. I knew she wouldn’t have ghosted me. We had too much of a good thing going. All the same, I wish I knew for sure how she felt about me.” He sipped his drink meditatively. “You know,” he said, “when I want to share my deepest feelings with someone, I talk to my brother. It’s called a confidante, I think. Do you know if Kay had a sister or maybe a close friend who was, like, her confidante? If so, I’d love to talk to her. ”
His question set off tiny jingles of alarm in Kay. There could be absolutely no one in Serendipity Kay’s life but herself and Jeremy. No sisters, no close friends, no confidantes. This called for an emergency reinvention. Until this moment she’d pictured herself as merely a colleague of SK’s, hence her vagueness about her date of death. She would now have to transform into her BFF, sidekick, soul mate and lifelong compadre. She could almost hear the screeching gear shift in her head as she beamed at Jeremy and said, “Actually, you’re talking to her now.”
Jeremy looked startled and a little confused. “ You were her confidante?”
“Indeed I was. I knew her better than anyone in the world. I didn’t want to say anything at first because…” Because what? Kay wondered. This always happened when she strayed off piste – she skied straight into a minefield of her own making. “Because I, um – well, I wasn’t sure you were the real Jeremy at first – but you are, aren’t you? You’re him.”
“I am.”
“Oh wow,” laughed Kay, maybe a little too ecstatically, considering they were talking about her recently deceased best friend. “Well in that case I can tell you – the thing is, she talked about you a lot.”
“She did?” Jeremy said breathlessly. She could almost hear his heart beating beneath his polo shirt. “What did she say? ”
“Oh, lots. She was so happy whenever you messaged.”
“Really? Wow! Wowee! Elaine, do you think it’s possible that she was a little bit in love with me too?”
Kay nodded and grinned. “Actually I think a lot of a bit.”
A new brightness dawned in his eyes when he heard this, and it was a heartening sight for Kay to witness. She felt entirely vindicated. What she’d done today was so much better than silly Sondra’s Dear Jeremy message, which would have left him with more questions than answers. Thanks to Kay, this dear, sweet, unlucky man would be left with a dream of something beautiful that might have been, and the belief that his love had, for once, been reciprocated by a woman.
His joy was bittersweet though, as became evident when the tears began once more to flow. She returned to the counter to pick up some paper napkins and handed him one, which he thanked her for. “It’s been a tough week,” he sniffed. “An emotional rollercoaster, mostly downhill.”
“Why, what else has happened?” she asked.
“Well, apart from the whole Kay thing, there’s been my brother and his girlfriend.”
“What about them?”
“They’re splitting up.”
“Oh?” said Kay. She hadn’t meant it to sound like a question, like she was curious or anything, but she was. Very. With studied casualness, she asked, “Have they been together long?”
“Ages, and I’d hoped it would be forever. I feel absolutely awful about it. I love them both very much and… Well, it sounds strange to say, but I saw them as a sort of example of what love could be. I wanted to find my Lorna just like Dan did. I thought Kay was going to be my Lorna, only now it turns out that even Lorna wasn’t a true Lorna. It’s so confusing and sad. Maybe true love is impossible.”
“You mustn’t think that,” said Kay, handing him another napkin. “I’m sure you’ll meet someone lovely one day – maybe not quite as lovely as Kay, but close enough.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I do. Although I should warn you: don’t set your expectations too high. The perfect relationship doesn’t exist. For most people, relationships are hard work and they quite often fail.”
She thought of Stuart, as she always did during such conversations – the only proper attempt she’d ever made at a serious relationship. Stuart had been no better or worse than many of the men she’d met in her adventures online and, looking back, the whole thing had mainly been a bid to impress Barbara. Look, Mother, I can do the serious relationship thing! But of course Barbara hadn’t been impressed. Maybe if he’d been a doctor, but how do you meet one of those? He was a PE teacher, quite fit in both senses, and very good in bed, but he didn’t read books, only health and nutrition blogs, and he was always banging on about Kay’s poor diet.
In the end, Kay didn’t need yet another voice in her ear telling her she was crap – she had her mother and Sondra for that – so she dumped him and took up photography, reinventing herself as an observer of the world rather than a partaker in it. Taking pictures had fulfilled part but not all of her. Loneliness and boredom had eventually driven her back to the online dating world, not so much seeking a relationship but the thrill of first contact – flirtation, butterflies in the tummy, sexting with a virtual stranger, the dramatic possibilities of adopting an online persona and then just winging it. That was what she enjoyed, and if she happened to meet the man of her dreams in the process, fantastic, but she didn’t hold out much hope.
Then she saw that photo of Dan – a taller, slimmer, handsomer version of Jeremy, and, lookswise at least, every inch the dream man. In a very offhand way she had asked Jeremy about him, and he had been quite forthcoming. It was clear he adored his older brother, and she could see why. He sounded like a lovely man, kind and caring to his brother, respected by his driving students and the kids he coached at football. He was also, sadly, very much spoken for. It seemed to prove Kay’s theory that dream men would always be just out of her reach. Better to view the love quest as a journey with no particular destination. Once you fixate on destinations, you’ll end up frustrated.
Only now it turns out that Dreamy Daniel may not be so out of reach after all. He was, to use a horrid term, back on the market, though no doubt likely to be snapped up very quickly by any passing, opportunistic woman. With his job as a driving instructor, he probably met quite a few of those, and that student-teacher dynamic can be intense, verging on erotic. She could imagine the student placing her hand on the gearstick. Is this how I should hold it, Dan? If Kay were to make a move, it would have to be soon.
Of course, morally speaking, it would be quite wrong for her to pursue him, after having so recently dropped his brother. Or would it? As far as Jeremy was concerned, she was Elaine, so what was the problem? The problem was the nagging voice inside her head, the one that sounded quite a lot like Sondra. Even if Jeremy was none the wiser, the nagging voice would be there constantly reminding her that what she was doing was disgraceful and abominable and she should be ashamed of herself.
Still, she thought, all is fair in love and war. Wasn’t that what they said? You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. The ends justify the means. There you go , the nagging voice immediately responded, trying to mollify me with clichés, because let’s face it,you simply cannot get that photo of Dan out of your head, can you? No, she admitted. I can’t.
*
At a nearby table sat the man with the grizzled sideburns, scarred cheek and broken nose. He’d spotted the kid, quite by chance, at the library while he was checking out the crime shelves. After borrowing a copy of Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying , he loitered close enough to the desk to overhear her masterful exchange with the young man. Curiosity duly whetted, he followed her here to witness the dénouement of her performance. I underestimated her , he thought as he sipped his filter coffee. This kid actually relishes the Lie. What’s more she’s damn good at it. She can think on her feet. The talent is still raw and needs honing. If she’s going to suddenly change tack and veer off on some new tangent, she needs to have a landing zone prepared, but the fundamentals are all there, and she’s not averse to taking risks . Is she really going to go for the brother? he wondered. That would be a bold move. Smiling to himself, he left Starbucks and started for home. He was already thinking about his supper, trying to decide between the trout traybake with asparagus and new potatoes, and the devilled whitebait with garlic mayo.