Chapter 22
22
‘I think,’ Kay said as she opened the driver door, ‘that she’s going to be OK.’ She looked at Helen over the roof. ‘I wasn’t at all sure on the way down, but I think so now.’
‘Me too,’ Helen said. She looked across the car park, and saw the indicator on Caro’s BMW flash orange as she turned out onto the road. ‘Me too.’
They climbed in, Kay put the key in the ignition, switched it on and then switched it off. She leaned back in her seat. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ she said.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Nothing to get back for?’
Helen shook her head. What did she have to get back for? With a sense of guilt, she remembered Libby's crestfallen face that morning when she’d finished the call with Danny and come galloping down the stairs to gulp back the tea her daughter had made while explaining that she was leaving. And remembering this made her remember something else. Those yellow squares, decorating the living room. No, she had nothing to rush back for. ‘Only more of Lawrence’s post-it notes,' she muttered.
‘What?’ Kay looked at her.
‘I haven’t even had the chance to tell you. Lawrence has started slapping post-it notes on everything he considers his.’
Kay’s lips twitched. ‘And what,’ she asked, ‘does he consider his?’
‘Oh… the commemoration medal for his Five Countries, Five Months All-Road Cycle Challenge.’
Kay laughed. ‘Did he think you would take that?’
‘Honestly, Kay? I really don’t know what he thinks any more.’ She looked down and stretched her t-shirt over her stomach. ‘I’m not sure I ever did,’ she added.
Kay didn’t answer. She turned back to the steering wheel, her hands resting loosely at ten to two. And together they watched as the man with the white socks crossed in front of their parked car, hands still in pockets, ear buds in ears.
Instinctively Helen slid lower in her seat.
Kay was smiling. ‘I don’t think he’s going to notice,’ she said.
She was right. The man walked on, looking neither left nor right, nor in fact anywhere.
Helen watched him go. ‘Why were you asking?’ she said. ‘If I had anything to hurry back for?’
‘I was just wondering if you fancied a trip down memory lane.’
‘Haven’t we already done that?’
‘We could so some more.’ Kay leaned forward and put the key back in the ignition. ‘Shall we take a drive and see if we can’t find that B and B?’
Helen stared at her. ‘I haven’t a clue where it was, Kay.’
‘Neither have I,’ Kay said. ‘But it’ll be fun looking.’
An hour and five minutes later, Kay slowed the car at yet another junction, another meeting point of pre-war housing, run-down commercial units and constantly flowing traffic. The back of her neck was on fire with heat and irritation. She craned forward over the steering wheel. ‘This could have been it,’ she muttered, ‘but I don’t remember that glaziers, do you?’
‘I told you, I don’t remember anything!’ Helen covered her face with her hands. Kay, she was beginning to think, wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d searched every last street in Salisbury. Which was very un-pragmatic and therefore very out of character. What on earth was wrong with her? She was the least nostalgic of all of them. ‘I was twenty-one,’ she wailed. ‘I’d been drinking Strongbow cider all day and I honestly thought my destiny lay in the hands of a hippy from Portsmouth.’
‘OK, OK…’ Flushed, Kay sat back, her hand at her neck. ‘Let’s just try the next street up then?’
‘Or let's not!’ Helen sighed. ‘I’m starving! And leave your neck alone. You’re only going to make it worse.’
‘I know.’ Kay scratched. ‘It’s just irritating.’
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘Perpetually.’
‘Right then. Let’s just give it up and get some food. My treat.’
‘Or mine.’
‘I really don’t care,' Helen said and she opened her window to allow some cool air in. ‘I’m ravenous.’
‘Now this place,’ Kay said, her mouth full of pitta bread, ‘I do remember. We came in here for a fry-up before we caught the bus back.’
They were seated in the outside garden of a pub close to the city centre at a busy junction. A little distance away, over the tops of trees and less ambitious buildings, rose the majestic Gothic spire of Salisbury cathedral.
Holding her own slice of warm pitta, Helen looked around. ‘Even if we were here, we wouldn’t have ordered this. Not at twenty-one.’ And she dipped a crust into a pot of creamy oily hummus.
‘How could we? It hadn’t been invented.’ Kay picked up her napkin to wipe her mouth, did a double take and stumbled to her feet. ‘That was Caro!’ she said, stretching to see. ‘I’m sure of it. The BMW there.’
‘Where?’ Helen pushed her sunglasses to the back of her head. She couldn’t see a thing. Only the back of a large recycling lorry that belched fumes.
‘She just drove past.’ Kay sat back down. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘She’ll definitely be back before us at this rate,’ Helen said and pushed the pitta into her mouth. Wiping her hands on her own napkin she nodded at Kay’s phone, which lay at arm’s reach on the table. ‘What’s the time anyway?’
Kay shrugged.
‘Well, can you look?’
Kay didn't answer.
‘Kay! Check the time!’
In response, Kay shuddered and pushed her plate away.
Helen stared at it. ‘Aren’t you having any more?’
‘Lost my appetite.’
‘OK. Well do you mind if…’ She pulled the plate towards her, watching as Kay reached for her cardigan and pulled it on. Her face had paled two to three shades lighter and now, instead of scratching her neck, she was picking at the skin of her thumb. ‘Are you OK?’ Helen asked through another mouthful of pitta.
‘Fine,’ Kay snapped.
‘You look…’ And heavy as an iron bar, the penny dropped. So heavy, Helen almost sagged. Kay was fine, had been fine only as long as she’d remained distracted. Looking for and finding Caro, looking for and not finding the B and B, allowing minutes to evolve into half-hours and then whole hours. Anything to stop her thinking about Alex and the race. No wonder she was, literally, beside herself. She stretched her hand across the table, took hold of Kay’s and squeezed it hard. ‘Alex will be OK,’ she said. ‘The race is about now, isn't it?’
Kay managed a nod. She reached for Helen’s wine glass. ‘One mouthful?’ she said. ‘I’m just having one mouthful.’
‘Take it.’ Helen pushed the glass across. ‘I’ll drive back.’
Pausing for less than half a second, Kay took the glass. ‘Are you sure?’
But Helen didn’t get to the end of her nod before the glass was empty. She stood up. ‘I’ll get you one more, and then we’ll sit in the sun and wait for Alex to ring.’
And she was off, returning quickly with a large white for Kay and a Diet Coke for herself. ‘When he’s called, we’ll get going,' she said.
From behind the bowl of her wineglass, Kay nodded.
‘Right then.’ Helen stretched back on the bench and put her hands behind her head. The sun was out now, and the afternoon had warmed. Back at Stonehenge, sunhats and water bottles would be flying off the shelves. With Kay slightly benumbed, she wanted the space of a few moments to think about the boy with the ponytail… The one she didn’t sleep under the stars with… Would she know him if they knocked shoulders on the street? His kiss had, with a fluid warmth, shaped itself into her memory, but the reality had been as transient as a breaking wave. And wasn’t that the strangest thing about being human? How we all, in places wholly outside of ourselves, live forever? Like her lost child, Daniel, who remained eternal.
Behind her the traffic hummed on. People leaving or coming into the city – cyclists, pedestrians, dogs straining on leads, tots leaning out of prams – and the sun warm on her back. Moments passed over to minutes. Kay sipped and bit the skin of her thumb; Helen leaned her face to the sky. And then, just when she had started to wonder if they shouldn’t get going anyway, Kay’s phone beeped. Helen turned to it. ‘Is it Alex?’
Kay nodded. With one hand she picked up her phone, the other she pressed against her chest as if it was needed there to keep her heart from bursting free. ‘He’s fine,’ she whispered. ‘He came ninth. Out of thirty.’ And she held her phone up to show Helen the photograph.
‘Kay!’ Helen broke into a huge grin. ‘Ninth! Is he pleased?’
‘Delighted.’ Kay looked up. ‘Which means, of course, that he’s only going to want to carry on.’ The phone was at her chest now, pressed against her breastbone like a crucifix. ‘I wish I could shrink him back to five, Helen,’ she said. ‘It’s so hard. It’s so bloody hard. Why didn’t anyone tell us?’ And in response her phone beeped three more times. She turned it around and swiped through, smiling and wiping away the rogue tears at the corners of both eyes.
‘Can I see?’ Helen asked after Kay had looked through. She took Kay’s phone. ‘This is Shook again?’
Kay was nodding.
‘What did you mean earlier, when you said he remembered Caro?’
Blotting her cheeks with the back of her hand, Kay’s face was as cheeky as an imp’s, exactly like it always used to be. ‘Between you and me,’ she said, ‘I think that he fancied her and…’ Kay leaned forward. ‘I didn’t think about this until just now, but when Caro met him, before Cyprus this is, I think she fancied him too. He is quite attractive… In a weather beaten kind of way.’
‘Nothing wrong with weather beaten.’ Helen was thinking of Kaveh.
Kay nodded. ‘He’s a lovely man.’
Helen nodded. ‘Well, it’s probably just what she needs. A bit of fun. Romance. Maybe we should try and set them up?’
‘I agree. As soon as possible.’