Chapter 6
6
‘ W ait! Eyebrows is coming! I have to hide.’
‘Who is eyebrows?’
‘Sophia. You don’t know her. She’s the area manager. She has a degree in tourism and the eyebrows of my grandfather.’
Kay picked up her cup and peered at her screen. Marianne had her phone positioned under her chin, so mostly all she could see were nostrils. She smiled. Marianne worked as a receptionist at the Hotel Adagio in Cyprus, where Caro, Helen and herself had stayed. They had kept in touch, had in fact become such good friends, Marianne had joined their trip to Vegas last year and been part of the wedding planning party in April. Thinking this, she shivered, and it was such a violent movement the tea in her cup wobbled. The trip to Vegas had ended with her waking up under a sheet in her airline seat, after a doctor on the flight had declared her dead. Never mind that Helen had panicked, or that the ‘doctor’ being a Doctor of Podiatry, was good at feet and obviously not much else. Never mind that, utterly exhausted by the highs and lows of Vegas and overwhelmed with relief to be on her way back to Alex, Kay had simply fallen into the deepest, calmest sleep she’d experienced since she’d first heard the word cancer. She might have been buried alive! This time the tea jumped the cup. It was a time and a moment she didn’t like to dwell on.
‘She draws them on,’ Marianne said, ‘very thick.’ And leaning even closer to the screen, she drew her finger across her eyebrow to mimic the action.
Relieved to be distracted, Kay laughed. Over numerous FaceTime calls since they had become friends, she had seen parts of Marianne she wasn’t sure anyone else had. The insides of her nostrils, like now, the pink-caved walls of her inner ear, even her belly button, as Marianne had sunbathed, blissfully unaware of the direction in which her camera pointed. Suddenly the view changed again, and she found herself looking at Marianne’s bosom, heaving like the Southern Ocean as Marianne began an awkward half-jog, half-walk.
‘I’m going out the gates,’ Marianne panted. ‘She won’t find me there. Ouch!’ The bosom disappeared, so now Kay was looking at blue sky. ‘ Oi mana mou! I dropped it…’
‘Is it cracked?’
More panting, more sky and a smudge of dust. ‘Leonard Cohen,’ Marianne breathed as her face came back into view, ‘says there is a crack in everything. I told you the story of how my mother gave me my name?’
Kay laughed. ‘Yes, you told me.’
‘Let me ca … catch my breath.’
‘Why don’t you ring me back,’ she said. ‘Find a seat, catch your breath and ring me back. I’m not in any hurry.’
A weak wave from Marianne signalled her agreement and propping her phone on her kitchen windowsill, Kay turned to look at her own sky, which was steel grey not blue. Soon, she really wouldn’t be in any hurry, ever again. Today was the last day of her working life. The last day she could legitimately call herself a teacher and it had come around so fast that from her toes upward, she felt the surge of a worry that left her weak as a kitten.
Her phone rang. She jumped, stared at the screen and realised it was Marianne calling back. How lost she’d been, swamped with an apprehension that was sudden and blinding. Taking a breath, she swiped the screen and Marianne’s face came into view.
‘Ok. I’m ready, Marianne gasped, ‘Just a mo ...’
‘Catch your breath.’ Kay waited. Behind from where Marianne sat, she could see tendrils of fuchsia pink bougainvillea scrawled across a white wall. Everything else in the picture was a soft blurry ochre, from the scrubbed slopes of the Kyrenia mountains, to the rocks beyond. It was a view she remembered well, a view that offered a beautifully simple contrast: a strike of colour from the bougainvillea, a muted, quiet background behind. Just as her decision to take early retirement and move to Cyprus had once been beautifully simple. Those days felt far away now, days when watching the ceiling during radiotherapy sessions, her prayers had been the prayers of a woman with few options. If I get a second chance, I will do this … If I’m lucky … Now she watched the ceiling and tortured herself in other ways and the more she did, the more Cyprus was beginning to feel difficult. The weekend in April had brought home just how far from home she would be, had her thinking that it was all just a morphine-induced pipe dream she had perhaps smoked too much of. She picked up her mug and blowing air to cool her tea down, glanced across at the package on the kitchen bench. It had been there since Saturday. Her leopard-print bikini still unwrapped.
Looking at it, Kay felt her shoulders drop. It was astonishing to her now, the small amount of consideration she had given to how hard this was going to be. No, she wasn’t selling the house. No lampshades to stuff into her luggage. No tables and chairs strapped to a wagon, pulled by a weary donkey, a fiddler on the roof playing a mournful lament. I’m looking at it as extended holiday, rather than anything permanent, she’d begun explaining to everyone who had never asked. Including her father, who had asked. But how on earth could she have contemplated leaving him for months at a time so soon after her mother had died? He’d been like a ghost lately, every time she saw him, he seemed to have diminished in height, in energy, in sheer physical presence, as if one by one, all the ties that tethered a being to this life were being snipped away. She had hoped that after the last few years of caring for her mother, the opposite would have happened. That he would have started living again. She’d even gone so far as sign him up to a seniors’ social club, but without her mother by his side, in sickness and in health, he seemed directionless: a boat without a rudder.
Hands wrapped around her cup, she took a long contemplative slurp. And then, of course, there was Alex. Although since he had gone out and got a girlfriend – something she had never even tried imagining he would do, she’d hardly seen him. Her awkward, painfully shy, often mono-syllabic son had a girlfriend. Emmy-Lou. Or was it Emmeline? She wasn’t sure, having met the girl only once, and then for not more than a few brief seconds as they had crossed paths on the doorstep. Alex seemed determined to keep her under wraps.
‘I’m ready now!’ Marianne sat upright. ‘I wanted to ring and wish you all the best for today.’
‘Oh.’ Tears smarted. Kay put her cup down and covered her mouth.
‘I hope you have a wonderful day, Kay. You deserve it.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t cry now,’ Marianne scolded. ‘Chin up. It’s the start of something new. I’m wishing all good things for you.’
Unable to speak, Kay nodded. If she had a pound for every good wish she’d received ... So many texts, so many students popping into her classroom all week long, bringing her gifts, shyly handing over cards. The mantle in her living room overflowed. It was overwhelming. Thank goodness there really was no party planned, all she wanted to do was make a quiet exit before her cold feet turned to ice, dropped off and she changed her mind.
‘Well then. I don’t have long I’m afraid, eyebrows, wants to go through our new customer satisfaction forms.’ Marianne’s face pinched in disgust. ‘If they’re satisfied,’ she snorted, ‘they come back. It’s simple. No forms, no stupid smiley face, no, what could we have done better? Why do they make it so complicated? Nothing is simple anymore.’
Kay smiled. If Marianne could read her mind.
‘She must justify her degree I suppose. They all have to justify their expensive educations. So,’ brushing dust from her skirt, Marianne leaned forward. ‘Do you have a date for your flight yet? I know it will be after the wedding.’
‘I’ve bought a bikini!’
‘But no flight?’
‘Not yet and speaking of which, the wedding I mean, I saw Caro and Helen on Saturday. Helen’s back from America.’ Her voice was bright, the swerve of direction deliberate. The last few times she had spoken with Marianne she’d managed to avoid talk of dates altogether, falling back on the fact that with the end of term and retirement approaching, she simply had too much to concentrate on. Which was true. But the excuse was reaching its expiry date. ‘They look so well,’ she added, before Marianne could speak. ‘They have great tans. Helen from hiking and Caro, I suppose from all the work on the farm … smallholding, I mean. She has chickens. Can you imagine?’ She was garbling and she knew it, but at least it was steering the conversation away from where she didn’t want it to go.
And it worked, because now Marianne laughed. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t imagine it. Caro a farmer? With chickens!’
‘I find it hard too,’ Kay murmured.
‘So how is she in her farm, that is not a farm?’
Kay opened her mouth ready to speak.
‘Having second thoughts?’ Marianne said, filling the gap.
‘No.’ She glanced to the window. She was searching for the right word. It was hard, almost impossible to imagine Caro with chickens, but there hadn’t been any second-thought vibes at the weekend. If anything, Caro looked … ‘Content,’ she said, as she turned back to her screen.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I think that’s the right word.’
‘It’s the sex.’ Marianne nodded.
‘Sex!’
‘Yes. She will be having lots of sex. It makes anyone content.’
‘Oh, well I didn’t ask ––‘
‘It’s the best skincare a woman can use.’ And suddenly Marianne leaned to her screen and turned it left to right, showing her profile as if she were posing for a stamp. ‘Haven’t you noticed my face?’
Frowning, Kay tilted her head. She wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but now she’d been asked, Marianne did look well. Very well. And yes, she did have a glow, maybe even similar to the glow she’d had back in Vegas, during a brief fling with her old flame, Tony. ‘Are you seeing someone?’ she asked, a small smile forming.
‘Not someone.’
The stress on the one had been unmistakeable, still the conclusion was slow to arrive. Did Marianne mean more than one?
‘Friends with benefits, Kay.’ Marianne smiled. ‘That is what the young people call it.’
‘How many friends?’ she gasped, the question flying out of her mouth like a missile. Why on earth had she asked that? And what was an acceptable number anyway? Two? Three? Fifteen?
Marianne’s face darkened. ‘You and I talked about this, Kay.’
‘Did we?’ Her jaw fell slack. There had been many conversations with Marianne over the last twelve months, for which Kay was, and always would be deeply grateful. In a way, because their friendship had been new, it had been easier to open to her than to Helen or Caro and together they had trawled the depths of the deepest subjects. But friends with benefits? Sex, with more than one man? No, she couldn’t recall touching on that.
Marianne turned away from the sun, bringing her hand up to shield her eyes. ‘We agreed that we needed to get out more. Make new friends.’
‘We did,’ Kay blustered. ‘But...that’s not... I ––’
‘So, I joined Tinder.’
‘You joined Tinder?’
‘And you should too.’
Kay opened her mouth, nothing came out.
‘It’s very easy,’ Kay. Look.’ And before she could respond, Marianne had swiped her phone and opened her Tinder account, so now Kay was looking at the profile of a handsomely proud, and confident middle-aged woman.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, as Marianne swiped through the photos. There she was, her friend, in all her glory. One of the pictures had been taken in Vegas. It showed Marianne leaning against a ranch fence, horses grazing in the background, looking for all the world as if she were about to saddle up and ride off. Kay threw her head back and laughed. She’d taken this picture herself; Marianne never made it anywhere near the saddle!
‘Did you …’ she started, and then paused, remembering the afternoon and the way she had tried to frame the photograph. ‘Did you cut Tony out of that last picture?’
‘Of course I did!’ Marianne said. ‘Magic eraser, Kay. It’s brilliant. Imagine having it in real life? You can just rub out anything you don’t want around anymore.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t good with tech stuff.’
‘If I have to, I have to.’ Marianne shrugged. ‘And I know I don’t look quite like that in real life, but if I put a picture of myself without any filter, do you think they would come? Anyway, by the time they’ve made the journey, they don’t want to go back empty-handed, if you know what I mean.’
Kay didn’t speak. She did know what Marianne meant, but she had no idea how to respond.
‘Are you shocked?’ Marianne broke the silence. ‘It’s not so many friends like this, Kay.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘But you remember Tony and Vegas?’
‘Of course I do,’ she whispered.
‘It didn’t matter that it didn’t last.’ And even though there were only mountains to hear, and flowers to tell, Marianne too, whispered. ‘It was enough that it happened, Kay. He awakened something in me. And it’s nice. It’s so nice to have a cuddle.’
The sting of truth was so sharp it pricked Kay’s heart, and her heart pricked her eyes and tears smarted. A cuddle? She put her hand to her mouth. When was the last time she had had a cuddle from anyone other than her parents? Years? A decade?
’It’s even nicer to wave them goodbye and not be left washing their socks for the rest of your life.’ Marianne stood up. ‘I thought, why not? I’m only fifty-five. I have, I hope, many years left. Why not?’
But again, Kay had no answer, and Marianne had no response and the distance between them was fragile with miscomprehension.
‘I have offended you, Kay. I didn’t mean ––’
‘No.’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘No,’ she said again.
‘Then I have upset you?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
But she didn’t know what. First Helen in Cyprus with her holiday fling, then Marianne in Vegas and now Caro, content with that most vital thing, sex, companionship …a cuddle. Even Alex whose life was lived within in a five-mile radius of home had found himself someone to hold. ‘I’m not upset,’ she managed, ‘and I’m not offended. I suppose,’ she said quietly, ‘I’d like a cuddle too.’