Chapter 11 #3
‘Friend.’ She repeats it the way you’d repeat a word in a foreign language, testing whether it means what you think it means.
‘I remember when he used to come round for tea. So serious. Eighteen years old and already worried about everything. You’d be talking about saving the whales, or Greenpeace, or what crystal would best soothe a headache, and he’d be nodding along, agreeing with everything. ’
I bristle, and I don’t know why.
‘He wasn’t just nodding along agreeing with everything I was saying.’
She adjusts her sunhat. Doesn’t look at me. ‘He still does that, doesn’t he? Agree with everything you say?’
‘Mum.’
‘What? I’m making conversation.’
‘You’re making insinuations.’
‘I’m making observations. About the way he looked at you when he handed over that bear.’
‘He looks at everyone like that.’
‘He doesn’t, actually.’ She turns to me properly, and her expression is softer, serious. ‘I’ve been watching him all day, Nina. He looks at you differently. Always has.’
Something in me goes very still. The kind of still I’m not good at. The kind that means there’s a thought, a feeling trying to land on a moving ship, but the sea is too rough and it’s not safe for it to touch down.
‘Mum—’
‘I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what I see.’ She picks up her tea. ‘And I think you see it too. I think you’ve got very good at looking away.’
The rubbish brass band, which is basically just Frankie and Bill on trumpets they can’t play, starts up again with a jaunty tune that’s horrifyingly out of tune and time.
‘Tom’s my friend,’ I say. ‘He’s my best friend.’
Mum looks at me for a long moment. ‘If you say so, love.’ She pats my arm. ‘If you say so.’
The fete winds down as the afternoon softens. The brass band packs up. The bunting comes down. Families drift home, sun-tired and sand-crusted, carrying prizes and ice-creams and the satisfied exhaustion of a day well spent.
I find Tom by the water’s edge, helping Kit stack chairs onto the trailer.
The sun is low, turning the sea gold, and the heat has finally started to ease.
Someone’s strung fairy lights along the cleanup trailer and they’re blinking on now in the dusk, warm and familiar, and I don’t know why fairy lights keep catching my attention lately – in the café, at the pub, here – like they’re trying to tell me something in a language I don’t speak.
‘Survivor,’ Tom says when he sees me. ‘How’s the bear?’
‘Currently being photographed by seventeen different tourists. It’s more popular than I am.’
‘Fame is fleeting. The bear’s moment will pass.’
‘The bear is going to outlive us all. I’ve accepted this.’
He laughs, and I stand next to him and watch the water and try not to think about what Mum said. About looking away. About what I’d see if I stopped.
‘Good day?’ he asks.
‘Good day.’
‘Your mum seems well.’
‘She is. She likes it here. Pretends she doesn’t miss it, but I think she does.’
‘She should visit more.’
‘I keep telling her. She says she’s too busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Running her café. Having opinions. Watching me from a distance and drawing conclusions.’
‘What kind of conclusions?’
I glance at him sideways. He’s looking at the sea, his profile lit by the last of the sun, and in the dusk he looks like something from a painting – calm and golden and entirely still. Tom is always still. I’m never still. I’ve never thought about what that means before.
‘The wrong kind,’ I say. ‘Mums are like that. They see patterns that aren’t there.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Definitely.’
The last of the sun slips below the horizon. The beach is almost empty now, just the cleanup crew and the fairy lights blinking on the trailer and the sound of the sea.
‘I should go help Mum pack up,’ I say, but I don’t move. ‘She’s got an early train tomorrow.’
‘I’ll walk you back.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know I don’t have to.’
We walk back along the waterline, shoes in our hands, the sand still warm from the day’s heat. Chips trots ahead, investigating seaweed with profound seriousness. We don’t talk much. We don’t need to.
That’s the thing about Tom. The silences are never empty. They’re just … quiet. The shape of two people who fit together without trying.
I hear myself think that and the sentence snags. Fit together. I’ve never described us that way before. I’ve described us as friends, as partners, as the people who always end up at the same table. I’ve never said fit.
Mum’s waiting at the stall, the bear loaded into a wheelbarrow borrowed from Bill. She hugs Tom goodbye – properly, like family – and tells him to eat more vegetables and get more sleep and come visit her in Truro whenever he wants.
‘You’re always welcome,’ she says. ‘You know that.’
‘I know,’ Tom says. Something passes between them – a look I can’t read, a whole conversation I’m not part of.
Then he’s gone, walking up the beach towards the village, and it’s just me and Mum and the ridiculous pink bear.
‘Right,’ Mum says. ‘Let’s get this monster home.’ She takes one handle of the wheelbarrow. I take the other. ‘I want to hear all about those fuchsias Tom’s been watering.’
‘They’re fine. They’re just fuchsias.’
‘Nothing is ever just anything, love.’ She heaves her side of the wheelbarrow forward. ‘Haven’t you learned that by now?’
We push the bear up the beach towards home, and I don’t look back to see if Tom is still there.