5
“The owner of the cottage popped by while you were all asleep,” Matt told us when we ventured down to eat.
“Checking up on us?” asked Inga.
“Just seeing if we had everything we needed.”
“Checking up on us.”
Matt dished up the beef stroganoff. “Actually, I think she’s a bit lonely. She told me she’s a widow in about her third sentence. I almost felt I should invite her to dinner.”
“God,” said Inga, “I’m glad you didn’t. We’d have had to tidy up.”
It was true. The place was a complete mess. None of us, apparently, had the tidy gene, at least, not when we were on holiday.
“How old is she?” I asked, curious. Matt had dealt with the booking, and the key had been under the doormat.
“Only about forty, I think. Her husband died in a farming accident. He was crushed by a hay bale.”
“That’s awful,” said Alex.
“Depressing is what it is,” said Inga.
Matt shook his head. “I know. It made me think how we have no idea what’s going to happen second to second. One minute he’s at the kitchen table eating lunch with his family, the next he goes out into the barn and bam, the hay bales topple, and he’s gone.”
“Jesus, Matt. We’re on holiday, for Christ’s sake,” Inga said.
“Sorry. Just sharing my thoughts.”
There was a pause while we all started to eat. I couldn’t stop wondering whether there was a moment when the guy had known he was going to die, or whether it had just happened to him, and he’d been oblivious. A farmer, a family man, just finished his lunch. Had he looked up at the critical moment? Seen the bales falling? Had there been time for him to think about his wife? His kids? A man like that wouldn’t have been blind drunk like my mother was when disaster happened. He’d have been lucid. Aware.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I heard my uncle speaking to me?” Alex said into the silence. “I told you, Matt, I know.”
“You did, mate, yeah.”
“What d’you mean, you heard him speaking to you?” I asked, glad to be pulled from my miserable reflections.
“It was a few weeks after I finished school. I had this crap factory job, processing chickens. Completely vile. Anyway, I went in one day with a serious hangover, and there’s all this machinery going, all these women chatting and laughing, me in the middle of them, we’ve all got those blue protective hats on, and the women are taking the piss because I look as if I’m going to die right there on the conveyor belt. Get processed and packaged like the chickens.”
Inga burst out laughing so hard she almost choked on her food. I had to slap her on the back. “It sounds like hell,” she said when she could speak again.
“It was, it really was.” Alex shook his head. “I couldn’t eat chicken for years afterwards.”
“How does your uncle come into this?” I asked.
“Well, I heard him, honest to God. I’m standing there, trying not to die, trying to work, and I hear his voice, loud and clear as if he’s right next to me, speaking into my ear. So, I turn to look for him, but he isn’t there. Nobody is.”
“What did he say?”
“ ‘It won’t always be like this, Alex. Things will get better.’ ”
We stared at him. Goose bumps spread down my back.
“It was really weird, you know? But what with feeling so shit, I didn’t think too much about it. I mean, I was so hungover, I could have hallucinated anything. But when I got home, Dad told me Uncle Jim had died in a car crash that day.”
“Ooh, spooky,” said Inga.
“Were the two of you close?” I asked.
Alex shook his head. “Not really. The guy barely spoke to anyone. He has to be the most silent person I’ve ever met. I tried telling my dad what had happened, but he didn’t want to know. Actually, I think Dad was part of the reason I wasn’t close to Uncle Jim. I think Dad made his mind up about Jim when they were both young, and that was that. No second chances.”
I could believe that. Alex’s father was a man of strong opinions. The first few times we’d met, I’d definitely felt under scrutiny. Fortunately, he seemed to have decided to like me.
“We can never really know what’s going on with people, even if they do speak to us, can we?” I said, thinking not just about Matt and Inga’s secret, but my own secrets too. The dirty truth about my past I’d chosen not to reveal to these, my closest friends, in case they were so appalled they stopped loving me. “We can guess, and we can base those guesses on our experience of them, but maybe everything’s just a half truth, seen through a veil.”
They were all staring at me. I’d probably been a bit intense.
“We share everything, though, don’t we?” Inga said, making it worse, and my stomach squelched with guilt.
But then I saw her glance meaningfully at Matt and realised she was speaking about her own situation. “Unless it’s a secret that’s not ours to tell, anyway.”
“Sorry, Lily,” Matt said. “I asked Inga to keep my news to herself until I was surer something was going to happen. I was surprised she managed to keep quiet, though, I have to admit, you two being as close as you are.”
Alex was frowning by now, and I reached over to squeeze his hand.
“What news?” he asked.
“Matt had an interview for a job in London before we came away,” Inga told him. “If he gets it, we’re both moving there.”
Alex’s fingers gripped mine. Hurting me.
Matt sighed. “Sorry, mate. It all happened so quickly. To be honest, I didn’t think anything would come of my application.”
Alex rallied. Smiled at his friend. Withdrew his hand from mine and forked up some stroganoff. “That’s fine, no problem,” he said, but I could tell he was hurt. Because I was, too, even though I had absolutely no right to be when I was keeping secrets of my own.
“I hope you get the job. That’s ... well, it’s exciting. When will you know?”
“When we get home, I think.”
But it turned out to be sooner than that. Much sooner. Matt got a phone call officially offering him the job the next morning. By which time Alex had had time to recover.
“Mate!” he said, bear-hugging his friend. “That’s fantastic! I’m so pleased for you. For you both. You’ll love living in London, Inga. Won’t she, Lily?”
The day we waved Matt and Inga off, Alex and I took a train to the coast and walked along the beach with the sprawl of a fairground behind us, on the promenade. We could hear people screaming as they got soaked on the water chute. The rumble of the cars on the rollercoaster’s elderly, wooden tracks. This part of the beach—the ugly part, away from the sand dunes—was deserted. It couldn’t have been less like the beach at Catterline where Joan Eardley had painted the fishing nets hung out to dry, but the sea was beautiful anyway. And just ours.
“We won’t see any seals here,” Alex said, his hand in mine.
“No. But I bet they’re here, anyway, keeping an eye on us.”
Far out to sea the waves were breaking on a sandbank, frothy white in the middle of a solid expanse of grey blue. A black-backed gull flew over, squawking, on the lookout for fish.
“Why d’you think they kept it a secret from us?” Alex asked, sounding wistful.
If Inga and Matt had been here with us, the four of us would be laughing, pretending to push each other into the water. Dodging the breaking waves like children.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just all growing up. We can visit them, though. We’ll always keep close.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. You know we will.”
The tide was going out. We took off our shoes and walked on the wet sand, leaving our footprints. Then Alex said suddenly, “Say, why don’t we move to London too? I’m sure we could get work. You’d be near all the important galleries.”
I didn’t want to move to London. I didn’t want to move anywhere. London was super expensive, and it was difficult enough to get by as it was. Norwich was a small, friendly city—the type where you could entrust your neighbour with your new address and be sure she’d pass it on if anyone enquired after you.
“I’m sorry, Alex. I don’t want to move to London. I like it here. This feels like home to me. But maybe ...”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe we could try and buy somewhere together? I know you’re not keen on our flat. What d’you think?”
He kissed me, his face clearing. “I think old Uncle Jim was right about my life,” he said. “It did get better. A lot better. In fact, I’d say it’s about flipping perfect.”
A group of children suddenly rushed down onto the beach from the fairground, their excited cries interrupting our romantic moment. Two of the boys began hurling pebbles at a couple of seagulls resting on the beach, causing them to squawk and fly away.
“Hey, don’t throw rocks at the birds,” Alex shouted at them.
“Excuse me,” their mother said crossly to him as she joined them. “They’re my kids. If there’s any telling off to do, I’ll do it.”
And she herded them off, after shooting another scowl in Alex’s direction.
When they were out of earshot, Alex and I looked at each other and laughed.
“God,” he said, “they’re doing it again, and she’s just letting them. Why do people have kids if they’re going to let them turn into little shits?”
“I have no idea.”
“Let’s not have any little shits ourselves,” he said.
“It never has been on my wish list,” I said.
Alex squeezed my hand. “Okay, it’s a deal. No little shits. Now, come on, let’s go and get some ice cream.”