Chapter Six #2
‘It was our last night of a holiday in Palma. The first time I’d been away without my parents, and they only allowed it because I was with my big sister, Angela, who had rather carelessly got food poisoning.
I think it was probably the warm ham sandwich she ate on the sand, which had been wrapped in her towel for a couple of hours.
Anyway, it was either a case of sit indoors and watch her face turn grey or pluck up the courage to go out on my own.
So, I went wandering, which was most unlike me.
I wasn’t brave. I’ve never been brave,’ she admitted, ‘yet honestly? There was something about pushing myself out of my comfort zone that made me feel invincible! I remember everything about the evening. I’ve never thought I was pretty or attractive, not like Angela, who has fabulous bosoms.’ She glanced down at her chest where her fried eggs sat, as perkily as they were able, inside her cotton nightie.
‘She takes after our Nana Collins, who had melons, whereas I am more like our Nanny Jan.’
He laughed and she winced – how had she so quickly got on to the topic of boobies? She glanced over her shoulder towards Jonathan, who looked past her into the middle distance, and she felt a fine film of shame cover her.
‘Anyway, I was always lanky and pale, but not that night. That night I was alone in a foreign land, all warm and glorious, with the smell of paella wafting on the breeze, pesetas in my pocket and strawberry lip gloss in my clutch. Angela had bought these silver platform shoes and was saving them for her last night – well, I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I? ’
‘That would have been criminal,’ he agreed, and it made her smile.
‘Exactly, so I slipped them on and borrowed one of her off-the-shoulder T-shirt dresses, bouffed up my hair with enough hairspray to stop a gale, and off I went. I didn’t walk down that strip, Dominic, oh no. I strutted. It was my catwalk; my moment, and I was on the hunt.’
She paused, aware that she had spoken his name so casually, like she used to when catching up with her husband.
‘Oooh, remind me, Jonathan, to get the chicken out of the freezer...’
‘Did I tell you, Jonathan, that I bumped into Phil in the garden centre?’
‘What do you mean, terminal? What are you telling me, Jonathan?’
She did her best to shake off the suffocating feelings of loss she was trying to avoid.
‘I felt simultaneously grown-up and scared, but it was a good scared – you know, the way you feel when you are about to test yourself but come out the other side with a feeling of having achieved something.’
‘I do. I’m a keen sailor and when you really push a boat, test her, that’s when you not only learn about the vessel, but about yourself too.
If you race, which I used to, you can only win when you give over to that fear, resign yourself to the very worst thing imaginable and recognise that it’s okay.
No matter what happens, it will all be okay. ’
There was a beat of silence while she let his words settle, as he perfectly summed up all she was trying to convey.
‘Well, it was kind of like that. I heard a man whistle, calling to me from a bar where he sat with his mates. “Never Gonna Give You Up” was belting out of the speakers, it felt like a sign. I turned, and there he was, not a man at all and certainly not the swarthy Spaniard that I might have imagined, but in fact Karl from Whitley Bay, who was celebrating his eighteenth. We drank sangria, smoked Marlboro Lights and our thighs edged closer together on a sticky faux-leather banquette. Honestly, Dominic, I thought I was Sheena bloody Easton.’
This time he laughed heartily, easily.
‘We snogged on the beach, Karl and I. Snogged for an hour at least. A revelation for me, as I was never popular. I can’t believe I’ve just told you that!’ She screwed her eyes shut. ‘You’re the only person on the planet who knows this other than me and Karl.’
And Jonathan of course, Jonathan knows everything about me...
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ he whispered, his low murmur sending shivers along her limbs. It was a curious and unfamiliar reaction to a stranger, the overwhelming desire for physical connection that was like a spell.
‘It was all rather anticlimactic after that. He went off to find his mates and didn’t take my number.’
‘What a rotter!’
‘Not really. I didn’t want a boyfriend or anything like that, too busy studying and playing hockey.
Plus, this was the world pre-internet, mobile phones and messaging, it would only have fizzled and caused possible heartache.
Far better that one night that is stuck in my memory, special because of that, no matter how dire.
I learned two things that night. First, that clothes and shoes can really change the way you feel about yourself, which is why I always wear colour, it cheers me. ’
‘I noticed that today. You were . . . bright!’
‘Ha!’ He had noticed her, seen her! She liked the thought, bright.
‘What was the second thing?’
‘Oh, the second thing was that snogging, if you’re doing it with the wrong person, isn’t really much to write home about.’
‘Poor Karl!’ he laughed.
‘Poor me!’ she countered.
He laughed again, loudly and without restraint. It felt good to have him react in this way, a superpower!
‘I grew up a bit that night. And looking back, I needed to. My parents were strict really. They didn’t see me as an adult until I got married, which I did when I was in my twenties.
And even then they would phone to tell me if there was a cold snap expected, reminding me to leave extra time in the morning to defrost the car. ’
‘I can relate.’
‘I went back to the room to find Angela sitting on the loo while she threw up in the bidet in a room full of mozzies. She’d had to leave the windows open, apparently, to try and get rid of the smell.
But nothing could dent that feeling. Like I was desirable, a go-getter, and excited for my whole life that stretched ahead. ’
‘They define you, don’t they, those moments, those incidents that are unexpected, like jewels hiding in the gloom.’
Again, he summed it up perfectly. It was this conversation, this whole exchange, a jewel hiding in the gloom.
‘Did you have a Karl from Whitley Bay night in your misspent youth?’
‘No, he wasn’t really my type. There might not have been a Karl but there was an Issy who was rather free and easy with her favours, as my mother would have said, a lovely girl who had a fondness for Land Rovers, I seem to recall.’
‘And you had a Land Rover?’
‘No, but my dad did, and so I borrowed it one night and went a-wooing!’
‘Did it yield the result you were hoping for?’ She smiled.
‘It did indeed, and even the next day when I was getting leathered by my dad for taking his precious Landy for a spin without his permission, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.’
‘Worth it then,’ she guessed.
‘Oh, more than worth it. Issy married the son of a local farmer who, rumour had it, was a collector of Land Rovers.’
They both laughed in a way that was natural when two people were so well acquainted – and yet they weren’t. No more than strangers. She looked back towards the bathroom door; Jonathan was staring right at her. It was as sobering as it was jarring.
‘I should go, I should, erm...’ Sitting up, she pulled the neck of her nightie closed.
‘Oh, you don’t want to know why I’ve had quite the day?’
‘Sure, go ahead.’ She spoke softly, turning her body away from the bathroom door. Speaking quietly, as if this might prevent Jonathan from hearing.
‘In all honesty, it had been quite the day leading up to the unfortunate incident in the car park, but post that it really has turned out to be one to remember.’
He was charming, his flattery well received, and she felt a flare of joy at the admission.
‘I signed the lease on a flat. A place of my very own.’
‘Oh!’ Embarrassment cloaked her; of course it wasn’t her that had made his day one to remember. ‘Well, that sounds exciting.’ She meant it. A flat, his flat, single then. ‘I’m not sure,’ she coughed to clear her throat, ‘not sure why you called me back.’
‘I’m not sure why,’ he hesitated, ‘and everything I want to say is so clichéd that I don’t want to risk it.’
‘Probably best.’ She closed her eyes.
‘So, you were married in your twenties, and are you still, still married?’
It was the first time she’d heard a hint of nerves and was glad of it, giving the topic the attention it deserved.
‘I’m a widow.’ There it was again, that word, that dreadful, dreadful word. ‘My husband, Jonathan, he died three years ago.’
As was her habit, she twisted her wedding ring with the underside of her thumb.
‘I am so sorry. That must have been rough.’
‘Yes.’ She ran her hand along Pickle’s back, glad of the company. ‘And what about you, are you married, have been married?’
There, she had done it, asked the question on which everything else hinged. There was a second of silence before he spoke. ‘I am married.’
These three words were rocks that he lobbed through the glass of her happiness, leaving tiny fissures and cracks that spread far and wide, after which the whole energy of their interaction changed, and she felt a little foolish for having been so open.
More than a little foolish, mortified was more accurate.
Her tone and demeanour changed immediately. She sat up straight.
‘I see.’ Closing her eyes, she fought the embarrassing desire to cry, the drop in her stomach far greater than if she hadn’t allowed herself the swell of excitement before.
‘Well, I’ll say goodnight, Dominic. It’s been lovely to talk to you and it was nice to meet you ever so briefly, today, but.
.. well, you can... you can text me the details of your friend’s garage, or whatever.
’ She couldn’t find the words to convey how his marital status was an absolute non-starter for her, and realised she didn’t have to. ‘I have to go now.’
‘I... I understand, but before you go, can I just say that the picture you are painting of me right now is not a true one. I am married and I could have pretended otherwise, but I never lie, never, about anything.’ She heard his lips, forming the words, sticky with nerves.
‘And so believe me when I tell you that I’ve been, I’ve been treading water, for the longest time, not unhappily, not desperately, but just, idling.
And I want more. I think I deserve more; I don’t want to settle anymore!
And today I signed the lease on a flat, so we can start to dismantle. .. everything.’
His justification was so predictable, possibly even untrue, that he may as well have added she just doesn’t understand me!
‘Well, Dominic, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and that’s part of a much bigger conversation: what we want, what we deserve and what we settle for. And I am most definitely not the person to have that conversation with.’
In an instant, he turned ugly in her mind.
His smile no longer enticing but rather forced, his floppy fringe not appealing, but probably cultivated to fall just so, a cad.
And his friendly manner, no doubt well-rehearsed to snare unsuspecting widows who might be flattered by all that lovely attention.
‘I understand, but—’
‘There is no but.’ She cut him short.
‘Right.’ He swallowed loudly. ‘Good night, CP.’
She hated the way it felt, hearing their quickly established nickname, hated that she would never get used to the sound of it, hated the taste of disappointment that sat on her tongue and the deceit that coated her lips.
She had been flirting with a married man.
Flirting when she was still so desperately cut up over losing her husband, and he had a wife, a wife !
‘Good night.’
She lay still for some minutes, letting the words of their conversation permeate.
She was a fool, an easily flattered fool.
Hopping out of bed to wash her face in cool water, it was as she stood over the sink and flicked on the light that she saw Jonathan, as ever, looking over her shoulder.
His expression was thoughtful. She closed her eyes, unable to deal with his mood and obvious judgement, not when her own was so fresh and acute.
‘I... I know. I know, my love,’ she stuttered, ‘time to climb back into my ice den.’