Chapter 79
Josh
Rachel and I go out for lunch at the kind of pub we used to love when we were married. It has a huge beer garden that rambles down to the river, serves platefuls of food so big they leave you semi-comatose.
The lawn is almost full, with only a table beneath a lime tree going free. Everyone else is basking in the sun, limbs bare and faces upturned, as we might have once too, forty-odd years ago. Nowadays, I’m much more like a dog, seeking out shade whenever I can.
Rachel took some persuading, to come here today.
She’s been telling me a lot lately that she prefers to do things at her own pace.
Which is odd, because my life is hardly a non-stop bender.
She’s turned down a couple of parties recently, and has become increasingly impatient with Ingrid, who keeps trying to get her to fly out to LA.
Rachel insists she’s tired, that she’s taken on too much work over the past few months, and has struggled to get over a particularly nasty bout of flu.
She has just said – again – that she thinks she looks old enough to be my mother. Even though she knows I hate it when she talks like this.
‘Well, you don’t. But even if you did, who cares?’
The correct answer to this is no one. I don’t, and I can’t believe Rachel still gives a shit. And there is not a person in this beer garden who has slung more than a brief glance our way since we got here.
‘I’m going to ask someone.’
‘Rach—’
‘Excuse me,’ Rachel says sweetly to a passing server, while I consider if there is time to secrete myself beneath the table before he sees me. ‘Can I ask you something?’
The kid is young, maybe twenty. Then again, these days it’s becoming harder and harder to tell. Kids are getting Botox in their teens.
I pull my sunglasses firmly down over my face.
‘Yes?’ the server says uncertainly, looking between the two of us.
‘Me and this man,’ Rachel says, gesturing in my direction. ‘What would you say our relationship is?’
‘I don’t know,’ the boy says nervously, shading his eyes against the sun. ‘Nan?’
Despite myself, I suppress a laugh.
‘Thank you,’ Rachel says to him. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
The kid walks away, and Rachel turns back to face me. ‘Nan,’ she deadpans.
I notice, suddenly, that her shirt is misbuttoned. But I decide against telling her. It’s not gaping or anything. Just a mistake. Unusually, I sense – for some reason – that my pointing it out might embarrass her.
‘Well, cheers for establishing that,’ I say. ‘Though I don’t know why you felt the need to drag an innocent child into it.’
‘Oh, he loved it.’ She throws me an exaggerated wink.
Something’s off.
The thought hits without warning, alarming as a brick through glass.
I’ve not seen Rachel for a couple of months. But, today, she is different. I sense it now, not with my mind, but with my body. The knock of my pulse, the hairs going hard on my arms.
Rachel has never been the type of person to ask strangers to referee debates between us. Or amuse herself, but no one else, with Carry On winks. She used to groan at innuendo, and not in an appreciative way.
And there is something else. Something about the expression on her face. The way her eyes don’t quite land on me. As though we’re at opposite ends of a telescope, our proximity just illusion.
She raps her fingers on the table, looks distractedly away from me across the garden.
‘Hey,’ Emma says briskly.
‘Hey. You got five minutes?’
‘Not really. Two, maybe. Insane deadlines. You know how it is.’
I do. But I suspect hers are slightly more pressing than mine, given that they involve things like court dates and murderers.
‘What’s up?’ she says.
I picture Emma tight-jawed at her laptop, head in the law and not at all where I am. ‘I met your mum for lunch today.’
‘Oh, yeah. Nice time?’
‘Yeah, thanks. But I wanted to ask . . . does she seem different to you, at all?’
I hear fear in the pause that follows. ‘What do you mean?’ But I know she knows, because she says this so quietly, the words emerge barely formed.
My eyes stray to the first-edition copy of The Remains of the Day Rachel gave me for Christmas, two whole decades ago now. I reach up and take it down from the shelf, then thumb gently through it, as I do sometimes when I’m thinking of her.
I realise I cannot find the language to describe the shape and colour of the foreboding inside me. Slippery as shadow, dark as nightfall.
‘I think something’s wrong.’
On the end of the line, Emma lets out a long breath. And there it is: my worst fears confirmed. ‘I think something’s wrong too. She’s not herself.’
‘No. There are moments when—’
‘Oh, my God, Josh.’ Emma’s voice sounds suddenly muffled, as if she has covered her mouth as the shock finally surfaces.
I shut the book, stare down at the image of the pocket watch on the cover. It overwhelms me suddenly, the inevitability of time passing.
‘No, this can’t be . . . She’s too young,’ Emma says.
I think of Rachel’s mother. ‘She isn’t,’ I whisper.
‘Fuck.’ Her voice is pitched high, tiny and terrified.
‘It’ll be okay.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘Because. It has to be,’ is all I say.