More from Helen Rolfe
We hope you enjoyed reading Come Fly With Me. If you did, please leave a review.
Chapter One
NOW: 2023
Emma
Emma felt like she could finally take a breath. The gathering in the café had whittled down to just a small group. Everyone had been here for a few hours now. But when she heard the group become a bit more lively, following the sound of the front door opening despite the Closed sign – which had been that way all day – she knew exactly who must have come inside. And she knew she couldn’t hide in the kitchen forever.
She emerged to find Annalise standing just inside the doorway to the café, smiling over at the group, accepting their well wishes.
Memories washed over Emma, making this confrontation even harder than she’d always imagined it would be. Annalise still wore her trademark red lipstick, stunning against her dark hair. She’d aged of course, hadn’t they all, but she was still beautiful and it conjured up the bubbly girls who’d once sat in this very café after school or at weekends, who’d walked arm in arm along the pavement outside. The girls who’d had their whole lives ahead of them.
Annalise. Her best friend. Or at least she had been. Once upon a time. But that hadn’t been the case for almost two decades. Annalise and Emma hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in eighteen years – she could almost define the duration to the day, which she supposed was what happened when you lost someone who had once meant so much.
Emma could hear murmurings, Annalise’s name whispered on the air, which suddenly felt stifling in the confines of the café. The people here were mostly neighbours from Honeybee Place. A lot of them had lived in the street for as long as Emma’s family had. Some of them could remember this very café twenty years ago when it was a greasy spoon, before her parents took it on and made it welcoming, cosy, friendly. And plenty of them knew Annalise Baker, who’d once lived at number twelve.
‘What are you doing here?’ Emma’s sharp words stopped Annalise, who had taken a few tentative steps towards where Emma stood near the counter. Her bluntness had some of the other neighbours and friends occupying the café’s tables looking across at the women, who had at one time been inseparable, who’d gone off on the adventure of a lifetime. Now, they stood metres apart in a showdown Emma had suspected might come one day, but she hadn’t expected it to come without any warning.
Annalise rebutted the question by offering her condolences. ‘I was really sorry to hear about Mrs Griffin. I came because I wanted to pay my respects.’
Today had been Mrs Griffin’s funeral. Mrs Griffin had lived at number seven Honeybee Place since she was married in her twenties. When her husband Len died, Emma’s family, the Millers, had taken Mrs Griffin under their wing somewhat, as an extension of their family. It was something they were good at doing. They’d done it with Annalise, although these days that was easy to forget. Two years ago – when things got too much despite the Millers’ help – Mrs Griffin had gone to live with her son in Bristol and had stayed there right up until the day she died last month. At Mrs Griffin’s request, the wake to follow the funeral was to be held here at the café she’d visited so many times over the years. It was a nod of appreciation to the closeness of the Miller family she’d been able to rely on a great deal before she left Honeybee Place.
Today’s arrangements had gone smoothly. Neighbours had pitched in to lay out the food the second Emma opened the doors to the café. Regulars who didn’t know Mrs Griffin had respected the café’s closure and passed on their condolences. The only thing that had set Emma on edge was the funeral service itself. Not that anything had gone wrong specifically, but when she’d taken her dad’s arm to escort him out of the chapel, she caught sight of the woman who’d lingered at the back as though she was afraid to come any closer. And a few more steps towards the chapel entrance had revealed her identity to Emma, a discovery that almost made her legs buckle beneath her right there and then.
Part of her was angry Annalise had shown up; the other part of her wanted to run to her one-time best friend and hug her and hold on tight and never let go again. Instead, she’d looked away, put one foot in front of the other to leave the service and hadn’t seen Annalise’s face again until now.
‘She was really kind, wasn’t she?’ Annalise ventured.
‘She’ll be missed,’ said Emma as though she was talking to anyone else who’d come to the funeral or the wake. Emma wanted to shriek, Why come back here after all this time? But she settled for a polite reply if only so she didn’t get furious at a sombre occasion that deserved better. She tried to squash down her frustration that Annalise had shown up and was acting as though nothing had ever come between them and drawn a line beneath their friendship forever.
‘I kept sending the postcards from Paris.’ Annalise smiled tentatively. ‘To Mrs Griffin,’ she clarified. ‘She sent me postcards back from Bath and then Bristol.’
If Annalise was expecting her to smile in return, then she was going to have a bit of a wait. She picked up a stray napkin from the floor and took it over to the bin. She knew about the postcards – Mrs Griffin had told her – but she’d always been mindful not to interfere in what was going on with the girls. She hadn’t asked questions. All she’d done was expressed her sadness that they were no longer friends and promised never to share the details of Emma’s life if she was in contact with Annalise, and because Emma never heard about Annalise, she could only assume Mrs Griffin had done the same for her. Emma had needed the complete separation, the distance, an end after what happened, and information fed across the miles wasn’t going to help her.
Annalise took another step closer. ‘Can we talk? Please, Emma?’
‘How did you hear about Mrs Griffin?’
‘What?’ Unsettled by Emma’s avoidance of her question, she garbled, ‘My mum told me.’
Emma nodded. But while she’d never planned to take on the Café on the Corner, the Millers’ family business, she had learned to be a good hostess. And so she faked a smile and told Annalise, ‘Help yourself to food, plenty left.’ She gestured to the buffet that had been laid out on the pushed-together tables positioned against the side wall. The dishes no longer looked the way they had when they were served – sandwich arrangements were in disarray, slices of quiche were missing, ruining the perfect circular shape the pastry had been before. There were crumbs on the edge of the tables, a few little spills of tea here and there from the urn at the end.
Emma disappeared into the kitchen at the back, leaving people to flock to the former resident of number twelve. Hands resting on the counter in the kitchen, she looked out of the small back window that was open most of the year round, given how stuffy it could get with all the cooking going on. Emma closed her eyes. Allowed a moment to pull herself together. She would have thought it was losing dear Mrs Griffin who’d been so special to them, the service, the wake that might tip her emotions over the edge but she was wrong. It was Annalise’s presence that had done that. After all this time, Annalise was back in Bath in England’s south-west, the city she hadn’t looked back on for years.
She jumped when someone pushed open the door to the kitchen and asked if they could get some more water. She put on a faux jolliness she didn’t feel and turned to take the empty glass jug from one of her neighbours, assuring them she’d sort it in a jiffy. She robotically set down the jug, filled it with ice cubes, added slices of lemon and held it beneath the tap, waiting for the water to fill the vessel.
With a deep breath, she went back to the gathering, eyes downcast wherever possible to avoid meeting Annalise’s gaze, and set down the water jug. She went to open another window. Was it just her feeling the heat in here?
She swore beneath her breath when the window wouldn’t budge but it gave up the battle with a good shove. She fixed the latch in place so it wouldn’t blow wide open on the September evening breeze and looked out at the narrow, cobblestone street, wishing it was just another regular day at the Café on the Corner – the café that got its name from its location in Honeybee Place. The café was a stone’s throw from the green square surrounded by iron railings – the square with trees and small pathways that led to patches of lawn exclusively for residents’ use.
‘You okay, dear?’ Mr Cavendish from number nine put a hand on Emma’s shoulder.
‘I am, just a little sad – that’s all.’
‘Of course, as we all are.’
With a sigh, Emma thought about the flip of the seasons, how the leaves would soon turn, the sun would lose its warmth and gradually, the city would wrap itself up ready for another Christmas. Mrs Griffin had always been the first to comment on the seasons, the first to welcome the joy and the heat in the summer, the first to give out warnings about slippery pavements come winter. She’d been a delight to spend time with and Mr Cavendish was right: they were all sad at her passing.
Her neighbour patted her once more on the shoulder and left her in quiet contemplation, her mind back to Annalise’s presence. Not all the neighbours would know of the big falling-out. Some would just assume the girls had drifted apart, that today’s melancholy was only for Mrs Griffin.
When she felt the presence of someone else behind her, Emma knew it wasn’t her neighbour this time.
‘Can we talk?’ Annalise repeated her earlier suggestion.
Emma turned. Her limbs felt heavy, her head foggy. ‘Why now, Annalise?’ She noted Annalise start at her use of her full name. Emma hadn’t called her Annalise in years, not since Annalise turned eighteen and settled on the name Lise; she’d felt it suited her much better, as though trying to break out of a mould that up until that point had constricted her more than she could bear. The only person who had insisted on calling her by her full name, aside from her parents, was Xavier, the man she’d met and the man who’d ruined it all. It wound Emma up then that he wouldn’t call her Lise and it still did now, even though it had nothing to do with her any more.
‘What do you mean, “why now”?’
‘Why come back for Mrs Griffin’s funeral?’
‘She was special to me.’ Annalise gulped. ‘So was your mum. I’m sorry she died. I sent a card, some flowers.’
‘To my dad.’
‘I thought that best. I would’ve come when I heard but… well, I didn’t want to upset you, or anyone.’
‘It was a long time ago.’ Emma shrugged as though it was of no consequence but of course it was. Annalise had been a part of her life for so long. Her parents had welcomed her into their home as often as she needed, and no matter what had gone between them, Emma was touched when, following her mother’s death, she took delivery of the flowers for her dad. Emma had been too wrapped up in grief to feel much that day but even now, ten years on, she remembered the gesture and how it had made her wish things had worked out differently with her best friend. She’d thought about Annalise in the middle of the funeral too, wishing she was at her side.
Keely – Emma’s mum – had been sick for a while and had planned her funeral down to the last detail. She’d chosen a humanist service and the celebrant spoke eloquently using all the information he’d been given by the family, plenty of stories of Toby and Emma growing up, occasional memories incorporating Annalise and Emma, because they’d both been a big part of Keely’s life, especially during their teenage years. That day, there’d been laughter, tears, togetherness, but there’d been no Annalise.
The words were out, the accusation, before Emma could stop herself. ‘Is that why you didn’t come to Toby’s funeral? Because you thought it would upset me, or anyone else? Or was it that you were too busy with your new life to even care?’ Arms crossed in front of her, Emma got ready to shove past and get out of Annalise’s orbit.
Annalise’s mouth fell open. ‘I… I…’
She choked back a sob. ‘My brother died and you weren’t there for me.’ And it hurt just as much now as it had done almost eighteen years ago. Annalise not showing up to Toby’s funeral – no matter whether they were on speaking terms or not – had been a huge slap in the face for Emma. As well as everything else that had gone on, Annalise’s absence that day and in the days after had been something Emma had never been able to come back from.
‘I sent you emails, I sent letters.’ Annalise hooked her dark, wavy, bobbed hair behind her ear, causing the sapphire and diamond teardrop earring on that side to wobble. ‘There was good reason for me not coming to the funeral, Emma.’
But Emma held up a hand. ‘I’m not listening to excuses. You weren’t there, for me, for my parents, for Toby. And you coming back here now was a bad idea, full stop. So please, just go away and leave me alone.’
She stalked into the kitchen and promptly burst into tears. Annalise had been her best friend and she’d never ever thought that would change. She’d never thought her friend would hurt her or not be on her side.
And Emma didn’t intend to make the mistake of ever letting Annalise get close again.