Chapter 9
So I’m in the walled garden attached to the garden centre as soon as it opens at nine o’clock on Saturday morning, wandering around with my sandals in one hand, enjoying the damp of the grass under my bare feet, when I sense someone staring at me.
She waves and smiles when I look up, heads over when I give her a little twitch of the hand and hitch of the lips in return.
“Lindsay?” she says, stopping in front of me. “Lindsay Lord?”
My stomach lurches. I have no idea who this is and clearly I should. I would have said she was a bit older than me. She might be someone’s big sister, I suppose. She’s dressed in serious busy-weekend gear, with a phone and keys in one hand and a water bottle dangling from one finger of the other.
“You don’t remember, do you?” she says. “Aileen.” She waits with her eyebrows raised. “Aileen Murdoch?” The eyebrows go up a bit further. “Aw, come on! The choir trip to Saint Andrews? When we were all sick on the bus? I was in your class for French, geography . . .”
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “Aileen?” I still can’t bring her to mind at all. “I’ve been— Recently, I’ve been finding— Maybe I need—”
But she’s not listening. “Pfft. I’ve lost a lot of weight. And my mum doesn’t cut my hair anymore.” Then she leans forward and hugs me. “I heard. How are you doing?”
For once I don’t have to find an answer to that unanswerable question because a man has come in through the turnstile, spotted us, and lifted his arms as if he’s been searching for hours. He stalks across the grass, making a beeline for Aileen.
“Hi,” he says, kissing her on one cheek and nodding at me. “I wondered where you’d got to. Are the kids in the café? Did you need anything lugged into the car?”
“David, this is Lindsay. Lindsay, David. No, I only bought plants. Thanks, though.”
“Right,” he says and turns my way. “Pleased to meet you.” He shakes my hand and gives a tight, closed-lips smile that doesn’t quite make it to his eyes.
He’s so much her other half they could have come in a set, Posh McBarbie and Celtic Ken.
They’ve got the same confident air, the same neat weekend clobber.
He’s even got the iron-grey hair Aileen would have if she didn’t dye it.
“Okay then,” she says. She squeezes my arm, turns on her heel and leaves. Her husband doesn’t go with her. He stands next to me watching her go.
“Uh,” I say, confused. “Can I help you with something?”
“What?” he says, turning to face me again.
“Shouldn’t you . . . ?” I gesture at Aileen’s back as she disappears through the turnstile.
“Oh!” His face softens. This smile shows straight teeth and goes all the way to his brown eyes, breaking out in two fans of fine lines that reach halfway down his cheeks. “We’re divorced. This is us handing over the kids on neutral territory.”
“Ah,” I said. “Right.”
“So you’re not a close friend then,” he goes on. “If you didn’t hear the saga.”
I feel it in my stomach again. Recognising when I shouldn’t, failing when I should, and now memory loss.
Even if I’ve explained away the visual stuff, I can’t ignore the rest of it anymore.
Everyone thinks it’s headaches that tip you off, but this is how it started with Kai too.
Only, I can’t blurt out to this complete stranger that I think I’ve got a brain tumour.
So I make something up. “I’m an old school friend and I’ve been overseas for a while,” I say, which is technically true.
“Are you okay?” he says, dipping his head to catch my eye.
“Um, well, I was abroad because I was married but . . .” I take the kind of big breath required to let me tell someone, but I can’t do it.
“It’s a long story,” I say instead. Then I wonder if that’s a strange thing to say.
Next I wonder if I’m editing because he’s quite attractive.
I can feel my neck starting to go red in patches.
I tell myself he is a million miles from being my type.
He’s wearing a signet ring, for God’s sake.
He dips his head again, even lower, looks up at me from under his brows and says, “Tell me the sordid details over a coffee?”
The red patches have joined up and I can feel my ears getting hot. I’m making heavy weather of not much, but my mouth is too dry to speak.
“Lindsay!” Chloe is marching across the grass. “Put that poor man down.”
My whole head is purple now. I can feel a line of sweat along my hairline.
“For God’s sake, Chloe. This is the husband of an old friend I just ran into.”
“Ex-husband,” says David.
“What old friend?” asks Chloe. “I’m your old friend.” I’ve always loved how possessive she is. There’s nothing like feeling wanted.
“Aileen Murdoch?” I say. “From school?” I still can’t remember the name or the face and I hope Chloe can’t either; then there’s nothing to explain away.
“Oh yeah,” Chloe says though. “Big Aileen.”
“She shrank,” I say. I try again. “You must have passed her in the café and didn’t recognise her either.”
“And so you’re the husband?” Chloe says, giving David a look up and down as if he’s a room in a client’s house that a cleaner on probation has submitted for her approval. “Well, well, well.”
“See?” he says to me. “She knows the sorry tale. Chloe, is it?”
“I would have asked for details anyway,” she tells him, “before I let my best friend get mixed up with you.”
“Chloe!” I say. “Behave yourself!” But then I add, “What details?” David snorts and I feel my flush start to take over again. “What I mean is, no one’s getting mixed up with anyone. We were just passing the time of day.”
“Very convincing,” Chloe says. “You always could lie to me so skilfully. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t ask a divorce case why his marriage broke up before you’d let him date me.”
“Have you been sniffing the Pledge?” I hiss at her. “Get a bloody grip.”
“I find it refreshing,” David says. “It was the usual thing, by the way. Another woman.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, that’s . . .”
“Very funny,” says Chloe. “You’re hysterical.”
“It was another woman!” David says, putting a hand on his chest in mock affront. Then he turns to me. “Not me, though. Her.” His smile has faded a bit.
“Oh,” I say again. “Poor you. I mean, did you know she was bi already or was it like a—”
“Ton of bricks, yes.”
“Although even at school . . .” says Chloe.
“So is that better or worse?” I ask him, ignoring her.
“Oh, better,” he says. “Miles better. I mean, with the best will in the world, you know?”
“Yes, yes, we know, great, excellent,” Chloe says. “So swap numbers.”
He takes his phone out and waits for me to recite my number but, instead of giving me his, he produces a business card—plain white, engraved in plain black—kisses me on one cheek, and leaves.
“You’re a maniac,” I tell Chloe as we both watch him walk away.
“Absolutely no arse at all,” Chloe says. “Does that bother you?”
But I’m looking at his card: David Minto LLM, CC, and a bunch of contact details. “What does ‘LLM’ stand for?” I ask her. “And ‘CC’?”
“Not a clue,” she says. “You need to fix your make-up. And you need to buy better make-up that doesn’t melt when you blush. And you really need to grow up and stop blushing.”
When I’m on my way to the toilet mirror, I catch sight of him driving a large, clean car with one teenage boy in the passenger seat and another one, identical but a bit smaller, in the back.
He toots the horn and gives me a wave. I see both boys’ faces shut down as if someone’s flipped a switch, instantly hostile. He’s not perfect, then.
But no one in my age range is going to be perfect, I tell myself, looking in the mirror over the row of sinks.
They’ll either be late starters who’ve got something wrong with them, or they’ll come with exes and kids who’ve been through stuff.
Like David Minto and his extra letters. And anyway, all I want to do is go on a date to see what it feels like.
I can’t deny how my spirits have lifted, though. I can explain not knowing Aileen, what with all the weight loss, and I didn’t think I recognised David. And right now the sinks and taps and plants on the windowsill are all in glorious, plump 3-D.
A cubicle door opens behind me and someone joins me at the sinks. She’s late middle age with a waxed jacket and a silk scarf round her neck. I don’t fake recognise her either.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Can I ask you something? Do you know what ‘LLM’ stands for? On a business card? Or ‘CC’? It’s nothing to do with plants or gardens.”
“I think ‘LLM’ is a master’s degree,” the woman says. “Certainly ‘CC’ is Crown counsel, so that would make sense.” Then she takes pity on me. “Advocate,” she says. “Barrister? Lawyer, you know. White wig, black robe.”
I go back out to tell Chloe but she’s already googled it. “Rumpole of the Bailey,” she tells me. “You lucky pig. The last time I swiped right, he was a driver for the Blood Transfusion Service. It creeped me out too much to let him touch me.”
She phones after dinner, another video call, not just to boast about how right she was, although she starts there. “See? See? You stopped thinking about it and did something else and bang! A lawyer drops right into your lap.”
“Yeah, you covered that over tea and cakes,” I say.
“Right, stop distracting me,” she says. “I’ve got news. We can get in to view the house tomorrow. It’s definitely for sale, so how early can you be ready?”
“Wait, what?” I say. “Wasn’t it definitely for sale before?”
John and Shelley are doing the dishes, but the clinking and sloshing have stopped. They’re listening.
“Still for sale, I mean,” Chloe says. “Nobody’s nipped in. But I’ve got to warn you: It’s a bit of a fixer.”
“I’ve seen Escape to the Country,” I tell her. “I watched the episode where it was a tin shack with a warning sign on the door and they couldn’t even go inside. I watched the episode where it was a field with an architect’s impression on a tablet.”
“It’s not a shack or a field.”
“Right then,” I say.