Chapter 11
BONNIE
Howard had been gone for five weeks and waking up without him beside her was just as painful for Bonnie now as it had been the first time. Would it ever get any easier? These days she wanted to shut out the entire world; she wasn’t sure she even wanted to be a part of it any more.
Bonnie had taken to sitting in Howard’s chair to feel a connection to him.
She’d even made it to midnight a couple of times, as if that kept her closer to her late husband.
The one thing she wouldn’t do, however, was set foot inside his beloved bookshop.
She’d closed Driftwick Bay Books and really she would rather it just disappeared off the face of the earth.
And yet, she still hadn’t made the call to the developers.
The letter was sitting in the letter rack and she’d deal with it eventually but not just yet.
She didn’t want to speak to anyone let alone them.
She swore her knees creaked as she climbed out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen.
She was sixty-six. Shuffling wasn’t for someone her age, was it?
But that’s all she could bear to do without Howard.
It was as if the simple act of lifting up a foot to take a step and then doing it over and over so you could get where you were going was too hard.
She picked up the post from the mat. She hoped there wouldn’t be something else to sort out – the paperwork and admin when someone died was never-ending.
It was upsetting, stressful, and she’d dealt with enough of it to last a lifetime.
She’d been on the phone to banks, insurance companies, the private pension company, the inland revenue.
It made the loss of someone so much more powerful when over and over again you had to share the fact that they had died, the date of their death, their full name and date of birth, each word a tiny bit sharper than the one before as it shot pain through your heart at the knowledge this was permanent. Howard was never coming back.
The post brought nothing of interest, just some junk mail and a council tax reminder, so she put the kettle on and took two mugs out of the cupboard. She dropped a teabag into each.
And then she just stared at the mugs. Two mugs, not one, and she’d made the same mistake every day since her darling Howard died.
She could still remember the first cup of tea Howard had given her.
It had been the summer of 1977, and on a rainy seafront in Blackpool he’d seen her waiting at the bus stop drenched from head to toe.
She’d been staying at her uncle’s and working on his ice-cream van.
She was allowed free time when the weather was bad and tourists fell away, and the weather that day was dreadful.
She’d gone in and out of the amusement arcades with her pennies, playing the slot machines, not winning much but enjoying herself and a summer of freedom in a new place, before she’d given up and gone to get the bus.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ came a voice next to her at the bus stop. It hadn’t been raining quite so hard when she got here but the bus was ten minutes late and now the downpour was worse and she was soaked. She looked into kind blueish grey eyes when the man asked, ‘Do you know when the next bus is due?’
‘Should be any minute now.’ She tried to smile, like it was perfectly normal to be standing here arms folded across her chest and shivering.
‘Here.’ He thrust his umbrella out and over her head, leaving himself to get wet.
‘You’ll get soaked.’ She put her hand on the shaft of the umbrella and pushed it back his way.
He hesitated before he stepped to her side so that they were both under cover. ‘Now neither of us will get wet.’
‘Or wetter? It’s a bit late for me.’ And she was pretty sure the blouse she was wearing would be see-through now it was so soaked.
‘I’ve got a thermos of tea. Would you like a cup?’
She barely hesitated because she was freezing. ‘Yes please.’ But she started to giggle.
‘What’s so funny?’ He removed a thermos from his rucksack, took the plastic cup off the top, passed it to her to hold.
‘Most guys your age would have alcohol in that, not tea.’
‘If any of my mates walk past, it’s beer, all right.’ He filled the plastic piece with the hot liquid. ‘We’ll take turns to drink.’
‘Thank you.’ It was hot but not so hot she couldn’t drink it gulp after gulp.
‘Another?’
‘No, your turn – you have one. You don’t want to catch a chill.’
And so it continued until the tea was gone and the bus finally came into sight. But by then the rain had stopped, the sun came out and the man, who had introduced himself as Howard, pointed upwards. ‘Look at that.’
‘A rainbow.’ She smiled. It was beautiful.
They got on the bus together and Howard insisted he get off at her stop to walk her to the front door.
He told her which campsite he was staying at with friends and asked whether she would like to see him again.
Bonnie had thought he’d make a move on her, try to kiss her or something, but he hadn’t.
And she’d told him that of course she would love to see him again.
He was so polite, unexpected, she couldn’t imagine not saying yes.
Bonnie visited the campsite the next day as they’d agreed – she was almost forty-five minutes earlier than the time they settled on though because she’d been worried about being late – and found Howard on a fold-out chair behind the toilet block after she’d walked around unable to locate him in the part of the field he’d told her his tent was pitched.
‘Whatever are you doing here?’ She pulled a face, looking up at the high windows at the back of the block.
‘The boys think I’m still in the toilet.’ He held up the book on his lap, a hefty tome by the looks of things. ‘Only way I get some peace.’ He stood up and offered her the chair.
‘No thanks.’ She shook her head. ‘So, you have to pretend you’ve got alcohol not tea and you have to hide away to read?’
‘Crazy, I know. I’ve had a brill holiday, they’re good mates, just that I am a bit of a nerd really. Always was at school. Still am at twenty-four.’
‘I’m nineteen.’ She hoped that didn’t make this a bad thing. She wasn’t sure her uncle would approve or her parents, as it was quite the age gap.
‘Good to know.’ He smiled.
‘I wasn’t a nerd at school like you were,’ she teased, ‘but I’m working a bit harder now I’m training to be a nurse.’
‘So the ice-cream van will lose you soon.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m just helping out family with that. There isn’t much to do here on a visit. What do you do? For work, I mean?’
‘I’m in the civil service.’
‘And what do you do in the civil service?’
‘I’m in administration. Which sounds dull, but I don’t mind it. I’m learning all the time. Who knows what I’ll get into next.’
She liked his response. It sounded mysterious, like there was more to this man than she realised. She could imagine him in an administration role – he’d be organised, patient, do things right. She wasn’t sure why she knew this; she just did.
She looked at his book. ‘That looks heavy.’ She took it when he passed it her way. She was right.
‘Do you read, Bonnie?’ he asked, relieving her of the weight of it.
‘I had to for my studies, but not for pleasure, no.’
‘You’re missing out.’
‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘I like real life, me.’
Except right now in her kitchen on her own in their cottage in Driftwick Bay she’d rather have anything but her real life.
She took her tea into the back room and set it on the desk. Howard’s books hogged the shelves behind and his laptop was exactly where he’d left it. He’d had a habit of always leaving it open and she’d come along and close it so that dust didn’t gather between the keys.
She picked up her mug of tea and turned to look at the painting of the ice-cream van she’d done in the summer of 1977.
On the day she’d gone to meet Howard at the campsite, she’d had a later shift at the ice-cream van.
She’d told Howard to stop by just after 4 p.m. as that was usually when her uncle took his break.
She might only be nineteen, but had already been married once – something she knew she ought to explain to Howard sooner rather than later, because after the terrible time with her first husband, her family, immediate and extended, kept a watchful eye on her.
Howard had turned up promptly at 4 p.m. and standing behind three others in the queue he’d not taken his eyes off her.
She knew he was watching her every move and she’d tried to act nonchalant, like she wasn’t nervous at all.
But her hand shook as she took the change from the elderly gentleman buying a cider lolly and a 99 before she looked up as if she’d only just realised Howard was there.
‘Four p.m. already,’ she said.
‘Looks like it.’
She leaned onto the counter. She was way more nervous than she’d been seeing him that morning and she knew it was because she liked him so much. They hadn’t spent much time together but already he made her feel safe, which was odd – she didn’t know him that well, so how was that even possible?
She spotted the rucksack on his back again. ‘You got a book in that bag?’
‘Never leave home, or the tent, without one. And besides, if the boys find my book back at the campsite, it’ll be destroyed and that would be a crime.’
‘Where do they think you are now?’
‘I told them I was going to walk all the way to the pier. That put them off.’
‘You’re on holiday with them. Don’t you want to do things together, like go out and meet girls?’ She expected that was what they were all here for like many of the big single-sex groups.
‘I’ve already met my girl.’
Flustered, she served another lady three mini milks. A young boy wanted a tongue twister and a girl with dreadlocks rushed up with a request for a strawberry split.
When it was all quiet again, she asked Howard what he would like.
‘What would you suggest?’