Chapter 7 #2
‘Is there nothing amongst all the clutter that you can get rid of?’
‘I should but… it’s hard. You get attached…’
She tilted her head. Perhaps it would do him good to come to one of her special Sunday afternoon events. The rain began to pelt down. Now wasn’t the time to mention it.
‘Well, if you change your mind, we’ve had an influx of toys. I know Jack loves board games and one’s come in to do with building dinosaurs. Maybe a visit will inspire you to declutter a bit.’
Callum gave a non-committal shrug, smiled again, and they said goodbye as a group of early Saturday night drinkers jostled past. Head down, coat collar up, she went to pass Crystoffees where Em used to work, breathing in the smell of joss sticks as the door opened.
‘Hey! Lili!’
It was as if fate was trying to intervene, to stop her continuing her investigations. She looked up. It was Paul, Em’s old manager.
‘Hold up,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a spare pasty that needs eating up tonight.’ He disappeared and came back with a bulging paper bag. ‘Right, better go and close up. I’m off to the cinema tonight.’
‘Thanks so much, Paul.’ But he’d already gone.
Back at the cottage, Lili hung up her coat, put on her slippers and poured out a glass of cold water. A clear head was needed. She settled on the sofa and took out her phone.
Autumn pot pourri filled the room with the aroma of pumpkin spice.
Smooth Radio played gently in the background.
She’d never lived alone until this year, moving straight from a life with her parents to one with Em, so she’d worked hard at filling the emptiness of the cottage with fragrances and sounds.
Lili had taken up crocheting, bought jigsaws and invested in a tin of coloured pencils and big drawing pad.
None of the hobbies had lasted. None of them had got rid of the void Em had left.
Not even the occasional date. Meg encouraged her to go through dating app profiles on their lunchbreak, but the idea of a romantic distraction didn’t work.
It was so not what Lili was about. One positive from her parents’ divorce was that each of them, in their own way, afterwards, showed their daughter the foundations of inner confidence.
‘If you ever have to compromise yourself to fit into a relationship then it’s not good, even if that partner is a good person,’ said Mum.
‘Pretending I was something I wasn’t slowly killed me,’ said Dad. ‘I should have spoken up earlier, stood up for who I was. It wasn’t your mum’s fault.’
Both those comments stuck with a young Lili and made her realise that the most important thing in life was honesty, through and through.
Right. No more procrastinating. Lili ran a finger over the phone’s screen and was about to go into Contacts when the corner cabinet caught her eye.
She and Em had laid out souvenirs from their trips.
They each collected something different.
For Em it was boxes of matches. She smoked back then, until her dad had a lung cancer scare and she wanted to support him stopping his forty-a-day habit.
Lili herself also stopped vaping, even though she enjoyed the faces Em would pull every time she tried a new flavour that her friend would deem sickly sweet.
Lili’s souvenirs were small ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree once a year, like the pair of clogs from Holland, and castanets from La Manga.
Where might Em have gone travelling this last year?
How dare she go without her!
Lili pressed dial, blocking out the possibility a total stranger might pick up.
Or would it be a stranger? Could it be someone she knew, playing a twisted joke?
What if dicko Sean… She’d bumped into him once, after the break-up.
He’d smiled and said hello in that smooth tone, as if nothing had happened.
Lili told him in no uncertain terms what a selfish, two-faced jerk he was.
His whole demeanour changed in an instant and Sean had snarled back that Lili had always been jealous of Em dating him; he’d scoffed at how she’d never had a boyfriend, little realising that had been her choice.
Could he have been playing a joke? No, no, no, she wouldn’t entertain that notion.
Surely even Sean couldn’t be that spiteful?
The phone rang out. And rang. Her stomach twisted and…
Oh. The call clicked into an automated voicemail.
Not Em’s usual recorded message. Lili went to speak but ended the call instead.
She hadn’t waited one year to simply speak to a digital voice.
As the radiators gurgled with hot water, Lili shivered and wrote a text.
Hey Bestie, let’s meet up. I can’t wait to see you again. It’s time us interlopers show Cornwall how to live it up again xx
She put a turtle emoji. They’d called themselves interlopers when they’d first moved down from the north. Truth was though, the rugged coastline and down-to-earth Cornish banter quickly felt like the perfect fit. An idea came into her head and she carried on typing.
It’s Halloween on Friday, how about then? We could dress up!
Determined not to obsessively keep checking her phone, Lili went for a long bath. She ate the pasty. Only then did she pull out the charger and look at the screen.
A message was waiting!
Sure, mate! Sounds good. Thursday gives me time to get back from Europe! Halloween? It’s got to be The Rough Tor in Bodmin then. See you at eight.
No emoji this time, but no matter! Whoop! Friday it was!
Lili stared at the words on the screen. My God. What was she doing? Was this really happening? This felt right, and Em did occasionally call her mate, although she wasn’t familiar with Bodmin.
See you then! xx
A sob escaped her lips. These messages shone a torch into what had felt like such a gloomy future. Lili knew that whatever the outcome, she was going to this meeting. If there was the slightest possibility that this was Em, it was worth it.