Authors: Kate Eberlen
Midday passed with us all hoping for a sudden miraculous break in the weather. Nobody said anything. After waiting for a good hour with no sign of it letting up, my father suddenly turned on the
ignition and drove us back to Yarmouth, his fury at the failure of the mission as overpowering in the confined interior of the BMW as the scent of the lilies.
‘How about we drop them over the side of the ferry?’ he finally suggested as we approached the town.
‘Why don’t we go to the little jetty by the pub instead?’ said my mother, glancing round to enlist my support. ‘Where you used to go crabbing?’
As we made our sorry little procession down the slippery boardwalk under a golf umbrella that didn’t cover all of us, I wondered why Ross couldn’t have a normal grave in a place that
was already sad instead of turning this whole island, with its sunny childhood memories of sandcastles and ice cream, into a rainy place where we could never be happy again.
At the end of the jetty, Mum struggled with the crackly florist’s cellophane on the lilies before finally ripping it off and passing it back to me to hold while the two of them performed
the flower throwing.
‘One, two, three!’
Their eyes were closed as they hurled, as if they were making a wish. The bouquet plopped onto the water. We stood watching it bob about, pelted by the rain. I found myself willing it not to
sink, because that would somehow feel wrong, and yet not be washed inshore by the swell in case we had to go through the whole ritual again. After a couple of minutes, I thought perhaps it would be
better if it did sink, because we were never going to leave unless something happened.
My mother finally sighed and said, with a fond smile in her voice, ‘I bet he’s gone twice round the world already.’
‘I bet he has!’ my father agreed heartily.
Even Ross’s ashes were adventurous and heroic.
They both turned and stared at me as if they’d forgotten I was there.
They’d have preferred it to be me, Ross.
Of course they would.
We drove home in silence.
My mother went straight upstairs. My father poured himself a Scotch and switched on the Hogmanay celebrations.
In my room, I lay staring at the black window, remembering how I used to listen to the murmur of grown-ups at my parents’ cheese-and-wine parties downstairs, or my father’s sporadic
guffawing at Ross’s stories as they shared a single-malt whisky or two. Now, only the splashes of canned laughter from the show on television blotted my mother’s stifled sobbing in
Ross’s room next door.
I opened the window, sticking my face out into the cold, still air, amazed at how dark and silent it was now that the rain had stopped. In London, it never got properly dark; there was always a
fine orange gauze over the night sky. I thought about Bonfire Night and Lucy’s face all golden as she gazed up with child-like wonder at shimmering palms of iridescence in the sky. In London,
it was never completely quiet. There was always the rumble of an Underground train or the nerve-jangling shriek of a car alarm.
As my ears adjusted to the silence, I became aware of the slight reverberation of party music from some distant home. It stopped for the countdown to midnight; a faraway crowd of strangers
shouting, ‘Five, Four, Three, Two, One!’ amid a discordant blast of party hooters; a confident first line of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ trailing away into the base thump of dance
music.
The sky was now clear. There were probably millions of people in the world gazing up at the twinkling universe, fixing resolutions on the stars.
Closing the window, I rifled through my bag until I found the piece of paper on which Lucy had written her number, then I ran downstairs and dialled it before I could change my mind.
‘Who’s calling?’ the woman asked.
I could hear a buzz of people celebrating in the background.
‘Gus,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as quiet as possible, so there was no chance of my parents overhearing.
I thought I heard her say, ‘It’s him!’ Then Lucy was on the line.
‘Happy New Year!’ I said.
‘Happy New Year!’
There was a slight pause, then we both spoke at once.
‘You know we said about meeting . . .’
‘Look, d’you fancy meeting . . . ?’
Nervous laughter.
‘OK if I come tomorrow?’
The familiar shape of Lucy’s duffle coat and her beaming face when she spotted me walking down the platform towards her brought life streaming back into my blood.
I’d told my parents I’d decided to go back to London early so that I could revise. It felt satisfyingly rebellious, as if I was running away from home.
Lucy drove us to the seafront. It had only been two weeks since we had seen each other, but she was full of news. Bright, happy, normal news about going to a school reunion to pick up her
A-level certificates, and shopping with her sister at the sales in Bluewater, and the pantomime they’d taken her little niece Chloe to at the Winter Gardens in Margate, where they’d had
to leave at the interval because the child was terrified by the dame.
I told her about my trips to the National Theatre, which seemed a long time ago now.
‘On your own? Wasn’t that a bit strange?’
‘I suppose so,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe we could go together sometime?’
‘Definitely,’ she said.
We parked in one of the narrow little streets that led down to the beach. She handled the car with enviable confidence, backing into a tight space right next to the kerb.
‘So how was your Christmas?’ she asked.
I didn’t have any funny stories like her Granny Cynthia, who apparently suffered from mild dementia, pouring the water jug over the Christmas pudding to put out the flames.
‘Quiet,’ I said.
It wasn’t like the seaside I knew. On the Isle of Wight, there was fine pale sand, like caster sugar, but here it was coarse and dark, like builders’ sand, and shelved so steeply
into the Channel that it was a struggle to keep a footing. We had to dig in the edges of our trainers to stay upright. The first time Lucy slid away from me down the slope I grabbed her gloved hand
to pull her back up and let go as soon as she was stable again. The second time, I kept her hand in mine as we climbed up to the promenade high above the beach.
‘Let’s get a coffee!’ I suggested as we passed the window of a retro Italian cafe.
The steamy warmth inside relaxed the tension.
‘This place is famous for its ice cream,’ Lucy said, then ordered a hot chocolate for herself.
‘I’ll have a Knickerbocker Glory,’ I told the waitress, then saw Lucy was laughing. ‘What? I love ice cream!’
‘You’re so . . .’ She searched for a word.
‘Stupid?’
‘Original.’ Lucy chose the word carefully.
‘Is that all right?’ I asked.
‘It’s lovely!’ she reassured me, then blushed, as if she’d said too much.
‘You’re lovely,’ I heard myself saying.
My hand stretched across the pink Formica table. She had taken her gloves off but her fingers felt cold. I kneaded them gently in mine, releasing her hand quickly when the waitress returned with
our order.
Lucy sipped her tall glass mug, then replaced it on the table.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘The cream on top is fluffy, but the liquid underneath is boiling . . .’
‘Did you burn your mouth?’
‘A little.’
‘Have some ice cream.’
I gouged out a quenelle of vanilla and offered it across the table on the long spoon. She hesitated before opening her lips for it. I felt a twitch of arousal in my groin as she took the whole
spoonful and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin.
‘Better?’ I asked.
‘Yes, thank you, doctor!’
The silence that followed was charged with unspoken thoughts as I delved and swallowed and she stirred her drink, spoon clinking occasionally against glass.
‘We could go back to my house, if you like,’ she said.
‘OK,’ I said, cautiously, wondering if jeans and a checked shirt were suitable for meeting her family.
‘My parents are taking Granny Cee back to Rye.’ ‘Rye?’ I repeated.
‘She’s in a home. Just outside Rye.’
‘That’s quite a drive, isn’t it?’ I wasn’t really talking about the distance.
‘About an hour and a half. They’ll stay for tea.’ Nor was she.
Lucy carried on stirring her hot chocolate.
‘Why don’t I put some more ice cream in that? Cool it down?’
She giggled. ‘You’re funny . . .’
I knew I wasn’t very funny, or original, for that matter, but in her company, I felt as if I was all right, as if my frozen emotions were gradually beginning to thaw.
The family home was in a leafy private estate on the outskirts of town. A large detached house with mock-Tudor features, half-timbered gables and a stained-glass crest in the
front door, it was built in an era when land was plentiful and people who could afford places like this expected a decent garden, front and back. There was a Volvo parked on the semicircular drive
as we pulled in, making me fear that something had prevented her parents from going to Rye. Lucy read my mind. The car was her mother’s, she told me. They’d gone in her father’s
Audi. The Renault Clio we were in was shared with her middle sister.
‘How many sisters do you have?’ I asked, finding it increasingly difficult to make small talk in the anticipation of what might be about to happen.
‘Two. The oldest, Helen, is married and has Chloe and a baby on the way. The middle one, Pippa, is in Canada at the moment.’
‘Are you close?’
‘We’re all very different, but we get on quite well. I can’t imagine what it’s like being on your own . . .’ Lucy gave me such a searching look that I wondered if
she’d guessed.
I’d never directly lied to her about Ross, but I knew this was an opportunity to correct the mis-impression, possibly the last chance that I would have and still get away with it.
I said nothing.
Ironically, Ross used to say I was a hopeless liar because I couldn’t come up with excuses quickly enough. Back then, my silences had given me away. Now they seemed to make me a little bit
mysterious and unknowable.
‘No wonder you’re so . . .’ Lucy searched for the right word.
I hoped she wasn’t going to say ‘spoilt’. That’s what only children were usually called, wasn’t it?
‘Self-contained.’
The spacious hall was littered with bright plastic children’s toys. A ride-along yellow horse with a blue mane towered like a giant over the scattering of much smaller farm and zoo
animals.
‘Mum looks after my niece two days a week,’ Lucy said. ‘So Helen can work part-time.’
‘What does Helen do?’
‘She’s a GP.’
Lucy’s father was a GP, her mother a health visitor, one sister a GP, the other training to be a physiotherapist. I imagined how eager my father would be to impress in this set-up.
‘Coffee?’ Lucy asked.
I followed her into a large kitchen diner, which, unlike ours, was filled with all the paraphernalia a happy family generates – unmatching fridge magnets with lists, taxi cards and
children’s drawings; opened boxes of cereal on the table; a bowl of cat food and one of water on the floor.
‘Excuse the mess,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you’d be coming back.’
‘I like it.’
She looked at me as if I was joking. The whoosh of water filling the kettle seemed inordinately loud.
I jumped as I felt something furry around my legs and looked down to see a large ginger cat.
‘That’s Marmalade. He doesn’t normally like strangers! Do you have any pets?
‘I had a guinea pig when I was little, but a fox got him.’
‘Oh!’ Lucy’s face fell and I kicked myself for putting a downer on things.
We seemed to have gone back to square one. Or maybe even further than that, as if we had just met and were struggling to make conversation.
‘Coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee. Please.’
The jar of instant coffee on the counter had only one serving left. Lucy stretched to get another from the cupboard above.
‘Here, let me . . .’
One moment I was behind her, my arm reaching for the jar, the next, she had turned to face me, and we were kissing, and, with my eyes tight closed, all I could hear was the bubbling of the
kettle as the water heated to boiling point, and then clicked off.
She tasted of chocolate. All I wanted to do was kiss and kiss her again, cupping her face in my hands, inhaling the lemon scent of her shiny hair. At first, she stood with arms passively by her
side, but as I drew away to look at her, she placed her hands softly on the small of my back at the precise spot that made me squirm and harden with pleasure.
Then she took my hand and led me out of the kitchen.
I wanted to kick aside the toys and do it on the parquet floor of the hall; on the carpeted stairs, the edges pressing into our backs; on the landing, the two of us reflected in the full-length
mirror on the wall.
‘I haven’t got any . . .’ I stuttered, as she opened a door with a little painted china plaque saying
Lucy’s room
.
‘It’s OK. I’m on the Pill,’ she whispered.
The statement was so clinical and unexpected, the spontaneity vanished, along with my erection.
All sorts of questions were racing around my head as I watched Lucy undress, folding each item in a neat pile on the stool of her dressing table. I had assumed that, like me, she was a virgin,
with no one to compare me to. Had she planned this, and if so, for how long? And why hadn’t I known? Or had she been having sex with other people? Not Toby, surely?
When she was down to a bra and panties, she lifted the corner of her duvet and got into bed and then I wished that I had undressed with her, because now she was looking at me. I turned away,
took off my shirt, jeans and socks, and got into bed with my boxers still on. It was a single bed. There was no way we could lie without touching, but neither of us dared move.
My feet were sticking out. She was completely motionless. How weird we would look if someone walked in now! Had she changed her mind? Or was she waiting for me? In the kitchen, my need had been
so urgent, I could barely hold myself together. Now, I didn’t know how to begin.