Authors: Julie Cohen
But he takes a deep breath.
‘I’ve done it myself,’ he says. ‘You wake up and the bus is noisy. You think you’re on the road somewhere between New York and Ohio. Or Paris and Geneva. Or Sydney and Melbourne. The bus is
always the same inside, so you could be anywhere. The windows are tinted and the engine is running. You get up, thinking you’re moving, and there’s no one else on it, and you find out that you’re in a car park and everyone else has gone for a shower.’
I know what he’s doing: he’s talking about something else so that he doesn’t have to talk about the painful thing. I do it too. He’s rubbing the
tips of his fingers on the arm of his chair, as if he’s trying to get rid of an itch. And he’s lapsed into silence again. But I think he needs to talk about the painful thing, to let it out. It’s weighing him down.
‘Tell me about Lee,’ I say.
‘He was a sound engineer. A bloody good one. We met years ago and kept on recommending each other for jobs so we could work together. He was sick of travelling,
though. He wanted to stop and settle down, spend some more time with his wife. That was the last thing we talked about, in fact. He said he should go back to his wife, and I should go and visit my daughter.’ He rubs his fingers harder on the chair, hard enough to leave a dent in the leather. ‘I didn’t want him to stop touring. I wanted him to keep on going. Even though I knew he was right,
because touring was going to ruin his marriage as much as it ruined my being a father. Because I knew that if he stopped, if he stayed with Petra, I’d be lonely without him. How pathetic is that?’
‘And what happened?’
‘We were in Texas. I really bloody hate Texas. It goes on forever.’ He closes his eyes, and speaks like that. ‘It was my birthday so Lee and I were drinking rum. It was something
like four in the morning, so I suppose it wasn’t my birthday any more, but we were pissed and everyone else on the bus was asleep. We were supposed to be stopping in Amarillo. We had hotel rooms there for the day. So Lee had given me a couple of Cuban cigars as a birthday present and we got off the bus to smoke them.’
His life is so different from mine, I think. Travelling and drinking, smoking
cigars. Life on the road, with no connection to any of the places you pass through: is this what walking lightly is like?
‘Except the bus hadn’t stopped,’ says Ewan. ‘It was still going at seventy miles an hour when Lee stepped out.’
He holds out his right hand, the one that he’s been rubbing on the arm of his chair.
‘I tried to catch him. I had hold of him, or nearly. I could feel his shirt
right here, in my fingers, and then I didn’t. He was gone. I still feel it here. It won’t go away. I still feel it.’
He spreads out his fingers in the air. Each one imprinted with memory.
‘
BUT THAT’S NOT
your fault,’ Felicity said. ‘Shouldn’t the bus door have been locked?’
‘He was on the bus because of me. He was drinking because of me. I wanted to go outside for a smoke. It should have been me opening that door, not him.’
He hadn’t told anyone about Lee, hadn’t discussed it with anyone who didn’t already know, and avoided discussing it with people who did, which was pretty
much everyone in the business. He had never admitted his guilt out loud, though he knew he wore it on his face like a scar. He had told the doctor that he had bad dreams, but not what they were about.
Not about the wind, the sound. The way he woke up feeling the back of Lee’s shirt on the tips of his fingers, how he felt that every time he tried to play guitar.
Why was he telling Felicity Bloom
all this? A random woman from his past, someone he had never thought to meet again?
Because she had saved his life. She had caught the back of his shirt and stopped him from leaping.
‘I can understand why you feel guilty,’ said Felicity. ‘But that’s not the same as actual guilt. Would Lee have blamed you?’
‘He would, if he’d known what I was thinking. How I didn’t want him to go off to be happy
with Petra.’
‘It’s not what we think that matters. It’s what we do.’ She ducked her head when she said it, and began playing with the hem of her skirt. ‘What does Petra say? Does she blame you?’
‘I haven’t spoken to her. I didn’t go to the funeral. It was too much.’
‘But you need to speak to her. How can you even start to forgive yourself if you haven’t heard that she forgives you too?’
‘I
don’t think I want to forgive myself.’
She looked up then, and met his gaze. She looked at him for what seemed like a very long time. It was so late that there was barely any noise from outside on the street. He found himself remembering what she felt like in his arms, not a few days ago, but ten years ago. When they were lovers, and it had seemed like anything was possible.
‘Okay,’ she said
softly. ‘Okay. I understand that, too. But maybe you can do something that will help someone else. Maybe that will make you feel better.’
‘How can I help anyone?’
‘Do what Lee told you to. His final request, if it was what you were talking about just before he died. Go and see your daughter.’
‘That won’t help anyone.’
‘It might help you.’
He tipped his head back on the chair and looked up
at the ceiling. ‘I thought I’d forgotten all about that painting. But I’ve been thinking about it since you turned up and told me about Esther. It was full of flowers, wasn’t it?’
‘Frangipani.’ Her voice was even quieter.
‘It’s odd to think about it still being out there in the world, unchanged. I’m still young, those flowers are still alive. You were still there in the room with me and we were
lovers. When really, everything that produced that picture is dead.’
The room, nearly silent. Far away, the whisper of a car passing.
‘It’s not all dead,’ Felicity said.
She was still looking at him and when he met her gaze again he could feel an attraction deep in his belly. A cord binding him to her, something he’d nearly forgotten but now, tonight, as fresh as the first time he’d seen her,
a bright summer daytime.
Felicity didn’t move from the sofa. He remembered how she’d flung her arms around him in the park in Greenwich, as if no time had passed.
‘Does your husband know you’re here?’ he asked her.
‘No.’
That hadn’t been her husband on the phone, then. This husband of hers seemed to be often missing. But the fact of him stood in the room between them. ‘Don’t you think he should
know?’
‘There are a lot of things I can’t tell him. Not yet, anyway.’
‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you a cab.’ But he didn’t get up to fetch his phone.
‘Will you sleep?’ she asked.
‘I doubt it.’
‘I don’t think you should be alone tonight. Not after talking about all of this.’
‘What am I going to do? You’ve poured my suicide kit down the drain.’
‘You’ve already listed several other ways
you could kill yourself.’
‘Flick, I’m guilty enough as it is. Go back to your husband.’
She dropped her gaze. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said to her lap.
They were both poised to fall. Or step back safely. Unlike on the bus, he could think, this time. He could choose.
Experience told him that the most appealing choice would probably be the worst.
He got up, but he didn’t go to her. Didn’t
sit beside her, didn’t take her head in his hands and kiss her.
‘You can have a blanket and a pillow from my bed,’ he said. ‘The sofa is pretty comfortable, and I’ll buy you a bacon butty in the morning. To thank you for saving my life.’
‘
IT WAS ON
this corner,’ I say. ‘I’m sure of it. Look, this is the pub, and then there was a newsagent, and then there was a launderette, and then there was the café. Here.’ I point to a block of flats where the café used to be. A block of 1960s flats. Their architecture stubbornly insists that they have been standing here for a good forty years before I ever had a coffee with
Ewan in this location. ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘It was on the other side of the road,’ says Ewan.
‘I was certain it was on the right.’
‘Look at the windows.’ I examine them: plate glass, wide and tall, framed in black. Yes, that’s where the gingham curtains used to be. But now it’s a chemist, with displays of sun cream and allergy medication.
‘So much for a bacon butty,’ I say.
I’m not hungry, to tell
the truth. I feel a bit hungover: fuzzy-brained, vague, headachy. I didn’t get much sleep on Ewan’s sofa last night, and what I did get was fitful. Every time I moved, the leather cushions squeaked, and I could hear Ewan in the next room. I lay awake, dreading the scent of frangipani, something that would propel me off the sofa and into the bedroom, where I would either make a fool of myself or
even worse, he would welcome me.
The scent didn’t come. I was awoken by a text from Quinn:
Good night out?
Too much tequila
, I texted back to him.
Talk to you later
.
It’s the first outright lie I’ve told to him. When Ewan came into the living room, rubbing his hair dry on a towel, I told him I needed a walk to clear my head before I had the breakfast he’d promised me.
But the walk hasn’t cleared
my head. It’s hot already, though it’s before ten o’clock. I’m still wearing my going-out clothes, my hair bundled into an elastic. I’ve done the best I can with a wet flannel to erase the mascara trails under my eyes, but I feel as if I’m on what we used to call the Walk of Shame, where everyone can tell that you’ve been out all night. Perversely, this doesn’t make me feel like a mess; it
makes me feel sexy.
Dammit.
I should not be allowing myself to feel sexy. I’m with Ewan because he needs my help. Last night, lying awake, it occurred to me that perhaps the memories I’ve been having are a different kind of sign than I’d thought. Perhaps they’ve led me to Ewan because he needed me there, in his life, at that precise moment. Perhaps it has nothing to do with attraction, or feeling
in love.
And yet I’ve lied to Quinn.
‘There are plenty of other cafés,’ says Ewan.
‘I don’t think I even fancy a bacon sandwich,’ I say. ‘I’m too hot.’ And I should be getting back to Canary Wharf, to have a shower and wash myself back into my normal life. But I’m reluctant to leave Ewan. I don’t think he’s in imminent danger of committing suicide, not today; he seems more cheerful this morning,
as if it’s helped him to admit what happened with Lee. It will probably get bad for him again, but today is a good day. And on a good day, he’s so much more like the man I remember.
‘I might have a better idea.’ Ewan starts striding purposefully down the road. Around the corner there’s a park, with a few toddlers playing in the sunshine while their mothers sit under trees with the buggies. An
ice-cream van idles on the corner, the driver reading the
Sun
. Ewan goes straight up to it and in a few minutes he’s back with two enormous cornets, each with a Flake.
‘Ice cream for breakfast?’ I ask him, taking mine.
‘Why not?’ He licks his. ‘We’re grown-ups. Bench?’
We sit together on a bench, eating our ice creams and watching East London go by around us. Whippy soft ice cream is, in fact,
the perfect breakfast on a day like today. And this is exactly the sort of thing that Ewan and I would have done ten years ago, with no jobs, no responsibilities. Except ten years ago we wouldn’t have been able to keep our hands off each other.
‘Let’s do whatever we want today,’ I say, and then realize that could be misconstrued as being sexual. My cheeks heating, I amend, ‘Let’s wander around
London and look at whatever we fancy. Eat whatever we want, drink whatever we want. Just spend a day being alive.’
‘You’re trying to convince me that life is good, aren’t you? That it’s worth living?’
‘I don’t think I can do that with a day wandering around London. This isn’t a Christmas movie. I think you need to see a professional, Ewan. If you’re having suicidal feelings, you can’t mess around.
You need to work out some stuff. Promise me you’ll do that?’ I turn and look directly at him; he’s mid-lick, but he swallows and presses his lips together.
‘Promise,’ I insist. ‘In words.’
‘Okay. I’ll see a doctor.’
I look hard at him. ‘I’m not certain I believe you.’
‘I’ll spit in my palm and shake your hand if you want, but you might get a bit of Flake in it.’
‘Call your GP right now and
make an appointment. Then I’ll be satisfied.’
I watch him call and make the appointment for later in the week. I am aware that in some ways I am being a hypocrite.
‘Okay, and also put the Samaritans’ number into your phone. In fact, give it to me and I’ll do it for you.’
He hands it over, still warm, and I look up the number. When I open his contacts list I see that he still has Alana’s number,
right at the top. I make a new entry for the Samaritans. ‘I’ll call them Sammy. And here’s my number too.’
As I’m keying it in, I think that this might be a dangerous thing to do. But I can’t imagine Quinn ever checking mine or anyone else’s phone. He’s far too principled and trusting for that; he doesn’t even have a lock for his bicycle, even though there’s a nine-year-old poised to steal it
at any moment.
Of course this makes it much easier for me to betray him. I swallow and close my eyes for a moment, dizzy at the enormity of what I’m doing.
I send Ewan’s number to my phone. And because he’s not watching me, but gazing across the park, I send Alana’s number, too. In case anything happens to Ewan and I need to tell his next-of-kin.
‘There,’ I say, hearing my own phone dinging
twice as it receives the numbers. ‘Done.’ I give him his phone back and resume licking my ice cream.
‘So, a day wandering around London,’ he says. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do? Job to go to? Husband to see?’
‘This is the most important thing I have to do today.’ I throw my slightly ice-creamy serviette into the bin, and stand up. ‘Ready to go?’
The day is hot, so we don’t cover as
much ground as we might have done otherwise. We pop into a vinyl-record shop where Ewan educates me about the bands I’ve been missing all of my life. We jump on a bus and ride for a bit on the top deck, until the heat drives us off it. For lunch we buy cold samosas and chunks of watermelon from an Asian grocery and find another park so we can spit the seeds at each other. The juice runs down my arm
and wets the sleeve of my dress. By early afternoon my feet are beginning to hurt in my going-out shoes, so I buy a cheap pair of flip-flops. The pavement burns through them with every step.