Authors: Lucie Whitehouse
The café was quiet even for a Monday. Mary had come in to get on with the baking and I served the handful of customers and tried to stay out of the kitchen. Her usual harried air had been replaced by one of complete absorption, but there was an edge to her mood that made me hesitate to bring up the question of swapping my days. Eventually, though, at half three, when the last of the lunchtime stragglers had left and I’d finished the clean-up, I stuck my head round the door and asked.
‘Tomorrow? OK. It’s short notice but OK; I should be able to manage.’
‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance. I need to go to London.’
She filled the last of the muffin cases, sliding the mixture off the spoon with the side of her little finger, and turned to look at me. ‘I have to ask,’ she said. ‘Is it true what I hear on the vine, that you’re seeing Pete Frewin?’
I hesitated, then decided just to be straight. ‘Yes. It’s a new thing, though – really new.’
She reached for the oven gloves and put them on. ‘Well, it’s quick but life’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? You have to take it when it comes. I hope it works out for you. You both deserve a bit of happiness.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, touched.
‘Is there anyone left?’
‘Oh. No, that was the last of them.’
‘Why don’t you head off then? I’ve nearly finished and there’s no point both of us being here when we’re empty. Buzz off – I’m sure you’ve got better things to do. Go and buy a dress; that’s what people do when they’ve got a new boyfriend, isn’t it?’
Crossing the Square, I’d had the thought that I would spend the unexpected remainder of the afternoon and the evening trying to get to grips with the translation again but as soon as I walked through the door of the cottage, I changed my mind. The house was silent, the hum of the fridge and the clicking of the pipes when I filled the kettle for tea too loud. It would make me jumpy to sit here on my own for hours, waiting for it to get dark. On a whim, I put my jacket back on and went out to the car. I would take Mary’s idea and go shopping, find something new to be wearing when Pete came through the door later on. Apart from the evening of the supper when I’d worn that old woollen grey dress, he’d only ever seen me in jeans and jumpers; I would surprise him.
I took the left at the garage in Shalfleet and went via the lanes to Cowes. Out in the woods round Porchfield the trees were infused with the golden light of late afternoon, which spotted through the new leaves on to the windscreen and the road. Everything was lush and fresh and green; the grass on the verges growing long with the warmth, wild daffodils still visible here and there in shaded spots. The sky was cloud-free, marked only by a vapour trail feathering out into the blue.
I hadn’t been to Cowes again since the day after the supper, when anything between Pete and me seemed impossible. I knew I’d felt a sort of resistance to it when I’d come to the Island, a desire to stay away from the places which were most like London. The summer regatta drew people from all over the world but even the rest of the year, Cowes felt too cosmopolitan: my Isle of Wight had been the one running twenty years behind the rest of southern England. Today, though, I wanted a degree of urbanity.
I parked the car on the seafront again and took the passageway up from the parade to the top of the old-fashioned High Street. Barely a car’s width at the top, it had none of the usual names; instead there were cafés, a couple of art galleries, an ice-cream parlour, a newsagent’s, even a wool shop which I was sure had been there when I was a child. There were a lot of places selling yachting wear, of course, and a couple of dusty ladies’ dress shops fronted by demure mannequins but nowhere that looked as though it might sell what I had in mind.
It didn’t really matter. Just being here was a good thing, away from the cottage and surrounded by other people going about normal business. My phone was in my bag, in the pocket at the side where I would be able to put my hand on it in a second. It didn’t ring, though, and there were no text messages, either from Pete, whom I’d hoped might write between meetings, or from Helen.
Don’t think about it now
, I told myself;
wait until tomorrow
.
About halfway down the High Street there was a gift shop which also sold things for the house: vases and teapots and glasses. I went in to spend a few minutes browsing and at the back discovered a single rail of clothes on which was hanging an emerald dress in soft jersey fabric. I took it into the changing room and knew at once I had to buy it: it clung in all the right places, skimming my shape in a way that I thought Pete would appreciate. While I waited for the girl behind the counter to wrap it in tissue, I let my eyes wander over the rest of the stock, the cushions and lamps and candlesticks. Here was everything, I thought, that Pete’s house lacked: the individual things, personalising touches. I felt an urge to go wild and buy it all but then I stopped.
It was Pete and Alice’s house. I couldn’t just move in and start changing things. I imagined how I would have reacted if Dad had met someone else straight after my mother had gone, how Matt and I would have felt to watch her shipping her things in. No, anything I changed would have to be minimal, incremental. Even if I couldn’t feel Alice in the house, Pete would see her shadow everywhere; his memories of their life there would be fresh and vivid. Were all her personal things – her hairbrushes, her clothes, her scent – still laid out in their bedroom just as she’d left them? Dad had kept everything my mother had left behind, all the half-empty bottles of hand-cream and body lotion that she hadn’t thought worth carting back to France. He’d kept them for years, arrayed on her dressing table as if she might be back to use them at any time.
As I slipped my card back into my purse, I was sideswiped by the thought I had been holding at arm’s length: was Pete really ready? Or was he just someone who needed a relationship, trying to buy off his grief and loneliness by jumping into something new? I thought of the conversation on Saturday night, how he’d said he’d think about her for ever. I stumbled out of the shop, the bag with the new dress held tightly against my chest.
Further up the High Street there was a café-bar, its double doors open to the street. I went in and ordered a glass of wine which I took to one of the tables by a long window overlooking the Solent. Though it was just before six, I was the only customer. The sun was mellowing and casting a sheen over the water so that the little boats at the mouth of the river seemed to be coming and going in molten gold. I sipped the wine and reasoned with myself, remembering Pete’s kindness, his concern about Richard, the way he had held me in the dark, telling me that we would be happy. At once there was an ache in my chest, a resonant emptiness. That wasn’t manufactured; it was real. One had to take happiness where one found it; Mary was right. I had to have faith.
An earlier customer had left a copy of the
County Press
at the next table. I retrieved it, hoping to distract myself from further negativity. The local news here was my news now that I was staying; I wasn’t going to be a temporary resident any more but a permanent overner. Moving the wine off the table on to the windowsill to accommodate the paper’s pterodactyl wingspan, I started scanning the stories of council meetings and yacht races and events at schools. Perhaps there would come a time when schools here became relevant to me, I thought, feeling myself blush.
It was when I turned the second page that I saw it. The piece took up the top half of page five and the photograph a quarter of that. The wine turned to acid; I clapped my hand over my mouth just in time. I forced myself to look again, to make sure, but I’d seen the picture before: it was the one that was used in all his company literature, the photograph of the dynamic entrepreneur, serious but genial, confident. Now I was shaking, not just my hands but all over, shivering as if I was very cold while my face burned. He looked straight up out of the paper as if he could see me.
I couldn’t get my eyes to bring the text into focus. Only the headline stayed still on the page long enough for me to make sense of it: Luxury Revamp for Parade Landmark. I tried again, anchoring myself by key words: Cowes seafront, neglected Art Deco apartment building, luxury flats, Brookwood Developments. Richard Brookwood.
I pushed the chair back and stood up. The room tilted and I steadied myself against the edge of the table. As soon as I thought I could move without falling, I rushed out on to the street. I ran on legs of sponge, the tarmac seeming to undulate under me. Sound ebbed and flowed, rushing in and then withdrawing. My car was parked on the Parade; I couldn’t get away without going there.
At the bottom of the passageway down to the seafront I paused, tried to gather myself. He knew where I was, there wasn’t a shadow of doubt about it now. There was no other reason he’d come here. Yes, Cowes was lovely, up and coming probably, but he didn’t deal in developments this size. His houses in Spain had covered a hillside. I reminded myself how much he travelled, how many projects he ran simultaneously; even if he had this building, it didn’t mean he was physically here now, waiting for me to turn up outside. I just needed to keep my head, to get back to the car and get out of Cowes without drawing attention to myself. I could think about the rest when I’d done that.
I left the end of the passage and turned the corner out on to the Parade. I was hardly conscious of anything other than trying to keep calm, regulate my breathing. I could see my car now, only thirty yards away. All I had to do was keep going, hold on. Without moving my head I let my eyes stray across the street to the buildings that faced on to it. I could see it now, the small white Deco block that I’d scarcely registered earlier. I had parked directly across the street from it. There, on the wall of the building, not more than twenty feet away from my car, was the wooden board which proclaimed
Just Acquired by Brookwood Properties
with its logo of three blue lines denoting the brook and three stylised fir trees.
The contents of my stomach – the sandwich I’d had for lunch at the café, the half-glass of white wine – rose up my throat and I swallowed it down, felt burning. I overruled the instinct to run and carried on walking as calmly as I could: if he was here, he’d expect me to run; if he was looking, it would draw his attention. I was only four cars from mine when I saw that parked a little way up the street, facing me now, there was a navy-blue Mercedes SLK. I looked at the number plate.
I stumbled the last few feet to my own car, crouched down by the driver’s door, and was sick repeatedly into the drain. It was like food poisoning; every time I thought there was nothing left to come up, another spasm went through me. I was breathing only from the very top of my lungs, unable to fill my chest, and the lack of air only added to my mounting sense of panic.
I unlocked the car and got in, snapping the lock down, imagining him appearing at the window, reaching for the handle. My hands slipped on the steering wheel, sweating. I shouldn’t drive but I had no choice. I had to go, get away. I started the engine and reversed out, clipping the wing mirror on the car next door, the sound making me cry out loud with alarm.
I took the hill away from the seafront in too high a gear and felt the car struggle, threatening to stall just on the steepest corner. I had a mental image of it rolling back, crashing into one of the houses which lined the roadside, exploding in a ball of fire, and for a moment, the thought didn’t horrify me. I ground the gears, heard the engine protest, and reached the top. I drove out of town as if I were drunk, swinging round the series of roundabouts in fourth gear, cutting people up, overtaking on a blind bend. For that time, ten minutes or more, I didn’t care if I had an accident. Fear shimmered like a blade in the air around me, cutting closer and closer.
I was back at Porchfield again, hurtling between the trees whose dappled light had lifted my spirits earlier, when my phone started ringing. I reached over and fumbled in my bag for it, swerving up on to the verge into low branches. A pigeon flew up in front of the windscreen in a shock of wings. I slammed my foot on the brake and stalled the car, flinging myself forward. The name on the display was Helen’s.
‘Kate?’ I heard the crying before the phone even reached my ear. ‘I’ve been such an idiot.’
‘What’s happened? What’s going on? Are you hurt?’
She sobbed. ‘You were right. I’ve been seeing him.’
I closed my eyes.
‘I don’t know how I let it happen. He rang me in January, begged me to meet him, just to talk about what was going on. It was constant – emails, phone calls at the office. I only said yes to make it stop.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought I could shield you from it. I was trying to protect you.’
‘Don’t cry – please don’t cry. Just tell me.’
‘I met him after work. I was going to have one drink, tell him you never wanted to see him again and that would be it. But it all went wrong. He cried – in the middle of the Queen’s Head. It was packed but he didn’t seem to care. He was there with tears running down his face and I thought
I’ve got you wrong
. I didn’t forget he was married or that he’d lied about his son but I just saw someone who’d got himself into something he couldn’t handle.’
‘But all the other stuff –’
‘I thought you must have exaggerated.’ She took a breath, trying to compose herself. ‘You’re my best friend and you’ve been through some bad stuff but sometimes you judged things wrong, over-reacted. You used to fly off the handle . . .’