From a Distance

by Raffaella Barker

  Luisa had suggested a trip to visit Kit in Cornwall. They could go when Ellie started at university. She was going to Exeter, it would be so easy. Tom was more enthusiastic than she’d expected, and when he suggested staying with Kit, she had to bite her tongue to stop herself reacting. She wanted to shout, ‘Are you mad? There could be nothing more embarrassing than the three of us staying in his house together’ but instead she counted to five and said, ‘Don’t you think it might be a bit much for him to have us staying? There are lovely B&B places around there, why don’t I look for one?’

  The van’s frown came from its oddly splayed windscreen wipers and the saturnine appearance of two bright blue cones welded to the roof.

  Luisa reached to touch one, enjoying the solid shape, smooth to the touch. ‘We should repaint these a more realistic colour,’ she commented. ‘No ice creams are blue. Apart from that crazy Baked Alaska I made.

  Tom grinned. ‘The car sponge? I liked it.’ He ran his hand along the side of the van. ‘There’s a lot to do, but it’s coming together.’ His shirt was covered in oil, his hair had wood shavings in it. He waved the piece of wood towards the back of the van. ‘Finally got the door of that cupboard to stop swinging about. It’s pretty much all set now. I had the engine on charge overnight, so when you’re ready, we can try a virgin run.’

  Luisa tried a joke. ‘That sounds all wrong for an ice-cream van.’

  His laugh was almost heartfelt. ‘You’re right it does. All right, a test drive. That’s more like it.’ He opened the door and inclined his head towards the passenger’s seat. ‘Coming? Tod?’ He waved her in with a flourish.

  Luisa opened her mouth to protest. She had too much to do, she had food to cook, phone calls to make, work to finish, people to chivvy around the place. Ellie was coming home today and she had to prepare. Then she shut her mouth again. If Kit had asked her, she would’ve said yes straight away.

  ‘Okay.’ She climbed into the cab and shuffled herself on to the passenger seat. The familiar plastic smell, the faint whiff of vanilla, the almost childlike simplicity of the dashboard with its round dial and red needle that never went over 25mph rushed her back to her childhood.

  Tom’s head bent to the steering wheel as he listened to the engine turn over. Everything in his movements and gestures, the frown that snapped between his eyes when he concentrated, the shape of his hands and how he laid them on the wheel was familiar, and yet she felt that he’d changed. He’d gone a bit native. He had longer hair than usual, his skin had bronzed through the long summer days and his jaw was dark with stubble. She didn’t recognise the old plaid shirt he was wearing, frayed at the collar and faded pink and pale green, and seeing him dressed in something unfamiliar gave her a sudden sense of how he appeared to others. Strong, magnetic. As if he heard her thoughts he looked up, dropping the frown of concentration and their eyes met. Her heart flipped over, and Luisa felt colour rush to her cheeks.

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Whose is this shirt?’ The fabric was soft, she found the button on the sleeve and ran her fingers over it.

  Tom put his hand gently over hers. ‘Dunno. I found it on top of all the paints we brought back from the Lighthouse, someone must’ve left it.’ He moved her hand onto the pocket, which was spattered with white flecks. ‘It’s covered in paint.’

  The engine revved then died. Tom squeezed Luisa’s hand and and got out of the van. ‘Hang on, Tod, it won’t take a minute.’

  She laughed. ‘It’s been so long already, what’s a minute or two now?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed, and whistling, opened the bonnet again. A slit of light through the door showing the dripping wet day beyond. Tom leaned over the dusty old van, and Luisa watched him. She didn’t move. This was the man Tom could be in the summer holidays, when he left behind all the school rules and filing and marking, and he could tinker around in the shed and lead an untrammelled life. She envied him suddenly. He could be anyone he wanted to be for the summer, and then the autumn would come, and he would be needed back in school in his suit, with all his wisdom and knowledge at his fingertips, ready to inspire, or at least contain, a new cohort of pupils. Tom knew who he was, and that made him attractive.

  A spanner clanged to the ground. ‘Bastard,’ said Tom. ‘It’s not working yet. Sorry.’ He dived under the bonnet again, muttering to himself.

  Luisa climbed out, put a hand on his back. ‘I’m going to pick Ellie up now, so I wouldn’t have had time to go anywhere today.’

  ‘No?’ Tom was preoccupied, his muscles tight beneath her hand as he twisted something in the engine with the spanner.

  ‘So I’ll make sure everything’s sorted for when she arrives back, and if you could just make sure that Mae lays the table, I’ll—’

  Suddenly the ice-cream van gurgled into life.

  Tom peered up at her from the mouth of the engine. ‘Ah. I think it’ll work now.’ His teeth flashed from an oil-smeared face. A familiar gust of frustration blew through Luisa. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said, he was all ears for the engine. She opened her mouth to complain, and a whirl and click heralded the opening chime of the ice-cream-van music. Luisa leaned against the door, weak with laughter, Tom shouted something she couldn’t hear over the music, but he looked delighted. He leapt back into the cab and silence fell like a cloak as he switched everything off. ‘Back to the drawing board,’ he said cheerily, ‘but at least we know the sound works.’

  Luisa leaned on the door frame. ‘D’you remember when we met?’ You were so sure you wouldn’t ever have anything to do with ice creams or Great Yarmouth or any of that Italian stuff. Now look at you, this van is your baby.’

  ‘Yep, well, let me finish it, and it can be yours too,’ he was walking away, but he stopped, turned, and came back. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Ellie too,’ he said, and he brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. ‘See you later. Safe journey.’

  The International Arrivals Terminal at the airport ought to look a lot more exciting. Bunting, cheerful music, obviously an ice-cream van. Luisa watched, cocooned in happy anticipation, staring vaguely at the stream of faces passing through. She heard the excitement of reunited couples rushing to collide and kiss, the shriek of an overjoyed child swooped up in the midst of a family, or the hesitant greetings of travel-weary individuals by families or friends or just a taxi driver, both sides uncertain how to respond to this freighted moment. The moment, enormous as it was for some people, was swamped by the airlessness of the grey space. A bunch of flowers, bold pink and orange gerberas nodded next to her, folded in a burly man’s grasp. The polished floor in front of the doors to customs was an empty runway for the next arrivals. Passengers emerged, eyes glazed with tiredness, leaning on heaped trolleys, dragging bulky wheeled cases, staggering with rucksacks. Approaching the welcome committee, they looked blankly for someone familiar, or a sheet of paper bearing their name. Something to connect with. Ellie would appear through those automatic doors in a moment, and when she came through, Luisa would have her family back.

  She fished her phone out of her bag. No message. There wouldn’t be any more messages now. Kit had no need to get in touch with her. In a parents’ evening talk on drugs at the school last term, the speaker had explained how quickly a habit can form. Just three days, he said, and then you’re hooked. How long to walk away from it again?

  It was four months since she’d taken Ellie to the airport. None of them had any idea Kit existed then. Luisa had no reason to look beyond the walls of Green Farm House except to wish she could follow her daughter to India to protect her. Luisa scrolled to a photo on her phone she’d taken of Ellie the day she left. She was standing on the escalator up to Departures, awkward with her rucksack on her back, but giving her mum the thumbs up and making a funny face. She was like a firework crackling with excitement. She was ready to go. Ellie had jigged on the spot as she was about to go through. Luisa had completely run out of things to say except ‘Don’t go’ and she was managing to k
eep that one to herself. She settled for clucking, adjusting the yellow nylon money belt Dora had given Ellie, folding straps into keepers, checking the buckles.

  ‘Don’t get excited and throw this away. I know it’s not cool, but it’s useful,’ she cautioned. ‘Just make sure you keep important things safe. And . . . and . . .’ A wave of emotion rushed up and she stopped, pressed her fingers into her eyes. She mustn’t cry. She mustn’t.

  Ellie swooped on her, rucksack and all.

  ‘Aw, Mum,’ she smelled of insect repellent. Luisa had sprayed it onto everything the night before. The smell caught in Luisa’s throat and distilled a moment of nostalgia, the citron smell reminding her of summer evenings, all the family together having supper outside with a flare flickering, and the midge-­repelling candles lit.

  Ellie had given Luisa a tissue. ‘Here, Mum, have one of these. You gave me so many, all my pockets are stuffed. I’ll be fine you know, and I’ll keep in touch. You’ll have adventures back home too, and you won’t even notice I’m gone soon.’

  Well, she’d been right about that, hadn’t she? It struck Luisa that perhaps none of this would have happened if Ellie hadn’t gone away.

  An announcement gurgled through the tannoy and an electric trolley beeped past them. Ellie had kept the yellow money belt, and it had become a joke. She sent occasional pictures of herself modelling it, worn with her bikini on a beach, across her body, military style on the banks of the Ganges River. The last that was seen of it was when Ellie posted a photograph of a pair of grinning small boys holding a football, with it spread out on the ground in front of them, ‘Goal post for football.’ It was as crisp and new as the day Dora had given it to her.

  Luisa looked at her watch. Ellie would appear any minute. Would she be taller? Thinner? She might look the same as she did before, but be a different person inside? Luisa had never been away on her own for longer than a school exchange trip. She had found it almost impossible to believe Ellie, her baby, was in India. Even though Tom’s clock always told her the time there, and she’d seen her on Skype, she’d never got over her conviction that Ellie was really at school, or asleep in her room, or away on a Duke of Edinburgh camping trip. That she was on another continent, with a babble of languages Luisa had never heard in her ears, breathing scents of pungent spices she was unfamiliar with, was implausible.

  It seemed to Luisa like yesterday that Ellie, aged fourteen, went with a schoolfriend on her first day trip to London. Now she had crossed continents on train journeys lasting days, to arrive at a coastline or a mountain range far away, in time to see the new moon rise the wrong way up. Luisa had missed so much of Ellie’s life she could never catch up on. No amount of saying, ‘So you arrived at the airport, and then what happened?’ would give her even the smallest idea of the full story. Ellie was her own person, her own woman. She had a life her family could not share, and that was only going to happen more and more. Luisa knew that before the whole incident with Kit, this would have upset her, now she accepted it. And so she should, after all she had a lot that had happened at home that she wouldn’t be telling Ellie either. Or anyone for that matter.

  The white arrivals doors swung open as a new trickle of passengers came through. A slight Indonesian woman steered her trolley with one hand, her other arm supporting a sleeping toddler on her shoulder, while another child bounced on the heap of cases and bundles tied with thin green rope. A man with a moustache ducked under the barrier and engulfed them. The baby woke and sputtered crossly. Happiness poured out of the man like sunshine, and he caught the baby up, surprising it into silence. ‘Well, well, well! Well, well, well! Here I am. Here you are. We’re together now.’ The woman reached up for the startled child, the man kissed her and a quick smile flew between them.

  ‘Mum. Mum – I’m here!’ Luisa turned in confusion. A hit of patchouli oil and incense, like Mae’s joss sticks in her bedroom wafted towards her. Was it Ellie? Where? How had she missed her for God’s sake? A tall girl staggering beneath a huge rucksack rushed up and past, staring into the distance. Someone else’s daughter. The parents had pushed through the crowd to her and she lurched between them, trying to hug them both. The family walked away, her father attempting without success to swing the rucksack onto his back. Luisa wondered if they had any surprises cooking in their family. Like Kit? Since he’d left for Cornwall again, life had hardly paused. Ellie had suddenly decided to return early, and that had thrown everything into a whirl of excitement that had not yet slowed down. Luisa had never even had a moment with Kit to say – what? Really there was nothing to say. Or not to him. Plenty to tell Ellie.

  A new uncle. She would tell her on the way home, it was Luisa’s only opportunity to take part in the story of Kit. Her part in it was just a jokey story about the sheep at the Lighthouse. The rest was buried. Only Luisa knew how it had altered her. The frisson of attraction, the possibility of passion, had changed something inside her. She walked taller, and there was some subtle shift in the way she interacted with others. Luisa didn’t any longer feel the need to run after everyone in her life. Sometimes she could simply stand still and let them come to her. Magnetism. She’d found a core of magnetism within her.

  Ellie could hear about everything else. The story of Kit and Tom. It was wonderful that Tom was so genuinely pleased. Dora was the same. None of them seemed to mind being shifted down the family into new positions, though a lot of that was surely down to Kit and his charm. Luisa tried to imagine such a thing happening in her family. No chance of it working out there. It would be pumped up testosterone all the way to the pub and a fight of some sort. Anyway, there hadn’t been time for any of that, there hadn’t been time for anything at all, and now Kit had gone back to his life in Cornwall. Their secret momento di passione, their frisson, their whatever it had been, was gone. Delicious, bittersweet, melt in the mouth and transient as her finest ice cream. It had no staying power. And she had no place in her life for anything like that, no time.

  ‘I’m coming back, Mum, I’ll be home on Thursday. I’ve booked the flight, come and get me please Mumma’ had been Ellie’s message, ripping her right out of her fantasy life and back to earth in the thump of a heartbeat. She hardly had time to plan and create the welcome feast, she certainly didn’t have time to think about a crazy infatuation. Rose ice cream. Lovely delicate, sophisticated, quintessentially English yet also Indian – many roses being from the subcontinent originally. Utterly romantic. Perfect to welcome Ellie, a recipe for the future. Luisa pulled out all the stops to make it irresistible. She infused the petals of her favourite rose varieties, pounding them in the pestle. She searched the Internet for the right rose absolute essence. She hid the receipt for that, because drop for drop it probably cost more than Tom’s favourite single malt whisky, but it was worth it, the flavour was sublime. Then finally, late last night, she’d stirred in her precious rosehip syrup made last autumn. At last her ingredients submitted, and rolled together to become something both delicate and voluptuous with the scent of a magic spell. It was ready. She was ready. Ellie was coming home.

  ‘Hey, Mum! It’s me!’

  Unbelievable, but she hadn’t even seen Ellie appear. After all that. She threw her arms round her daughter, and almost cried, it was so familiar to embrace her. ‘Ellie! I didn’t see you. Oh, look, you’ve grown.’

  ‘Hey, Mum.’ Contentment, inner peace, beauty, shiny hair, henna tattoos on her wrist, whatever India offered, Ellie seemed to have it in spadeloads now. Luisa hesitated for a microsecond. Her daughter had grown up. It wasn’t her automatic right to grab her and hug her any more. Their eyes met, laughter burst from them both and they rocked together. Luisa registered subtle changes: a different weight of the ribcage she held against her own, a new strength in the way Ellie held herself, a softer edge to her voice, an indefinable sense of being relaxed, easy in her own skin. Ellie had grown. She was taller than Luisa, her face thinner too. Tiny plaits framed clear eyes, shining, happy with no hint of redness or exhaust
ion from the flight. About her hung a sultry, evocative, provocative scent, more subtle than patchouli, but delicious, like amber. Until she saw her daughter return, Luisa hadn’t understood what going away like this meant. Much had been lost in translation. The Skype sessions had not prepared her for the raw, radiant, physical reality of Ellie all grown up. Luisa didn’t know how to behave except as a mother, and Ellie looked as though she was past the mothering stage.

  ‘God, it’s very strange to be somewhere so muted,’ said Ellie, pulling her bag up on to her shoulder. ‘Every scrap of India seems to be a different colour, they don’t do minimal in any way at all.’ She coiled a huge crimson shawl around her neck and pulled her hair over it, bracelets tinkling. She was glamorous, Luisa noticed heads turning as they walked out of the airport building. Pride tangled with excitement, a pang of regret for the end of her childhood, and Luisa’s tears spilled over.

  She wiped them away quickly, but Ellie caught her hand. ‘Mum! I knew you’d cry, Mae and I discussed it. Come on, we’ve got to get home. I need to see everyone. Did you come in the ice-cream van? Is it done? I thought I could work through the rest of the summer in it and earn some money for uni.’

  Luisa laughed. ‘The van? I can’t believe you even remember I have a van. It’s still not mended, of course, but Dad says—’

  Ellie was jumping with excitement now. ‘I know, Dad will fix it. He always says that, Oh I can’t wait to see them all. Why didn’t Mae come with you? My phone’s out of battery, can we call her and Luca in the car? Mum, I want to know everything about home. It’s so long to be away, what’s happened?’

  Luisa laughed. ‘Let’s get in the car and I’ll tell you everything.’

  Ellie sat with her feet up on the dashboard, gulping the water from the bottle Luisa passed to her, a flow of chatter passing between them as if she had never been away. Luisa drove with a smile sealed on her lips. Ellie couldn’t know the thousand tiny ways she had changed, or the countless gestures and intonations that showed she was still the same Ellie she’d always been. They turned onto the motorway, and Ellie took her mother’s iPod and put on an Otis Redding song, ‘These Arms of Mine’.