by Julie Cohen
He isn’t there. He didn’t say any of those things. I lean against the metal railing that’s meant to stop people crossing the road at the wrong place and I do the only thing I can do, which is to close my eyes, ignore my surroundings, and give myself up to bliss.
‘Are you all right, miss?’
I pull myself back to reality, as much as I can, and see an elderly gentleman nearby. His skin is dark, his hair is grizzled, and he is wearing a tweed suit in full summer. This is so brilliant. I love people who utterly disregard the weather in their choice of clothing.
‘I am fantastic,’ I tell him. ‘I’m the best I can be.’
‘That is good to hear. You don’t need help, then? Only you’re holding on to that railing as if it’s about to fly away.’
I laugh. ‘I don’t need help.’ And yes, the feeling is fading. It’s not so overwhelming; I can stand up straight (somehow I’d sunk down, so I was nearly kneeling, without noticing it).
‘I’m in love,’ I tell him.
‘Well, that is also good. Love is good.’
‘It’s the best thing in the world. I know it is. It has to be. Otherwise, what have we got?’
‘You be careful now. Look where you are going.’
I let go of the railing, flexing stiff fingers.
‘Are you certain you’re feeling well, miss? You seem unsteady.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I’m just on my way to …’
I don’t know this street. I thought I was near the underground station, but I must have taken a wrong turning when I was paying attention to the frangipani.
‘To where?’ asks the gentleman, concerned again. But I don’t care; I feel great and I’ll find the station eventually. It can’t be hard. I smile at him, the smile of a woman in love who knows that everything is going to be all right.
Lauren’s flat in Canary Wharf is sparkling new and beautifully designed, climate controlled, with tall windows that look out towards the Thames. When I return to it, Lauren’s spare laptop is still open on the table, asleep. If I pressed the space bar, it would come up immediately with Ewan’s Facebook page, which includes his address and his telephone number and says that he is a professional guitarist. The profile photograph shows him on stage playing guitar, recognizable only by his hair and his stance. He has 1,453 friends and his relationship status says It’s complicated. He has been here, online, ready to be found, at any time. But I only looked him up this morning.
It’s taken five days. That’s how long I’ve waited between leaving my husband and trying to find another man. Of course, that other man appears to have spent the last ten years turning into an utter tosser.
And yet I still felt as if I loved him.
I stumble across the polished hardwood floor and collapse on one of Lauren’s twin sofas. It’s composed of straight lines and not all that comfortable, but I’m exhausted. Bone-deep tired. There’s a lot to sort out in my mind: should I meet Ewan again? Should I tell Quinn about him? Should I forget about all this and go back to Tillingford?
But my eyes close by themselves. I dream Ewan as a crow, leggy and wild-winged, with his eyes reflecting the lights of a fruit machine. He opens his beak and a ringing comes out.
I blink awake. My phone is ringing in my bag. I grope for it and see it’s Quinn calling. Habit makes me answer.
‘Hello, love,’ he says.
‘Sorry, I’ve only just woken up.’ I sit up on the sofa, pushing my hair out of my face.
‘Are you all right? Do you want to go back to sleep?’
‘No, no. Just taking a nap.’ I glance at the big digital clock glowing over the door to the kitchen; it’s half past six, which is the time Quinn has rung me every day since I’ve been in London. Right after he’s got home, made himself a cup of tea. My head feels full of cotton wool. ‘How’s your day been?’
‘Summer fêtes. Charity walks. We’ve got a meeting with Tamsyn Ford next week to discuss the campaign for keeping Boscombe House open. She’s our MP,’ he reminds me, without my having to ask. ‘Cameron Bishop stole my bicycle again.’
‘Have you got it back yet?’
‘He only stole it five minutes ago. I saw him through the window.’ He doesn’t quite sigh.
I know where he is: in the armchair by the side of the telly, the one we rarely ever sit on. That’s the one with the best view through the side window. One of the wooden arms is coming loose and I can hear it creaking when he talks.
I imagine him in the cottage, sitting in different chairs to make it seem less empty.
‘Are you going to the pub later?’ I ask him. I want him to be with other people, talking, laughing.
‘Not tonight. What have you done today? Have you had any inspiration?’
I look around at the living room of the flat. Modern, bright, with windows looking out onto the grey and brown river. ‘No, not really. Not yet.’
‘It’ll come.’
When I left, I mentioned spending the time to do some work as an appeasement. So that my leaving wouldn’t hurt so much, so that I had a good, non-emotional reason to be in London. By tacit mutual consent we seem both to have latched on to it. We’re both pretending that I’m only here to work. It’s easier.
‘I met up with an old friend,’ I say. ‘We might meet up next week, too. But I’m not sure.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Well, he’s a bit of a tosser to be honest. But you know … old times’ sake.’
He’s silent. Our phone calls are like this now, with these pauses. The weight of everything we’re not saying. Mentioning Ewan to Quinn doesn’t help me feel any better. But that’s what I’ve done, after all. Met up with an old friend, who’s turned out to be not as nice as I remember. I might meet him again.
I staggered down Shoreditch High Street, drunk with love for him this afternoon.
‘So what are you going to do about Cameron and your bike?’ I ask. ‘That can’t keep on happening.’
‘I might have to get a lock. But I’m worried that then he’ll bother himself to get a pair of bolt-cutters, and he could get hurt that way.’
‘He could also ride your bike into the path of a car. You wouldn’t be responsible for that, either.’
‘I don’t know why he likes my bicycle so much. It’s not anything special. His mother says he has a BMX in the shed. Anyway, I can’t get a lock. Every time he steals it, he says he’ll never do it again. If I get a lock, it stops him being able to prove himself.’
It’s a conversation we’ve had many times before, over tea, over supper, walking down the lane. I’m suddenly certain that if I’d been pregnant, we’d have done this: talked about our baby to cover up these silences.
Come back, he doesn’t say. I can hear it in his breathing, in the creak of his chair.
‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘I’m really tired. I might get an early night. It’s supposed to get hotter tomorrow.’
‘For the next few weeks. Proper summer weather for once. Mum’s fretting about her flowers.’
What has he told his parents and Suz? Anything besides the fiction that I’m here working? I doubt it; Molly has already sent me two cards. One had a kitten on the front, and the other had a fake 1950s housewife on it. Both of them said, in her cheerful handwriting, Good luck with the book!
‘Well,’ I say, ‘I suppose I should find something for supper. Lauren hasn’t left much in the cupboards except for some protein bars. I think they’re from her personal-trainer boyfriend.’
‘Do you have any plans for tomorrow?’ He asks it in a rush. ‘Shall I come up to London? We could meet for lunch.’
The ring on my finger tells me to say yes. It was Quinn’s grandmother’s – rose gold and diamonds. I twist it round and say, ‘I’m not sure. The whole thing about having space, Quinn, is that I have space.’
‘I don’t need to come to Canary Wharf. We could meet somewhere.’
‘I don’t know. It’s … I need to think about things.’
‘I’m yo
ur husband, Felicity. You can meet me for lunch.’ For the first time since that night I left, there’s an edge of impatience to his voice.
I twist the ring on my finger. Tuesday. Ewan asked me to meet him Tuesday. I can’t be certain of anything until then.
It would be so easy to meet Quinn for lunch, fall into our relationship, our companionship, our routine. Our pretending. It would be easy to go home with him. Go back to Tillingford with nothing having changed. Like our conversation about his bicycle, running in well-worn tracks.
‘Give me another week. We can meet up next weekend. Okay?’
‘I suppose it will have to be.’
‘Good night, Quinn.’
‘Good night, love.’
Chapter Sixteen
GREENWICH IS HOT. The sunlight bounces off the big white buildings of the Old Royal Naval College and steals the coolness from the Thames. I make my way through the park, up the path between swathes of grass towards the oniony dome at the top of the hill, the spike with the red ball impaled on it.
Ewan told me not to wait for long, which implies that he wouldn’t stick around long himself, and I don’t want to miss him. So, for once in my life, I’m early. Even on a hot Tuesday morning, the path is thronged with tourists calling to each other in their own languages, pushing buggies, taking photos, wheezing from the climb. Some people have spread blankets on the grass and are laying out picnics.
I reach the top of the hill. The Meridian Line is in a courtyard behind big black gates. People are queuing up behind it, waiting to stand on it and have their photograph taken with one foot in the east, one in the west. Did Ewan want to meet me actually on the line, or somewhere near it? I hesitate, but decide to stand outside the gates on the top of the hill. This way I can see him coming if he’s not here yet, and I can see him inside the courtyard if he’s beaten me here.
I station myself next to the clock set into the wall near the gates. I’m five minutes early – that’s not very early, but it’s quite a bit for me. It would be better if I had a newspaper or something to read, something to take my mind off waiting, like Quinn always has. I crane my neck, looking for Ewan, trying to peer around tourists. ‘This is it,’ says one of the tourists near my shoulder. ‘This is where time begins.’
Is that what it is here? I must admit I have only the shakiest idea of what the Prime Meridian even means. Below the clock there are displayed Public Standards of Length, in iron bars. So that everywhere in the world, things are measured the same. This is a yard. This is a foot. This is certainty.
I spot a black leather jacket to my right, coming up the hill. My heart leaps, but it’s a teenage boy with a pierced lip, not Ewan at all.
I think about what he said to me. Don’t wait for long. And if I don’t turn up, forget all about me.
It’s all very well, his saying that. But I don’t seem able to forget about him.
Last night, I Googled ‘frangipani’. Wikipedia told me that it was another name for the plumeria flower, a tropical and sub-tropical species. It has a sweet scent but no nectar. In many places in Asia the flower is associated with funerals, cemeteries and death.
I kept looking, but there was nothing about a disease that causes you to smell frangipani.
I could ask for an earlier appointment with the neurologist and see if there’s something physical causing me to have the scent and the memories. There might be some medication I could take. Or perhaps it’s something more serious. I’ve seen what cancer does. Perhaps I’m carrying something around in my mind aside from memories, something growing and changing, something that may eventually eat all my memories away.
Perhaps this love is a sickness.
I leave the clock and the measurements and go to the other side of the path, leaning on the railing to gaze down at the view. The white symmetrical buildings below, the columns, the towers, the upright architecture, rational and perfect. Beyond it, across the river, are the jagged peaks of Canary Wharf, where I’ve been living since I’ve run away from my life.
And all love is sickness, isn’t it? Something that comes from outside of you, like a virus, or from inside of you, like a cancer. It changes everything about you. It’s temporary or it’s permanent. You can’t rip it out without causing more damage.
‘Flick,’ says Ewan behind me, and I jump. He’s not wearing his leather jacket, just a T-shirt and jeans.
‘You came,’ I say, breathless.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here.’
‘I am.’
We stare at each other for a moment. He’s breathless too, as if he’s run up the hill to get here.
‘I’m sorry I’m a little late,’ he says. ‘I had to wait around for the postman, and then there was a bit of an argument.’
‘You weren’t rude to another member of Her Majesty’s Postal Service, were you?’
‘Apparently it’s against the law to give a person a letter addressed to another person, even if the first person was the one who wrote it.’
‘You were trying to get a letter back that you’d written? Why?’
‘It’s a long story. And a boring one. Let’s get out of here, there are too many people.’
We slip through a gap at the top of the railing. I sniff, but there’s no frangipani, just a faint scent of shower gel. He’s shaved since I saw him last, and washed his hair. He doesn’t say anything as we walk past the crowds of people snapping photos of the view.
Ten years can change a lot. Since we were lovers, Ewan has become a father. He’s been places, lived in houses, met people, had what looks like a successful career. The visible signs of change on his face, in his clothes, are only the surface of what could be seismic changes inside. I used to know him in the past, but that doesn’t mean I know him at all any more. And even then, ten years ago, we only spent a summer together. This man is a stranger.
It’s safer to think that way, anyway.
We reach a tree and Ewan sits down on the dry grass underneath it in the shade. I do the same and lean my back against the trunk.
‘It’s a nice afternoon,’ I say. Something you would say to a stranger. Something I might say to Quinn, these days.
Ewan looks out across the grass, down the hill to the historical buildings and all the people milling around them, like tiny insects. He glances up at the blue sky and he rubs the palm of his hand against the scrubby grass.
Then he barks a laugh. ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he says. He throws himself backwards onto the ground, and sweeps his arms and legs to and fro. If he were in the snow, he’d be making an angel. ‘A strange and beautiful day to be alive. Since when do you talk about days being “nice”?’
Ten years ago I would have flung myself down beside him. Rolled and rolled down the hill, laughing.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘it is. Nice.’
He sits up and brushes grass out of his hair. ‘I’m sorry about Esther,’ he says. ‘I thought she would go on for ever.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yes. So did I.’
‘You saw the painting she did of me? With those flowers?’
‘Yes. In New York.’ This isn’t how I was expecting the conversation to go. I was expecting an argument. I didn’t even think he’d listened to what I’d said the other day about my mother.
‘Is that why you found me?’ he asks. ‘Because you saw the painting and you wanted to tell me about your mother?’
‘It was partly because I saw your painting.’
He glances sideways at me, briefly. ‘How did she die?’
‘Does it make a difference?’
‘No. I suppose not. Death is death.’
‘Except it’s not,’ I say with more vehemence than he must have been expecting, because he looks fully at me now. ‘Some are worse than others.’
‘Was she very ill?’
‘She had cancer. She was in a lot of pain. She wanted to die.’ I rip handfuls of grass from the dry ground and drop it in clumps.
Ewan looks down. He offers no comfort, as Q
uinn would. He doesn’t ask me for any more details.
‘Sometimes it’s the best thing,’ he says to the grass, or to himself, or maybe to me. ‘The world’s going to carry on existing whether you’re here to see it or not. I don’t think it makes much difference.’
‘It makes a huge amount of difference to me.’
‘Because you loved her. But if there’s no one to love you, there isn’t much difference.’ He stands up and dusts the dry grass and dirt from his trousers. ‘Right. Well. Thanks for meeting me.’
‘That’s it? You’re going?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m not all that interested in the view. I wanted to say sorry for Esther. I’ve said it. So I’ll go now.’
I jump to my feet. ‘I don’t understand you. You begged me to come here, and now you’re just leaving. You haven’t told me why you wanted to meet me. You haven’t told me anything about yourself at all.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘I do want to. That’s why I came.’
‘What do you want to know, then?’
I gesture with my hands. ‘What do you do? What have you done? It’s been ten years, Ewan.’
‘I’m a guitar player. I play session guitar for bands. We go on tour. I play guitar for them on their songs. That’s pretty much it.’
‘What about your band? With Dougie and Gavin and that other guy?’
‘That didn’t really go anywhere. I went back to Glasgow. As you know.’
‘And you married Alana.’
‘And I married Alana.’ His voice is singsong, as if he’s mocking me.
‘And you had a child.’
‘Rebecca. Yes. Didn’t we go through all of this the other day?’
‘And …’ Any question I could ask seems somehow inadequate. I have butterflies in my stomach, anxiety in my throat. ‘How are they?’
‘I don’t know.’
His hands are on his hips.
