Knowing Anna

by Sarah Meyrick

  ‘On the radio,’ added Adam, in a burst of loquacity. ‘At the hostel. Walking for Anna today.’

  By now the whole party had made it to the place Stephen had stopped, by the platform. They were stacking up behind him. Bethany looked miserable and bedraggled, and Samuel was pale with exhaustion. Even Smith seemed to have lost some of his exuberance.

  Theo pushed his way down and came over. ‘Everything OK, Stephen?’

  At the sound of his sharp tone, Adam skittered away like a foal, bobbing furiously. Stephen could feel him trying to melt into the background, but he was hemmed in by the wooden railings.

  ‘All well, thank you, Theo. Would you mind taking the lead for now? Keep straight ahead till you reach the road, and then turn left towards the quarry. Do make sure everyone looks out for lorries, though. You’ll come to a car park a few hundred metres beyond, where Ruth and David should both be waiting to ferry us onwards. I’ll catch up with you all later.’

  By the time Stephen finally made it to the convent, most of the walkers were clean, dry and considerably more cheerful. The guesthouse was simple but clean, warm and welcoming. David was holding court in the large guest kitchen. Tamsin, Catherine and William were sitting on benches at a long scrubbed pine table, and Theo stood leaning against a cast iron range, nursing a mug. David was wearing Mary Anne’s flowery apron and pouring tea from a vast enamel tea pot.

  ‘At last – the wanderer returns!’ he cried, as Stephen walked into the kitchen. ‘Earl Grey or Lapsang? And do try one of my flapjacks. I’ve chucked in some cranberries for a change and I must confess I’m rather thrilled with the result. Just sharp enough. Practically a health food! Or are you heading straight for the shower?’

  Stephen felt his heart turn a somersault. He was torn between fury that he couldn’t throw himself into David’s arms and sheer joy at seeing him. His initial disappointment that their reunion was so public gave way to delight in the way that he was evidently bewitching the assembled company with the full force of his considerable charm.

  ‘Good man! Earl Grey would hit the spot, I think,’ he said lightly, hoping the inane smile on his face would be interpreted as simple pleasure at the prospect of refreshment at the end of a long day.

  ‘You’re too kind,’ he said, as David presented him with a mug.

  ‘Now tell all,’ said David. ‘Who was your mysterious stranger? Did you bring him with you?’

  ‘Oh, just Adam,’ he said. ‘No great mystery. A gentleman of the road. Turns up every now and again on my doorstep in need of a little TLC. He caught you on the radio, Tamsin. Heard about the walk and thought he’d come along for the ride.’

  ‘So what have you done with him? You didn’t bring him here, did you?’ said Mary Anne, walking into the kitchen. ‘I’m not sure that would be exactly appropriate.’

  ‘Well, there we differ,’ said Stephen cheerfully. ‘I can’t think of anything more appropriate than a convent offering the blessing of hospitality to someone in need. It’s up to us to look after the needy where we can.’

  He took a slug of tea – nectar! ‘But Adam does his own thing, by and large. I bought him a sandwich and a drink, and he’s gone on his way. For now, at any rate. He’ll probably pop up again somewhere along the journey.’

  He drained his mug and put it down on the table. ‘That was just what I needed,’ he said.

  ‘Time for that shower. Can anyone point me in the right direction?’

  ‘Let me,’ said David, taking off the apron and flinging it over the back of a chair. ‘This way.’

  12 miles

  Tamsin

  Tamsin drew the curtain in her room in the convent and sighed. Bloody Poms and their rain! It was nearly the end of May and supposed to be half-term, for heaven’s sake. Why was the weather so unreliable? Having said that, her home city of Melbourne – wide open to all the elements the Southern Ocean was capable of throwing at it – was famous for producing four seasons in a day. Still, you knew where you were with Aussie weather. It was the endless grey of the British climate that got her down.

  Mustn’t grumble. Milo was having a ball, and broadly speaking if he was happy, she was happy. While she loved the little scrap to pieces, it was no picnic being a single mother of an eight-year-old boy. He was a tornado of energy. As far as she was concerned, any activity that kept him entertained and wore him out at the same time was a gift. The fact that she found herself in sole charge of two small boys (well, three if you counted Sam, since Theo wasn’t exactly on the case) and a mongrel to boot was easily outweighed by the fact that he was happily occupied.

  Thanks, Anna, she thought. Just wish you were here to share it with us. Which she kind of was, she supposed. She was there in spirit, in the conversation, in the air about them. But it was poignant that she wasn’t there in person. It was a bit like going to a party where the host nips out to the bottle shop to top up supplies. Trouble was, they could all wait till they were blue in the face but Anna wasn’t ever going to come back. It was hard to get your head around that. It was bloody sad. Miss you, mate, she thought. Life’s just not the same.

  She checked her watch. Just time to edit the latest instalment of her audio diary and send it over to Ian in the studio for the breakfast show. She should still be able to grab a shower, provided Milo stayed asleep. She fired up her laptop, pulled on her earphones and opened up yesterday’s sound files. There was a good bit of singing from the service on Sunday which she could use as an intro – that church had a great acoustic – but on the other hand they hadn’t sung at all yesterday, so maybe it wouldn’t work. Hymn-singing took her right back to childhood. A quick canter through that old pilgrim hymn gave a sense of coherence to the walk. Something that bound them all together. A unity of purpose, perhaps? Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, she thought; you could take the girl out of the convent, but you never took the convent out of the girl. See, Sister Bridget? Something rubbed off. She’d ask Father Stephen if there was going to be any singing today.

  She scanned quickly through the files. There was an earnest bit of conversation where a dog-walker had asked Catherine what they were all doing, and why no one was speaking to anyone else, and she’d done her best to explain in a whisper so as not to disturb the others. With the result that the bloke hadn’t heard a word, and Catherine had to repeat herself, twice over, until her stage whisper was at least as loud as normal speech would have been in the first place. Poor woman! She’d looked mortified to be breaking the silence. But fair dos, she was doing her best.

  Personally Tamsin thought Catherine was a bit of a goody-two-shoes. But if Anna loved her, that was good enough for her. Catherine had been Beth and Sam’s childminder when Anna went back to uni on her return from Spain. It had been gutsy, retraining like that, when you’d have thought her hands were pretty full already, what with Beth and Sam to look after. And the rest. Tamsin, meanwhile, had been on a plane to Oz within days of Anna’s homecoming. A move that made her about as popular as a rattlesnake in a lucky dip. Still. At the time there seemed no alternative.

  Now here was Father Stephen going on about wilderness. He’d warmed to his theme, all right. She liked the image of the inner landscape. In her mind’s eye she saw the Australian bush, the red dusty soil, the burning sun, the snakes, and miles and miles and miles of bloody nowhere. It was inspiring, awesome landscape, to be treated with fear and respect. She wondered if he’d ever been down under, seen the outback. Talk about isolation! Most Brits had absolutely no clue. Another question for him.

  Then there was that bit where she’d caught up with Celia and Jackie just as they were heading off for the station at the end of the afternoon. She hadn’t appreciated they were leaving yesterday, and it had all been a bit last minute. They’d been quite choked up, Jackie in particular. ‘I’ve never done anything like this, and it’s been a real challenge,’ she’d said. ‘Just look at me! Not exactly built for walking! But I’ve loved every moment. With so many of her friends and family here, it’
s been the next best thing to having Anna walk with us. I’m just so sad we’ve got to go back to work and can’t finish the course. But we’ll be with you all in spirit.’

  And here was a funny part, but maybe not one for broadcast, given the fruitiness of his language: Theo going troppo when that bloke with the flowers in his hat turned up at the end of the day. Where in hell’s name had he sprung from? You could hear the rain in this clip, too, splashing down onto windcheaters as they flapped in the wind. She’d need to clean that up a tad. Which reminded her: the weather outlook. Did she really want to know?

  Tamsin finished her edit, added an intro and a wrap-up, and delivered a perfect two minutes and thirty seconds’ worth of audio into the station Dropbox for Ian to pick up the other end. She texted him to expect it, tweeted a picture from yesterday with a link to the fundraising site, and then logged on to see how they were doing. Eleven hundred bucks! Not at all bad. Although come to think of it, she’d probably hoped for a bit more than that, after yesterday’s spectacular leap. She needed to try and get something on the afternoon show, she reckoned, give it a bit of a boost.

  She wondered what they were going to see on the route today. If there was anything quirky along the way, that would help to build a story. And who would make a good interviewee? Tom perhaps? He had presence. She quite liked him, although she was beginning to find him a touch over-attentive. Or Ruth, maybe? Yes; Ruth sounded authoritative and calm, and she’d done a great job a year or two back when Tamsin had inveigled her into being an on-air expert for a phone-in during Hospice Week. The fact that this was such a personal story would add poignancy. Tamsin would try and sweet-talk her into it later.

  By now, most of the walkers were in a routine. The end of breakfast saw sandwiches made and bags packed. Ruth and William arrived in time for a leisurely cup of coffee so that the walkers could stow any heavier items in the boot of the old Volvo. They also – bless them – brought along Smith; he was billeted out with them overnight on the grounds that not all the accommodation was dog-friendly. As always, Smith greeted her with lavish delight, out of all proportion to a twelve-hour separation. Milo, at eight, was almost as demonstrative in his affections, even in front of his friends. Tamsin was realistic enough to know that this couldn’t last, but surrendered to the present with joy. At least she had one bloke in her life who was reliably loving.

  Because of the location of the convent, the minibus was in service again today to shuttle the walkers back to the day’s starting point. Which meant another glimpse of the delectable David. Blond and finely chiselled, and clearly a man who knew how to look after himself, he’d arrived that morning with a box of home-made macarons. A bit of a turn-up for the books! Mary Anne was prac­tically salivating. Good for Father Steve, the old dog.

  ‘We’re a smaller party today,’ Father Stephen announced in his morning briefing. ‘It was sad waving farewell to Celia and Jackie last night. But duty calls. And Tom – I think you’re leaving us tonight? We’ll miss you. As far as the route goes, it’s a twelve-miler today. There are a couple of quite steep climbs in store. The first goes up Botley Hill and takes us to the highest point on the entire route. Then there’s one more steep ascent at Westerham, but otherwise it’s a reasonably gentle day.’

  There were groans from the group. ‘If you say so!’ said Catherine.

  ‘We’ll take your word for it, Father Steve,’ added Tamsin, winking at Beth.

  The priest smiled serenely. ‘My suggestion is that we stop off for a short reflection at a little church later in the day. I’ll tell you more later, but for now, St Botolph’s is a significant site along the Pilgrims’ Way. Then there’s another noisy section where we’ll have to endure the din of traffic. But all being well, we’ll end the day walking through lavender fields. Too early in the season for olfactory pleasure, I’m afraid, so we’ll have to use our imaginations. But it’ll make a pleasant diversion from the blight of the blessed motorway. And I know this rain’s a bit tiresome, but the outlook’s better for the afternoon. So bring your coats, and here’s to another good day!’

  ‘Milo!’ called Tamsin. ‘You all sorted, doll? Good to go?’

  ‘Mum,’ said Milo, rolling his eyes. ‘Course I’m ready. Me and Sam and George have been ready for hours.’

  ‘So how come I just found your toothbrush – which I might add is completely dry – on the basin next to your washbag, huh?’ She chased him in the direction of the bathroom. ‘George? Sam? Do I need to do a teeth inspection for you guys, too? Go on! Get your skates on. Everyone else is pretty much good to go.’ Presumably there would come a time when Milo would remember to clean his teeth without a reminder and maybe even change his socks once in a while, but so far there wasn’t much sign.

  She had a sudden vision of a thirty-year-old Milo, still living at home in her tiny cottage, with her doing his laundry and making him a brown-bag lunch every day. She absolutely mustn’t let that happen. It was too easy to do everything for him – far quicker, for one thing, and they always seemed to be running late – but she knew that wouldn’t be doing either of them any favours. She only had to think of Frankie – her ex – so comprehensively molly­coddled by his Italian–Australian mother that he was entirely incapable of taking adult responsibility. It was practically a disability. When they’d first met – he’d been section editor of The Age when she first returned to Melbourne – he’d still been living with his parents, although he was thirty-four, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘It’s an Italian thing,’ he’d assured her with a complacent smile. ‘My mamma needs to spoil me. It’d break her heart if I left. She’d worry I wasn’t eating properly.’

  I should have seen the writing on the bloody wall, she thought now. But Frankie had been such a godsend as she established her freelance career that she allowed herself to be swayed by his lazy charm and handsome Mediterranean looks until she fancied herself in love with him. She’d arrived back in her home city on the very slenderest wing and a prayer. A desperate, late-night phone call to her cousin Tegan had resulted in an offer of a bed for six weeks while Tegan’s flatmate was overseas, and the promise of an introduction to a journo she’d been at college with, who might be able to put some work her way. Who turned out to be Francesco Rossi.

  God, Frankie! It had all been OK to begin with. Well, more than OK, if she was honest. She couldn’t believe her luck and clung to him as if to a life-raft after a shipwreck. After an email exchange, they met in his third-floor office in the Fairfax building on Collins Street. He looked her up and down, for rather longer than he looked at her CV, in truth, and smiled appreciatively.

  ‘Tell you what, it’s almost lunchtime,’ he said, never taking his eyes off her. ‘There’s a bar on the corner called O’Connell’s. Meet me there in ten and pitch me three decent ideas for features. If they’re any good, you get an assignment and I stand you lunch. If not, you’re on your own. Right?’

  When Frankie showed up half an hour later, Tamsin had three ideas ready and waiting: a run-down of the ten hottest nightclubs in London (how would Francesco know, anyway?); an investigation into the alarming rise of elective C-sections in Australia, based on a brief conversation over breakfast with Tegan, who was a midwife (‘Melbourne Mums: too posh to push?’); and an exclusive interview with an up-and-coming Aussie comedian, just back on home turf after a sell-out tour of Europe, who’d sat next to Tamsin on the plane over and whose card she later found tucked into her handbag (bit of a sleazebag, but hey). Frankie had been impressed. He also turned out to be good company, sexy as hell, and expansive with the compliments and his wallet. Lunch turned into a long afternoon at the bar, and the start of a highly productive partnership. One that quickly moved from the office to the bedroom.

  By the time Tegan’s flatmate returned, Tamsin was sufficiently solvent to put down a deposit on a one-bed rental unit in Hawthorn. Frankie all but moved in when she did. Thanks to the steady stream of commissions he put her way, within three months of her arrival she wa
s offered a rare staff post on the paper. The knowledge that she was pregnant led to a brief crisis of conscience, but she accepted the offer anyway on the assumption that it would all come good in the end. By the time her bump was impossible to conceal she intended to be indispensable.

  Frankie, to his credit, proved a devoted father. Which was good of him, since fatherhood had not exactly been on his game-plan when they met, and an unplanned sprog swiftly turned their carefree life together upside down. He took enormous paternal pride in the infant Milo, and insisted on having a vast Italian family christening at St Patrick’s Cathedral followed by a lunch party for fifty of his nearest and dearest. Tamsin herself was pitifully short on family. A late child of elderly parents, she had been orphaned in her early twenties while she was still a student, living in London. At which point, Frankie’s mother Teresa, appalled that Tamsin could muster only Tegan and her boyfriend to represent the distaff side, finally let down her defences and embraced Tamsin to her capacious bosom as the mother of her newest grandson.

  It seemed exactly the new beginning Tamsin had yearned for when she fled England the year before. With remarkably little effort on her part, a ready-made life beckoned. It was as if she’d landed in a parallel universe. So complete was the package the large and noisy Rossi family offered that she sometimes felt like an amnesiac who’d awoken to find her past obliterated. She perpetuated this herself, in part, by losing contact with her friends in the UK. She persuaded herself that this was because she’d been waiting till she was fixed up before sending out change of address cards, and had then been too busy working her socks off and setting up home with Frankie. In the end, in a fit of hormone-induced contrition after Milo’s birth, she dropped cards to a handful of friends, including Anna and Theo, announcing the news. ‘Sorry I’ve been so crap at keeping in touch,’ she scribbled inadequately on the back. ‘Bit of a whirlwind this end! One day you guys must meet my new family . . .’