Hello, Again

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘I hope he doesn’t expect a gift,’ her mother rattled on. ‘They will probably have a list at John Lewis. Well, they’re not getting so much as a card from me.’

  ‘I can pay for our flights,’ Pepper replied, thinking as she did so how strange it was that she would be taking another trip in the near future. The Channel Islands were not exactly exotic, but it still meant a plane journey.

  ‘When is it?’ she added, interrupting her mother’s protestations about travel costs.

  ‘Towards the end of the summer, I think,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the exact date, or perhaps Martin didn’t think to mention it. That would be just like him. He always has been forgetful.’ Her tone had softened now, as if her ex-husband’s absentmindedness was something she remembered fondly. It was a sentiment that rankled.

  ‘Your dad has gone because he is too sad to stay,’ her mother had told Pepper, who was fourteen when her father moved out. ‘We make him too sad.’

  Pepper had tried to make sense of those words at the time, had chased them around in her mind almost constantly, but they had never become any clearer. Because how could it feel right, after losing one daughter, to leave the one you had left? How would that make the sadness go away? Surely, she had reasoned, choosing to go would only make him sadder still? Years later, disinhibited by alcohol, Pepper had asked her father to tell her his reasons why.

  ‘I just couldn’t stay,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t do it any more.’

  Couldn’t be a husband. Couldn’t be a father. Couldn’t.

  It still stung.

  ‘That sounds like Dad,’ she agreed, because it was always easier to humour her mother. ‘Just check the hotel booking and text me the dates, so I can block those days out from work.’

  ‘The hotel booking?’ For a moment, her mother sounded completely lost, then she remembered. ‘Oh. Yes, of course. I see. Yes. It’s this wedding – it’s thrown me. My mind is tied up in knots.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum.’

  Pepper stared unseeingly at the blur of mopeds and stumbling tourists, unaware of the sun on her bare limbs, and the strutting dance of the pigeons as they picked at paving stones beneath her feet.

  ‘It will be fine,’ she soothed. ‘We’ll dress up nicely, hold our heads up high and act like we’re happy for them, even if we’re not. We’ll smile, eat their food, drink their champagne, then we’ll come home again.’

  ‘It’s not your father’s fault,’ her mother said then, her inner pendulum swinging from affection to loyalty. ‘He deserves to be happy.’

  ‘So do you,’ Pepper reminded her, but she could already sense a rebuttal.

  ‘You say that,’ her mum said with a sigh, ‘but it’s an empty platitude, Philippa.’

  Pepper understood it, of course; knew that the absence of Bethan meant an absence of happiness for her mother. As she sat there, her phone pressing her ear against the side of her head, Pepper found herself assailed by the same guilt she always experienced whenever she saw or spoke to her mother. Guilt that her own pain did not run deep enough, that she dared to hope for elation in the wake of tragedy.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she whispered, standing up to pace in a circle. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I just worry about you, that’s all.’

  ‘I know you do.’ Her mother sounded almost sleepy. ‘I know you do.’

  Her nose stinging now with unshed tears, Pepper said a hurried goodbye, then jabbed at her phone to end the call.

  This was it – this was what it would always be like with her mother. The pattern of their relationship would keep repeating, just like the designs on all this city’s azulejos. The same picture, over and over. The same outcome, forever inevitable.

  Chapter 15

  ‘Fabulous, isn’t it?’

  Josephine had to fold up the rim of her UFO hat in order to admire the curved stone arches of the Convento do Carmo – a grand yet ruinous cathedral nestled in the heart of the city.

  ‘Very,’ agreed Pepper, who was still feeling bruised after her phone call.

  ‘I can remember being here with Jorge as if it were yesterday. It hasn’t changed a dot. Do you know, part of the original structure collapsed during an earthquake in 1755, but instead of attempting to rebuild her, the Portuguese simply chose to nurture what remained. I think she’s rather beautiful, in an eerie way. Jorge brought me here because he wanted to paint me, but I never had the patience to sit for him. Now, of course, I wish I had.’

  Pepper found it strange to walk through a nave that was open to the elements, the cracked stone pillars bleached pale gold by a sun they were never meant to see. She avoided churches at home because she always felt as if silent condemnation was emanating from every pew and flickering candle. It did not feel the same here, though, with the sky so blue above them and the breeze so warm. There were no echoes of death here, no corners shrouded in darkness, or whispering voices.

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’ Pepper asked. As well as being a church, the Convento do Carmo site also had an adjoining archaeology museum.

  Josephine pulled a face. ‘Not especially. I always find looking at old artefacts a bit depressing. They remind me of how fusty I am.’

  ‘Oh my God, woman!’ exploded Pepper. ‘You are ridiculous.’

  ‘Ravenous is what I am,’ she replied, offering Pepper the crook of her elbow. ‘And as luck would have it, the next place I want to see has the added benefit of pastel de nata by the barrowload.’

  ‘Pastel de who?’

  Josephine tittered. ‘Nata. Utterly divine and exceedingly delicious custard tarts. You must have seen them – they’re in the front window of every other bakery we walk past.’

  ‘Oh, those!’

  ‘So, what do you say?’ she enthused. ‘Shall we go to Belém and see how many we can eat before we’re sick?’

  Pepper estimated that walking the five kilometres along the river to Belém would take them at least an hour, and was therefore out of the question for Josephine, whose fall on the beach she had not forgotten. Instead of flagging down a taxi, however, she suggested they took the bus, only to find it packed to the doors with passengers. A young mum near the front offered a seat to Josephine, while Pepper stood towards the back, wedged in between two elderly women in long, black dresses and a group of rowdy teenage boys.

  Hoping to find a message from Finn when she took out her phone, Pepper was disheartened to be greeted by a blank screen.

  I like him, she thought. Being within his orbit yesterday had felt to Pepper as if she was inside a happy bubble. Life had been better for those few hours; Finn had rubbed away the dullness that had settled over her former shine.

  Chewing at a curl of skin on her thumb, she used the other to tap out a rapid message to him, pressing ‘send’ before she had a chance to reconsider. The bus trundled from one stop to the next, groaning under the weight of its human cargo, and all the while Pepper clung to the pole, trying her best not to bash into people whilst also keeping track of how far they had come.

  Her phone pinged.

  ‘Hallo,’ Finn had written, followed by an emoji of a waving hand. There was a pause, then another message came through. Pepper had asked him what he was up to, and now she let out a squeak of pleasure. The universe wasn’t just listening, it was doing.

  Finn was sitting on the bus stop bench when she and Josephine arrived, and smiled when they came into view. Getting to his feet, he strode smoothly across to greet them.

  ‘You look nice,’ he said, looking Pepper up and down. ‘Like a raspberry ripple ice cream.’

  Josephine nodded in enthusiastic agreement, eyeing Finn like a cat might a goldfish bowl.

  ‘And you look lovely, too,’ Finn added, running an appraising eye over Josephine’s green trousers and pale yellow blouse. ‘The colours of a summer meadow.’

  ‘I remember rolling around in those, once upon a time,’ she chuckled, and a mortified Pepper covered her face with her hands.

  ‘I
would not suggest that you do the same here,’ Finn replied. ‘Not in front of so many people.’

  Josephine thought this was hilarious and waggled a mock-offended finger at him as she complimented his crisp white shirt with its polo player embroidered on the breast pocket.

  ‘How wonderful that you two young things keep bumping into each other,’ Josephine said now. ‘I warned Pepper that this city has a history of bringing people together.’

  ‘Perhaps the stars want us to know one other,’ he agreed, beaming at both of them without a trace of humour or irony. Pepper could not imagine any of the men down at the Turbot having the gumption to talk like this.

  ‘I seem to recall Pastéis de Belém being this way,’ Josephine said, as another bus pulled up and a second crowd of occupants spilled out onto the pavement. The Rio Tejo lay, vast and glittering, to their right, while across the road there was a rectangular sprawl of lawn bordered by orange trees. Ignoring the path, Josephine beckoned them with a hand and made her way over the grass instead, stepping over outstretched legs and picnic baskets as she went.

  It was impossible to miss the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos – an enormous dreamscape of carved stone on the far side of the park – but Josephine was clearly a woman on a mission for a custard tart, and aside from a brief appreciative glance in the building’s direction, she made no comment, instead continuing determinedly towards what looked to be the main street. Pepper could see souvenir shops, bars, and a line of electric scooters for hire, but it was the queue outside Pastéis de Belém that really drew her eye. All around the entrance in the shade of the bakery’s blue awning, tourists stood in excitable huddles, many posing for selfies with pastries raised up towards their mouths.

  ‘It smells like cinnamon,’ she said, her nose in the air. ‘And sugar.’

  Finn glanced down. His sunglasses were hiding his eyes, but the upward trajectory of his lips was a clear indicator of his mood.

  ‘Then we have come to the right place.’

  In any other circumstance, for any other food source, Pepper could not imagine ever waiting in line for close to thirty minutes in order to sample it. But this situation was different for two reasons. One: she got to wait in said queue with Finn, and two: when it came to the actual eating part, it turned out that pastel de nata genuinely were more than worth it.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed between mouthfuls, as the gooey, warm, custard filling oozed over her taste buds and the thin layers of pastry cracked delectably. The flavour – a perfect balance between sweetness, richness and spice – was like nothing Pepper had ever experienced before.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, using a finger to scoop up the extra filling that had leaked out into the cardboard tube. ‘These are – wow!’

  Finn, who had ordered eight pastries to her four and still had his mouth full, articulated his wholehearted agreement with a brisk nodding of his blond head.

  ‘Even better than beer,’ he declared, when he was done chewing.

  ‘Utterly sublime,’ Josephine agreed, wiping delicately at the corner of her mouth with her handkerchief. ‘Jorge and I would buy a bagful for the equivalent of pennies and eat them down by the riverbank,’ she went on. ‘Do you know, once upon a time, they would have sold them over in the monastery there, as a ruse to attract more people inside.’

  ‘I can understand the logic behind that plan,’ Pepper enthused, going in for a third helping.

  ‘It says here on the bag that the recipe is still the same,’ Josephine said. ‘The secret ingredients have been passed on from one generation to the next.’

  ‘I like that idea.’ Finn folded his empty carton in half. ‘I think it is important that we learn from our parents, and our grandparents, just as we will one day teach our children.’

  Josephine was looking at Pepper.

  ‘Can we add friends to that list, too?’ she asked him. ‘Even I know that a person is never too old to learn a new lesson – or to teach one, for that matter.’

  Pepper wanted to reply, to explain to her friend that she had already taught her so much about the importance of grabbing moments as they passed, and how vital it is to cherish the time you have. She knew that if Josephine could find a way to heal Pepper of the hurt that she still carried, she would. But simply knowing it didn’t make it so.

  When it came to forging a future free from guilt, Pepper still had a lot of work to do.

  Chapter 16

  It was early evening by the time they left Belém and braved the bus for the second time that day. Pleasantly pink from a day spent in the sun and with a nicely full stomach courtesy of Pastéis de Belém, Pepper stared out of the window at the passing scenery. Real life, with its antagonistic parents, bills to pay and work to be done, felt very far away.

  Finn was in the adjacent seat, his leg tantalisingly close to her own, while Josephine sat facing them. Every time Pepper glanced in her direction, the older woman offered her an expression laced with mischievousness, a single, suggestive eyebrow raised up like a feather duster.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said airily, examining one of the many bracelets that decorated her wrist. ‘Do you two urchins think you could amuse yourselves for the evening? I rather fancy a nap, then I thought I might go for a stroll. By myself,’ she added, seeing that Pepper was about to interject.

  ‘But––’ Pepper began.

  ‘Honestly, darling. I really would rather be alone for a bit, if it’s all the same with you? There are so many memories coming back to me, and I fear some are being chased away by all our chatter.’

  ‘I can stay quiet,’ Pepper protested, but Josephine shook her head.

  ‘Yes, but that is hardly fair on you. What would please me most of all is if the two of you were to toddle off and do something fun together. Perhaps go to a Fado club?’ She nodded to Finn. ‘Or explore those exciting-looking bars you keep telling me I’m not allowed to venture into?’

  ‘Finn probably has his own plans,’ Pepper pointed out, but Josephine was not going to be deterred that easily.

  ‘I very much doubt that he’s had an offer better than this one.’

  She had posed it as a question, and Finn did not let her down.

  ‘That is true,’ he agreed, pressing the bell to alert the driver that they were nearing their stop, then helping Josephine to her feet when the bus began to slow.

  ‘But what about dinner?’ Pepper went on as they clambered off. ‘You can’t survive on just custard tart.’

  ‘I am perfectly capable of dining at the hotel.’ Josephine tempered. ‘Alternatively, I can eat out somewhere later. Jorge’s family used to run a restaurant, you know, and I should like to see if they are still there. I promise I won’t go far – I will stay within the boundaries of Alfama.’

  ‘But what if something happens?’ Pepper argued, lowering her voice a fraction. ‘These cobbles are treacherous enough in daylight hours.’

  ‘My dear.’ Josephine put a hand on her arm. ‘This trip is all about us having fun, so if you please, stop being a worry goblin and let me have mine.’

  It was only after she promised to text every hour and avoid unnecessary steps that Pepper let her go, and after they had waved her off, she and Finn stood facing each other on the pavement, their shared smiles doing the work of all the words they were unable to find.

  Pepper spoke first.

  ‘Beer?’

  Finn removed his hands from the pockets of his shorts.

  ‘Ja!’

  This time it was Pepper’s turn to take the lead, Finn falling in step beside her as she guided them up winding stone steps and along alleyways that appeared from between the tall houses as if from nowhere. There was a place in Alfama that she wanted to show him – a bar she and Josephine had passed on their first day – and she found her way back to it without too much trouble, trusting her own memory rather than relying on her phone.

  ‘This place looks great,’ said Finn, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe as they went inside.

&
nbsp; The bar was laid out like someone’s living room – albeit one in a house belonging to an eccentric kleptomaniac with a penchant for hoarding, thought Pepper – and every available surface was piled high with an astonishing array of ornaments, pictures, candles, framed photos, records and postcards. Someone had fashioned a disco light out of a gramophone, and the furniture was a jumble of mismatched pieces in varying states of disrepair. Pepper pointed to a mirror-fronted cabinet in the corner that someone had decorated in stick-on goggly eyes, a battalion of costume dolls on one of the wooden shelves above. There were shisha pipes stacked against the walls, a rickety table groaning under the weight of board games, and a large grandfather clock with graffiti-green chimes.

  After ordering two cans of beer from a red-haired woman who was manning the kitchen-cum-bar area, they sat down on a chintzy sofa that promptly coughed out a fog of dust.

  ‘Obrigada,’ said Finn, thanking the same woman as she plonked a small basket of nuts down on the table in front of them.

  ‘So,’ said Pepper, pouring her beer from the can into a glass.

  ‘So,’ said Finn, following suit.

  Before she had time to conjure up something interesting or witty to say, he had plucked a dog-eared menu off a nearby shelf and began reading the cocktail list aloud.

  ‘Sloe comfortable screw?’ he suggested.

  Pepper choked as her beer went down the wrong way.

  ‘Nein? OK . . . Perhaps, then, a Climax?’

  ‘Stop!’ Pepper laughingly poked his leg. ‘You’re lowering the tone.’

  ‘Between the Sheets sounds good, ja?’ he teased. ‘White rum, cognac, triple sec and a splash of lemon juice.’

  ‘Very nice,’ she said obediently. ‘But to be honest, I’m more a simple beer or wine girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, putting down the menu. ‘That is why we get along so well, I think. You like the simple things in life, and I am simple.’

  ‘Simple suggests you’re not interesting,’ she pointed out. ‘And I would argue that you are.’

  ‘Ja?’ He was fishing now.

  ‘You co-own a bar and a restaurant and you’re launching your own website. You apparently speak at least three languages – including Portuguese – and spend the majority of your time travelling around the world. Oh, and there’s also the fact you accost strange women in the street.’