Hello, Again

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘I really hope it does not,’ Pepper said, slipping her phone out of her pocket and finding the screen still blank.

  ‘Unfortunately, as with anything as momentous as love, it carries with it a certain amount of risk. There is always the risk you will be rejected, or hurt, or deceived – but the rewards are too great to pass up. I would wager that most people who have had their hearts broken would still keep the chapters of their story that contained love, rather than tear them out. Because what are we without love, really?’

  Pepper was not thinking about Finn now, but about Bethan. About how she would still rather have had those seven years with her sister, than never known her at all, even taking into consideration the pain of her own grief, and how much havoc Bethan’s death would wreak. Pepper knew that she was who she was because of her sister, not in spite of her.

  ‘How did you know?’ she asked Josephine. ‘That you were in love with Jorge, I mean?’

  The lift had arrived, and the doors slid open to reveal a gaggle of schoolchildren, each one clutching a clipboard and chattering away excitedly in Spanish.

  One of Josephine’s eyebrows twitched.

  ‘That is a very good question,’ she said, stepping forwards as Pepper followed. ‘But I fear now may not the best time to answer.’

  And with that, for the time being at least, Pepper had no choice but to be satisfied.

  Chapter 34

  Finn finally replied to Pepper’s message as she was dressing for dinner later that evening, telling her that he also missed her very much and asking lots of questions about what she had been up to and how she was finding her first experience of Spain. It had not surprised her to learn that he had visited Barcelona many times before, and when she asked him to recommend somewhere nice for food, he promptly responded with a list.

  Now she and Josephine were sitting opposite one another at a small restaurant called Bodega Joan, which had a dark-wood interior, strings of garlic bulbs hanging in clusters from the ceiling, and wicker baskets of various sizes decorating the walls. It was also, according to Finn, one of the best establishments in the city to sample paella.

  ‘I thought we would have trouble getting in,’ Pepper said now, picking up the earthenware jug of sangria and topping up each of their glasses. Aside from herself and Josephine, there were only four other tables occupied.

  ‘That is because we’re rather early for dinner, darling,’ said Josephine.

  ‘Half past eight? Early?’

  ‘The locals won’t venture out until ten to eat – perhaps even later, given that it’s a Saturday.’

  ‘If I waited that long to eat, my stomach would eat itself,’ Pepper said seriously, pulling off a chunk of the bread that their waiter had not long ago brought over, and Josephine smiled.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she mused, watching as Pepper dug her knife into the butter. ‘But since my diagnosis, my appetite has been boringly lacklustre. I am supposed to be keeping my strength up and all that gubbins, but I have been struggling to feel very enthusiastic about English food. The same is certainly not true here – that was part of the reason I wanted to revisit this city, to find a morsel or two to reignite my taste buds.’

  ‘I knew I should have made sure you took a siesta,’ Pepper implored. After she and Josephine had left Casa Batlló, the older woman had promptly crossed the road towards yet another of Gaudí’s architectural wonderlands, La Pedrera, and insisted they go inside.

  It was the rooftop of this particular building that was its standout feature, and instead of boring chimneys and ventilation towers, the innovative artist had created an army of stone guardians to watch over his city. Pepper had felt like a pawn on a giant chess board as she gazed up at each one in turn. Many of the sculptures had been decorated in pieces of broken tile, and she and Josephine had traced the patterns with their fingers as they meandered up and down steps and along pathways, all the while playing a game of hide and seek with the sun.

  By the time they emerged, pink and dehydrated three hours later, the afternoon was drawing to an end and, having skipped lunch in favour of worship at the esteemed altar of Gaudí, both were hungrier for dinner than a nap. Pepper continued to be astounded by her friend’s determination to remain upbeat and relatively energetic, but she still worried that Josephine was perhaps pushing herself too far.

  ‘I think tomorrow, we should have a more relaxing day,’ Pepper suggested now, picking a slice of orange out of her glass and sucking it. ‘A boat tour, maybe? Or back to the beach?’

  Josephine gave a little grimace.

  ‘Both those ideas sound delightful, but I am afraid we already have plans.’

  ‘We do?’

  Josephine tapped the side of her nose with a finger.

  ‘All shall be revealed tomorrow, darling.’

  The paella arrived, vast and golden and overflowing with enormous pink prawns and gigantic mussels. It was fresh from the stove and steaming hot, the smell so enticing that both Pepper and Josephine leant forwards in their seats, their mouths open and their eyes alight.

  ‘Golly, this looks divine,’ Josephine said, helping herself to a huge portion. ‘Make sure you scrape that spoon across the bottom of the pan,’ she told Pepper. ‘The socarrat, that’s the singed stuff, has the very best flavour.’

  ‘Is that another of Jorge’s pearls of culinary wisdom?’

  ‘Indeed it is. He was full of them, you know. And he enjoyed teaching.’ She eyed Pepper over the table. ‘The two of you have a lot in common, when I come to think about it – the art, the teaching, the misfortune to end up with me by your side.’

  She had obviously been joking as she said the last, but Pepper felt the need to argue back regardless.

  ‘How could being around you ever be viewed as a misfortune?’ she exclaimed. ‘My life has become so much richer since I met you. I have learnt so much and experienced things I never thought I would, seen things I never have. Hell, I would never have met Finn if it wasn’t for you!’

  Josephine took a delicate mouthful of paella and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. The restaurant was getting steadily busier, and they could hear the sound of pots being banged down and staff shouting to one another.

  ‘I am by no means perfect,’ she said. Then, when Pepper pulled a face. ‘Honestly, darling – I have made some very iffy decisions over the course of my life. I have not always been honest with the people I was supposed to love and trust the most.’

  ‘Do you mean about Jorge?’ Pepper asked. ‘The fact that your husband never knew about him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Josephine speared a prawn but didn’t eat it. ‘But there is more to the story, more that I have not yet relayed to you.’

  Pepper reached for her sangria to wash down her most recent forkful of paella. Josephine was right, the socarrat was the best bit.

  ‘The thing is,’ the older woman began, waiting until Pepper had lowered her glass before continuing, ‘when I told you that I never heard from Jorge again, and that I gave up when he did not reply to any of my letters, that wasn’t strictly the truth.’

  ‘Oh.’ Pepper went very still.

  ‘Two summers after I had first met Jorge, my life felt as if it had fallen completely apart. I had been married to Ian for less than a year, pregnant for most of it, and scared absolutely witless about becoming a mother for the first time. In those days, it wasn’t in the slightest bit unusual for a girl of nineteen, as I was then, to be starting a family – but that didn’t make it any easier. I kept thinking that once the baby arrived, once I was holding them in my arms, all the fear would fall away. I trusted that my body and those so-promised motherly instincts would take over, but then Georgina arrived, and I felt . . . Well, I felt indifferent, if I’m completely honest with you. There was just this big, dark hole where I thought all the love would be, and it seemed to suck me down into it. For the first few months after she was born, I was floating, rudderless, utterly lost and so very terrified.’

  ‘Oh, y
ou poor thing.’ Pepper lifted an instinctive hand to touch her, then changed her mind and lowered it again. ‘Was it post-natal depression?’

  Josephine fussed absentmindedly with her mass of frizzy grey hair.

  ‘I deduced later that it must have been,’ she said. ‘But nobody talked about such things then. It was all “pull your socks up” and “less fussing, more getting on with it”. There was no real support on offer, or certainly none that I experienced, and Ian was at a loss as to how to help me. The poor man sought refuge at work, while back at our home in London, I slowly but surely went into decline. I knew that Georgina needed me, and at first it was enough to go through the motions of feeding and cleaning and comforting, but after a while I became fixated on the idea of escaping – from her and from Ian. I honestly believed that they would both be better off without me.’

  She paused briefly to gather her thoughts, and Pepper wondered if she should interject. But then, what could she say? She had never been a mother, so she could only begin to guess at what her friend had gone through.

  ‘I had a little bit of money saved,’ Josephine went on. ‘My father had passed away not long before Ian and I got married and he had left me some. It had been our plan to save it, create a trust for Georgina, so she had something there as a safeguard, or for when she needed it for her studies, or to buy a home of her own one day. It was so important to me that she have it, that option for independence that I had so craved – but all of a sudden, my escape felt more important. I knew that if I didn’t get away I would go mad, it was as simple as that. I waited for a Bank Holiday weekend and managed to persuade Ian to take Georgina to visit his parents alone. He could see that I was struggling, even if he pretended not to, and so he agreed, even though Georgina was still so young. I should have been sad to see the two of them drive away, but I’m ashamed to admit now that I wasn’t – I was relieved.’

  Pepper, who had never met Ian Hurley, tried her best to imagine the scene. It was difficult to pull together a picture from the limited photographs she had seen, of Josephine and her much-taller, jolly-looking husband. She had always presumed that they must have had a happy marriage, but all she really knew was that it had been a long union, and that the couple had welcomed three further children. Georgina had emigrated to Australia, of course, where she worked as a midwife, Toby and Patrick lived next-door to each other in suburban Surrey and ran a very successful property development business, while Bunty, the ‘surprise’ youngest, was an architect and had recently moved up to Scotland.

  Pepper wondered if any of them had ever been told this story.

  ‘I thought that if I could just get myself back to Lisbon and see Jorge again, I would feel better. I would be able to sleep again, feel like a human being again – like myself again. I was convinced that it was the only way.’

  Pepper’s eyes widened.

  ‘You went back again?’

  ‘I know,’ Josephine shook her head. ‘I know what you’re thinking – why would I go off and leave my baby behind to look for a man who had, to all intents and purposes, rejected me? Why would I do such a thing?’

  ‘You weren’t well,’ Pepper reminded her gently. ‘You have to make allowances for that.’

  ‘I was a coward,’ Josephine replied firmly. ‘What I should have done is ask for help. Instead, I ran away from the two people I was supposed to love most in the world – who loved me the most.’

  ‘But did it help?’ Pepper asked, seized by a sudden urgency. ‘Oh my God – did you find him? Did you find Jorge?’

  Josephine lifted her shoulders. ‘Getting away did help,’ she said, sounding abashed. ‘I felt immediately happier as soon as I got there, but what I should have felt was guilt – ashamed to have abandoned my husband and young daughter and run off in search of another man. I kept waiting for the reality of what I was doing to hit me, but it didn’t – not for the two weeks I spent hunting – unsuccessfully, I might add – for Jorge. That was how long it took for the guilt to catch up with me. I remember it so clearly, waking up one morning and knowing, just knowing, that I had to go home. In that moment, I missed Ian and Georgina so much that I almost stopped breathing. I started running around the room I had rented, throwing my belongings into a bag and wailing my head off like a demented banshee. I was so glad, then, to not have found Jorge after all. I could not believe how close I had come to losing everything.’

  ‘Wow.’ Pepper breathed. The paella was still sitting half-eaten on her plate, forgotten.

  ‘What happened after you got back?’ she asked.

  ‘Poor Ian,’ Josephine said, extracting a tissue from her cavernous handbag and dabbing at her eyes. ‘He was so relieved to see me. I had left a note saying I needed some time alone, but he had no idea where I had gone, and the dear man had searched all over England for me. My family were beside themselves, and my daughter––’

  She took a long, steadying breath.

  ‘Georgina had been so fretful without me. Ian told me that she never stopped crying out for me, that she had barely slept and was refusing food. I cannot bear to think about what I put her through, what she endured because of me, the one person who was supposed to love and protect her over everyone.’

  Her tears were falling steadily now, but Pepper felt at a loss as to what to say. Instead, she reached across the table and put a hand on her friend’s arm. She was so slim, so fragile.

  ‘Gosh, I’m such a silly old bat,’ Josephine muttered, blowing her nose. ‘I didn’t know that talking about all this stuff would still have such an impact on me. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Please don’t apologise,’ Pepper soothed. ‘I think you’re amazing. You swam when you very easily could have sunk – and you did go back. Don’t forget that. You left, but not forever. Not like––’ She pulled herself to an abrupt halt.

  This was not about her.

  Josephine didn’t seem to register. She was staring down at the golden rice in the dish between them. Sensing that her comforting hand was no longer required, Pepper removed it.

  ‘Ian forgave you for disappearing?’

  A nod.

  ‘Did you tell him where you had been?’

  Josephine closed her eyes briefly, as if in a wince. ‘No, never. I know I should have told him. I tried to, many times. But in the end, it would only have hurt him more and he deserved better than that – better than me, in truth. I have been trying very hard to forgive myself for my whole life, and clearly’ – she gestured towards her face – ‘I haven’t been able to do so. And if I am unable to forgive myself, then what chance would dear Ian have had?’

  Pepper opened her mouth to attempt a rebuttal, then shut it again. She understood about forgiveness, and how the passing of time sometimes offered little comfort. People go on about forgiving and forgetting, but do they ever really do so? When something is profound enough to change a life, can it ever be forgotten? And should it be? Josephine was entitled to feel all this pain, a fact that Pepper appreciated more than most, thanks to her mother.

  ‘You didn’t let what happened define you, though, did you?’ she said at last. ‘My mother has allowed my sister’s death to define her whole existence.’

  ‘Losing a child . . .’ Josephine visibly shuddered. ‘I don’t think anything could be harder than that. Pain of that kind changes a person permanently, I’m afraid. She will never be the woman she was before it happened.’

  ‘I know that.’ Pepper’s voice was small. ‘But she could be happier than she is, if she would only try a bit harder. Everything is black to her, there is no light at all. No matter what I do, I can’t make her see that there are still plenty of reasons to be happy, and things to enjoy.’

  ‘Is that why you stay?’ Josephine asked. She had taken a few sips of her sangria now, and the colour was returning to her cheeks. ‘In Aldeburgh? Even though most of your friends have gone?’

  Pepper did not want to think about the fact that Josephine would soon be gone, too. Instead of replying, she merel
y shrugged.

  ‘I hope your mother is not the sole reason you are still there,’ Josephine went on, her tone low now and laced with caution. ‘Because this is your life – you must live it for yourself.’

  ‘I might have agreed with you a few weeks ago,’ Pepper said, picking up her fork once more. ‘But now that Finn is coming to live with me, I have everything I need to be happy, right where I am. I honestly believe that he is the missing piece I have been waiting for, and as soon as he’s there, everything else will fall into place.’

  For a moment or two, Josephine said nothing, then she raised her glass.

  ‘Shall we drink to that, then?’ she asked, as Pepper followed suit.

  ‘To what, exactly?’

  ‘Oh darling, isn’t that obvious? To love, of course!’

  Chapter 35

  Having left Bodega Joan even more full of affection for Finn than she was of paella, Pepper attempted to FaceTime him as soon as she was back in her hotel room, but her call went unanswered.

  She stayed up for as long as she could, flicking through TV channels she could not understand and sketching absentmindedly in the pad she had brought along in her hand luggage, drawing on a day spent in the company of Gaudí for inspiration. She may not be here in Barcelona with Finn, but she had decided that she still wanted to include the city in her painted tile project. It made her excited to think about how she would recreate the stunning mosaics in Park Güell and capture that trapped sense of movement she had felt in Casa Batlló. The work distracted her, but she still felt deflated switching off the bedside light hours later, her phone resolutely empty of new messages or calls.

  The next morning there was still no word, but Pepper could see from the soul-crushing blue ticks that Finn had both received and read her messages, which meant he was choosing not to get in touch. What could have happened in the past twelve hours to make him suddenly ignore her? Pepper trawled fruitlessly through her brain, trying to come up with a solution and failing, her frustration at not knowing what was going on causing her to stub her toe painfully on the bathroom door and stab herself in the eye with her mascara wand.