by Kiley Dunbar
It was too late to call Kelsey, and she was crying too hard to make sense anyway, so she reached for her phone, as she always did late at night now she was installed back at her mum’s house. Opening the app, she started scrolling, swiping left, looking for a stranger to talk to.
Chapter Seven
‘All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me’
(Sonnet 43)
Autumn always brought with it a ‘back to school’ feeling of renewal that Kelsey never failed to get caught up in. This was the start of the new year as far as she was concerned. A time when, if she was lucky, she treated herself to new boots to see her through the cold months; a time when, inspired by the changing colours around her, she’d feel inclined to experiment with her make-up palette, not something that interested her much at other times of the year, and she started reaching for her berry lipsticks instead of her pink nudes.
She’d bemoaned her situation to Mirren over the phone, telling her, ‘Jonathan’s missing the three weeks of the year where I look ace,’ and she just knew Mirren was rolling her eyes and readying herself for an emphatic speech about how Kelsey looked great every day of the year so she’d better stop putting herself down like that.
But Kelsey, like all autumn-born babies with an affinity for this magical time of year, knew what she was talking about, and it was the weather that did it. October’s dry days were perfect for her Celtic hair, prone to bedraggling in summer heat and winter damp. These few weeks between seasons were the Goldilocks time for her golden-brown locks, and she made the most of it.
Her autumn bloom always coincided with her birthday, and Kelsey had turned twenty-nine only days ago. Mirren had phoned to wish her well and, noticing her friend was down, Kelsey tried her best to draw out the reason why, but Mirren wouldn’t say a word other than her usual breezy, ‘You know me, Kelse, I’m always fine, just busy.’ So Kelsey had dropped it and thanked Mirren for the big bags of Percy Pigs chewy sweets – which hadn’t lasted long at all – and the Netflix gift card which Kelsey had immediately splurged on a Keanu Reeves marathon.
Her mum, little brother Calum and grandad, all living together back home in Scotland, had posted a big package of things they knew she’d love to her little bedsit.
There was a new jar of moisturiser, and a book about photography her mum had doubtless found in a charity shop and which was perfect inspiration as Kelsey settled into her new job. There was a new jumper too, big, baggy and super soft in sapphire blue, a departure for Kelsey from her reliance on autumnal browns and oranges all year round. Best of all, there had been a gift card for a hair salon in the town centre.
Kelsey had walked past its doors many times that summer as she’d beaten the streets leading her tour groups from ancient building to hidden garden, but she’d never set foot inside. The salon always looked intimidatingly trendy to Kelsey, but she had delightedly pushed through the doors to make her appointment.
Only this morning she’d left through those doors, an eighty-quid gift token and ten inches of wild, tawny-blonde hair lighter.
‘Like it?’ she said, peering at Jonathan’s grinning face on her tablet now she was home again, swishing her hair and enjoying the novelty of the neat ends skimming her shoulders.
‘Beautiful. You look beautiful.’
‘Like someone who owns their own business? You’d trust this woman with your wedding photos, right?’
‘I’d trust you with anything, my heart included.’
They smiled at their screens, Jonathan’s straight white teeth flashing beneath curling lips in the American smile that had kick-started Kelsey’s slow-burn attraction to him the day she had, literally, bumped into him at the café with the pink awnings by the marina; the slow burn that had soon turned into a loved-up inferno no distance or time apart could extinguish.
After a moment she turned her phone, angling it to the table and vase in the corner of her tiny white bedsit, showing Jonathan the lavish flowers he’d sent her for her birthday. ‘They’ve opened up even more. Aren’t they lovely? I wish you were here to smell their perfume.’
He’d taken care to contact the florist in the town’s smart shopping arcade that she had admired so often, and he’d listed every flower he’d ever seen mentioned in a Shakespeare play or poem for the florist to choose from. When the delivery arrived at St. Ninian’s there was a note attached in Jonathan’s handwriting listing each flower in turn. The whole thing must have taken days to orchestrate.
For Kelsey, my love and my leading lady, on your birthday. Here’s flowering rosemary for remembrance (Hamlet), sweet musk-roses and eglantine (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), lady-smocks all silver-white (Love’s Labour’s Lost), and carnations and streak’d gillyflowers (The Winter’s Tale). I hope you like them. They’re sent with all my love, J, x
The whole spray was bold and bright and a little untidy with a hint of wild nature about it, much like Jonathan himself. He really couldn’t have sent a more appropriate gift.
‘I’m wishing the days away until Christmas and you flying in, but I wish I could freeze this bouquet in time and have it last forever,’ said Kelsey, letting him see her face once more.
Jonathan smiled fondly, his eyes shining. ‘I’ll just have to send you more when those ones fade.’
‘Does acting pay that much?’ she laughed.
‘Ah, well, let’s not talk about that.’ He flashed his smile again, his cheeks making his eyes close in crescents and showing Kelsey that dimple on his chin, the one that should have been illegal it was so appealing.
‘I wish you were here,’ she said in a quiet voice. Not for the first time she felt the miles between them. So often as she walked through town she’d see their old haunts and be struck with the knowledge of how depleted her everyday life was without the possibility of running into him there, so closely was he linked to her sense of the place, and yet she’d forced herself to carry on and discover new sides to Stratford, and herself, and to keep testing out her independence all the more. Still, she was allowed to sulk sometimes and this was one of them.
‘I wish I was there too,’ said Jonathan. ‘But I’m with you all the time, and I’m not going anywhere. Just hold on. You keep working on the studio, and I’ll keep dying on stage every night as Hamlet.’ He mimed his body recoiling from the sword-stabbing action of his fist towards his chest and pulled a face at his own joke. Kelsey couldn’t help but smile at his goofiness. ‘It’ll be December twenty-third before we know it, ’kay?’
‘All right.’
‘Talk to you tomorrow?’
‘Sunrise?’
‘Sunrise. I love you.’
His image disappeared from her phone screen and she sat back on her bed with a sigh. This waiting was proving harder than she thought. Last month she’d been convinced that the morning he left had been the hardest part, but this was a whole new kind of longing.
She thought back to the last time they’d been in touching distance, trying to bring back the feel of his hands and the scent of his skin. That night, their last together until midwinter when Jonathan would return for the briefest of Christmas vacations, had proved to be the most intense of their short relationship.
It was September the fourth. His flight was at five a.m., so he’d be setting off from Stratford in a cab in the pre-dawn light. Neither of them intended to sleep that night.
It had been only the fourth night they’d spent together after a long summer of getting to know each other. Four nights since they’d shared those first ardent ‘I love you’s and fallen into Kelsey’s bed.
On their last night, they’d spent the evening drinking champagne at the Yorick pub with the rest of Norma’s tour guide staff, all out of work and wondering what the autumn ahead held for them, but they’d left before everyone else, keen to make the most of their last precious hours together.
Still light enough in the evenings for the room to glow with the orange and pink of a wa
tery summer’s end sunset, they’d begun peeling away each other’s clothes, letting their eyes take in each new inch of skin as it was exposed, standing over Kelsey’s single bed in her pristine white bedsit at the top of the Victorian building under the terracotta tiles and the sloping eves where the summer heat still lingered.
Kelsey remembered how Jonathan’s breath caught and grew increasingly shaky as she traced her fingertips across his broad collar bones and down his chest, while both of them tried to forget his suitcase by the door, ready for his departure.
‘I can’t believe you’re going and I won’t be able to do this to you whenever I want,’ she said, stretching up on her arches to press a kiss into the thick sinewed warmth of his neck.
For a moment, Jonathan wordlessly relished her lips skimming his skin, rolling his head back and closing his eyes drowsily before bringing Kelsey’s face before his, steadying her with his hands cupping her jaw, his fingertips reaching the nape of her neck.
‘It’ll pass and I’ll come back to you, for Christmas.’ His eyes narrowed as his gaze fell to her lips again.
‘I love you, Kelsey. Now I’ve found you, I won’t ever let you go,’ he said as he trailed his mouth from her lips to her neck and slowly down over her stomach to between her thighs where he’d lingered, making her inner muscles tense and soften as he listened to her moans, letting her responses guide his tongue and soft lips.
She’d told him she loved him too, the words getting lost in gasps as she scrunched his dark brown waves in her fingers, loving the softness of his hair against her skin. There wasn’t a thing about this beautiful man she didn’t love.
No, they’d had no intention of sleeping that last night. She’d had time enough to make sure he understood exactly how she felt before three a.m. and the cabby’s knock.
He’d left, Kelsey calculated, staring at the blank phone screen in her hands with a heavy sigh, six weeks, four hours, forty-three minutes and twenty-two seconds ago.
Jonathan wasn’t the only one faithfully counting the days.
Chapter Eight
‘Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime’
(Sonnet 3)
‘Mirren! What a nice surprise, come in.’
Mari Anderson, Kelsey’s mum, knew how to make people feel welcome. She’d opened her home up years ago to her hairdressing clients, many of whom outstayed their appointment times to drink tea and chat. The house was often full of Calum’s friends too.
Kelsey’s little brother was known amongst his group of cosplaying, sci-fi obsessed pals as the host of his nerdy friendship circle. Moments before Mirren arrived, a four and a half foot tall Boba Fett and a surprisingly well made-up Queen Amidala had run inside and were now scoffing popcorn and energy drinks in Calum’s room. Mari never seemed to mind the stream of kookily dressed kids who appeared at her door, and she had always made Mirren feel welcome too whenever she’d called round. That was just the kind of woman she was.
Kelsey’s grandfather, who had recently moved in with the family, was reclined open-mouthed and dreaming in front of the TV. He’d been sleeping in Kelsey’s old room and benefitting from Mari’s home cooking and the lightening of the burden that looking after his old marital home had become since the death of his wife many years ago now. Mirren slipped the big bundle of Edinburgh rock she’d brought for him onto the kitchen worktop.
‘I’m sorry to intrude. Are you busy?’ Mirren asked.
‘Don’t be daft. I was just away to put the kettle on and you’ll save me eating this coffee cake all by myself.’
Mirren’s shoulders dropped with the relief. This was exactly the kind of welcome she knew she would receive, having been all but adopted by the Anderson family since her school days, and yet, having been raised in a volatile home, a small part of her still expected that one day the calm, friendly Andersons might not be pleased to see her and she might be turned away. Such is the never-ending insecurity that accompanies the adult child of parents who swing between extremes of kindness and cruelty.
‘Kelsey told me you might drop round actually, and I was hoping you would,’ Mari said with an easy smile.
After a little while chatting, brewing tea and arranging the plates and forks, the pair settled in front of the old range in the kitchen of Mari’s little grey stone terrace overlooking the steely waves of the Firth of Forth beyond the concrete sea wall.
‘So how are things back at your mum’s?’ Mari asked, diplomatically avoiding eye contact by pouring the milk.
‘It’s… well it’s…’ Mirren struggled for the words. She didn’t like to criticise her mother and would more often than not avoid the topic altogether, but Mari was familiar with the cycles of drinking followed by long periods of sobriety and renewed fervour for life that Jeanie Imrie suffered through. Mari knew all about the hospital admissions too and that one summer Jeanie spent in a private rehab facility which had prompted Mirren to move in with Preston’s family and the sixteen-year-old had started eating healthily, sleeping well, and for the first time in a long time she lost her gauntness and had the look of teenage bloom about her. Recently, Mirren had let herself wonder if she and Preston would have begun the search for a flat of their own at eighteen if it wasn’t for her precarious home life, but she packed the thoughts away now.
‘It’s strange after living with Preston for so long,’ Mirren said in a rush. ‘I’m looking for my own place, just haven’t found anything yet,’ she said with a shrug as though it was only a small worry.
‘Oh well, it’s not for too long then, is it? You’ll soon find somewhere nice,’ Mari said generously, but seeing through Mirren’s bluff.
A loud snore from the living room caused them both to turn their heads in Kelsey’s grandad’s direction. Mari’s eye caught Mirren’s, conveying so much without any words. She would have offered her daughter’s best friend a bed if she’d had the room, but with her elderly dad’s new living arrangements it wasn’t possible. Mirren returned the look with a crinkle of her eyes in an understanding, grateful smile.
‘I quite fancy doing what Kelsey did, just getting away, a complete change of scene, you know?’
Mari nodded. ‘She’s certainly found her place.’ Unmistakable pride and warmth accompanied the words. ‘I was worried she’d never spread her wings.’
‘I know. I see how happy she is. I’m tied to work, though. I can’t exactly leave the country.’
‘Hmm.’ Mari trod carefully. ‘How did your promotion go?’
‘Oh, it didn’t. They gave it to… someone else.’ The utter smugness mixed with faux modesty on Jamesey Wallace’s face as Mr Angus awarded the promotion at the team-building away day last month flashed in Mirren’s memory. She’d been sure that this time she had it in the bag. Losing to Jamesey made being passed over yet again smart all the more.
‘Next time, eh?’ Mari said, handing Mirren the larger of two slices of cake.
‘Yeah, next time. They are letting me write a feature though on Christmas theatre excursions.’
‘They are? And we’re sitting here drinking tea?’ Mari was already on the move, reaching for the fridge door and the prosecco inside. ‘We’re celebrating that!’
Soon they were sipping bubbly and Mirren was asking how things were going without Kelsey around.
‘Aye, great,’ Mari answered. ‘We’re busy. Dad’s nurse visits every few days. Calum spends most of his time with his friends in other galaxies, and I’m working a lot. People will always need their hair cut, right?’
Mirren leaned in a little, cocking her head at Mari’s expression, wondering if she didn’t look a little sad. ‘But?’ Mirren coaxed.
Mari swiped a hand and smiled, dismissing the little niggle she’d betrayed.
‘You can’t kid a kidder,’ Mirren added.
‘Well… oh, God, don’t tell Kelsey, she’ll only worry.’ Mari huffed out a sharp breath, meeting Mirren’s eyes. ‘It’s just one of my clients
, a friend actually, umm…’
‘Go on.’
‘She set me up with a friend of hers, a guy, and I can’t say it went well. We met in the Bonnie Prince Charlie for a drink last week but it was all a bit stilted. I haven’t been out on a Friday night since Lewis passed, let alone going out on a date, and even though it felt like it might be the right time, it definitely wasn’t the right person. I haven’t slept very well since, thinking about it all, you know? I feel a bit unsettled, a bit… lonely.’
Mirren had to tell herself not to let her excitement show too much. This was exactly what Kelsey had hoped would happen and she’d often told Mirren her dream that one day her mum would feel ready to meet someone new.
It had been fourteen long years since Kelsey’s dad passed away in a tragic, horrible motorway accident that had stolen a devoted dad from baby Calum and teenage Kelsey, and left Mari mourning the love of her life and her childhood sweetheart.
This was the first time Mari had ever shown any signs of being ready to take the first tentative steps into dating and Mirren knew if she let the excitement fizzing within her show she could easily spook Mari and put her off dating for the rest of her life.
After a measured breath, Mirren reached for her phone. ‘You could try one of my dating apps. I use them sometimes.’ All the time, she thought. ‘And I’ve met some really nice men on them.’ She tried to remember exactly which of the men she’d have classed as really nice. Fair enough, some of them were friendly but some were plain dull, and then there were the guys with their wedding rings hidden in their wallets, the no-shows, the liars and fantasists, and the one whose profile picture featured a muscled underwear model from Italy when in reality he was a paunchy chip shop owner from Kilmarnock.
