Читать книгу Homecoming - Cathy Kelly - Страница 11

Never underestimate the power of a simple mushroom. When I was young, Agnes and my mother would head off at dawn on summer’s mornings to search for mushrooms. Nobody thought of growing them in the vegetable garden along with the potatoes and cabbage. Mushrooms were the fairies’ gift to us, my mother would say: like soft pincushions scattered on the grass as the sun rose.

You had to be quick, mind, or else the cattle would trample them and they’d be gone.

Home with their pot of mushrooms, we’d put the fattest on top of the range and sprinkle a little salt on them. Roasted like that, with the heat rising up into the mushrooms and the pink pleated underbelly turning brown, they were the most delicious thing you’d ever eat.

They made a great feast with a bit of scrambled egg: a plate of earth brown mushrooms with the juices running out of them and the eggs like yellow clouds beside them.

Even now – and it’s a long time since I walked a green field to pick a wild mushroom – I can still taste the freshness of one roasted on my mam’s range.

It was the simplicity we loved. Agnes had told us of the grand feasts in the big house, with sauces you had to stir for hours.

Hollandaise for asparagus was the fashion at the time in the grand houses. I’ve since tried asparagus and all I can say is, give me a roasted mushroom any day.

But the humble mushroom is proof that sometimes the best things in life are found growing wild and free right under your nose. Don’t rush so fast, Eleanor, that you can’t see the wild mushrooms around you.

Two weeks into January and the rains came. Rae wasn’t sure which was the lesser of two evils: the fact that the rain raised the temperature from an icy minus three in the early morning or the fact that at least when it was freezing, it didn’t rain.

Will was awake and reading when Rae woke up one mid-January morning with the sound of torrential rain bouncing off the windows. She peered at him sleepily, then looked at the clock. Only six thirty, still dark.

She wriggled over in the bed and snuggled up against him, loving the solid heat of his body beside hers. He was always warm. She wore bedsocks and fleecy pyjamas, which she’d learned to like when she was menopausal and prone to night sweats.

She’d hated the sweats. Waking up to a cool film of perspiration and with her hair stuck to her head as if she’d been swimming.

But she’d found the loss of fertility even harder. Menopause was one of those words she winced at. The end of fertility. There was something horribly final about it.

Even if she was too old to have a child now, the ability to have one was something precious.

And yet the ability to have children had brought her pain along with joy. Rae could never look at a baby in a pram without feeling a surge of an old pain rise up in her.

‘Hello, love,’ said Will.

‘You’re awake early,’ she murmured.

‘Couldn’t sleep. Did you sleep well?’

‘Really well. Sorry you didn’t.’

Rae lay for a moment more, doing what she’d done for so many years: gently nudging the past back into its box in her mind.

That done, she stretched luxuriously. She didn’t have to get up for another hour. Bliss.

She loved lying in, half-sleep. When Anton had been little, this had been the thing she’d missed the most: the dreaming time at weekends before she got up to face the day. Anton had been a particularly early riser. He was born when she was twenty-nine. He was now the same age she was when she’d given birth to him. She tried to imagine her beloved son as a parent – not that there was any sign of him settling down yet.

He’d be a gentle and thoughtful dad, she thought. He’d been the tallest of his class for years, built like a rugby player but totally lacking the rugby player’s ferocious sporting instinct. She’d always thought he’d work with animals in some way. She remembered the gentleness of him when he was sitting in the dog’s basket, stroking her silky ears. Instead, he’d turned that sensitive, thoughtful side into political analysis.

And he was happy. That was all she wanted, really.

She was lucky, despite everything that had happened. She must remember that.

Rae’s mind roved about, flitting into Titania’s and the morning ahead. Patsy from the hair salon wanted a table for ten at lunchtime and a cake for a birthday.

‘Candles?’ Rae had asked on the phone.

‘Definitely no candles,’ Patsy had answered in her raspy, smoker’s voice. ‘She’s gone beyond candles. But something with shoes would be nice. She loves shoes. They love you back, too.’

Rae laughed. She liked Patsy and her sharp, dry humour. Patsy was another person who hadn’t been brought up in happy-familyville, Rae was sure of it. There was a sense of kinship between them, even though neither had ever said a word about their past to the other. But sometimes, you knew.

Patsy never looked at Rae as if she were a comfortable married woman who helped out with Community Cares to fill her spare time. She understood that Rae was helping herself by helping other people, in the same way that Patsy helped the women who turned up at Patsy’s Salon sporting red eyes, black eyes and faces full of pain. Patsy welcomed them in, put the kettle on and made them beautiful. Beauty, like cups of tea in Titania’s, was sometimes more than skin deep.

‘I was thinking…’ Will put down his book.

Rae struggled out of her half-dream and sat up against the pillows. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself, love,’ she teased.

In retaliation, Will stretched his long fingers under her armpit and found the tickliest place.

‘You win,’ she said, laughing.

‘I was going to suggest a fabulous holiday to cheer us up after the winter,’ Will said, ‘but seeing as you think I’m Mr Thicko…’

Rae leaned up and nibbled his ear. ‘Go on, Mr Thicko,’ she said, ‘you know I love you.’

‘Well, I was thinking – before I was rudely interrupted, that we haven’t had a holiday for two years. What about a cruise?’

Rae gave a little gasp of shock. She’d always wanted to go on a cruise, but cruising holidays always seemed too expensive whenever she’d idled away time looking at the prices on the internet.

‘Do you think we could afford it?’ she said. Inside, she was thinking that they must be able to afford it. Will was the finance person in their marriage. Even though she managed Titania’s, the café belonged to Timothy. He gave her budgets and sorted out cashflow. Rae herself had never been that comfortable about money.

Left to her, she and Will would never spend anything in case some catastrophe occurred and they ended up penniless. Her parents had been permanently broke. Her work with Community Cares showed her nothing but people who lived on the edge of the abyss.

‘I was looking at the bank statements on the internet last night,’ Will said. ‘We could do it this year, for sure.’

‘Yes, but would it be wise?’ she asked. ‘Who knows how long the economic downturn’s going to last. You’re not that busy, Timothy might turn round and close Titania’s…’ Rae felt the familiar twinge of money worries overcoming all thoughts of the holiday she’d always wanted.

‘Listen, we are doing fine financially, love,’ Will said. ‘We don’t spend money, Rae, we’re so careful. The downturn is here and, yes, I’m doing half the work I was a year ago.’ Will worked as an architectural technician for a local business and, as building work was at a standstill, he was working only on the company’s projects in the Far East. ‘But we’re fine. We have no mortgage, we could survive on half the money we’re earning now.’

Rae thanked God silently for the bequest from Will’s father that had allowed them to pay off their mortgage fifteen years previously. They’d bought the house long before the property boom, so they’d paid buttons for it compared to what it was now worth.

‘Rae, how long have we been talking about a cruise?’

She allowed herself to relax. ‘Since Anton was small and we knew there was no way in heck that he’d cope with being closeted on a boat,’ she said fondly. ‘Think of all those seaside holidays.’

‘Crazy golf,’ Will said.

They both groaned.

Anton had taken a mad passion for crazy golf when he was ten and no holiday was complete without a trip to a course. Will and Rae had spent many hours trying to whack golf balls into clown’s mouths and windmills.

‘Disney in Florida?’ It had taken them three years to save up for that holiday.

‘That was amazing,’ Will said with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I could do any of those rollercoaster things again.’

‘You were brilliant for going on them all,’ Rae said. She was terrified of heights and just looking at some of Orlando’s rides was enough to make her central nervous system go into shock.

‘I’d love a cruise,’ Rae said, and suddenly she wanted it so much she felt as if she might burst out crying with the sheer joy of it all. She was so lucky. She had her wonderful son, her wonderful husband, and now this unexpected treat. When she thought of how sad her life had looked all those years ago, she’d never dreamed she could have this happiness.

‘I love you, Will,’ she said, winding her arms round him.

‘Mr Thicko loves you back,’ he replied, kissing her. ‘That’s a very sexy outfit you’re wearing,’ he murmured, moving the neckline of her definitely unsexy fleecy pyjamas so he could nuzzle her neck.

‘It’s designed to drive men wild with lust,’ Rae agreed. ‘If it’s disturbing you, I could take it off.’

‘There’s a thought,’ he murmured, and then they didn’t talk for a while.

Forty minutes later, they were up, dressed and getting breakfast. They moved easily around each other in the kitchen. Rae turned the coffee machine on, Will laid out cups and plates. She toasted some wholegrain bread; he found the marmalade she liked and put out plum jelly just in case they were in the mood for that.

It was the precise opposite to the way Rae had grown up; mornings then had been taut as a violin string, the air trembling with arguments that might erupt at any moment. One wrong word was all it took for Glory Hennessey to start throwing plates and insults at Paudge, with him throwing them right back. Rae had hated it, and had learned how to blend into the furniture so she didn’t get involved.

As a child, she perfected the adult ability to take the emotional temperature of a room within two minutes of entering. If the room was happy, she’d do happy, but she wouldn’t really be happy. Her happiness was surface only. Play along with them, but don’t really relax because in two minutes happy could be over and major screaming fit could be the order of the day.

When she was at school, the teachers thought her a strangely silent child. It was habit. Talking turned into saying the wrong thing so easily at home. Silence was the wisest option.

Even now, Rae could still feel her stomach clench when she heard people rowing.

It was no accident that she’d married a man who was gentle, thoughtful and rarely spoke without first considering the likely effect of his words on the other person.

By eight twenty it had stopped raining. Rae kissed Will on the cheek and they both headed off to work: she to Titania’s down the street, and he to his office in the long back garden of their house.

She took the long route to Titania’s, walking all around the garden itself, where the heady earthy smell of wet soil obliterated all other smells. Despite the wet, a couple of dogs were rolling in the grass, seemingly trying to wriggle themselves into the ground in pure pleasure.

Rae recognised Nora Flynn’s little greyhound and her fluffy pompom of a dog that loved to bounce along self-importantly.

But Nora wasn’t with them. Instead, a slender dark-haired girl with an elfin face and big haunted eyes sat on the bench watching. She’d been in Titania’s a few days before and Rae had recognised her as Nora’s niece, the actress. Rae hadn’t been able to recall her name, but was sure that when she’d last seen the girl, she’d been a pretty blonde slip of a thing, not a dark, sad waif.

Rae was aware that there had been some scandal. Someone at the counter in Titania’s had talked about it recently, but she’d listened with only half an ear. Rae was wary of gossip. Often, she found it to be wildly inaccurate and she hated the casual cruelty of the celebrity magazines.

She’d wanted to welcome the girl – Megan, that was her name – to Golden Square the other day in the tearooms but she’d looked on the verge of tears, so Rae had decided to say nothing. There were times, she knew, when kindness tipped you over the edge.

Today, Megan looked less sad.

‘Hello,’ Rae said. ‘I’m Rae Kerrigan, from the tearooms. You’re Nora’s niece, aren’t you? Welcome back.’ She inhaled the earthy scent of the park. Lots of people didn’t appreciate nature in winter: she loved it, the sense of hibernation before the earth slowly unfurled herself into beauty again. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? You could be in the middle of the countryside.’

The girl said nothing, just watched from under lowered lashes.

She was wary, Rae realised instantly. Speaking non-judgementally and idly was required.

‘Aren’t dogs funny? I love the way they enjoy the simple things.’ On the grass in front of her, the fluffy dog was wriggling in an orgy of pleasure, making little contented snorts.

Rae bent to rub the dog’s pink belly, murmuring ‘Hello, pooch,’ and she could sense the girl softening beside her. Animals were the true arbitrators of decency: it was hard to be the sort of person who’d convincingly stroke a dog and then lash out at the human being beside them.

‘She loves that,’ the girl said in a slightly husky voice.

‘They all do,’ Rae said, getting back to her feet. ‘My son loves animals and when he was a kid, he was always coming home with things he’d rescued. Apparently, when a dog lets you pet its belly, it’s at peace.’

‘In Cici’s case, she’s at peace and she also thinks she’s an Egyptian princess lying there waiting for the grapes to be peeled for her,’ the girl said drily.

Rae laughed.

Sensing she was being talked about, Cici sat up, shook herself to get rid of all the debris from the grass, and went to have a proper sniff of Rae.

‘She’s adorable,’ Rae said, reaching down for one more pet. ‘See you around,’ she added, with a smile at the girl.

‘Yeah, sure.’

For the first time, the girl looked at Rae straight on and Rae caught her breath. She hadn’t really seen her face in Titania’s, not properly, because she’d kept her head down. But now, Rae could see she was lovely, like a silent movie star in an old photograph, with more angles and high points than a normal person’s face.

And yet there was huge sadness there. Rae wished she’d paid more attention to whatever Megan’s story was. Not for gossip’s sake, but so she could understand. The gist, according to the people at the counter, was that she’d romanced a very married movie star. But this wary girl didn’t look like a femme fatale to Rae. No, there was something more to it than that.

She left the square by the vine-covered black-and-gold iron gate opposite Titania’s and said thanks for the blessings in her life.

It was one of her tenets: saying thanks every single day. Some people wrote gratitude journals, and Rae liked the idea, but she preferred a more living gratitude method. Every day, she said thanks for what had happened.

Thank you for Will, thank you for allowing us to have a good life and be able to plan a holiday when so many other people are barely surviving. Thank you that my life is calm, not like that poor girl in the square.

And always she added, Let Jasmine be happy too, please. Wherever she is, let her be happy.

When the older woman from Titania’s Palace had said hello to her, Megan had frozen. Not another fake friendly person. Some awful cow with sly eyes had sidled up to her in The Nook the previous day, and said: ‘You look different with that hair, missy. Not so starry now.’

Megan had put down her basket and fled the shop.

But this woman – Rae, did she say her name was? – had been different. Nice. Welcoming.

Over the past two weeks, the routine of Golden Square had settled around Megan like a soft blanket. Each morning, after Nora had gone downstairs to the clinic, the dogs would gradually wake Megan. Animals were so much more comforting than people. There was never any censure in their eyes, except when they felt walking duties were being neglected.

Then Megan would make coffee for herself and stand outside the back door, often shivering in her dressing gown against the coolness, while she smoked a cigarette. It had been a long time since she’d lived in a house with a garden. It felt both strange and familiar. Nora wasn’t much of a woman for gardening, so the long hundred-foot garden was a tangle of briars and old trees. Although Megan didn’t know much about nature, she knew the biggest tree in the middle was a horse chestnut, but only because she could remember finding conkers under it when she was a kid.

Leonardo and Cici would head off into the undergrowth, noses glued to the ground as they followed scents. Then they’d return, wet from the morning dew and covered with bits of twig and grass, to sit beside her.

‘I shouldn’t be smoking beside you,’ she found herself saying on many occasions. Which was strange, as she’d never worried about anyone else being affected by passive smoking before. Smoking had been part of who she was, like wearing mini dresses and little pixie boots. But here in Nora’s house in Golden Square, smoking, a bit like her normal clothes, didn’t quite work. It was, Megan felt, as if she’d sloughed off the old skin of Megan Bouchier and was returning to Megan Flynn.

A few weeks was all it had taken. Carole had phoned her mobile a few times with updates on the disaster area that was her career.

An earthquake in the Far East and another wave of terrorist threats, coupled with a pop star’s illness and a reality TV star’s live breast-reduction operation had now claimed the headlines from Megan the Mantrapper.

‘You’re so lucky,’ Carole said. ‘That earthquake’s taken the heat off you. And thank God for Destiny’s boob op.’

Megan had actually watched a few minutes of the breast-reduction programme, until Nora had come into the sitting room and caught her at it.

‘Merciful hour, they’re like space hoppers under her chest. How did any surgeon do that to the poor woman?’ Nora stared at the television in horror.

‘He’s taking them out now,’ Megan said, searching for the remote control.

‘Not a moment too soon. They look like they might burst. I’d say she hasn’t seen her toes for a few years. Imagine the state of her feet.’

A rare bubble of real giggles erupted inside Megan.

‘The press haven’t given up, you know. Don’t get complacent,’ Carole warned.

‘I’m not,’ said Megan testily. ‘I’m just fed up. I want to go back to work.’

At least if she was working, she wouldn’t have time to think about what had happened with Rob.

‘Until you get offered a few decent roles again – and not slasher movies from people who know you’ll do anything now in desperation – you have to stay low. All decent offers have dried up. You hadn’t signed the contract for the costume drama, so they don’t want you any more. Thank fuck they’d finished with you in Romania. You’ll have to fly over to London for post-production work, but that’s not for another couple of months. You should do something charitable. Raise your profile in a more positive way. Do you want us to sort something out for you?’

‘No,’ said Megan, filled with misery at the cynicism of it all. Find a charity and pretend to care about something: that was the best advice from her old world.

There was no news of Rob Hartnell, other than the usual media speculation about his whereabouts. He was on a billionaire’s yacht in the Pacific or on a private island in the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean, depending which magazine you read.

‘He was supposed to be shooting a movie in Stockholm now. One of those crime thrillers,’ said Carole. ‘It’s been postponed, which means the production company is mad, which means the studio is mad, which means they all hate you. Rob Hartnell is box office magic, so there’s no way anyone’s going to hate him. One of the Hollywood gossip blogs says that you dreamed this up to garner publicity.’

Megan felt nauseated. ‘Aren’t you going to refute that?’

There was a pause. ‘Let’s just see how it plays out, right?’ said Carole.

Just thinking about it made Megan depressed.

Sitting on the bench in Golden Square, watching Rae walk away, she lit another cigarette. She wasn’t surprised the woman didn’t seem to recognise her: nobody would these days – which was one plus. The last thing she needed was for the media to find her here.

She lived in jeans and cardigans, didn’t wear make-up or even bother to brush her hair: it was so short, it didn’t need brushing. She ran her fingers through it and it settled. She was still astonished every time she looked in the mirror to find this dark-haired, wary stranger looking back at her. But the glory of her new look was that it gave her some privacy.

In London, she was used to paparazzi following her every move at film premieres and parties. After her hit Britflick, they’d trailed her for a few weeks, selling their pictures of her to the celebrity-watching magazines. She’d made an effort to dress up, had even enjoyed it.

‘You mean they papped you buying coffee in the local shop?’ Pippa had said the first time this strange phenomenon had occurred and Megan phoned immediately phoned her to report.

‘Yes,’ said Megan proudly. ‘I mean, I know it’s intrusive, but wow!’

‘What were you wearing? Not your pyjamas, please.’

‘No,’ said Megan, laughing. ‘I’m wearing my skinny jeans, a cream T-shirt with chiffon sleeves, that Vuitton scarf everyone wants – they sent it to me! – and a beret with a flower brooch on it.’

‘All that to go round the shop to get a latte?’

‘I made an effort, Pippa,’ Megan said, suddenly irritated. ‘That’s why they papped me. I’m not Julia Roberts, you know. I’m only good if I look good. I dressed up on purpose.’

‘Oh.’

Megan remembered that conversation now and felt a small dart of unease. She’d been angry at her sister for not understanding her world. A world where getting papped mattered; it meant you were somebody. Now she saw the downside of that world. She missed what she had once had. Here, apart from Nora, nobody thought Megan was anybody. That was hard.

Instead of her old glamorous life, her days involved coffee, smoking, walking the dogs, more coffee in Titania’s Palace if she could face being out in public, and then staying home watching daytime TV. Hiding. It was soul destroying.

‘Come on, walkies over,’ she shouted crossly at the dogs.

From the distance, they quivered at this new, tough Megan, and stayed away.

Oh, let them run on for a minute longer, she decided.

If anyone had changed it wasn’t her, it was Pippa. She’d once understood Megan’s life. She’d gone to the movie parties, she’d hung round with Megan’s friends. And where was she now? Not holed up with Megan, sympathising about what had happened. No, she was at home with her kids, slowly sliding on to the side of the moral police.

She’d only rung twice since Megan had come to Golden Square. That said something, didn’t it?

Nothing had happened in the few weeks since she’d come to Golden Square. Nothing had changed in her life, except that the trees in the small square were showing new growth, and early daffodils were starting to come out. She was just waiting in limbo. It was horrible.

A small, fat brown dog of indeterminate parentage lollopped along to greet Cici and Leonardo. Fed up, and just to do something, anything, Megan got off the bench and walked through the square to the play area, which was cordoned off from doggy poo by a low fence. Two young women with toddlers in pushchairs had just arrived and were starting the complicated business of unhooking the children. It seemed to take ages, this clip and that clip. Megan had watched Pippa do it with Kim when she’d been younger, but she’d always found it too hard. She’d put Kim into the pushchair, but someone else had to fasten the harness.

‘She’ll fall out if I do it,’ Megan said.

‘Just do it,’ Pippa had said once, then sighed furiously and rushed over to do it herself. Megan had been upset. Pippa never used to speak to her like that, but instead of saying sorry, her sister concentrated on her daughter. Like it was some strange motherly ritual, this pushchair thing. Settle Kim’s solid little body in properly, manoeuvre her arms through the straps, click them up, all the time talking in a soft, soothing voice.

Megan hadn’t wanted to speak, she was too hurt, but all the same she found herself mumbling, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just no good at that sort of thing.’

Pippa hadn’t even turned round. ‘You’d be good at that sort of thing if you wanted to be,’ she’d said shortly.

Megan had gone home soon afterwards. She couldn’t bear cross words or confrontation. Better to leave. She’d hopped in her sporty little MX5 and driven off, music blaring.

She’d never tried to do anything much with Kim after that, or with Toby when he came along. Megan was no good with children: she was like her mother. Ready to please men, not so good with kids.

One of the children in the playground reminded her of Kim as a squirming toddler. Same dark hair, same solid little body. Kim had grown taller now, and was all legs and skinny arms, but once she’d been a sturdy little person like this child.

The woman extracted her daughter from the pushchair, gave her a kiss, then set her down to toddle off to the sandpit.

Megan burst into tears. She’d never felt more lonely in her whole life.

At the end of January, St Matilda’s third and sixth-year students sat mock exams in preparation for the real state exams in June. In a cruel twist of fate, the mock exams coincided with a twoday rock festival and a severe strain of flu.

‘I’d edit ten books before I’d do exams again,’ said Nicky with feeling. ‘Those poor girls. And they’re missing the festival. If I was doing my exams, I think I’d bunk off to go to the festival. You need time out, right?’

‘Just as well you’re not a teacher,’ said Connie, shocked. ‘Nothing should make you miss your mocks.’

But the flu had other plans for her. On the morning the exams were due to start, Connie couldn’t go in to the school to cheer on her girls as she was stuck in bed feeling violently ill. Her whole head ached, her eyes couldn’t bear any light at all and the very notion of food made her want to retch.

For three days, she had to lie in bed motionless.

‘Apparently, it’s only flu if it’s raining fifty euro notes down outside and you’re too sick to run out and pick them up,’ Nicky said to her sister, from the sanctity of the doorway, on Connie’s fourth day off work.

‘It’s flu,’ moaned Connie, who couldn’t have moved even if entire gold ingots were raining down outside. Was that in the Bible? A plague of gold ingots? Or was she delirious and bewildered after spending too much time in a Catholic girls’ school?

Sister Lavinia had lots of mad Bible stories, one for every occasion, and Connie often got them mixed up. There was one about foolish virgins and lamps, and she still couldn’t recall the moral of the story.

‘Do you want me to get you anything before I go to work?’ Nicky said.

Connie shook her head.

‘OK, see you later. And phone if you feel really bad or something. I could come home, you know…’

Connie shook her head again. She was incapable of speech.

She rolled over in the bed, pulled the duvet up to cover her head and went back to sleep.

Miraculously, she woke at noon feeling strangely recovered. Still weak, after three and a half days in bed and no food apart from flat lemonade and toast, but better.

Cautiously, she sat up. Still better.

And suddenly, she was ravenously hungry. She was shaky on her feet when she made it into the kitchen to ransack the fridge. Without her to fill it, the fridge was a wasteland of old yogurts, a few slices of ham, and some milk. There was only one slice of bread left, no cheese, and worse, no chocolate.

She quarter-filled a bowl with the remains of a box of cereal and ate in front of the telly. She was still hungry but there was literally nothing else to eat, except things like cans of beans or soup. Connie longed for a toasted cheese sandwich followed by something sweet.

Titania’s Palace, she decided; she’d go there.

She brushed her teeth and her hair, pulled on her red fleece and a coat, and stepped out into the bitter January air to cross the square. She looked like hell on earth, but who’d be looking at her?

Megan liked the fact that the staff in Titania’s Palace were all friendly but not nosy. Nobody tried to engage her in conversation. They were welcoming, but perfectly happy to let her sit at a window table with her Americano with its extra shot of espresso. She could pretend to look out the window and stare off into the middle distance, lost in her own world.

They played cool music too, generally female torch singers from the 1930s and 40s. If Titania’s Palace was a person, she’d be a throaty, comforting lady with sex appeal, a hugehearted person who was utterly comfortable in her own skin.

Megan wondered if there was an actual Titania? The motherly woman who ran the place was called Rae, so perhaps she’d just liked the name.

Megan had watched Rae a few times when she’d been there and it was obvious why the place was such a success with her running it. She appeared to know everyone, and had a smile and a word for them all. It wasn’t like a coffee shop: it was like being welcomed into someone’s house.

Megan had seen Patsy from the hair salon in there too. Patsy’s hair was a darker, more vibrant red this week. She had a way of nodding hello that said she’d totally understand if you wanted to be alone, but she was there, if you felt like talking.

Rae and Patsy weren’t there today, but the place was jammed with the lunchtime crowd. Megan kept her baseball hat low on her head, and snagged a two-seater window table when a couple of people got up to leave.

She put their dishes on one side of the small table, and settled herself on the other side.

Conversations flowed all around her.

‘…She’s useless around the office. Can’t type for peanuts because she has gel nails. The filing system’s shot to hell, and when the boss comes back from his holidays, who’s going to be to blame? Not her, oh no. She’ll say it’s all my fault…’

‘…three stone. Imagine losing that much weight! They deliver food to your door and you can only eat that. It’s expensive, she told me, but it’s worth it…’

‘…I don’t know what to buy him. Would cufflinks be special enough? I want it to be special…’

The gentle ebb and flow of conversation was interrupted by a woman’s voice: ‘Do you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’

A tall woman with a cloud of beautiful dark brown hair stood at the other seat. She was muffled up in a big coat and held a tray bearing a toasted sandwich, a frothy coffee and one of Titania’s enormous lemon-and-poppyseed muffins.

In London, Megan would have said no. Here, things were different.

‘Of course,’ she said, and began to move the previous occupants’ dishes into the middle of the table.

‘Normally, I wouldn’t interrupt, but I can’t stand at the counter. I need to sit. I’ve just had flu,’ the woman explained. ‘It’s OK,’ she added quickly, ‘I’m not toxic any more. I met the doctor at the counter and he said not to cough my guts up on to anyone, but I should be fine. I love GPs, don’t you? They’re so laid back. Unless your leg is hanging off, they tell you to take an aspirin and call in the morning. Wouldn’t you love to be that relaxed?’

‘Er…yeah,’ said Megan.

She’d thought she was giving a seat to another solitary diner. It appeared she’d said yes to a companion.

The woman wriggled out of her ginormous coat. She was late thirties, Megan reckoned, and from her clothes to her unpainted nails, was clearly the very opposite of high maintenance. Even though her round face was shiny and make-up free, there was a wonderful vitality to her. And she had such smiling brown eyes.

Megan used to be impressed by high-achieving thinness and Botox undetectable to all but the most knowing eye. Nowadays, she found she liked people who smiled at her without recognition.

‘You’re probably relaxed anyhow,’ the woman went on, unloading her tray. ‘Young people are. My sister’s always telling me that my generation are going to drop dead with clogged arteries by the time we’re fifty. It’s all the worry, all the stress.’

She sliced open her sandwich and gazed at it happily.

‘Buddhism’s very good for stress, they say. I’ve always liked the sound of Buddhism,’ Connie went on. ‘But there’s a lot of work to it. If only you could get it inserted or something. A painless operation and you’d wake up with inner peace and the ability to remember a mantra.’

Megan laughed.

Connie bit into her sandwich and moaned in pleasure. ‘Bliss, I love these.’

She was glad she’d chosen to sit here. She’d seen the pretty dark-haired girl walking those dogs and the poor thing always looked so lonely. Besides, Connie hadn’t felt up to talking for three days, and now she wanted human company.

There was silence as Connie ate and Megan decided it would seem rude if she now stared out the window again. The conversational tennis ball was in her court. She’d almost forgotten how to do idle chitchat.

‘Do you live around here?’ she asked finally.

‘Across the square,’ Connie said. ‘With my sister, in the first-floor flat of that pale green house.’

Megan peered through the trees. ‘Pretty,’ she said. ‘I live over there with my aunt. The redbrick one on the end. I’m staying with her for a while,’ she added.

‘The chiropodist,’ exclaimed Connie delightedly. ‘I’d love to see her professionally, but my feet are terrible. You’d need an industrial sander to get close to them and I’d be so embarrassed. It’s like pedicures. I’ve never had one.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Megan, who’d had pedicures in some of the world’s most glamorous spas and had never worried for so much as a second as to the state of her toes.

‘You’re not a chiropodist too, are you? I didn’t mean that you’d use industrial sanders, it’s just that, for hard skin…’

Megan shook her head. ‘Lord, no. I’m not a chiropodist. Can’t stand feet.’

‘I had someone massage my feet a few times,’ Connie said thoughtfully. Her eyes glazed over and Megan could swear she saw tears appearing.

Thinking of Keith massaging her feet always made Connie think of pregnant women. ‘Put your feet up, love,’ the prospective daddy would say, gently massaging his pregnant partner’s feet. The idea always made her cry. She even hated looking at foot spas.

‘Goodness, that old flu makes you weepy at the oddest things,’ Connie said brightly.

But Megan, who never normally noticed other people’s pain, had the strangest sense of seeing through the fake chirpiness. Suddenly, she felt a sense of kinship with this woman. She’d been hurt too. The man who’d massaged her feet was in the past, there was no doubt about it. Megan wasn’t foolish to have had her heart broken: it happened to other women too.

In her old life, Megan would have ignored the glint of tears on another woman. In her experience, other women generally ignored her tears. But that was the old life. The old Megan.

Impulsively, she reached out a hand. ‘I’m Megan Flynn,’ she said.

‘Connie O’Callaghan,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know what came over me. Must be the flu,’ she said, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. ‘It was years ago. The feet-massaging thing.’

‘I’m not sure that time matters much when your heart is broken,’ Megan reflected.

‘Yes!’ said Connie. ‘You’re right. Nobody else agrees with me. They all think there’s a statute of limitations on love, but there isn’t.’