“Like meet your friends for a drink.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “Do you remember that I didn’t tell you about my dad because normal was what I wanted?”
He looked ashamed. “God, I’m so useless.”
“No you’re not. I understand. I do.” She kissed him, ran her hand across his groin. His penis twitched obediently back to life.
She had only ever visited Patrick’s out of season. During the summer it always seemed too full of visiting glitterati. She and Alex had stayed loyal to the inn on the square; with erstwhile friends or the occasional lover she frequented the pubs on the edge of town, country-comfortable and full of locals. On the threshold of Patrick’s she hesitated, not only conscious of her hick status but also keenly aware that tonight Gil would be not just hers but theirs. She had never seen him with people he knew before, save for five minutes on the prom with Henry. She had never had to share his attention. It was going to require an adjustment.
It began the moment they approached the bar through the noise and the heat, shouts of Hey Gil! and where the bloody hell’ve you been hiding? and Christ, what happened to your face? Gil grinned, still holding her hand, and said hey and I’ve been around and ah, just acting like a dick and finally, pointedly, this is Jem. Too many faces, too many voices, for her to take in but the greetings were friendly, the smiles wide. She wanted a drink, swallowed her first like water. Gil cocked an eyebrow - “Catching me up?” – and led her though the crowd to a table on the far side of the dance floor.
“You okay?” he asked her as they sat down.
“Yeah. It’s – loud, isn’t it?”
“You don’t like loud?”
“No, I can do loud. Do you dance?”
“Badly.” He laughed.
“Hi Gil.” A tall blonde girl leant down between them, her hair brushing Jem’s shoulder as she bent to kiss Gil’s cheek. “It’s so good to see you. It hasn’t been the same round here without you.”
He smiled. “Lucy, this is Jem. Jem – Lucy.”
“Hello,” Jem said equably, aware she was being assessed, written off. Lucy’s mouth seemed to be saying Hi but in her eyes Jem read Back off he’s ours. She watched as Gil and Lucy chatted, the shorthand of their conversation, the casual intimacy of their body language, and wondered how many times this was going to happen tonight.
“Sorry,” Gil said when Lucy finally prowled away. “She can be a bit … ”
“Can’t she, though? I take it she’s one of yours?”
“No, in fact.”
“But she wants to be.”
He shrugged, as if he were forever helpless in the path of predatory women. “Come on,” he said. “Dance with me.”
He had lied, or been unduly modest: he was a very good dancer, instinctive and inventive and fun. If she hadn’t already known, she would have been wondering what he was like in bed. As he twirled her to the fast beats and held her to the slow ones, she thought of all the women who looked at him and wondered that and would never know, and she almost felt sorry for them. Even Lucy.
When they returned to their table it seemed they had been usurped, as it held replacement drinks and two young men, both lean and tanned, one with sunbleached straggles for hair, his sleeveless t-shirt revealing upper arms emblazoned with New Age tattoos, the other close cropped and chiselled of features, like an advertisement for the US marines. Gil was smiling and saying, “Hey guys” and she understood. They were his surf dudes.
The marine was called Radar and Tattoo Man was Buz and they gazed at her with open interest.
“Got the drinks in,” Buz pointed out.
“Yeah thanks. Next one’s mine.” Gil grinned. “So what’s the story?”
Jem knew guys like Buz and Radar as if they were in her blood. She had been to school with them, worked in bars with them, hung out at uni with them. Their humour and priorities – in so far as they had any – and their chilled, fatalistic philosophy of life were like the air she breathed. As she laughed and talked she could see the rapport was mutual. I just get them, she said to Gil later. It’s like we know who we are.
“What do you do?” she asked Radar, when Gil and Buz were engaged in some good-natured, rambling argument. “When you’re not surfing the waves?”
“Part-time chef at The Anchor. Sunday lunch, couple of evenings - it’s more of a hobby.”
She smiled. “And Buz?”
“Oh Buz has it all his own way, puts in a shift at his parents’ hotel when he can be arsed. They were real hippies, way back when, jazzed to have a surfer for a son.”
“But we’re all like that, aren’t we,” she said. “None of us could do the nine-to-five because living here is what we do, it’s the single most important thing. Earning money comes second.”
“You’re a local, then?”
“I am.” She hesitated, decided to go for it. “My dad was Alex Gregory, the artist.”
“Oh right, the gallery on The Wharf?”
“You knew who he was?”
“Sure.” His expression morphed into the wary-sympathetic one people had been using around her for a while. “I heard he died. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” It should have been a moment of triumph. Someone had heard, in the natural way of things, that her father had died. She had been able to confirm it without unravelling. It should have been another small step along the path towards acceptance but instead it felt like another small step away from him. He was disappearing like smoke in the air and she couldn’t bear it.
Radar nodded. “He was a good bloke, your dad.”
She tried to picture him chatting, in the gallery, in the pub, with Gil and Radar and a whole host of people who had been, were still, strangers to her. At his funeral the church had been filled with people she had known since childhood. Only now, friends and acquaintances swept in on the summer tide, did she see that there had been a strand to his life of which she’d known nothing.
Dad.
Radar said, “Come and dance.”
She looked at him, at Gil who laughed and gestured – feel free – and she stood, edging her way between the table and his knees, after Radar and onto the dance floor. It was far busier now, a challenge to carve out your own square foot of space and she had to stand closer to Radar, closer to anyone, than she would have chosen. He bopped and dipped, not quite in time to the music, and she dipped and bopped in return. “See, my take on dancing,” he told her above the clashing chords and press of the crowd, “is you don’t have to be any good at it. You just have to enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, sure.” Like sex? she wanted to say, but didn’t. On the plus side, dancing with someone worse at it than you was liberating and no one else here cared. She swayed and swung, feeling the rhythm as if it were part of her, dizzied by the lights and the drinks she’d downed. Through brief gaps between shoulders, over heads, she glimpsed their empty table, Gil at the bar, Buz holding forth to a group of teenage girls. The music changed to a slower number, Take That’s Rule The World. Radar lifted his hands. “You want to stop?”
“No.” She smiled, stepped closer. He held her loosely as they rocked from one foot to the other. “I’m having such a nice evening,” she told him. “Why hasn’t Gil brought me down here before?”
“I guess he wanted you all to himself. Can’t say I blame him.”
“But he’s a sociable guy.”
“He is. Different with you, though.”
“Different how?”
He shrugged. “More serious.”
It was what she wanted to hear. She thought she should stop now, before she heard something she didn’t. Beyond him bodies parted to allow a view clear across the room. The beefy blond man called Henry was entering from the pier with a woman Jem felt was familiar. Tousled light brown hair, curves accentuated by a flowered dress. Who was she? Why couldn’t she place her, out of context? And then she had it. She was the woman who ran the café on the square.
And Radar said, “
Hey, there’s Henry and Cecily.”
She frowned. “Cecily? Gil’s friend Cecily?”
“Our friend Cecily but yeah, okay.”
She felt as though she had been asked to do a complicated sum which didn’t make sense. Gil’s close friend and former lover, was the woman from the café in the square?
She had stopped dancing. Radar said, “You all right?”
“Yeah, I … just a bit dizzy.”
“Come here.” He steered her towards the bar, their table having been engulfed now by a fresh wave of revellers. “Sit down.” He propped her against a bar stool. “Gil!”
He was there in a moment. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing, I’m fine.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
She nodded.
“I was going to … introduce you to … ” He scanned the bar. “Where did she go?”
Radar said, “Cecily?”
“Yeah. She was here a minute ago. Where did she go?”
“Don’t know. Henry’s there, d’you want to ask him?”
Gil laughed wryly. “Maybe not. Come on.” He slipped his arm around Jem’s shoulders. “Let’s get some air.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Gil opened his eyes to see, as he had somehow intuited from sleep, that beside him lay nothing more than a tangle of duvet and a dented pillow and the lingering scent of her where warmth of bed met morning air. He contemplated the empty space for a moment, unmoving, then saw that within the dent of the pillow was a sheet of paper.
Gone to start my day. You look so beautiful when you’re asleep I couldn’t bear to disturb you. See you later. I love you. J xxxxx
He smiled, put the note back on the pillow, rolled over and let himself drift back into unconsciousness.
The pounding on his door had him bolt upright, heart racing, before he was properly awake. “Jesus! Did you forget to leave it on the latch?” But even in his confused and stumbling state he realised she wouldn’t be banging on the door, she’d be texting him, and even if she were banging, it wouldn’t be as if the hounds of hell were after her.
“It’s Justine!” cried the blurred figure on the other side of the frosted panes.
Justine? He pulled on his jeans. Justine … ?
“From the café,” she called, as if reading his thoughts. “Is Cecily with you?”
He flung open the door. “What?”
“She isn’t there.” The girl looked entirely different, her habitual sulk replaced with anxiety. “I’ve just got here to do my shift and the café’s all locked up.”
“Have you phoned her?”
“Er – duh.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly ten.”
She should have opened up hours ago. He scooped up his own phone with his key to the café and hurried down the iron staircase, which clanged beneath his weight and speed, calling up her number as he went. No answer. He frowned. The Closed sign was still showing through the glass of the café door, the room beyond dim and deserted. Justine, at his heels, said, “It isn’t like her, is it?”
“No. It isn’t.” He looked up to the attic windows. “Cecily!”
Nothing. Not a sound, not a glimpse. Aware of the trail of families and teenagers beginning to filter across the square, and the attention he would draw if he continued to stand there shouting, Gil walked round to unlock the kitchen door.
“What if she’s there?” Justine squeaked. “Won’t she be mad at you?”
“I hope she is there and mad at me.” He stood in the centre of the silent sunlit kitchen, surfaces scrubbed and bare, gleaming implements awaiting use. He called her name again, then climbed the stairs.
Her attic room was as peaceful and as comfortable as he had ever known it: the smoothed patchwork quilt beneath whitewashed beams; her jacket swinging from its hook on the back of the door; the DVDs from the other night still scattered across the coffee table; a pair of red high heeled shoes abandoned beside the sofa.
But Cecily herself was gone.
Jem strolled along The Walk to the pleasing sound of her flip-flops flapping against the pavement, the early sun warm on her bare legs. She wore shorts and a grey Stone Roses vest top which she had found to her surprise on the floor of Gil’s room, as if her wardrobe were steadily migrating there without consulting her. The smell of coffee and baking emanated from a café as she passed, shops opening their doors and raising their grilles for business. She was toying with the idea of picking up a croissant en route when she heard, from somewhere above her, “Jemima!”
Firstly, who used her full name and secondly what were they doing in the air? She frowned, then saw a pair of long tanned legs descending a stepladder outside The Joshua Tree and there was Atlanta Fox, brandishing a Cath Kidston watering can, her hanging basket of orange petunias swaying and dripping in her wake.
“Hi,” Jem smiled.
“Hello! How serendipitous! I was going to call you today.”
“You were?”
Atlanta was beaming. “I need more stock.”
Jem was taken aback. She had supplied Atlanta with as much stock as would fill her little stall for a glorious summer. “More?”
“I know! Isn’t it fabulous? I can’t believe what a runaway success you’ve been.”
“It’s amazing,” Jem deadpanned.
“It’s made such a difference to my first season. I was so clever to find you.”
She wanted to laugh, wanted to remember and repeat this conversation word for word to Alex. The morning darkened around her, her delight shrivelling. She swallowed.
Atlanta said, “Have you got a minute? I could show you the figures.”
“Actually, I’m on a bit of a mission.”
“Oh okay. Tomorrow, perhaps? I’ll give you a bell.”
“Sure. Thanks, that’s really good news.” She took a step away.
“Oh wait!” Atlanta put her little watering can down on the pavement, reached to fold the ladders. “I saw you last night, at that bar on the pier. You were dancing with Gil Hunt.”
“You know Gil?”
“Heavens, everyone knows him. He’s a local celebrity isn’t he? I had a bit of a flirt with him myself once.”
“Did you?” Jem said.
“Yes, when would that have been? Ages ago, beginning of the summer. Gorgeous man.”
“Mm,” Jem said.
“So, are you two … ?”
“Yes.”
“Gosh.” Atlanta looked impressed, as though dating Gil Hunt and making jewellery that people actually wanted to buy raised Jem to the level of celebrity herself. Oh Dad, she thought. You wouldn’t believe it.
Jem was too young to remember a time when the fishermen’s cottages at the other end of town had been occupied by fishermen. For as long as she could recall the smarter houses with the sea views had been holiday homes while those on the shadier side of the street belonged to the old and the poor. Eve Callaghan was neither of these; she had simply inherited the place from her parents and never done anything with it. The house had always reminded Jem of her own: small, cramped and wholly unpretentious. But she knew her own home to be crammed with precious, much-loved belongings and nothing about Eve’s house felt loved. It was just the base from which she ran the military campaign of her career and while Alex had said there was at least an honesty about that, Jem had always felt defiant indifference was the defence Eve mounted against the world.
“Jemima.” Eve looked harassed, impatient. “Come in.”
On a huge wooden table in the dining room were reams of newspapers, printed papers, scrawled notes, a laptop and a large, old-fashioned radio whose voices reverberated around the yellowed walls and ceiling. Eve turned the volume down to a background babble. Despite the open windows the room stank of smoke. She said, “How’re you doing?”
“Okay.” The last time Jem had seen her was at the funeral. Eve hadn’t, unlike most others, hugged Jem or told her what a great man
Alex was and how his death was a terrible, terrible tragedy. She had been grim and silent and said, right at the end, that Jem knew where she was. Well I do, Jem thought now. And here I am. And I notice you are not at all surprised to see me. She said, “This is a bad time, isn’t it?”
“Just on my way out. But go on.”
“I’ve been sorting through some of Mum and Dad’s things, and I’ve realised there’s so much I don’t know, so many questions neither of them will ever be able to answer and I wondered, well, if I could ask you.”
“Now?”
“I thought one night, over a bottle of wine.”
Eve frowned. “I was away a lot, you know.”
Her tone was distinctly unhelpful. Jem tried again. “Sure. But you have a perspective and … an insight into them which I don’t – can’t – have. You could tell me things from an adult point of view. From a friend’s point of view.”
Eve was packing items fast from the table into a scarred satchel, pens, a dictaphone, a notebook. “You mean, sharing my memories of them?”
“Yes. What else would I mean?”
Eve glanced at her sharply, said nothing.
“What’s the matter?” Jem asked. “Have I said the wrong thing?”
“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.”
“Oh. Right. But it was a good idea for you to tell Gil he was selfish and irresponsible and no good for me?”
“Ah.” She folded over the lid of the satchel. “I knew that was why you’d come.”
“I came,” Jem said furiously, “about my parents, your friends, but if you won’t talk to me about them at least you can tell me why other people in my life are suddenly your business.”
Eve paused, took a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve caught me at a bad moment. Of course I will talk to you about Alex and Marianne. We’ll go for a drink sometime soon. As for Gil Hunt … ” She shook her head. “I’m looking out for you, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to look out for me. You don’t know him.”
“I know his type.”
“He’s not a type, he’s a person!”