The Accidental Wife (53 page)

‘Thank you.’ He is kind and he is talking to me just like I’m a person. No, not that; I am a person. I am still a person. I mean he’s talking to me like I’m me, and I like it. It’s warming me through, and I feel oddly happy. I miss feeling happy – just happy, without feeling that every moment of joy I experience now must also be tinged with sadness.

‘So, you’re locked out. Is someone going to ring you when they get back, or bring you a key?’

I hesitate. ‘There will be someone in, in a bit.’ I have no idea if that’s a lie. ‘I’ll wait a while and then go back.’ That is a lie. I don’t know where I am or how to get to back, wherever that is.

He chuckles, and I look at him sharply. ‘Sorry.’ He smiles. ‘It’s just that you do actually look like a drowned rat, and a very pretty one, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ I say. ‘Say more like that!’

He laughs again.

‘I’m a fool,’ I say, warming to my new not-ill status. It feels good to be just me, and not me with the disease, the thing that now defines me. I’ve found a moment of peace and normality in this maelstrom of uncertainty, and it is such a relief. I could kiss him with gratitude. Instead I talk too much. I’m famous for talking too much; it used to be a thing about me that people enjoyed. ‘I always have been. If something can go wrong, it happens to me. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m a magnet for mishap. Ha, mishap. There’s a word you don’t hear often enough.’ I rattle on and I don’t really care what I am saying out loud, conscious only that here I am, a girl talking to a boy.

‘I’m a bit like that too,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever grow up.’

‘I know that I won’t,’ I say. ‘I know it for sure.’

‘Here.’ He hands me his paper napkin. ‘You look a little bit like you’ve escaped the apocalypse. Just.’

‘A paper napkin?’ I take it and laugh, dabbing it on my hair, face, wiping it under my eyes. When I take it away, there is black stuff on it, which means I put some black stuff on my eyes at some point today, a fact I find comforting: black stuff on my lashes means my eyes will look better, I will look better, even if I look like a better panda. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose.’

‘There’s a hand dryer in the toilet,’ he says, pointing at a door behind him. ‘You could give yourself a quick blast under that. Take the edge off.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, patting my damp knees as if to make a point. I do not want to leave this table, this seat, this coffee, and go anywhere else. Here it feels like I am almost safe, like I’m clinging on to a ledge, and as long as I don’t move I will be fine and I won’t fall. The longer I can sit here, without having to think about where I am and how to get home, the better. I push away the surge of fear and panic, and concentrate on now. On feeling happy.

‘How long have you been married?’ He nods at the ring on my finger, which I notice with mild surprise. It feels right there, as if it has bedded into its place on my person, yet somehow it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me.

‘It’s my father’s,’ I say, the words coming from a long ago moment in the past, another time when I said them to another boy. ‘When he died my mum gave me his ring to wear. I wear it always. One day I’ll give it to the man I love.’

There is a moment of silence, awkwardness, I suppose. Once again, present and past converge, and I’m lost. I am so very lost that really all there is in this world is this moment, this table, this person speaking kindly to me, those very nice eyes.

‘Perhaps I could take you for another coffee, then?’ he says, sounding hesitant, cautious. ‘When you are dry and not stuck in the middle of a disaster. I could meet you here or anywhere you like.’ He reaches over to the counter and picks up a stumpy writing thing that is not a pen and scrawls on my folded napkin. ‘The rain has stopped, shall I walk you home?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You might be a maniac.’

He smiles. ‘So ring me, then? For a coffee?’

‘I won’t ring you,’ I say, apologetically. ‘I’m very busy. Chances are I won’t remember to.’

He looks at me and laughs. ‘Well, if somehow you find the time or the impulse, then ring me. And don’t worry; you’ll get back into your flat. One of your flatmates will turn up any second, I’m certain.’

‘My name is Claire,’ I tell him in a rush as he gets up. ‘You don’t know my name.’

‘Claire.’ He smiles at me. ‘You look like a Claire.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I laugh. ‘And you, what’s your name?’

‘Ryan,’ he says. ‘I should have written it on the napkin.’

‘Goodbye, Ryan,’ I say, knowing that very soon he won’t even be a memory. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’ He looks perplexed.

‘That napkin!’ I say, holding up the scrunched-up sodden piece of tissue.

I watch him leave the café, chuckling to himself, and disappear into the dark night. I say his name over and over again. Perhaps if I say his name enough times, it will stick. I will be able to pin it down. A woman on the next table is watching him leave. She is frowning, and her frown is disconcerting. It makes me wonder if everything I thought just happened really did – if it was a nice happy moment or if something bad happened that I hadn’t seen, because I’ve stopped being able to tell the difference. I’m not ready for that to happen yet. I don’t want that to be true yet. It’s dark outside now, except for a slash of pink sky cutting through the cloud as the sun sets. The woman is still frowning, and I am stuck on this chair.

‘Claire?’ A woman leans over me. ‘Are you OK? What’s wrong?’

I look at her, her smooth oval face, long straight brown hair. The frown is concern, I think, and I think she knows me.

‘I am not exactly sure how to get home,’ I confide in her, for want of any better solution.

She looks towards the door and then obviously thinks better of what she was about to say. Instead she turns back to me, with the frown again. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? It’s fine, I know about your . . . problem. My name is Leslie, and our daughters are friends. My daughter is Cassie, with the pink hair and the nose piercing? And the awful taste in men? There was a time about four years ago when our girls were inseparable.’

‘I’ve got Alzheimer’s,’ I say. It comes back to me, like the last rays of sun piercing the clouds, and I’m relieved. ‘I forget things. They come and go. And sometimes just go.’

‘I know, Cassie told me. She and Caitlin met up a few days ago, caught up. I have your Caity’s number here, from that time they were supposedly sleeping over at each other’s houses, and attempted to go clubbing in London. Remember? You and I waited all night for every single London train that came in, until they finally got home at about two. They hadn’t even managed to get into the club. A drunk man had propositioned them on the tube, and they were crying so much we let them off the hook in the end.’

‘They sound like a right pair,’ I say. The woman frowns again and this time I decide it’s concern rather than anger.

‘Will you remember Caitlin,’ the woman asks me, ‘if she comes?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘Caitlin, yes, I remember what she looks like. Dark hair and eyes like rock pools under moonlight, black and deep.’

She smiles. ‘I forgot you were a writer.’

‘I’m not a writer,’ I say. ‘I do have a writing room, though. I tried it, writing, but it didn’t work, and so now I have an empty writing room right at the top of the house. There’s nothing in it but a desk and a chair, and a lamp. I was so sure I was going to fill it to the brim with ideas, but instead it just got emptier.’ The woman frowns again, and her shoulders stiffen. I’m talking too much and it’s making her uncomfortable. ‘The thing I’m scared about the most is losing words.’

I’ve upset her. I should stop saying things. I’m never that sure what I am saying any more. I have to really think. And wait. Talking too much is not a fun or sweet thing about me any more. I close my lips firmly.

‘I’ll sit with you, shall I? Until she gets here.’

‘Oh . . .’ I begin to protest, but it peters out. ‘Thank you.’

I listen to her make a call to Caitlin. After exchanging a few words, she gets up and goes outside the café. As I watch her through the window, in the glow of the street lights, and I can see her still talking on the phone. She nods, her free hand gesturing. And then the call ends and she takes a deep breath of cold damp air before she comes back in and sits at my table.

‘She’ll be here in a few minutes,’ she tells me. She seems so nice, I don’t have the heart to ask her who she is talking about.

Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Copyright © Rowan Coleman 2008

Rowan Coleman has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Arrow Books
This edition published in 2014 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Penguin Random House Group Company

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781473527379