We have all been called ‘stupid idiots’ by the paramedic team, and the hospital staff and Haringey Council, who’ve given us a proper ticking-off, and Kemp is all disgruntled because he doubts he’ll be able to get down there again, now, and he only got a few decent photos. Still, one of those photos won the Architectural Photo of the Year – it was in the Evening Standard, along with his real name, Jason Hamilton – and he’s alive, which is the main thing, plus he was quite impressed by my heroic escape from the reservoir. How I walked the twenty-four arches. Very impressed, as a matter of fact.
‘Can I ask you to put your blind up now, please?’
I smile at the air hostess and slip my pencil back into the little pencil case I have in my travel bag. The duty-free trolley has made its final trundle up the aisle and is disappearing behind the blue curtain. Disembarkation cards are being retrieved by yawning passengers from under dog-eared magazines in the seat pockets in front of them. Airline staff are smiling wearily at each other, smoothing hair back from faces above tired eyes and getting ready to get strapped into their side-saddle seats. Others do final checks of trays, blinds and seat belts.
We’re landing in twenty minutes.
I step out of the plane into bright sunshine and the smell of bougainvillea and aviation fuel. The air is hot and sweet, and I breathe it in like nectar. I help Dad down the creaking metal steps, both of us gripping the handrail: him for support, me to steady my nerves. We are here. We have made it. It’s been a long flight. Behind us, clunking her case noisily down the metal steps (I wonder if Dad is counting them) is someone who has been annoying me greatly on the flight. This person has been sucking loudly on sweets, tutting intermittently at any number of random things, laughing like a runaway flute, twittering on about everything and nothing and basically being an absolute pain in the rear.
‘Bloody hell, it’s hot!’ says Angela as she stops halfway down the steps and surveys the view. ‘I need to take my jumper off.’
‘Well, of course it’s hot,’ I say. ‘That jumper’s hideous, anyway. Where did you get it from? Some crabby old fisherman who discarded it down a Nova Scotian ice hole?’
‘Very funny.’
I grin at her and she grins back.
Dad and I have been to Nova Scotia for a week. We played with Angela’s two beautiful daughters, who are not spoilt at all, despite all the Facebook boasting on their behalf, and are absolute sweethearts who like jigsaw puzzles and tickles and getting messy down at the lake. I silently apologized to them for being such a crap auntie and we spent hours making paper chains and mashing up petals for rose perfume. We visited the lighthouse at Louisbourg and went down to the port with Warren and were introduced to his new boat, Beatty. We had pancakes and crab cakes and various types of pie down at Missy’s Diner. We sat in the swing chair on the veranda and talked to Angela about everything we ever should have talked about.
We have a three-stop trip, Dad and I – Canada, Hawaii and San Francisco; Angela’s not doing the last leg. She’s going to fly home after our Hawaii stop, but Dad and I are going on. I’m going to see Janis Joplin’s house. Dad is going to walk down Lombard Street and eat at Bobo’s steakhouse. Angela has her own plans when she gets back to Warren and the girls. Mum called her while Dad and I were there. They spoke for a long time. Dad and I sat on the veranda not listening to them talk as we played Warren’s copy of The Who’s My Generation on his ancient stereo, but I talked briefly to Mum at the end of their conversation because Angela forced me. It went OK. I might pop into the travel agent’s when we eventually get home; I haven’t quite decided yet. I did something else while we were in Canada. I messaged Cherry Lau. Nothing dramatic, and we’re not going to be become best buddies again, or anything like that, or probably ever message each other again, but I told her I was really sorry for what I did back then – really truly sorry – and after three days she replied to me and said, ‘Thank you’, and I knew more than anyone that it wasn’t enough, really, my apology after all this time – nowhere near – but it was something.
‘Welcome to Hawaii.’
We’re on the tarmac now and the voice comes from somewhere under a huge swathe of pink and white leis. The person holding them is tiny and beautiful. She places a pink lei around Dad’s neck, on top of his The Jam T-shirt, and a white one around my neck. Angela gets a white one too.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Thank you,’ say Dad and Angela.
‘I got you a hat.’ There’s a kiss on my left cheek, a tender arm snaked round my waist; leather wristbands tickling my hip bone under my white cotton shirt. Kemp, who has been trailing Angela and lugging her huge carrier bag of duty-free toiletries and magazines, is holding what looks suspiciously like another bloody fisherman’s hat and he plonks it on my head. ‘Let me take a photo,’ he says, laughing, and reaching in his cross-body camera bag for his prized Minolta. Kemp’s come with us on our trip – well, he’s flying on to Argentina, after Hawaii; he has another assignment. I asked him if he wanted to come, when Dad and I first decided on the trip, and he said ‘yes’. I’ve even let him take the occasional photo of me.
‘Cheese,’ I say, grinning like a loon. ‘I bet I look ridiculous.’
‘I think you look beautiful,’ he says and I believe him. I believe him when he says he loves me – he has said it to me so many times now – and last Thursday, at about four o’clock, down at a little jetty in Albert Bridge, Nova Scotia, when the sun was shining and Kemp had just caught a fish and put it back, and the water was lapping at the edge of the jetty and everything was just beautiful and it felt right, I told him I loved him, too, and that I had loved him for a very long time.
Kemp receives his own lei now, over his own fisherman’s hat – we really do look a right pair of saps – and he takes my right hand, and Dad places his hand on Angela’s left arm, just above the elbow, and the four of us walk into the terminal building. Passport Control and Baggage Reclaim are smooth sailing, and soon we are heading through a pair of sliding doors and into the arrivals hall, where I immediately scan the sea of waiting faces at the barrier.
There’s a man standing just behind it who has white hair and a big bushy moustache and beard. He’s wearing a pale grey linen suit with white trainers and a panama hat and has something propped under his arm. Unlike lots of other people, he is not holding up a sign. But he is waiting for us.
‘Dad,’ I say, as we walk. ‘There’s somebody here to greet us. At the barrier.’
Dad nods. ‘How many steps until we get there?’
‘Eleven, maybe twelve.’
Kemp lets go of my hand and drops behind me, as does Angela. Dad and I walk forward. Nine steps, ten steps, eleven. We have turned a corner, Dad and I. We have music and laughter again, in The Palladian. We have hope. And we walk forward together.
‘We’re at the barrier,’ I tell him. As we stop, I reach across myself and quickly squeeze Dad’s hand, which is at the back of my arm, just above the elbow, then I reach to lightly touch the sleeve of the waiting man’s linen suit.
‘I’m Prue Alberta,’ I say. ‘It’s really nice to meet you.’
‘You made it, then?’ He smiles.
‘Yes, we made it. Would you like to meet my father?’ I say.
‘Very much so.’
‘Dad?’
Dad leans forward and holds his hand out into the air. He is smiling, too. ‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Hello,’ says the man holding out his hand, finding Dad’s and giving it a hearty shake. ‘I’m John Harrison Burrows.’
‘And I’m Vince Alberta,’ Dad grins, ‘very pleased to meet you.’
‘Architect and architect,’ I say, and my heart expands with this brand-new happiness I cherish; a happiness – hidden from me for so long – I found with my father on the streets of London. I look behind me at Kemp, and he looks back at me, my future in his eyes.
‘Ready?’ he asks, after a while.
‘Ready.’
He takes my hand
in his again and, with Dad and Angela and John in step, we walk out of the terminal and back into the light.
Acknowledgements
Enormous thanks go to my amazing editors at Transworld. Thank you, Molly Crawford, for helping me to hone Prue and Vince’s story. It’s all the better for your insight, wisdom and general genius. Thank you, too, to Francesca Best for your huge support and care.
Thanks to the whole editorial, design and publicity team at Transworld for your hard work and dedication in getting this book out into the world.
Thank you to my agent, Diana Beaumont. I’m so hugely grateful to have you in my corner.
And, as always, to Mary Torjussen, my virtual office WhatsApp colleague, cheerleader and sounding board – I couldn’t do any of it without you. What a journey to be on together!
If you enjoyed Summer in the City, you’ll fall in love with You, Me and the Movies — a romance like no other!
A love like theirs could never last.
But years later, whilst visiting a friend in hospital, Arden sees the one face she could never forget. Badly injured, Mac can only make brief references to the classic films they once watched together. Which is all it takes for Arden to remember everything …
Will Arden ever find a movie-worthy love again?
Available now in paperback and ebook
YOU, ME AND THE MOVIES
Fiona Collins
When Arden meets Mac she quickly falls for the handsome, charismatic film lecturer. Their love is the sort you see in movies: dramatic, exciting and all-consuming … and complicated.
A love like theirs could never last.
But years later, whilst visiting a friend in hospital, Arden sees the one face she could never forget. Badly injured, Mac can only make brief references to the classic films they once watched together. Which is all it takes for Arden to remember everything.
Will Arden ever find a movie-worthy love again?
Unique and true-to-life, You, Me and the Movies is a love story like no other. Perfect for fans of David Nicholls, Jojo Moyes and Richard Curtis films.
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THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Corgi.
Copyright © Fiona Collins 2021
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-473-56704-7
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Summer in the City Page 36