by Libby Page
“Oh, it’s you two!” he says, nearly bumping into them as he pulls the hood of his raincoat up over his head. He kisses Rosemary on the cheek and looks at Kate for a moment before kissing her too. She feels very aware of the curve of her hips in her pink dress. For once she doesn’t mind the feeling.
“I’m just stepping outside to take a photo of the flowers and the chalkboard before the writing melts completely,” he says. “Great weather for a wedding!”
As they step inside they are greeted by Sprout, her tail wagging and a white bow tied around her collar.
“Look at you,” says Kate, kneeling to stroke the dog who brushes up against her, leaving blond hairs on the raspberry fabric of her dress.
“Look at this,” says Rosemary, tugging at Kate’s arm.
The café is transformed, small tables pulled together into two long rows lined with vases of white peonies that stand on top of piles of old books. White paper flowers hang from the ceiling like moons and candles flicker in glass lanterns along the window ledge. Beyond it is the lido, empty and gray in the now heavy rain. The room is full of guests talking and drinking from champagne flutes, and the sound of laughter.
Kate and Rosemary greet Jermaine and Frank by the bar. Jermaine wears a navy suit and Frank’s is gray; both have white flowers in their buttonholes. Sprout finds them again among the crowd and sits at their feet, looking up at them with soppy brown eyes.
“This is beautiful,” says Kate.
“We were going to say our vows by the pool but it looks like that’s off now,” says Jermaine, looking out of the window. “We thought a summer wedding would mean we’d avoid the rain! But I suppose this is England.”
“It’s cozy in here; I like it,” says Frank, pulling Jermaine toward him and kissing the spot where his beard meets his cheek.
“The lido has never looked so lovely,” says Rosemary, looking through the flowers and the candles at the rain falling onto the surface of the pool. Frank hands her a glass of champagne.
“Oh, I don’t know if I should. I can’t remember when I last had champagne,” she says.
“We insist,” says Frank, placing the champagne in Rosemary’s hand with both of his around hers.
“Oh, go on then.”
At the back of the room, Rosemary sits to soothe the aching in her knees.
“Are you sure you are okay?” Kate asks. Rosemary insists that she is, and Kate drifts back to the group, never moving too far away.
Rosemary happily observes Kate talking animatedly with Frank and Jermaine.
As the few children at the wedding run in and out among the adults and duck under the tables to play in their world of ankles and tablecloths, condensation gathers on the café windows, the warm bodies getting even warmer from the champagne.
Kate laughs with a group of Jermaine’s friends, surprising herself with the sound and with her own confidence. She waits for the feeling of anxiety that usually comes when she is among so many strangers, but it doesn’t come and they don’t feel like strangers. She looks out at the lido and across at Rosemary every now and then—the two views grounding her. She lets herself get light-headed with champagne.
The wedding is small and informal and it is a member of staff who suggests that Frank and Jermaine should probably say their vows now, as the food is nearly ready to come out. The guests take their seats along the table and Frank and Jermaine move to the front of the coffee bar. Sprout seems to sense the change in mood and darts out from under the table to join them. Parents pull their children from the floor and sit them on their laps. Everyone is quiet.
“I take you as you are, loving who you are now and who you are yet to become,” says Jermaine, his voice shaking. As he says the words he thinks about his mother, now dead, and how she had cried when she realized her son would never get married.
“I promise to listen to you and learn from you, to support you and accept your support.”
He thinks about the bookshop and how much it means to both of them, despite the stress and sleepless nights that it often brings. The walls of their relationship are built with books.
“I will celebrate your triumphs and mourn your losses as though they were my own. I will love you and have faith in your love for me, through all our years and all that life may bring us.”
Rosemary starts to cry, tears falling silently down her face like the rain dripping down the windows. She cries for George, for all their years and for all that life brought them. But she also cries a different kind of tears—tears that come from a place of being happy to be alive seeing the candles and the flowers and the empty lido in the rain and hearing vows that will last another couple’s lifetime.
“What I possess in this world, I give to you,” says Frank. “I will keep you and hold you, comfort and tend you, protect you and shelter you, for all the days of my life.”
Frank and Jermaine are both crying now, too, as are most of the guests. Kate reaches for Rosemary’s hand and squeezes it hard. Sprout barks loudly and the room softens into laughter.
Jermaine wipes his eyes and kisses his husband, thinking that he will never tire of calling him that.
CHAPTER 44
On Monday Kate misses Rosemary at the pool. She swims her morning lengths in silence, slipping deeper into her thoughts length after slow length. Afterward, she nods at a few of the regulars but they do not exchange words, each caught in their own thoughts this morning. Summer peeks in over the lido walls. The trees are heavy with green and the morning light is golden and hazy.
Kate remembers swimming as a child in the summer holidays. Before she learned to be self-conscious her mother dressed her in a Minnie Mouse swimsuit, which she wore all the way to Bournemouth when they visited the grandparents. Erin sat in the back of the car next to her, a blue bikini poking out from underneath her clothes. She spent most of the journey texting and listening to music, but joined Kate in the race to spot the sea.
“I can see the sea, I can see the sea!” they both shrieked, pointing at the silvery blue that sparkled with the sun. They parked on the cliff top, the children below like colorful pebbles in the sand, building sandcastles or skipping to the sea. The water was always cold, just like the lido. But the cold could be as delicious as a Mr. Whippy ice cream on a hot day.
Kate and Erin’s grandparents buried coins in the sand for them both to find. Erin always forgot that she was a teenager in the ageless and unifying pursuit of pocket money. Afterward, if Erin was in a good mood, she would take Kate’s hand and they would run to the sea together, Kate only occasionally tripping on account of her much shorter legs.
As they swam, their mother and grandparents would sit behind a blue-and-yellow-striped windbreaker, their grandmother wearing an anorak and passing a thermos of tea between them, whatever the weather.
Kate and Erin would splash at the water’s edge, sinking their feet deeper and deeper into the sand as the waves rolled in and out, until they had to make an effort to tug their legs out with a sound like jelly being scooped from a bowl. In the white foam they splashed and danced, jumping over waves or defiantly crashing right through them, tasting the salt water on their lips as the spray drenched their faces. Sometimes their grandfather would join them and swim a steady front crawl along the length of the beach, the two girls watching him in admiration until he was just a brown dot bobbing on the waves.
Remembering her grandmother watching them, Kate thinks of Rosemary. Kate realizes that her corkscrew kick has come back and she is missing the guidance and company of her friend. Once she is dry she asks after Rosemary at the reception desk.
“No Rosemary today?” she asks Ahmed.
“Not today,” he replies.
Kate wonders if perhaps Rosemary drank too much champagne at the wedding. She phones her and leaves a message on her voice mail, then heads to work.
But the next day Kate swims on her own again. She asks Ahmed again at the reception whether he has seen Rosemary. He shakes his head.
�
��No, I haven’t seen her. She’s never missed two days in a row before—never. And Ellis came swimming here last night and said he hadn’t seen her at the market, either, and Monday is her shopping day. Is she okay?”
As Kate leaves the lido she phones Phil and tells him she will be late to work and will make up the time this evening. She crosses the road to Rosemary’s flat, fear making her walk fast and Panic filling her throat like a thick tar.
The summer Kate turned eight, during a visit to her grandparents, Kate’s grandmother went out to an exercise class. Erin was upstairs reading a book, and Kate’s mother was on a work phone call that seemed to go on all afternoon.
From her position curled up on the sofa in front of the television Kate could just see the top of her grandfather’s head out of the window, in the garden tending to his busy Lizzies. Sometimes it would dip below window level as he bent to water the flowers. She watched Tom and Jerry, feeling the quiet guilt of being inside on a sunny day, but enjoying the luxury of solitude. In the heat of the living room she fell asleep, dreaming that she was a mouse chasing a cat.
When she woke up she looked up at the window, expecting to see the brown top of her grandfather’s head. But he wasn’t there.
She decided to visit him in the garden and walked dozily out of the patio doors. The maid in Tom and Jerry started to scream and Kate heard the sound of her broom swiping at the cartoon mouse as she spotted her grandfather, lying faceup in the flower bed. His eyes were open and his trowel was abandoned in the dirt next to him.
The front door clicked shut and Kate heard her grandmother calling for her granddaughters.
“I’ve got Battenberg for you,” she said, appearing behind Kate with a tray in her hands. She screamed and dropped the cake into the grass, crying and running toward the flower bed. That was when Kate began to understand and started crying too. She has never been able to eat Battenberg since.
Now Kate shields the sun from her eyes with her hands and looks up at the mid-rise, trying to spot signs of life on Rosemary’s balcony. The flagpole is empty—there is no swimsuit waving in the breeze today.
Kate presses the flat number into the keypad by the door and waits. A young mother is pushing a crying baby in a swing in the play area outside the block of flats. Kate presses the buzzer again and waits.
After a few minutes a noise comes out of the panel and can just be heard above the baby.
“Hello?” it croaks quietly.
Kate breathes out heavily in relief at the sound of Rosemary’s voice.
“Rosemary, it’s Kate. Can I come up?”
There is a pause and then the door buzzes and clicks open.
The door to Rosemary’s flat is already open when Kate reaches it and pushes inside. The curtains to the balcony are shut and the living room is dark. The room smells faintly of urine, but Kate pretends not to notice.
“Don’t turn the light on,” says Rosemary from the sofa.
It takes Kate’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. White piles of tissues carpet the floor and she can make out the shape of Rosemary’s body curled under a blanket on the small sofa. Her head is resting on the arm. Tucked up like that she looks tiny, like a baby animal that hasn’t grown its fur yet.
“What has happened, Rosemary?” asks Kate, closing the door and making her way across to the sofa, careful not to bump into any furniture.
“Nothing happened,” says Rosemary. “I got old.”
Kate kneels down by the sofa and puts her hand on Rosemary’s forehead. Her skin feels dry despite the fever.
“When did you last have something to eat? Or some water?”
Rosemary shakes her head but doesn’t answer.
“Have you called the doctor?” Kate calls behind her as she heads into the kitchen, filling two glasses with water. She opens the fridge and looks inside—it is empty and she remembers what Ahmed said—that Ellis reported Rosemary hadn’t been to the market. Back in the living room Kate lines the water glasses up on a small table. She helps Rosemary sit up and holds the glass to Rosemary’s lips.
Rosemary avoids Kate’s eyes as she takes slow sips. She doesn’t answer the question about the doctor. Kate waits until Rosemary has finished both glasses of water before going to the phone and dialing the local doctor’s office. She talks quietly but quickly.
“The doctor will be over soon,” she says after hanging up.
In the darkness she scoops up the tissues and puts them in the bin. She boils water in the kettle and makes Rosemary a cup of tea with two sugars. While they wait for the doctor Kate takes Rosemary’s keys from her swimming bag by the door and pops out to the local corner shop. Rosemary doesn’t notice—she has fallen asleep.
Kate returns with cans of soup, a loaf of bread, a pint of milk, and some eggs. As Rosemary sleeps on the sofa Kate boils her an egg, heats up some soup, and cuts toast into thin strips. Kate helps her eat, dipping the toast into the yolk of the egg and handing the slices to Rosemary, who eats them slowly, her hands unsteady. Rosemary drops a piece of toast onto the blanket. Kate picks it up and puts it on the side of the plate.
Kate wants to say something, to tell her that it will be okay, but Rosemary’s embarrassment is clear, so she says nothing. She opens the balcony door and pulls the curtain back over it, a breeze blowing through the thin fabric.
“I’m cold,” says Rosemary, pulling the blanket tighter around her.
“You’re hot,” says Kate. “And you need some fresh air.”
Kate tidies around Rosemary as she drifts in and out of sleep. Eventually the doctor buzzes up. Kate lets him in and follows him to the sofa.
“Is this your grandmother?” the doctor asks.
“No,” she replies, “she’s my friend.”
“And how long has she been ill for?”
“I can hear you, you know!” says Rosemary.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Peterson,” says the doctor, kneeling beside her and opening his bag. “How long have you been ill for?”
“Since Sunday evening. I thought it was just the champagne. We were at a wedding. I haven’t had champagne in a very long time.”
He does some checks and then stands up.
“It’s the flu,” he says to Rosemary. He turns to Kate. “She should be okay but needs plenty of fluids and lots of rest. She will need watching and taking care of—if her temperature rises, you should call the surgery again. Do you have any children, Mrs. Peterson?”
“No.”
“I can look after you,” Kate says to Rosemary, kneeling next to the sofa with her back to the doctor, who is now standing up and packing away his things.
“I don’t want to make you do that,” says Rosemary.
“I can look after you,” Kate says again. She looks at Rosemary, who doesn’t say anything else.
So the doctor leaves them and Kate makes a call to Phil explaining the situation and telling him she will need to work from home this week.
“I’m just going to go and get my things, okay?” she says to Rosemary. Before she leaves she heads into the kitchen and reaches above the fridge for the black notebook that she knows lives there. She walks quickly to her house, collects her laptop, sleeping bag, and a bag with some clothes and toiletries. Then she heads to the market to ask Ellis for help.
CHAPTER 45
While Rosemary is ill, Kate cooks, working her way through George’s notebook. Ellis filled bags with everything she would need for a week of recipes and wouldn’t let her pay for anything.
“Just get her better,” he had said.
Kate has never cooked this much in her life. She gently handles the notebook, turning each page with care and deciding what Rosemary might like to eat. There are pies and puddings, stews and casseroles. One recipe just reads “Rosemary’s favorite soup” so Kate starts with that. She painstakingly reads and follows every instruction. Every now and then she has to ask Rosemary to read a certain word where she can’t quite decipher George’s handwriting.
Rosem
ary eats hardly anything, but the smell of the cooking seems to revive her a little. She sits up slightly on the sofa and looks out onto the balcony, watching the bees on the lavender pots. When she was sleeping Kate dragged the pots closer to the door so that they would be easy for her to see. She keeps the curtains open and the door ajar so a breeze fills the flat. Kate eats, too, sitting on a cushion on the floor by the sofa. Rosemary doesn’t talk and Kate doesn’t want to force her, so she reads or types on her laptop as they eat in silence. Every day Kate checks the Facebook page and the petition. It has reached over a thousand signatures now, and she writes a short piece about the milestone for the paper. She also receives several emails from local businesses who want to show their support for the campaign by putting posters in their windows. Jay helps to make and distribute them while Kate works from Rosemary’s flat.
It gives her hope, but something at the back of her mind makes her worry. She remembers the image of the lido turned into the private members’ gym and fear enters her like a chill through a window.
At night Kate helps Rosemary to her bedroom. She turns away while she changes. The old woman’s naked body looks very different in the dim light of her bedroom than it does in the fluorescent glare at the swimming pool changing room. It might be darker but she seems more naked here.
Rosemary wears button-up men’s striped pajamas. The sleeves of her shirt are rolled up neatly at the wrists. Kate helps her onto the bed and pulls the covers over her, tucking them around her body. Rosemary rolls onto her side and faces the wall. Kate makes sure there is a glass of water and George’s photograph on the bedside table, and then she softly closes the door.
In the living room Kate unrolls her sleeping bag onto the sofa and climbs inside. She considers taking a book from the shelf to flick through before falling asleep, but she doesn’t want to disturb the pattern of titles—a pattern that only Rosemary knows the logic to. She keeps the curtain to the balcony open so she can see the sky and the glow from the streetlamps as she falls asleep.