The Distance

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Right. The turkey, star anise, figs, goose fat. It’s all I need, we’ll be as quick as we can, poppet,’ Kate says, as she strokes Izzy’s chestnut hair from her crown to her back, and she flinches. ‘Turkey collection point turkey collection point turkey collection point…’

  ‘Mum, what’s wrong with you? You sound deranged.’

  Kate gives a harangued smile.

  ‘Can’t believe I forgot the goose fat last week. Doesn’t matter…’ she whispers under her breath. ‘Ooh sorry. Turkey, star anise, figs, goose fat… oh and cream. I need more double cream. Oh, excuse me please, sorry, where’s the turkey collection point? It’s not back at customer services is it?’

  A young man in a green tie gives a big smile. He clearly loves Christmas.

  ‘Back of the store, madam, there’s a special stand, wait there and one of our partners will go and find your turkey for you. Do you have your order number with you today?’

  Kate waves her phone and smiles before hurrying Izzy along with an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. Izzy slinks away to the seasonal aisle.

  ‘Stay with me, poppet, it’s too busy and I have to get the turkey.’

  Izzy ignores the instruction and walks off. ‘I’m just looking at the tins.’

  ‘Turkey collection point turkey collection point turkey collection point. Ah. Here you are, sorry…’ Kate is flapping, but excitedly. She’s always quite liked Christmas, but this year will be a good opportunity to draw a line under the year they’ve had, to batten down the hatches and get her family back together. Strangely, Kate hasn’t looked forward to a Christmas this much since their first Christmas with Chloe. This one means so much.

  Kate joins the back of the queue and waits, level with a little table. On it sits a box of own-brand chocolates to sample. She leans to take one wrapped in purple foil and feels her thighs rub together as she reaches in enthusiastically.

  Three bored-looking customers stand in front of Kate with slumped, accepting shoulders. They all look at their phones, at lists, recipes, texts. A chill runs down Kate’s spine when she realises who the shopper is in front of her.

  Maybe I’ll get the star anise first…

  The customer in front is irked by the rustling of the chocolate wrapper and turns before Kate can leave.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ says a face filled with disdain.

  Kate feels like she’s had the Christmas cheer and stuffing knocked out of her.

  ‘Hello Antonia,’ she says, picturing Antonia’s naked body stretched out underneath George’s. Anger washes over her, she thinks of Izzy across the store, the lioness inside her roars. ‘Doing your own errands today?’

  Antonia stands tall in her long red woollen coat with a black fur collar. ‘Quite the little comedian I see, Kate,’ Antonia smiles, eyeing Kate’s dark blue winter duffel coat with icy pity.

  Kate smooths down the rain-fuelled frizz all the way from her fringe to her ponytail.

  I will not walk away. I won this.

  Antonia turns her back to Kate, stands tall, and returns to the sanctuary of her phone. Kate sucks on the hazelnut until the caramel is all gone, and imagines the texts George and Antonia must have exchanged over the ‘year and a bit’ they were shagging. Were the messages dirty? Were they functional? Were they full of yearning and mischief? Were they full of passion and love?

  She’s not texting him now, is she?

  ‘Mum, can I get this?’ says Izzy sullenly, clutching a bumper tin of Quality Street with a snowy reindeer scene on the lid, knowing Kate is going to say no.

  ‘Yes, poppet, you can, it looks lovely.’

  ‘Really? Wow.’ Izzy raises her eyebrows and wonders who kidnapped her mum and replaced her with someone who’s even more of a pushover.

  Antonia waits for her order.

  A woman as wide as she is tall comes out clutching a box.

  ‘Goose for Lady Barrie?’

  ‘Here!’ Antonia nods as she slings her Gucci bag onto the crease in her elbow so she can take the bird in the box. Her red coat sweeps around and her thin frame looks resolute. Down but not out.

  Antonia gives Izzy a loaded smile and leans in to whisper in Kate’s ear. ‘He’s. Still. Miserable,’ she says, and glides away to the checkout at the front of the store.

  Kate stands, stuck to the spot, frozen in time. Her eyes well up. She doesn’t hear Izzy.

  ‘Mum? Mum? Are you OK, Mum?’

  Kate blinks and a tear falls down her mottled cheek and onto the grey square tile of the floor.

  ‘Yes, darling, fine,’ she nods reassuringly, voice wavering, relieved that between Izzy’s Bose headphones and her tweenage agenda, she didn’t seem to hear.

  Forty-Five

  Christmas Day 2018

  Hey beautiful,

  I hope you’re doing OK.

  Long time no speak, I know, and I’m so sorry, for… well, everything. But I have to let you know, whatever you think of me, I’m coming to Europe and I need to see you. I must see you! I need to make amends for everything, and I hope you can forgive me. I arrive in Paris on New Year’s Day – it would be super cool if you could meet me, if it’s not too difficult for you to get there. I think about you a lot and want to make things right.

  Besos,

  Hector

  x

  Kate closes the lid on her laptop. She was only looking for her go-to cranachan trifle recipe, just to check how much whisky to put into the cream, and there it sat, a timebomb waiting to explode in her messages list.

  She unscrews the lid off the Glenlivet, inhales the bitter blend of malt and wood, and a flame ignites in Kate’s stomach. Hector Herrera is coming to Europe.

  Whatever for?

  She shakily pours whisky onto a tablespoon six times, spilling it clumsily into the cream, where it dances dizzily under the Kenwood whisk.

  How did he find me on Facebook? And why now? After all this time.

  Kate thinks back to that summer, and the scents of mango, corn and motorbike exhaust fumes fill her with an excitement she hasn’t known for a long time.

  A beep emanates from the kitchen island, pulling Kate away from the summer she graduated. It’s George’s phone. Face up.

  Spatula in hand, Kate leaves the Kenwood to mix alone while she tries to read the message, but the reflection of the bulb in the pendant light above the island bounces off it and obscures the screen.

  George walks in, wearing his Christmas Day jumper, and heads straight to his phone. Kate pretends she hadn’t noticed the beep and turns off the motor of the mixer.

  ‘Well the Xbox is going down well,’ George says, as he punches in a code only he knows, and goes to read the message. ‘Ahhh. Mum and Dad. “Happy Christmas from the Jurassic coast! Love to Kate and the kids”. That’s nice.’

  Kate nods compliantly, quietly, as she scrapes silky folds of cream onto raspberries.

  I didn’t ask him who it was from.

  Forty-Six

  December 2018, Mexico City, Mexico

  At the Iberia check-in desk in the bustling departures hall of Benito Juárez International Airport, Hector heaves Pilar’s case onto the scales – 38kg – it must weigh almost as much as her. She looks like skin and bones in the blush pink tracksuit that hangs off her frame. Her cheeks have a little more colour in them than they did when she left hospital a month ago, and her whip of black hair has been coiffed back to give her frame more stature. But her face, free of make-up but for thick black eyeliner, looks hollow. For once, Hector is worried about what Mari-Carmen will think when she’s reunited with her daughter in Madrid.

  ‘There will be a charge for this, Señora,’ says a woman with a Castilian lisp. A red and gold hat sits primly on her head at a jaunty angle.

  ‘Obviously,’ says Pilar, flatly.

  ‘But how many bags are you checking in today? If Señor is under 23kg you can have some of his allowance. It will bring the charge down at least.’

  Hector wonders why the woman in the hat is trying
to be helpful when Pilar is responding so brusquely.

  ‘Just me,’ Pilar says, soberly, as Hector rubs the small of her back. ‘I’ll pay whatever.’

  *

  ‘So, this is it,’ Hector says with a faux melancholy, as he places Pilar’s carry-on holdall on the floor between their feet. They face each other and Hector takes her hands in his. She looks up at him with wide eyes.

  Despite knowing that this is what Pilar wants, this is what she’s chosen, Hector can’t help feeling guilty about the sensation of overwhelming relief in his tummy, and he feels terrible when he looks in the eyes of the fragile bird standing in front of him. Despite what she did. He checked out long before she reached the check-in desk, the toil and the chaos and the shouting was just too much, even though Hector knows he played his part.

  And then she says it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hector. I’m truly sorry.’

  Pilar clutches her travel pillow to her stomach as she falls onto Hector’s chest.

  He wraps his arms around her.

  ‘Hey, it’s OK, we’re gonna be OK. You’re gonna be OK. The whole of Spain is waiting for SupaPila to return, to educate them in the art of molé; the alchemy of the perfect salsa; what a totopo should actually taste like…’

  Pilar laughs, then her face drops again.

  ‘I’ll always love you,’ she states in a husky, low voice.

  Hector doesn’t know what to say. His mouth stays closed as passengers stream past them in their tense misshapen bubble.

  ‘I’ll always love Xalapa. I did have lots of good years there.’

  ‘I know you did. We did. It won’t be the same without you,’ Hector says, releasing Pilar from his arms.

  ‘Vuelve. Go back and do wonderful things, Hector.’

  Hector puts a hand on each of her shoulders before lowering his head so he’s level with Pilar. ‘And you in Spain, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you need to promise me something, Pilar. If you promise me this, then there’s no need to dwell on the past and be sorry.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Slow down baby. Cál-ma-te. You have a lot of happy times ahead of you, I know it. Just cálmate. Go easy on yourself.’

  Pilar’s hooded eyes well up and she plants an accepting kiss on Hector’s closed mouth before she picks up her holdall, hugs her pillow even tighter and snakes off through security without looking back.

  Hector puts his hands in his pockets and watches as Pilar doesn’t turn around; as she puts her belongings into a black plastic tray, as she walks through an archway, as she disappears around a corner, clutching her pillow to her stomach again. Then he lets out a sigh. He didn’t tell Pilar that he’s not going back to Xalapa tonight. Instead, he will wonder around the Zócalo, go for a cold Negra Modelo in his favourite bar on Calle Tacuba. He’ll catch up with Efrain’s brother Raymundo and his girlfriend to see their new baby, then Hector and Raymundo will wander to the market at Coyoacán to grab them all tortas before Hector beds down on Raymundo’s couch. In the morning he will return to Benito Juárez International airport. Tomorrow Hector will fly to Paris.

  Forty-Seven

  December 2018, Suffolk, England

  ‘So, here’s a funny thing,’ Kate says, as she sits on the sofa, leaning into one arm of it with a glass of red wine in her hand. Her legs curl underneath her, a little plumper than they were a week ago from turkey, trimmings and the hangover of leftovers. Her slippers hang off her feet, hot in the warm living room. George sits in the middle of the sofa, his arms wide on the back of it, bottle of beer in one hand, legs stretched out in front of him on a pouffe. Casual, relaxed, little regard for his companion in her corner as he watches James Bond on the telly. ‘I’m thinking of a little jaunt to Paris in a few days. Eurostar has some excellent fares…’

  ‘Paris? Why Paris?’ George says dismissively, as James Bond deftly weaves his way through a street parade somewhere far away.

  ‘Well, an old friend is going to be there; a friend from that summer I spent in Mexico, just for a few days… I don’t think he’s ever been to Europe before, so, given it’s not far for us, I thought we could go and say hello. Welcome him to the continent sort of thing,’ Kate witters with her flustered voice. When she feels nervous about something, she talks too much and witters. ‘It must have been, about, twenty years since I saw my friend…’ Kate knows it was exactly twenty and a half years since she last saw Hector Herrera, and her wittering makes George suspicious.

  ‘Which friend? I don’t know about any friends from Mexico.’

  ‘Oh, you know, my friend from the orphanage that summer I was volunteering.’

  ‘What, the boyfriend?’

  ‘Well… he wasn’t exactly my boyfriend.’

  ‘You said he broke your heart,’ George laughs. ‘That’s why you were so wary of me when we met. Bloody Mexican, I thought, getting in the way of me getting to first base.’

  ‘First base?! George, is that what you thought?’ Kate lets out a surprised laugh, her voice wobbling up and down an octave, although it’s nice to think that George might ever have been jealous. ‘Well, it didn’t seem to do you any harm in the end,’ she says cheekily. The wine is turning Kate’s lips a deep shade of Rembrandt red, giving her some Dutch courage along the way.

  ‘Why would you want to see an old Mexican boyfriend? They don’t age well – look at these guys,’ he jokes, pointing to the skeletons in a Day Of The Dead parade, pleased with himself and his quip. Kate doesn’t laugh. ‘I didn’t know you were in contact.’ George sounds blasé. It’s not a cover for jealousy, he’s just surprised.

  ‘Oh, well we’re not really. I get news via Sister Miriam every Christmas. The occasional birthday greeting. I think he’s married now.’

  ‘Good, well so are you, so why do you want to drag us all to Paris? It’ll be January, nobody goes anywhere in January unless it’s St Bart’s. And we can’t afford St Bart’s.’

  Kate thinks of Antonia Barrie and wonders if she’s in St Bart’s. Is that why St Bart’s sprang to George’s mind? She feels a slosh of anger.

  ‘It’s hardly dragging! We could go to Disney, have a minibreak before the kids go back to school.’

  ‘Disneyland Paris? Sounds vile.’

  ‘OK, I’ll go on my own when the kids start back, he’s there for a few days,’ Kate says, trying to call George’s bluff.

  George shrugs and takes another slug from his bottle of beer.

  An irritation runs up Kate’s blotchy neck that makes her feel invisible, like she can’t breathe and no one cares, but she speaks up again, boldness fuelled by Bordeaux.

  ‘I thought we were going to make more of an effort, George.’

  She looks along the sofa, pleadingly. George glances back but his gaze stops at the Christmas tree in the window.

  ‘Make an effort?’ George returns to the TV and talks at it as if he’s talking to Bond. ‘Well, Paris seems a bit extreme. Why don’t I book a babysitter, we can go to Corky’s one evening…’

  Great.

  ‘Or I’ll get Freya to sort dinner and a show in London, there are always cheap pre-theatre deals to get people out in January.’

  You took Her to the Shangri-La at The Shard.

  Kate takes a large sip to finish her vessel of wine and George carries on talking to Daniel Craig.

  ‘But really, Kate, I don’t think going to Paris for a cosy reunion with the man who broke your heart is really making an effort for “us”, is it?’

  ‘He wasn’t the only one who broke my heart.’

  George tips his head back as he blows an exasperated zephyr towards the ceiling. The faux crystals on the Homebase chandelier tinkle.

  ‘I thought we’d moved on?’ he groans, even though this is the first time Kate has referred to George’s affair since she confronted him about it; since he chose to stay with her; since they decided to make a go of their marriage.

  Kate’s trying, she really is, but a message out of the blue from
Hector Herrera has put the wind in her sails, and she’s all in a pickle.

  ‘Well, maybe I’ll take the girls shopping. Paris is meant to have some lovely department stores, we could just meet up with my friend for a coffee between shops.’

  ‘If you want,’ says George, giving Kate a sideways glance, wondering what’s got into her, knowing fully well she won’t be going to Paris.

  Forty-Eight

  March 2018, Day 1,725

  Hola.

  Hei.

  Where are you?

  Does it matter?

  I like to picture where you are if I can’t see you.

  Cecilie hovered a thumb over her phone, the green gem in her silver ring shone. But she didn’t reply.

  Can we FaceTime then?

  No, it won’t help.

  Won’t help what?

  You know, Hector.

  There was a pause. Hector didn’t respond.

  I just wanted to say goodbye. Good luck with the wedding, I hope it all works out for you, I really do.

  Cecilie did want Hector to be happy, but it made her feel sick that it couldn’t be with her.

  That’s it?

  Yes, that’s it. It’s not fair on your… on Pilar. It’s secretive and sly. It’s not fair on her. And it’s not fair on me.

  Hector felt wretched to the core.

  I didn’t mean to hurt you.

  I know you didn’t. What I meant was, I’m not being fair on me, living each waking moment around you; or allowing you into my dreams at night; or thinking about what time it is somewhere I’ll never go; or wondering whether I’m going to talk to you today; or judging my mood based on how well our last conversation went; or my unwillingness to meet anyone in ‘real’ life while you move forward with yours. It’s not fair. I need to be more present. I need to stop being blind to what’s in front of me. My life here. My family. The children here in the library…