Once in a Lifetime

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘I meant it in a good way. Newbay isn’t so bad.’

  ‘Ninety thousand pensioners can’t be wrong,’ Dani quipped, referring to the town’s demographic. ‘But what are you doing back here, Nathan Hayward? The last I heard, you were in London, making a fortune.’

  ‘Not a fortune, exactly. And miserable with it,’ said Nat. ‘I wanted to get back to the sea. I was always going to come back to Newbay at some point.’

  ‘Nuts,’ said Dani, making a ‘cuckoo’ swirl next to her temple.

  ‘OK. So maybe I came back here a little earlier than I expected. Dad’s not been well.’

  ‘I thought perhaps that was the case when I saw him at The Majestic. What happened?’

  ‘He had a stroke. Last November. He’s made a lot of progress since then, but he’s never going to be well enough to run the business again.’

  ‘So you’re here to do it for him?’

  ‘Yes. In short. And I know I said I never would …’

  When he was eighteen, Nat decided that the family pleasure boat business was destroying the local environment. That was why he’d taken a job at The Majestic rather than in the family firm.

  ‘I’m saying nothing. You’re allowed to change your mind,’ Dani said. ‘Looking out for your family matters.’

  Nat nodded. ‘That’s the conclusion I came to. I’ve actually been back since January’

  ‘And you didn’t look me up?’ Dani tutted.

  ‘I really didn’t think you’d still be here. The last I heard, you were in Paris on your year abroad. You had a French boyfriend.’

  ‘I wonder who that was supposed to be,’ Dani said. ‘Chinese whispers, I think.’

  ‘No French boyfriend?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’

  ‘Oh. Is there someone now?’

  ‘A man in my life? No.’

  Nat looked as though he might be about to ask the next obvious question. Dani pre-empted him.

  ‘No woman in my life either.’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘Though I have a daughter.’

  ‘You’ve got a daughter?’ Nat did a double take.

  ‘Just turned sixteen.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yes way. Her name is Florence. Flossie for short. Just doing her GCSEs.’

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know.’

  ‘You’ve been away for a long time. And I guess we stopped moving in the same circles after school.’

  It wasn’t just that they’d left school and gone away to university, and they both knew it, but for the moment it was a good enough explanation.

  ‘Is she like you?’ Nat asked.

  ‘Looks-wise, people seem to think so. But I don’t remember being quite so self-assured. She’s very into saving the world. Equality. Animal rights. She’s got all the answers.’

  ‘She is like you then,’ Nat teased.

  ‘She’s also got this awful boyfriend, which is how I’ve ended up with a dog.’

  Dani explained the situation. ‘Though I have to admit Jezza is growing on me.’ She looked down to where Jezza was chewing on her shoelace. Princess was working on the other foot.

  ‘Sorry,’ Nat persuaded Princess to let Dani’s shoelace go.

  ‘Maybe Jed’s right,’ said Nat as he considered Dani’s story. ‘Jezza chose you. Princess seems to have chosen me. And seeing you at Best Behaviour Boot Camp is a bonus. I wondered when we’d have the chance to catch up.’

  ‘Do you think we’re going to survive the whole term?’ Dani asked.

  ‘If we can have an after-class support group every week?’

  ‘We’ll have to find some better coffee.’

  Nat agreed.

  ‘So how did you meet your Lola?’ Dani asked then. ‘Is she local to here?’

  ‘Born and bred. I met her at the hospital. Dad was on the same ward as her grandfather. We got talking when she came in to see him and, well, the rest is history.’

  ‘So you haven’t been together long?’

  ‘I suppose not. Five months.’

  ‘But when you know, you know, eh?’

  ‘She’s got a boutique,’ said Nat. ‘Perhaps you know it. Lola’s?’

  ‘Do I look like the kind of woman who shops in boutiques?’ said Dani, indicating the rip in one knee of her jeans. It definitely wasn’t a designer rip.

  ‘You always dressed pretty well, as I remember. Or rather you always looked lovely.’

  ‘I was sixteen when you last saw me. You can wear a sack when you’re sixteen and look like a goddess. Look at you, though? What happened to—’

  ‘My hair?’

  Dani blushed. ‘I was going to ask what happened to the Che Guevara T-shirt? You’ve really changed your style.’

  ‘I guess I got old.’

  ‘We weren’t ever going to grow old. Remember?’

  Nat laughed. ‘No, we weren’t. But it’s better than the alternative.’

  ‘Where are you living now?’ Dani asked.

  Nat named a fancy part of town. ‘But just while we do up a place I bought a while back.’

  He named an even fancier part of town.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The same place I always lived.’

  ‘What? With your parents?’

  ‘Just Mum now. Dad passed away fifteen years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He was a great bloke.’

  ‘Thank you. We miss him still.’

  ‘I’ll bet. Let me see if I can remember your address. Fifteen Schooner Crescent?’

  ‘You remember.’

  ‘I could probably remember your phone number too.’ He could. ‘Weird, isn’t it? I’ve got a head full of numbers from the nineties but I can barely remember my own mobile number now.’

  ‘The world has changed.’

  ‘Well, most of it has. Not Newbay.’

  ‘Not Newbay,’ Dani agreed.

  ‘All the best bits remain. The Pier. The Majestic …’

  ‘Talking of which, Dave the chef would love to see you, I’m sure, Frank …’

  Nat groaned. ‘Only if he doesn’t call me Frank. I hated that nickname. I was self-conscious enough about my height as it was.’

  ‘You’ve grown into it.’

  ‘Got fat, you mean?’

  ‘That is not what I meant at all,’ Dani insisted.

  ‘Lola’s got me on a pretty strict regime,’ Nat admitted. ‘She’s a yoga bunny.’

  Of course, Dani thought. Of course she was.

  ‘Always trying to get me to do it too.’

  ‘I tried it a couple of times,’ Dani said. ‘Not really my thing.’

  ‘Mine neither.’

  This was weird. This conversation. So banal. So odd. If Dani had known that this is what they’d talk about? Yoga? Old phone numbers? She would never have believed it. Inside she just wanted to grab his face in her hands and say ‘Nat Hayward! Nat Hayward! Nat Hayward! Is it really you?’ again and again and again. Instead they were acting like this was all perfectly normal. Drinking bad coffee. Swapping news of family members and fitness regimes. Polite. Bloodless.

  ‘This coffee really is terrible,’ was as controversial as the conversation was going to get. As controversial as it should get, perhaps.

  ‘It’s the worst cup of coffee I’ve had in years,’ Nat agreed.

  After half an hour of small talk, during which neither Nat nor Dani finished their coffee, Nat suddenly said, ‘Well, I suppose I should be going. Lola will start to wonder what’s happened to me. Or to Princess, more to the point. I’ve definitely slipped down the pecking order since madam here came along. Give my love to your mum, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, I’m sure she’ll send hers in return.’

  ‘And I’ll see you next week. Same time, same place.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Nat got up and started to walk towards the pub door. Princess seemed reluctant to follow him. She and Jezza had to be lifted apart.

  ‘Dani Parker.�
� Nat paused on the threshold and breathed her name with the kind of wonder she’d been feeling since she saw him on the playing field. Since she saw him in the restaurant.

  ‘Nat Hayward,’ she said in response. And that was when it happened.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said then. ‘I think I recognise this place. Didn’t we once …’

  He stopped mid-sentence then nodded to himself. ‘Yeah. Of course.’

  Dani nodded too as the horrible realisation hit her. It was …

  Neither of them was going to say it.

  Nat’s smile wavered before it returned double-strength, as though he was trying to squash something down. A memory. A feeling.

  ‘I’ll see you next week,’ he said. ‘It’s been really nice to catch up. I mean that. Dani Parker. Who would have thought …’

  Dani lagged behind Nat on the pretence that she needed the loo but as soon as he was out of sight, she went back to the bar and ordered herself another drink. A real one this time. It felt wicked, though it was only half a pint of lager and it was nearly midday. It was a silly way to deal with the weirdness of the past half hour and she already knew it wouldn’t make a difference.

  ‘Nice dog,’ said the landlord, spotting Jezza. ‘What breed is he?’

  ‘Half poodle, half Staffordshire bull terrier.’

  ‘A Staffy-poo?’ the landlord suggested.

  ‘Yeah. I suppose he is.’

  Dani had a feeling she was going to have to get used to it.

  She sat back down at the table where she and Nat had spent the last half hour swapping stories. Of all the pubs she might have chosen, why had she decided on this one? Why hadn’t Nat said anything when he realised where they were headed? Perhaps it really had only struck him as he left.

  They’d both forgotten. That was a good thing, Dani told herself. They’d both forgotten, which meant that perhaps it hadn’t mattered that much after all.

  It was so weird. If she could have gone back in time and told her sixteen-year-old self that one day she and Nat Hayward would be making small talk in the place that had once seemed so significant? That they would part with a wave rather than a passionate kiss? It would not have seemed possible. How could you go from having a certain someone fill your every waking thought to not knowing what was going on in their life at all?

  She couldn’t believe Nat didn’t know anything about Flossie. Sure, they didn’t exactly have friends in common but at least one of his friends must have seen Dani around town, pushing her daughter in her pram. Had they stopped telling him what was going on in her life to save his feelings? Had he stopped asking?

  It didn’t really matter. Twenty-two years had passed. The time when they were everything to each other was more than half her lifetime ago. In any case, if Nat had tried to forget Dani deliberately, she could hardly blame him. She could hardly blame him at all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sarah and Jane were walking back from their class at the local university of the Third Age, held in the Newbay Arts Centre. Sarah, who had recently turned seventy, was very much taken by the possibilities of modern technology in all its guises. That morning, while the rest of the class was working through a project designed to highlight best security practice while on-line shopping, Sarah had asked one of the ‘delightful young people’ who ran the course to help her download some apps onto her phone.

  The two women stopped at the bus stop and Sarah got her phone out.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about trying this for weeks,’ she said, showing Jane the screen, which was open to Tinder.

  ‘Sarah!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘That’s not that sex app, is it?’

  ‘It is. I read all about it in the Daily Mail. It’s not just for young people. Hundreds of seventy-somethings have signed up too.’

  ‘You are joking,’ Jane laughed.

  ‘Not at all. Apparently it’s fuelling a huge boom in STDs for people of our generation.’

  ‘That’s hardly a good thing, is it?’

  ‘Well, no. But it does prove people our age are actually out there doing it.’

  ‘All with the same unsavoury person, by the sound of things.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport. There’s no harm in looking, is there?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Jane admitted. ‘Show me how it works.’

  ‘So,’ Sarah explained, ‘you turn the app on and then it shows you who’s in the area and available.’

  ‘At eleven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘Cupid never sleeps.’

  ‘What’s happening now?’

  ‘It’s loading up the possible matches. Then all I have to do is pick out the ones I’m interested in by swiping right and get rid of the ones I don’t like by swiping left. Like so.’

  Sarah swiped left on the first picture that came up.

  ‘Bum,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I meant to swipe him. Can you un-swipe?’

  ‘How would I know?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Left or right?’ asked the young man who was also waiting at the bus stop.

  ‘Left, I think,’ said Sarah, waggling her phone in that direction. She’d never been very good at knowing her left from right.

  ‘That means you said you weren’t interested. You can undo that if you want to.’

  ‘Show me,’ Sarah handed the young man her phone. Jane’s jaw dropped. ‘He’s not going to steal my phone,’ Sarah read Jane’s mind.

  ‘No,’ said the young man. ‘I’ve got a newer model. There you go, I’ve restored that match for you.’

  Sarah and Jane had a look at the restored profile.

  ‘No.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘I was right the first time. Look at his teeth.’

  ‘But he might have a nice personality,’ Jane tried.

  ‘Does that matter if that’s what you have to see first thing in the morning? Next.’

  ‘I like your style,’ said the young man.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sarah, glancing up at him from beneath her lashes. Jane recognised that her friend was turning on her famous ‘twinkle’. Irresistible to most men and dogs.

  Three minutes later, the young man was leaning in over Sarah’s shoulder to help with the elimination process. It was surprising to Jane just how many men in the Newbay area had signed up to this app thing. It was inevitable that at some point they would see someone they knew.

  ‘Isn’t that the mayor?’ Jane asked as Maurice Lindley popped up. He looked quite different out of his robes.

  ‘I think it is,’ said Sarah. ‘I didn’t know he was single.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was fifty-five,’ said Jane.

  ‘He bloody isn’t.’

  ‘Ugh, next,’ said the young man, swiping left on Sarah’s behalf. ‘I hate it when people lie about their age. What’s the point of pretending you’re fifty-five if when you turn up it’s obvious you’re sixty?’

  ‘Or seventy, in this chap’s case,’ said Sarah. ‘I wonder if we ought to tell the Newbay Observer that the mayor is lying about his age on Tinder? After all, he is in public office.’

  ‘That would be cruel,’ said Jane. ‘He’s always seemed very nice to me. Probably very lonely after losing his wife.’

  ‘Didn’t pay her much attention when she was alive,’ Sarah observed. ‘Ooooh. Look at this one. Nice eyes. Smart shirt.’

  ‘Almost certainly ironed by his wife,’ said Jane.

  ‘Yes,’ said the young man. ‘I wouldn’t bother with that one. See down there? That’s the edge of a woman’s hand at his waist. He’s cropped her out of the picture.’

  ‘So he has,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s a good job you’re here. I’d have swiped right on him for sure.’

  ‘You get used to sorting the wheat from the chaff,’ the young man said. ‘There are a lot of people pretending to be something they’re not out there in cyberspace. Always ask yourself if someone’s been cropped out of the frame. I mean, it may be the other person in the picture was just a mate but when there’s so much choice out there, why bother
risking it?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jane.

  ‘How about this one?’ Sarah asked their new friend.

  ‘See that calendar hanging on the wall behind him?’

  The two women peered more closely.

  ‘What’s the date on it?’

  ‘2009!’ Jane exclaimed.

  ‘Exactly. And he didn’t look good for sixty even then.’

  ‘You should do this for a living,’ said Sarah. ‘Dating consultant.’

  ‘What happens after you’ve done all this swiping?’ Jane asked, as Sarah swiped right on three men in quick succession.

  ‘You wait for them to swipe back,’ the young man said. ‘If they like you and you like them, you’re matched and then the rest is up to you. You arrange to meet in a pub or something.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

  ‘No more dangerous than meeting in a club,’ the young man assured Jane. He turned to Sarah now. ‘Always make sure someone – like your friend here – knows where you’re going. Perhaps even arrange for your friend to be there until the date arrives, so she can check him out. And then there’s the nine o’clock emergency call, which is when you ring and pretend to be having an emergency which requires her to leave her date right away.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ said Jane.

  ‘Are you on Tinder?’ Sarah asked the young man then. He did his best not to look terrified.

  ‘I’m on Grindr.’

  ‘Is that where I should be?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Not if you’re looking for a straight man.’

  Fortunately, the bus arrived.

  Sarah had been married twice. Jane had never met Sarah’s first husband, Toby. He was her childhood sweetheart. Sarah had married him just as soon as she was able – at eighteen – to get out of the parental home. Unfortunately, Toby turned out to be almost as restrictive as Sarah’s parents had been. Sarah was hoping for escape. Toby wanted a traditional missus, who would have the dinner on the table every night. She left him two years later.

  Sarah’s second husband – whom she met at thirty – was a proper love match. They met at a concert, when Sarah asked him to stop sniffing during a performance of Bach’s piano concertos. Mortified, Adam had asked if he could make it up to Sarah by taking her to see some Beethoven the following week. Sarah turned up to their first date with a packet of pure white cotton handkerchiefs. That evening they discovered that it was Sarah’s perfume – Fracas – that caused Adam’s nose to run. She promised to wear less of it. He promised to always carry a hanky and they were married within a year. They were divorced the year they should have celebrated their tenth. And Sarah started to wear Fracas all the time.