by Lia Louis
“I’m not sure Emmie could deal with another wedding this soon,” says Fox now. “Isn’t that right?”
I look up, blinking, eyes glazed, fixed on the horizon. “What’s that?”
“Me,” says Rosie. “This bloke I’m going on a date with tonight. Ravi. We have the same star sign, and his mum is from Pakistan, like my pops. I said to Fox, it probably means it’s fate and we’ll get married.”
“It definitely sounds like fate.” I smile. “Does Fox need to borrow my best man book? Oh, I can send you my spreadsheet!”
Fox folds his arms and raises his eyebrows. “You have a spreadsheet? And also, absolutely not.”
“She does.” Rosie nods. “She studies hard, does Emmie. She has these Pinterest boards, too, and it’s like a fucking library of its own. There are brides everywhere that would hire you on the spot through those alone, Em, you do realize that, don’t you?”
I shake my head and sip from my can of 7UP.
“Mhmm,” says Rosie.
I shake my head again. “Maybe until they found out the last and only wedding I did, I spent most of it staring at the groom, wanting to scream why isn’t it me? Then I’m pretty sure I’d be blacklisted and written about, like a cautionary tale, like that psychopath husband-stealer from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
“Oh!” says Rosie, flinging her arms in the air. “As if that’s what you are. That is the furthest from what you are.”
Fox unfolds his arms and pulls out his cigarettes. “Agreed,” he says, then getting one out, he asks, “What’s brought this on?”
I scrunch up the empty bag of Maltesers. “What do you mean?”
“Well, not that I’m stripping you of your right to be pessimistic or self-loathing, but… well, you’ve been fiercely determined and positive about this whole wedding and best woman business and now you sit here, in front of us—”
“He said before us this morning,” adds Rosie with a smirk, but Fox’s voice overlaps hers.
“And you seem different about it. Has something happened?”
They both look at me. I don’t want to tell them about my dad’s cards, which is starting to seep and swirl, like ink in water, into my every thought, and I don’t want to talk about Tom and the bar, and the school I couldn’t walk into. I’ve gone over it all so much in my head over the last few days. So instead I shrug and tell them the thing that’s on the surface. I miss Lucas. And looking at him outside that bar, I realized just how much, and how much I will miss him after he says “I do.” I tell them everything is changing. Yet I feel like I’m standing still. And they listen, eyes narrowed, nodding, all sympathetic sighs and hand-squeezes. Rosie cuddles me and says, “I still think you should talk to him,” and Fox leans back on the bench, blows out a stream of smoke, and finishes his cigarette.
“You know what I think, Emmie?” he says. “I think you put too much onus on this man. You don’t give yourself enough credit. Who you are on your own.”
We walk back to the hotel, all three of us in a line, arms around one another, regardless of how reluctant Fox was to let Rosie’s hand hold on to his waist. And deep down, I know he is right.
But it’s hard for them to realize, I suppose—Rosie with her large and warm and loving family; Fox with his dad who visits, and his postcard-sending mother—that over the last fourteen years, Lucas has been my only constant. And when I had nobody, he was right there.
* * *
It isn’t very often that I enter Fishers Way and hear voices, besides the radio. Louise doesn’t really ever talk on the phone, and she never has visitors. When I walk through the hallway door today, just to say hello, Louise is talking quickly, smile on her face, old hands cradling a cup of mint tea at the kitchen table, her crossword book closed, her golden pen retracted and on the cover. Eliot, from his seat at the table, looks up at me, mug in hand. “Hey,” he says with a smile.
I stop, feet on the carpet. “Um. Hi,” I say, and Louise looks at me, the whites of her eyes bright and twinkly, color in her cheeks. She smiles, and it’s nothing like her usual polite smile. The one reserved for postmen and passing neighbors in the street, so to not appear completely without a heart. “Sorry, I just—I didn’t screw up and forget we had plans, did I?”
Eliot shakes his head. “No, no, not at all, I was just passing through. Thought I’d stop by. Plus, I wanted to run something by you.” God. The STEN party, I bet. I really can’t think of anything I want to do less right now, feet throbbing, cheeks red, hair stuck fast with the smell of cooking, than sit and talk about the bloody STEN party. Tom has booked the venue—something he announced excitedly in the group chat. A ballroom not far from Le Touquet that’s been featured in a number of films I’ve never heard of, which I know will be right up Lucas’s street. It has shocked me, actually, because I’d expected the French equivalent of Stringfellows or something; a roast dinner served on some poor woman’s oiled-up buttocks.
I nod at Eliot. “Sure,” I say.
Louise is already getting up, putting her mug in the sink and shuffling past the table to the conservatory out the back, where she waters her tomato plants and sits among shelves of books I never see her read.
“I made a vegetable curry,” she says, her woolly-cardiganed back to me. “It’s on the stove. There’s plenty for you, Emmie, to eat for your dinner, if you’d like.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “Thank you, Louise. That’s really kind.”
“You can’t keep living on toast. It’s empty calories.” Then she stops, glances over her shoulder. “You’re welcome to some too, Eliot.”
Eliot smiles, looks at me. “Thanks, Louise. Smells really good.”
“I’m still good at some things,” she says, the corner of her mouth lifting, and walks away.
I take a seat at the table. Eliot balls his hands together in front of him and looks up at me, brown eyes, long eyelashes. He looks like his dad. And this is something I only know from the photos Eliot used to keep of him in his bedroom, when we were young. He’s dark, like him, tall, sharp jaw always peppered with stubble, his hair always “just” on his head, hand raked through it. He reminds me of the men Georgia would crush on when we were fifteen and we’d wander around smoky Camden Market buying posters, and jeans from Punkyfish.
“How are you doing?” asks Eliot, and I know what he’s referring to. The last time he saw me. Shaking and wobbly, outside that bar, the anger in his voice at Ana helping Tom over me, obvious as he spoke.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Luke got pretty wasted after we left, I hear,” he says, eyes on me.
“Did he?” I lift my shoulders to my ears. “I wouldn’t know. I left. We’ve not really spoken much since then, actually.”
Eliot hesitates, raises his eyebrows, gives a nod; one singular nod. “And how’s work?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Tiring. I did a double shift today and I cannot feel my feet.”
“Do you want tea?” Eliot asks, brows raised, already getting up. “I’ll make it. Kettle should still be hot.”
I go to say no, but then I nod because I can’t remember the last time I got home from work and someone made me a hot drink. “Yes. Please.”
It’s weird watching Eliot in Louise’s kitchen, opening cupboards, pulling open drawers, making tea as I sit here at the table exhausted and sweaty after a long shift. If someone had told me this would be happening one day, I’m not sure I would have believed them. Even when I see Eliot at the Moreaus’, at a family barbecue, we chat, but only ever strictly small talk, the way you do with someone at the till in Sainsbury’s—to pass the time, to fill an awkward silence. But I feel like something has shifted, just slightly. The gap between us that was left that night; that sudden, harsh, irreparable-seeming tear, doesn’t seem so huge. And I am glad.
“It’s nice of you to sit with Louise,” I say as he busies himself at the hot kettle, dropping a tea bag into a cup.
“She’s cool,” he says. “Knows a lot of shit,
eh?”
I shrug. “I guess so.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “She doesn’t really speak to me some weeks.”
He pours water in, a tiny smile on his lips. “Or you don’t speak to her, more like. Still one sugar?”
“What do you mean? And yes. Still one.”
Eliot gives a shrug. “I’m just saying, you’re quite tough sometimes, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean that you’re…” Eliot stands back, folding his arms, waiting for the tea bag to brew. “Well, you’re a bit of a closed book, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“And so is she.” He simply nods. “So, two closed books living together.” He closes his hands together, a teaspoon in one, and smiles. “Voilà. A house of no words.”
I stifle a laugh, pressing my lips together as he squeezes the tea bag, adds milk, and looks at me, eyebrows raising as if to say, “See? I’m right, aren’t I?”
He places the tea in front of me and sits back down where he was. “So, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about on the car ride up to Mum’s.”
“About the live band? For the STEN?”
Eliot stops and shakes his head. “No. Well, yeah, I have been thinking about that, too, but that’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I was thinking more about what you told me, about the cards.” He leans forward slightly. “About your dad. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, actually.”
I nod, feel warmth tingle across my skin at those words. There’s something about the way he says them that makes me trust him, and although a tiny voice asks if I should, I shake it away.
“Me too,” I say. “I tried calling my mum again last night. Nothing. Not a single call or text or even email back.”
Eliot grimaces, hand at the dark stubble of his chin. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s how it’s always been.”
The clock on the wall above the cooker ticks, and Eliot looks at me. “So, I was thinking we should go,” says Eliot. “To the address.”
“To the one on the cards?” I ask pointlessly, feeling my heart plummet with dread.
Eliot nods. “I think if we do, maybe something might make sense, someone might know something…”
My hands tighten around my mug. “Eliot, I—I don’t know.”
“It’s fifteen minutes away. I’m happy to knock if you don’t want to. But… I dunno, with these things, I find it’s better just to say fuck it, and face it, you know?” He’s leaned back in his chair, elbow bent resting on the back, slouching. I don’t think I have ever in my life seen Eliot panicked or worried. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Everything,” I say across the table. “I—I don’t know.” I place the mug down, suddenly going off the steaming cup of tea in my hands—and a good tea, made just how I like it, with a mere swirl of milk. He needed no reminder.
Eliot waits, watching me, his face soft, sympathetic. The calm of the kitchen, and of him, relaxed, no pressure, helps settle my nerves. I remember Lucas calling me, three or four years ago, to say Eliot and his wife, Pippa, had divorced. “He’s a mess, Em,” he’d said. “Stayed up till two this morning with him, just talking. He’s not sleeping, not eating, and God—he looks ill.” I try to muster that image of Eliot as I look at him now. I can’t.
“When?” I ask him.
Eliot shrugs, and gestures with a hand to the sun streaming through the kitchen window. “Now looks good?”
“No,” I say, without even thinking, and Eliot laughs. I look up at him, his eyebrows raised, a warm smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and I take a breath.
“I mean… I need to shower first,” I say. “Then maybe we can go.”
* * *
Where we are doesn’t look like the Ramsgate I remember, the streets I’d walk to school, to Georgia’s house, to the train station, to college. The houses are terraced and small in this little cul-de-sac. Sixties-built, with neat lawns and bushes. And I recognize it from Google Maps. There are rosebushes by the front door and a single potted lollipop of a bay tree in a terra-cotta pot. I sit in Eliot’s truck, beside him, the engine off.
“I don’t recognize this street at all,” I say into the still silence of the truck.
“So, it’s not where you might’ve once lived. A friend of your mum? A family member?”
I shake my head. “No. We lived in Cheshire from when I was about nine, after Den left. Then we moved back before I started secondary school. Into a flat. Maisonette. A different one from the one we lived in with Den. I’ve never lived in a house. Not somewhere like this.”
Eliot nods. “Maybe it’s worth asking,” he says gently. “Ask them if they know your mum. They might even know your dad.”
“But my dad lived in France. In Brittany.” The nerves rattle through me as I say those words, and Eliot nods slowly. “Well, still,” he says, “worth an ask, right?”
I look up at the house. Small. A little shabby, but neat. Cream roller-blinds at the windows at half-mast, large, mustard-yellow sunflowers in a vase on the windowsill downstairs. “Do you think I should… just knock?”
Eliot nods once enthusiastically. “Definitely. And in my experience, people are mostly nice and want to help.” And it’s that thought, that ideal, many, I’m sure, would counter, that gives me the courage to pull open the truck’s passenger-door handle. The door squeaks as I push it open. I look at the house, then look over my shoulder at Eliot, who watches me calmly, one hand on the wheel.
“Eliot? Would you…”
“Come with?”
I nod.
Eliot smiles. “Sure.”
Together we walk up the path, Eliot a step ahead, hands in his pockets, walking as though he’s bowling up to a bar in a pub he’s been in hundreds of times before. Before I can talk myself out of it, I press hard on the bell on the door frame, and it rings, like an old-school telephone. Inside, a dog barks. And now I realize I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to word it. I don’t know how to ask, and I feel my hands begin to sweat.
“All right, all right, you silly old mutt,” says a man behind the door. There’s a jangling of keys. By the sound of his voice, I’d hazard a guess at midfifties, maybe older. And Scottish. A strong accent.
The door swings open. A man fills the frame. And it falls out of my mouth before the memory of his face has even properly registered. “M-Marv.”
Scottish Marv stares at me, his blond hair now white, and tummy rounder, but still, the same as the smiling, patient man who would bring comic books and chocolate coins over when Den had to pop out to work. The one who’d sit and play Snakes and Ladders with me, and balance shells in his shovel-hands on the beach. Marv looks at Eliot, then to me.
“Yes?” he says. “I’m Marv.”
“I—I…” A smile breaks out on my face. “It’s me.”
Marv stares, and I realize, stupidly, that although he has barely altered, the last time this man saw me, I was eight years old.
I laugh, embarrassed. “Sorry, it’s been years, I…” Eliot is staring at me, brow furrowed. “I’m Emmie. Emmeline.”
Marv stares at me again, mouth agape, eyes fixed.
“Emmeline Blue?” I say again. “Katherine’s Emmie.” He keeps staring, so I keep talking, but I know he knows who I am. It’s the way he swallows. The way his cheeks flush. Yet the words just keep coming. “Den’s Katherine. Den Walsh. Twenty years… twenty-two now, would it be?”
His face. Marv’s face doesn’t break into a smile, or anything that even resembles surprised, or confused. He just stares at me, the flushed color in his face now draining, second by second, from his ruddy face. Trouble. Maybe he thinks—true of my mum and Den’s relationship in those final months—that I’m here to stir up trouble. Their split was sudden and volatile, Mum always screaming at him, Den, gritted teeth, storming out. Marv, as one of Den’s friend’s, is on guard, most likely. He doesn’t want to be dragged into Katherine Blue’s d
rama, and doesn’t want his friend to be either.
“I’m not here for Mum,” I rush out. “I don’t want any trouble at all. I just want to show you something, and I hope you can help somehow.”
A nod. Once. That’s all I get from him, his mouth still agape as I pull the jiffy bag of cards from my bag.
“Mum sent me these.”
Eliot watches Marv, and shifts beside me, folds his arms across his chest, straightens, stands taller. Reluctantly, Marv takes them.
“They’re cards,” I say. “Birthday cards, with…” He’s just looking at me now, eyes downturned at the corners. “With y-your address…” And it’s as if my heart knows before my head. Because I feel the sting across my chest. I feel the words dry up in my mouth. Why hasn’t he spoken? Why hasn’t he said a single thing?
He swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“S-Sorry?”
Marv looks at me, his breath ragged, his chest rising and falling as if he’s been jogging, then at Eliot, as if for help. Eliot watches me, calm, steady. Waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Marv says again. “I am. But…” He clears his throat, swallows. “But I can’t do this now. I really can’t. I… I have a family. They don’t—they don’t know…” And I already know, as I look at him, his eyes watery, hesitating, hands open in front of him as if he plans to reach out and touch me but decides against it.
“No,” he says. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Marv closes the door quickly. I hear the clatter of the latch, locking us out.
I look up at Eliot. “Emmie,” he begins. “Are you—”
I turn. I can’t stand here. I cannot stand here on his path. I cannot be here.
I run to Eliot’s truck. I hear the dog barking again from behind the locked door, and I hear Eliot’s feet pounding the concrete behind me. And I don’t cry until I’m in the truck, bent into myself, arms shielding my face. I wonder if he’s watching, from inside the house. I wonder if he’s desperate for us to drive away before his family gets back.