by Jenny Oliver
Her head flicked round, the perfume ideas gone; she hadn’t expected him to be the one to speak first. ‘Not so much a break as just a bit of thinking time,’ she said, a little bemused that he’d interrupted the silence.
‘Oh, right.’
‘I was deep in conveyer belt thought just then, you know.’
Jimmy chuckled. ‘Sorry.’
Eve closed her eyes again to try and reclaim her scent.
‘So tell me about these chickens.’
Her eyes flicked open and she sighed, her fragrance gone. ‘Actually I hate the chickens.’
Jimmy laughed. Deep and loud, it echoed through the trees.
Eve lay back and laughed as well, staring up at all the millions of pine needles above her and the cracks of light peeking through.
‘They came from Noah and Maisey’s school fair,’ she said snapping a pine needle between her fingers. ‘They used to be battery chickens. We were new to the area and all the other parents were going on about bloody chickens and what good pets they make and I wanted to look like we fitted in so I said we’d have them.’ She rolled her head to look at Jimmy and saw amusement dancing in his eyes. ‘Don’t look at me like that. No one had talked to me for two weeks before that. And it worked, they let me in the gang. Probably because I was suddenly saddled with two bloody annoying chickens just like all of them. They don’t do anything except squawk and peck and poo everywhere. They don’t even bloody lay eggs. But Noah and Maisey love them. I sometimes think about just leaving the door open so the foxes can get them but I can’t do it. They look at me with their ugly little eyes and guilt overtakes me.’
Jimmy laughed and lay back next to her. ‘So you think you shouldn’t have moved?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I thought that it would be all idyllic but I think maybe it’s just lonely. In my head I’d go on long country walks and come up with ideas but I don’t walk anywhere. I go in the car.’ She snapped another pine needle between her fingers. ‘I miss being able to walk to things. To shops. To life. I suppose it makes me feel a bit trapped.’
‘And that’s why you’re on a break?’
She paused; they were lying with their heads turned so their faces were a few inches apart, and she could see all the lines and marks on his face. The little scar across the bridge of his nose from when he’d been punched for getting off with some bloke’s girlfriend. Eve had held the frozen peas on his face.
‘Maybe that’s why,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. But yes, it could have something to do with it. It’s all much more concentrated. Like everyone knows everything about me and I’m not very good with that. It makes me too self-conscious. I want to be able to choose if I want to be part of the gang, you know? I don’t want to have to be part of it just so I have someone to talk to in the day.’
Jimmy blew out a breath and said, ‘Eve, I live on a boat away from all civilisation. Of course I know. It sounds horrendous.’
She smiled.
She saw his eyes light up.
He sighed. ‘I wish you had come with me.’
Eve tried to play it cool. It took every muscle in her body to keep her lying where she was and not to jerk upright.
‘I knew from the moment I picked up my bike it was a mistake.’ He propped himself up on his elbows, looking up at the sky rather than at Eve. ‘It’s pretty damn lonely cycling round the world on your own,’ he said with a sad little laugh.
The sun flickered between the pine needles above them like a reel of old cine film. The pigeons cooed at each other.
Eve tucked her hair behind her ears and then toyed with another fallen needle. ‘So why didn’t you come back?’ she asked.
He sat up and looked down at her. ‘Because I’d already gone,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Never go back,’ he added, as if that was explanation enough.
Eve sat up as well. ‘That’s not a real answer,’ she said, running her fingers through her hair to brush out the needles.
‘I suppose I’d told everyone I was going so I thought I may as well get on with it.’
‘What, so it was pride?’
He laughed. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It was really good fun, but—well, I just shouldn’t have left you behind,’ he said, jumping up and swiping the pine needles from his shorts.
She didn’t correct him. She didn’t say, ‘But you didn’t leave me, I chose not to go,’ because Jimmy was reaching out a hand to help her to standing and the sun was dancing in the air between them and he had a big, wide grin on his face. She knew that saying anything more would spoil the moment. Would make him frown and go back to tearing the garden apart when actually he was pointing towards the white boathouse on the shore, saying, ‘Fancy a drink?’
And she wasn’t ready for it to end.
So she said, ‘OK,’ and he slung his arm across her shoulders and they started walking in the direction of Bruno’s bar.
In her flip-flops with her big hat, sun-kissed skin, and pine-needle-tousled hair, Eve had a flash of her twenty-something-year-old self, bubbling with nervous energy and uncertainty, skipping through life making mischief with Jimmy. And the memory of it made her spine tingle. It made her thirsty for more. It made her want to drop everything and cycle round the world if it meant she could just hold on to that feeling.
JESSICA
Jessica had been working in the pool area when she’d heard Libby broach the subject of Flo with Miles. The conversation had floated down through an open window as the two of them ripped up carpet together.
Jessica had scrubbed harder at her patio tiles hoping to drown their words out but it didn’t work. Every time she’d paused, her arm muscles aching, snippets of conversation had filled the air.
So in the end she had chucked her brush into the brown soapy water in the bucket and walked through the lemon grove to the boathouse bar, where she had snuck herself a corner table in the shade to avoid being spotted by Bruno.
The bar was more relaxed than she’d given it credit for. All around her on the decking were white and blue deckchairs and huge stripy sun umbrellas. Her table was metal with a matching chair and a blue umbrella. There was a foosball table under a huge towering plane tree and a toy car that kids could sit in and ride for a euro. The waiters were the only drawback, all achingly cool with hipster beards and dreadlocks, clearly just there for the summer, and oozing the kind of entitlement only the young millennials could pull off. She’d been sitting there for half an hour and still no one had taken her order.
It reminded of her of New York. Of sitting on her own in cafés trying to kill some time. Of knowing that it didn’t matter if no one took her order because she just wanted somewhere to sit, but the lack of order-taking somehow highlighting her aloneness. She was unnoticeable.
Thinking of New York made her think back to earlier, with Libby asking Miles about Flo. It made her think about the email invite from Miles to his and Flo’s wedding at The Plaza. How he’d added a postscript to say that they didn’t have to come, that he knew the flights were expensive. Jessica had presumed that was the get-out clause. That none of them were going to go and would just wait for the photographs. She knew Eve wouldn’t go; she’d just had twins. Jimmy was off somewhere round the world. Jake was a junior doctor so had no money and no time, and Libby, trying to build her catering business, had even less of both. Jessica was in a fairly crap design agency job, broke, and certainly not going to go out of her way to watch Miles marry Flo. It was only Dex who’d championed the trip; who’d emailed them all asking how long they were all going to stay in the States and should they plan some sort of road trip. When he was met with a string of Reply All rebuffs he’d taken matters into his own hands and bought them all, except Eve, return tickets to New York. Accommodation, he’d said, was no matter, his parents had a place overlooking Central Park.
‘You’ve been waiting long to be served?’ Bruno’s voice broke Jessica’s concentration.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ, you gave me a shock.’ S
he had to put her hand on her chest to steady her heart.
Bruno stood back, both hands in the air. ‘I am sorry. Sorry.’ Then he laughed and summoned one of the waiters. ‘Why haven’t you got her a drink?’ he asked the young hipster who said something back in Italian and was given a long rebuke before Bruno turned back to Jessica and said, ‘What can he get you, my darling?’
She wasn’t sure. She’d waited so long that now she had no idea. ‘Just a water. A sparkling water, thanks.’
Bruno beckoned for the waiter to go and sort it out quick smart and then pulled up a chair at Jessica’s table, sitting back, ankle crossed over his knee, familiar knowing smile on his face. ‘You look very serious. Far too serious for someone who is on holiday. You looked …’ He seemed to play around in his head for the word, then said, ‘British.’ He laughed.
Jessica raised a brow. ‘And you’re seeming very … Italian,’ she said, looking him up and down as if to question why he was sitting at her table.
A smile stretched over Bruno’s face. Jessica turned away and looked out at the lake. The waiter came over with her water, placed it down delicately on a coaster, and then sloped off, all the while under Bruno’s scrutiny. After a moment’s silence as Jessica stirred her water with the straw, Bruno said, ‘Do you want to go on my boat?’
‘No.’ Jessica shook her head.
Bruno laughed, unfazed, clearly very much enjoying his time sitting with Jessica if the big smile on his face was anything to go by. Jessica had been quite keen for him to leave but, as she turned to look at him, one aloof brow arched, she was now having to stop herself from cracking even the merest hint of a smile. His grinning amusement was infectious. She bit the insides of her mouth as she turned away, looking out at the lake again, which, knowing he was sitting there watching her every move, suddenly seemed sharper in her eyes. The whiteness of the parasols seemed more blinding; the hiss of the cicadas more incessant; the clinking of the ice in her drink almost ear-splitting.
‘Do you want a game of foosball?’ he persevered, angling his head towards the battered wooden minifootball table in the corner by the bar.
Jessica found herself laughing. ‘No,’ she said, with a shake of her head.
‘You can’t play?’
‘Oh, yeah, I can play, I just don’t fancy it now,’ she said, taking another sip of water, the bubbles fizzing and popping on the surface.
‘You are worried you’ll lose?’ he said, leaning forward so his arms were crossed on the table.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if his childish reverse psychology was beneath her. She was torn between wanting him to give up and leave and thinking she might miss him if he was gone.
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and was just pushing back his chair to stand up when Jimmy and Eve appeared at the table.
‘Don’t leave on our account,’ Jimmy said, looking inquisitively between the pair of them.
But Bruno stood back and gestured for one of them to take his chair. ‘No, I’m going,’ he said. ‘The lovely Jessica cannot be convinced to play at the table.’ He nodded towards the foosball.
‘Really?’ Jimmy frowned. ‘I’ll play.’
Bruno cocked his head, semi-interested.
‘Eve, do you want to play?’ Jimmy asked. Then he turned to Bruno and said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Bruno. This is my bar.’
‘Very nice,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m jealous.’ Bruno shrugged as if he wasn’t surprised.
Eve meanwhile was looking at Jessica, clearly wondering what had been going on between the two of them before they turned up, and when Jessica wouldn’t catch her eye, said, ‘Why not? I’ll play.’ And then with a teasing little tap on Jessica’s shoulder added, ‘If you play we can have two teams.’
Jessica rolled her eyes. Eve was always like that, always up for the next thing, for anything that caused a bit of mischief. She’d been the one small enough to climb through the boys’ bathroom window directly above Jessica’s bedroom and tap on the window with a ruler, convincing her she was being haunted. She’d been the one to make them hitchhike to the South of France and camp for a week on the beach. She’d always been the one that needled them all, pushed them out of their comfort zones. But when Jimmy had left it seemed to take the edge off Eve’s verve. She had been more than happy for Flo to move in and pick up the mantle.
It was the sliver of familiarity in Eve’s playful goading that made Jessica push back her chair and stand up, trying to ignore Bruno’s satisfied smile. ‘Boys against girls,’ she said, determined not to give him any more encouragement by partnering with him.
‘If you want,’ Jimmy said, striding towards the table. ‘Except you’ll probably lose.’
‘Why would we lose?’ Jessica said, marching towards the opposite side of the table to Jimmy. ‘Because we’re girls?’
‘You’re always so easy to wind up,’ Jimmy said, laughing, pouring a couple of euros into the slot so the little white ball dropped into the hole at the side of the table.
Jessica glared at him. She heard Bruno chuckle as he took his place next to Jimmy.
Eve stood next to Jessica. ‘I’m not very good at this, Jessica,’ she whispered.
‘Just guard the goal,’ Jessica replied. ‘I’ll do the rest.’
When Dex and Jessica had moved into their first office space, a big draughty room that had once been an old hat factory, Dex had been so excited by the huge expanse of empty wooden floor he had gone out and bought a table football game, a basketball hoop, a pinball machine, Lego, and loads of multi-coloured beanbags. He’d read somewhere that it was all meant to encourage creative play and free imagination. Except, gradually, as they employed more people and the company grew to what it was today, all the creative paraphernalia just got on people’s nerves. The noise of the basketball bouncing was so annoying it had had been locked in a cupboard; the beanbags were too squishy and made people feel stupid as they tried to hold serious meetings; the Lego was ignored from the moment Dex strode through the office in a foul mood one day, saw an assistant building a tower, and said, ‘Working hard I see,’; the pinball was disabled because the banging was too loud; but the table football, which lived in the kitchen area, was such a success they had set up a league. It had been topped two years in a row by Jessica and a guy in web design called Karl. By chance, as she waited for the microwave to heat up her soup one day, Jessica had found it to be one of the most brilliant cures for stress and, from then on, if she ever had a problem that she couldn’t fix, a couple of rounds with her little blue-shirted players and without fail she had a solution.
Three games later in the bar and Jimmy was beginning to realise that girls against boys wasn’t such a good idea after all.
‘What? What? That was a foul!’ Jimmy slammed his bar of players hard into the table.
‘You can’t foul, it’s table football,’ Jessica scoffed.
‘You were spinning. You’re not allowed to spin them.’
‘I wasn’t spinning, Jimmy, I was just moving them really quickly,’ Jessica said with a look of pity in Jimmy’s direction.
‘It was spinning.’
Bruno coughed. ‘I actually don’t think it was. I was watching and it wasn’t spinning.’
Jimmy gave a big sigh. ‘This is a farce.’
Jessica made a face. ‘Just because you’re losing.’
Jimmy didn’t reply but sulked his way through one more game before saying, ‘I think I’m going to get a drink.’
Jessica licked her lips. Her eyes met Bruno’s across the table and his were alight with laughter.
Eve stood back as well. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any better,’ she said, then looked out at the lake, the water glistening in the sunshine, and added, ‘I wish I could go for a swim.’
‘There are towels for guests in the beach house,’ Bruno said, pointing towards the white wooden hut midway down the jetty.
‘Oh, really?’ Eve looked to where he wa
s pointing. ‘That’s a really clever idea.’ Then she paused. ‘But I don’t have a swimming costume on.’
Bruno shrugged. ‘So go naked.’
Eve snorted with surprise. Then said in a half whisper, ‘I can’t go naked. People might see.’
‘So?’ Bruno looked unperturbed.
Eve giggled.
The wind blew, gently rustling the leaves of the plane tree overhead, and rays of sun dappled the shade of the table.
Jimmy came back from the bar. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Bruno is trying to convince Eve to swim naked,’ Jessica said, leaning against the handles of her foosball players.
‘I’m game,’ Jimmy said.
‘I’m not sure.’ Eve shook her head.
‘You don’t have to swim at the end of the jetty. There is a lovely spot just up the path. Very private,’ Bruno added.
Jessica glanced to where he was pointing.
‘You want to swim?’ Bruno said, and Jessica realised he was talking to her.
‘Me? Oh no. There’s no way I’m swimming naked.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Jimmy chivvied, still clearly riled by Jessica’s foosball win. ‘Live a little.’
Bruno was already walking round from his side of the table assuming swimming was a fait accompli. Jimmy followed him in the direction of the more private part of the beach.
‘It could be fun?’ said Eve to Jessica, back-stepping out from the shade of the plane tree and into the sun to join the boys.
Jessica shook her head. ‘No way.’
‘Come on,’ Eve said, with a hesitant little shrug. ‘I think we’ll regret it if we don’t.’
‘I won’t.’
Bruno turned to look at her. ‘You are stubborn, aren’t you?’ he said, narrowing his eyes, trying to get the full measure of her.
‘God, yeah, Jessica’s always been stubborn,’ said Jimmy with a knowing grin.
‘I have not.’
‘Yes you have. Ask anyone. Ask Miles. He’ll agree you’re stubborn.’ Jimmy was walking backwards and nodded towards the entrance to the bar as he spoke. ‘Hey, Miles,’ he shouted, and Jessica swung round to see Miles strolling in.