A Year and a Day

by Isabelle Broom

  The tears pricked at Megan’s eyes behind her sunglasses.

  ‘I was feeling sorry for myself, basically.’ He gave her a sheepish half-smile. ‘But then I went into school every day and saw this boy. This boy who had lost everything, but who still made it into lessons every day and put his hand up to answer questions, and played football with his mates during break time. He told me once that his mum had made him promise to keep smiling after she went. He’d promised her that he would be brave and that he’d make her proud – and he was doing it, too. He was doing his best.’

  A small sob erupted from Megan, and Ollie immediately stopped. For a second she thought he was going to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he didn’t.

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked down at the icy pavement. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you; I was just … Well, I just wanted to say that Ryan made me feel like a prize idiot. I had no right to be even a smidgeon as upset as he was, and I was wallowing in it. He made me see that I had to man up a bit.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she muttered, her voice small.

  He didn’t ask what she was sorry for. He didn’t need to.

  They stood for a while, side by side, watching as a tour boat chugged past below them, its red and gold awning as bright as a log fire against the dark grey of the river. Megan lifted her camera to catch the moment, relishing the interruption it provided, and she sensed Ollie begin to move away. She didn’t need to turn her head to see if he was waiting for her. She knew he would be – he always was.

  39

  Hope and Annette found Charlie nursing a black coffee in the bar, his coat, scarf and hat laid across the table. When he saw them approaching, he smiled.

  ‘All okay?’

  In answer, Hope lifted up her hand so he could see Annette’s wrapped around it. ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you,’ she told him. ‘You’ve made me the happiest woman in the world.’

  He smiled again. ‘That’s all I wanted.’

  There was a silence, and Hope felt Annette shift beside her.

  ‘Mum, I’ve gone and left my phone up in the room,’ she said, finally dropping Hope’s hand. ‘Can I have the key?’

  Charlie’s face flickered a fraction, and Hope knew then that Annette hadn’t forgotten a thing – her daughter was just perceptive enough to realise that she and Charlie needed a few minutes alone.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked him, sitting down as soon as Annette was gone.

  ‘I’m more than okay,’ he assured her. ‘Seeing the look on your face when you opened that door … it was amazing. Made all my sneaking around worthwhile.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.’ She patted his hand awkwardly. ‘You gave me no reason to think badly of you, but I did. It was wrong of me.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, it was a bit. But I can understand why.’

  Relief coursed through her.

  ‘Where shall we take Annette today?’ she asked. ‘I must show her the bridge, and perhaps the castle.’

  She continued chatting for a few minutes before she realised he was shaking his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m not coming with you.’

  ‘What do you mean? You must come!’

  Charlie shook his head and started fiddling with the tassels on his scarf.

  ‘I don’t think so, love.’

  ‘But I want you and Annette to spend some time together, get to know each other. She was just telling me how much she likes you.’

  Charlie stopped her. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about yesterday, after you had that massage?’ he asked, not taking his eyes off her as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  ‘Nothing important.’ She shook her head and forced a smile. ‘It can wait.’

  He frowned at her. ‘I don’t think it can.’

  Hope glanced up towards the door, already missing the sight of her daughter, the smell of her, the feel of her.

  ‘Do we have to go into it now?’ she begged. She couldn’t bear for Charlie to pull out the stopper of her happiness just yet.

  ‘I’ve booked a flight,’ he told her, tapping at the table, not meeting her eyes. ‘I’m leaving in half an hour.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I had a little chat with Annette before I brought her up,’ he explained. ‘She told me she’s more than happy for you to go and stay with her and Patrick for a while.’

  Hope snorted. ‘You’re kicking me out?’

  His eyes were pure sorrow. ‘No, Hope. I’m letting you go.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go!’

  Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t the whole truth. He knew it just as well as she did.

  Charlie didn’t bother to argue, instead turning to face her and putting a big hand on her cheek.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he soothed. ‘This wasn’t what either of us planned, I know that. I was so excited to have you all to myself, I didn’t really stop to think about how it must feel for you, to have to leave behind your home and your life. I was selfish, but only because …’

  He paused.

  ‘Because you love me?’

  ‘Yes. Because I love you. And I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have to, because I know that you don’t love me.’

  ‘I do!’ Hope was quick to correct him. ‘I just … it’s complicated.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t have to explain.’

  ‘I do. I mean, I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Would you marry me?’

  Hope hadn’t been expecting that, and she heard herself gasp.

  ‘Do you know,’ Charlie said, staring hard at her as the colour filled her cheeks. ‘I almost proposed to you on our first night here, in the restaurant by the river. I had the ring in my pocket and everything.’

  Hope’s eyes widened.

  ‘I was this close.’ He held up his thumb and forefinger. ‘But then something stopped me.’

  ‘What?’ It was barely a whisper.

  He shrugged and sat back in his chair, at last releasing her from that intense stare. ‘I just saw something in your face, a flicker of something. And I knew you’d turn me down.’

  Hope tried in vain to think back to what she’d been feeling when they were in that restaurant. She could remember being upset about Annette, and trying in vain to pretend she was all right for his sake. Perhaps that was where she’d been going wrong all this time. Pretending to be fine when she was anything but.

  ‘I’m a mess.’ She held up her hands in emotional defeat. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Charlie sighed. ‘You’re allowed to be a mess,’ he said. ‘You’ve just broken up with your husband. If you weren’t a bit of a mess, I’d be worried, frankly.’

  ‘But I don’t love Dave.’ At last Hope had something that she knew was true to tell him.

  ‘I know.’ His voice was gentle again. ‘And it’s okay to admit that – even to Annette.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve failed her,’ Hope admitted.

  ‘Come on, love.’ Charlie’s expression was all concern. ‘That’s just not true. You tried your best – sometimes things just don’t work out. And you certainly haven’t failed as a mother. Do you think Annette would be here now if you had?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘When I called her the first time, sure she was angry. But she also wanted to know how you were, what you’d said about her, if you were missing her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. As soon as I heard that, I knew I had to bring the two of you together, and I didn’t want to wait. I offered her a flight and told her to think about it, and I’ve been calling to nag her ever since.’

  He picked up his phone from the table to check the time. ‘My taxi will be here soon and I need to go upstairs and get my stuff,’ he said, managing not to betray how Hope knew he must be feeling. She was suddenly hit by a panic, and grasped his arm with both hands.

  ‘What happens next?’

  Charlie looked down
before he answered. Her knuckles were white with the effort of holding on to him. ‘That’s not really up to me,’ he said. ‘I think you know what I want, now you need to work out what you want.’

  Hope couldn’t remember the last time anyone had put her in this position, asked her what she wanted to do. Dave had always been the chief decision-maker in their family, and after the break-up she had run straight to Charlie, who’d told her, ‘Live with me.’ So she had. But now, with the offer of a room at Annette’s, she had options for the first time.

  She shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she told him.

  Charlie pushed back his chair. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I’m scared I’ll never see you again,’ she whispered, more to herself than to him, but it was enough to stop Charlie in his tracks. She knew she should leap up and run across the room into his arms, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was in the chair, never taking her eyes off him as he opened the door. For a second she thought he wasn’t going to look back at her, but then, at the very last moment, he did.

  ‘Goodbye, Hope,’ he said. And then he was gone.

  40

  As the morning rolled up its sleeves and got ready to welcome its friend afternoon, the sunshine held fast in the clear sky. Megan and Ollie made slow progress as they picked their way along the bank of the Vltava towards Kampa Island in the Little Quarter. The baroque-style buildings they passed were tall and square, and many were lavishly decorated. Megan stopped endlessly to take photos, but she never even heard so much as a murmur of complaint from Ollie. He seemed to be lost in his own melancholy thoughts, and was content to stare out across the water while she worked.

  The city was even more beautiful when dappled in this strange, muted sunlight, and it wasn’t just the surrounding architecture that caused Megan to lift up her camera. The pavements, too, were ornately patterned in red and white square tiles, and someone had taken the time to come out early and sweep the stubborn remnants of melted snow to one side.

  Despite the sun standing proudly above the city, it was still bitterly cold, and Ollie was removing his glasses every few minutes to wipe away the condensation. Megan’s bare fingers were pink and sore, but she refused to put on her gloves. If she couldn’t feel the solid curves of her camera and the satisfying snap of the lens as she rotated it, then she found it harder to connect with what she was doing. Instead, she paused every few metres to breathe on to her hands or rub them together. Usually Ollie would make fun of her, but not today.

  They reached Kampa Island a little before lunchtime, ducking to avoid the droplets of melted snow that were dripping from the stripped branches of the trees. Following the path from the main road into a wide grassy square populated by shrieking groups of children, tiny dogs wearing minuscule waterproof jackets and clusters of tourists, they stopped to consult the guidebook.

  ‘That’s the Sova Mill,’ Ollie told her, pointing to the right, where an imposing white building loomed over them, half-blocking the light. Glancing upwards, Megan noticed that the roof tiles were black – a rare sight amongst its predominantly red-roofed neighbours.

  ‘The Kampa Museum of modern art is based here,’ Ollie went on, flicking over the page. ‘Shall we take a look?’

  Megan had never been much of a fan of modern art, but she nodded and followed him towards an open gate. The courtyard beyond was paved in crunchy gravel and littered with sculptures, each one more bizarre than the next. Megan stopped next to a large red horse, its male red rider naked and bald, with strange elongated arms that reached all the way down to the ground.

  ‘He must be a bit chilly,’ she quipped, but Ollie had already wandered off to look at a cubist-style creation of a woman lying awkwardly on her stomach, her face twisted upwards and her body horribly contorted. The small square paving slabs around the base of her plinth were decorated by tufts of rogue grass and patches of snow, which Megan found far more beautiful than the artwork itself. She didn’t share her thoughts with Ollie, however. She sensed a brittleness that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. Ever since he’d admitted to her how upset he’d been about his past break-up, it was as if he’d found a fresh reason to be annoyed with her. Megan knew him well enough to know when he was brooding, and that was exactly what he was doing now.

  On the far side of the courtyard they discovered another sculpture of a woman, this time standing upright with a long, thin body rolled almost as flat as a sheet of paper. With her head bowed forward and her splayed-out fan of blue hair, she exuded sorrow and defeat, and for the first time since they’d ventured inside, Megan felt moved enough to lift up her camera.

  Ollie had made his way back to the red man astride his horse and was crouching down to decipher the label. Megan was so used to feeling his eyes on her at all times that this new deliberate avoidance felt unnatural. She was accustomed to basking in the warm glow of his affection, and now that it was gone she felt as if someone had opened a door and let the cold air in. She and Ollie may never have been a proper couple, but she’d always suspected that he cared about her. She hadn’t wanted to admit what had been so blindingly obvious to all their friends – that Ollie fancied her just as much as he had on that first night when they’d kissed – but the tiny part of her that wasn’t in denial had known they were right. She knew it was wrong to crave Ollie’s love the way she did; she knew she was being selfish – but she also knew that the thought of losing him for good terrified her. He was such a big part of her life, and she was afraid that the void he would leave if he ever went away for good would be so big that it would consume her entirely.

  Battling a sudden surge of regret and fear, Megan did what she always did and brought up her camera, shielding her face from the world and venturing into another, one where she was in control. She found Ollie through the lens, saw his breath pooling into the cold air and the colour on his cheeks; saw his eyes shift behind his glasses as he searched for her, and saw the flicker of regret pass across them. His nose was just beginning to run, a glisten of moisture in the groove of his Cupid’s bow, and his lips were plump and full.

  She watched as he got up and strolled across the gravel to examine another structure, this one made of metal poles and intricate little wheels. He took out his phone to take his own photo, and Megan zoomed closer to see how he framed it. He’d removed one of his gloves, and she could see the torn shards of skin around his nails, the sporadic black hairs on the top of his exposed wrist, the pronounced veins criss-crossing the pale flesh, his ligaments busily working beneath the skin. She felt her heart soar and her pulse quicken, that treasured rush of inspiration so acute as she moved her finger around to compress the shutter. If only he knew how lost she was in him. If only she knew the words to explain it.

  After a time, Ollie turned towards her, his expression hard as granite as he made his way back to the open gateway, beckoning her with a hand when she didn’t immediately follow. She wondered when he would bring up the events of the previous night. Although he had batted the conversation away that morning, she knew Ollie – he would want to discuss it. If he was feeling anything like she was, then he would be experiencing constant flashbacks – colourful images of twisted bare limbs and open mouths – and it was becoming difficult to ignore the crackling energy in the air between them. She hoped more than anything that he wouldn’t make her reiterate why she didn’t want to be in a relationship, not least because she was beginning to doubt her own resolve.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  They’d left the courtyard of the museum and made their way back into Kampa Park, taking the path that ran past the rear of the Sova Mill. As they reached the edge of the building, however, Ollie, who was a few metres ahead, actually recoiled in surprise.

  ‘What is it?’

  Megan hurried forward through the slush to join him and gasped. There in front of them, frozen on all fours and looking about as ghoulish as anything Megan had ever encountered, were three huge bronze babies.

  ‘Good God!’ />
  She wasn’t sure if it was the sheer size of these creations, their random positioning in the park or the fact that instead of facial features each one had a strip of what looked like a window blind stretching from forehead to chin – the bronze skin puckered unpleasantly around the edges – but she was immediately and enormously creeped out.

  ‘Why don’t they have faces?’ she said, aghast.

  Ollie stepped forward and read from a plaque on the side of the Mill. ‘“David Cerny, 1967. Mimina/Babies.” Hang on, aren’t these the same babies as the ones on that TV Tower we saw in the distance?’

  ‘Yes!’ Megan snatched up her camera and starting clicking through the archive. ‘Here! There are loads of them.’ She paused to count, scrolling up and down her photos and shivering as a gust of wind blew a herd of fallen leaves through the park. ‘There are ten of them crawling up the tower.’

  ‘They’re quite something,’ Ollie said now. He walked over to the nearest sculpture and took off his glove to run his hand over the smooth bronze of its bare shoulder. Ollie was tall, but even he couldn’t look one of these things in the eye. Not that they had any eyes …

  ‘I hate their latticed faces!’ Megan was still rooted to the spot in horror.

  Ollie laughed at that, strolling around the back of the same baby and vaulting up on to its back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked. ‘You can’t ride the babies!’

  ‘I think you’ll find that I can,’ he informed her, swinging his leg over so he was sitting astride the vast metal monster. Megan lifted her camera and chuckled against it as he pulled stupid faces and peered at her from over the top of the baby’s head. A nearby family of tourists had been watching them and, spurred on by Ollie’s antics, the youngest children were demanding to be lifted up on to the backs of the other two babies.