by Zoë Folbigg
Maya would never say no to such beautiful diction. ‘Yes please.’
‘Hang on, let me switch that off. I don’t know why I listen to it, I don’t even have a garden!’ Velma chuckles as she kills a switch at the plug next to the kettle and the Sunday lunch bustle from the pizzeria underneath them starts to rise. ‘Company, I guess.’
Maya studies the bookshelves and wraps her arms around her ribs to warm up. An arctic blast is coming through the window Velma obviously keeps open all year round.
‘This is wonderful, Velma! I’m amazed you live here.’
Here is the noisiest sixty-five square metres in the entire town, above Hazelworth’s most bustling Italian restaurant and next to its old corn exchange, where merchants made their money and a town was built upon the grain trade. Nowadays drunken girls tumble out of the old corn exchange in miniskirts and bra tops, onto the market square, where they might end up plying a less wholesome trade.
‘Are you kidding? In London I lived on Old Compton Street, in Paris it was Pigalle, and you couldn’t tear me away from San Telmo in Buenos Aires. This is eerily quiet.’
Maya laughs.
‘But I was born on Broadway. I adore noise. Why do you think I’m moving to South Beach? I am not a country mouse.’
‘So how did you end up here?’ Maya’s nose crinkles as she says it.
‘In suburbia?’
A kettle rumbles in a battle against limescale Velma refuses to remove, lest it make for a quieter boil.
‘Conrad and Christopher thought I should slow down. When I hit seventy, I agreed. So they came over and wheeled me out to the sticks. Actually it was prompted by my being mugged in Soho, which was particularly mean since I had lived there for so long and never once encountered a bad word or a single ruffian there, until the day a tourist snatched my purse. But the flat on Old Compton Street was pretty run-down and hard to negotiate, I needed something…’ She looks around at organised chaos and waves an arm, ‘Calmer. Conrad and Christopher are strapping boys – you’ve seen them! – but they’re not much help over in New York. So I promised them I would try a quieter pace of life.’ Velma raises an eyebrow above a thick lens.
‘Do you hate it?’ Maya winces, feeling guilty that Hazelworth – her Hazelworth – isn’t as exciting as Soho or Manhattan.
Velma busies herself in the kitchen beyond glass doors that look like they’re made of ice cubes, and are propped open with towers of books.
‘I don’t love it. Hence the Florida plan. It’s fun there, it’s warm there, I can continue my work… and it’s in the same time zone as my sons.’
‘And grandchild!’ Maya calls, turning around from the bookshelf to a beaming old lady in the kitchen.
‘And grandchild,’ Velma smiles, rubbing her hands together. ‘Plus Florida is where we middle-class Americans go to see out our lives in the sunshine. It’s the right move for me now.’
‘Oh don’t say that!’
‘It’s true.’
‘So you still work?’ Maya asks, staring at the spines of the books on the shelf, as she did in her parents’ bedroom as a child. Wuthering Heights, Shantaram, Strangers On A Train.
‘I will work forever, my darling, it’s all I know.’ Velma carries a tray through into the living space, and perches it on the coffee table in front of the camelback sofas. She edges magazines out of the way with a shaky elbow.
‘Ooh let me help you,’ says Maya, holding out two hands.
‘I got it.’
‘What do you do?’ Maya feels bad for assuming Velma was retired. She’s known her for five months now, and didn’t even know that she worked. From looking around the apartment, Maya assumes Velma must be an academic, and feels somewhat embarrassed about the fact she comes up with silly names for clothes for a living.
‘I’m an agony aunt.’
Maya’s mouth hangs open. She’s never met an agony aunt before. ‘Wow!’
‘Radio, magazines, books… Less radio now, as I am finding it harder to get to the studio, but that was the same when I was only travelling in from Soho. My old legs need that Florida sunshine!’
Now the tea and sympathy make sense and Maya feels a little, well, exposed.
‘How do you take it?’
‘White, no sugar thanks.’
Velma tilts the chipped Royal Albert teapot towards one of the mismatched china cups, then lifts a floral milk jug, pours, and stirs with a fragile hand. Clank, chink, splosh.
‘Oh silly me, I forgot the cake.’ Velma shuffles back to the kitchen in the same shoes-cum-slippers she wears to class.
‘Do you always have cake on the go?’ asks Maya, seeing something of herself in Velma. A sweet tooth and once-adventurous spirit.
‘Uh-huh. In truth I don’t have many visitors since I moved here – my London flat was always bustling, in fact it was hard to get any work done with all the friends I had dropping by. But I’m a creature of habit, I like to have a fresh bake on the go in case I do, and baking is wonderfully therapeutic. Although I’m a little naughty and eat all the time when I’m writing. My hips certainly know it.’
Maya doesn’t think Velma could possibly have any hips under her baggy grey jumper.
‘Here, lemon and poppyseed.’
Maya takes a pale green tea plate with gold trim and tiny white polka dots and inhales the citrus scent and smiles. ‘Oh I totally understand that mindspace you get from baking – and the sweet reward at the end of it.’
‘You bake too?’
‘Yeah I love it. I moved in on my own just before Christmas so I’ve upped the ante since then. I finally bought my own place,’ says Maya as she lowers a brass fork into yellow crumb.
Velma laughs. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘Sweetie, I have never owned my own place, so don’t feel bad. I have lived on my own for a long time though – longer than you’ve been alive in fact, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not now anyway.’
The teacher and the pupil eat cake.
‘So tell me about yourself, Miss Oh Just Maya.’
Maya feels sad that she has nothing to tell. Velma can tell Maya feels sad.
‘Are you dating?’
‘Not really. There’s no “special someone”.’
‘Anyone not special but just a bit of fun?’ Velma gives a cheeky laugh.
Zingy lemon flavours burst in Maya’s mouth with the realisation that she is having afternoon tea with a kindly woman who clearly wants to know more about her – oh, and who just so happens to be an agony aunt. Her shoulders relax a little.
‘Actually there is someone. But it might sound silly.’
Velma pushes thick glasses down her long nose and looks at Maya with unmagnified, understanding eyes. ‘Honey, remember your audience. Nothing relating to matters of the heart will ever sound silly to me. I have genuinely heard it all.’
‘There’s a man who gets my train to work in the morning. Train Man.’ Maya says his moniker as if Velma must have heard of him.
‘Train Man, I like it, sounds dashing.’
‘Oh Velma he is!’ Maya’s face completely softens. ‘He’s so beautiful. Not in that square-jawed way your Christopher is – who by the way is very hot, well done on making him…’ Maya is going for a laugh to lighten the intensity of her feelings.
Velma doesn’t laugh, her listening eyes open wider. Kind, caring and tiny when not sitting behind thick lenses.
‘Train Man is just the most beautiful man I have ever seen, and from the minute I saw him it was like I knew him, and he felt like home and he looked… right. He looked lovely. He was the man I had dreamed of all my life but not known what he looked like until he arrived on the platform last summer.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to speak to him?’
‘Yes! I want to actually know him. I want to laugh with him, I want to kiss him. It feels weird that we don’t. But he doesn’t even see me. How
can we feel so differently when I think we’re meant to be together?’
Velma’s eyes narrow and she looks deep in thought. Maya takes a sip of tea to fill the pause. The punctuation of the slurp in the quiet apartment makes her realise the lunchtime rush must have ended in the pizzeria downstairs.
‘You know, Maya, there’s only one thing you can do and that is make contact with him. I can’t promise that he’ll be interested, although he’d be crazy not to be…’ Velma winks and pushes her glasses back up her nose, ‘But he might be in love with someone else. Or you might not be his type. Or gender.’
‘I did think of that.’
‘But you will never know unless you talk to him, say hi, ask him out for a drink.’
Velma lifts the cake knife to trim another few slices of the rectangular loaf. Crumbs fall onto an already speckled carpet.
‘But no one talks to each other on the train, he barely looks up once he’s found a seat.’
‘Well you need to find a way, Maya. Use your feminine wiles. Do that thing you British people do really well and raise your eyeballs to the sky and talk about the weather. Or just tell him you think he looks like a lovely person and ask him if he’d like to go for a drink with you.’
Maya looks bewildered. ‘I’m not sure I’m brave enough.’
‘Oh I bet you are.’
Silence fills the apartment but for the jingle of the bells on the wind chime by the open window.
Velma lifts the teapot once more and pours.
‘Tea and sympathy huh?’ laughs Maya as she takes the floral cup. ‘How did you know, Velma?’
‘I know a sad heart when I see one. Here, have another slice.’ Maya holds out the polka dot plate again. ‘What do your friends think?’
‘My best friend thinks it’s funny, just a joke really. I don’t think she realises how serious I am about him. And I tell my workmates about Train Man because he’s become a bit of a talking point in the office in the mornings. And my sister, well, I haven’t really told her the depths of my feelings because she’s got her hands full with her kids and she would think I was crazy if I said I loved a stranger.’
‘And what would you say if your best friend or your sister told you what you just told me, with as much conviction and passion in her eyes?’
‘I’d say she should talk to him, ask him out.’
‘Well I think he sounds darling and you already know what to do. What’s the worst that can happen?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
February 2014
James is sitting at his desk with his back to the floor-to-ceiling glass window behind it. Dominic’s thick stance leans in as they scroll through the pages of a photographer’s website. James isn’t impressed.
‘Nope, it’s not strong enough. He’s taken a beautiful woman and made her look dead behind the eyes. How does someone even manage that?’
‘It’s not her eyes we’ll be focusing on,’ laughs Dominic like a schoolboy.
James scowls, irritated more by frustration than his friend. Last summer he and Dominic won the biggest account the MFDD agency has ever had in its eighteen-year history, but James doesn’t feel excited.
‘What about Catrin?’ Dominic tries to muster some enthusiasm.
‘She shot for Vanity Fair last month,’ James counters flatly.
‘Bloody hell. Yes, I imagine pubic hair removal will be erm, beneath her, now.’
Dominic finally gets a laugh out of his mate.
‘Look Millsy, it’s hardly our dream product but look at what it means around here. Jeremy thinks we’re the mutt’s nuts now, Fisher + Whyman are already asking us to pitch for more business and we’ve not even shot Femme yet. We’re flying here, mate. Why are you so down on it?’
Dominic perches a small doughy bottom onto James’s desk and folds meaty arms in his blue checked shirt.
‘I’m not down on it. I’m just struggling to get excited about it, I don’t know why really. I guess all this chat about camellia oil and ylang-ylang isn’t exactly my bag.’
‘You didn’t eat dog food, but you managed to get enthusiastic about that one. Mate, we just got a ten grand payrise. We’re casting models in bikinis tomorrow. We’re shooting in South Africa next month, Jamaica in September, this is the dream, Baby.’
James looks up at his friend. He used to find Dominic’s enthusiasm infectious and feels shitty that it isn’t now. He feigns a smile, dimples flash and disappear.
‘Look how far we’ve come! All those chumps out there on Charlotte Street who would give their right bollock to work at MFDD. We’re here, we worked our arses off to get here. Our boss thinks we’re great. This is a good thing, Millsy. Remember the spotty oiks we were at uni. Well, I was spotty…’ Dominic looks at his pockmarked face in the reflection of the glass then sees the reflection of the clock. ‘Shit I’m meant to meet Josie…’ he says, turning his head so he can read the time properly. ‘Two minutes ago.’
James laughs to himself. His friend is vocal and vulgar and talks the talk about living the dream on shoots with models, when actually he’s a pussycat, besotted with his girlfriend, who is the PA to the CEO at the first advertising agency he and James worked for, straight out of university, situated about fifty metres up the road from the one they’re standing in now.
We haven’t come that far.
‘Oh I’ll come out with you and say hi.’
‘I’d say you could join us for lunch but, you know, it is Valentine’s Day and all, Josie might rather you didn’t.’
‘Shit, Valentine’s Day. I didn’t realise it was the fourteenth.’
‘Millsy, how could you not realise it’s fucking Valentine’s Day? You work in advertising. We’ve been ramming it down people’s throats since Christmas. Jesus you are distracted. Bad luck, Kitty’s going to go mental.’ Dominic lets out a little laugh.
‘Well she didn’t mention it either. You go. Say hi to Josie, I’d better make a call.’
*
In the low light of a lab on a science park, thin fingers answer a silently flashing phone.
‘I’m in the middle of something, can I call you back?’
Terseness people only save for people they know will tolerate it.
‘Sure. Just wondering if you want dinner out tonight?’
‘Oh. Erm, well where? Why?’
‘It’s Valentine’s Day.’
‘We never celebrate Valentine’s Day.’
‘We used to.’
‘Well, obviously you’ve only just been reminded by Dominic, so it can’t matter that much to you.’
A furrowed face keeps trying. ‘Why don’t you get the train all the way through to London tonight, don’t get off at home, and I’ll take you somewhere special?’
‘Not Moro. Dominic is taking Josie to Moro tonight, at least be original.’
James doesn’t mention that Dominic and Josie are also meeting for a sandwich right now, so they must still really like each other.
‘Not Moro. Wherever you want.’
‘Well let me see how long this takes, I’m in the middle of an experiment, I have thirty mice all waiting to be infected.’
‘Nice,’ says James sarcastically.
James marvels at how only Kitty can do something so amazing for a living as trying to eradicate a disease yet speak so indifferently about the killing that is part of the process. How her face can look so hard and so ethereal at the same time. The bones of her spine stick out so prominently she looks like she might break, yet the steely glare of her grey eyes can floor him.
‘Look I have to go, I’ll let you know later if I can get in, if not I’ll see you at home.’
‘OK bye.’
James puts his phone on the desk and looks back at his screen, to the beautiful woman who is dead behind the eyes.
*
‘Fancy being my lesbian lover?’
Nena’s puzzled face rises up from behind her menu, starting with the colourful fake flowers in her hair. They are in their new fav
ourite Soho eatery celebrating their least favourite night of the year. Part canteen, part deli, colourful woven bags adorn metal shelves and Middle Eastern delicacies jump out at diners, hoping to take the flavours of the meal home with them: pomegranate and orange blossom syrup, preserved lemons, sliced pink pickled turnips and Turkish delight in dusty colours stand like bright and beautiful treasures. Last year, Maya and Nena drank too many mango margaritas at the curry house up the road and the year before, they were thrown out of Soho’s best veggie restaurant after Nena drunkenly demanded flank steak five times from a humourless waiter.
Valentine’s Day dinner together has become something of a tradition. Even though Nena is never short of a date, she would rather be with Maya than with the barman or the handyman du jour. Usually.
‘Tempting as that offer is, Maya, you’re kind of lacking an appendage.’ Appendage. It’s a Nena word if ever there was one. ‘But if I were to be a lesbian, there is no other girl I would rather be with.’
‘Don’t be silly, I’m far too reliable and normal for you. I’d call when I said I would. You love a lover who doesn’t because he’s got into some ridiculous scrape, like that acrobat guy who fell and got tangled in his safety net, stood you up, and you had to pick him up from A&E.’
Nena raises a quizzical eyebrow as if to tell her that isn’t so, that she’s fallen in love with someone who’s very reliable in fact, and who calls every time he says he will. And when she sees his call incoming, her heart flutters and she feels… secure. And happy. But she’s not sure how to say it. Telling Maya, revealing that she has left the sisterhood of the solitary, feels like it might be a great treachery. Not because Maya wouldn’t be happy for her, she would. But admitting it might make it one hundred per cent real, and Nena can’t quite believe it herself. So she keeps her secret as close to her chest as the menu for now.
‘Why do you ask anyway?’
‘It’s just my boss has given me a voucher for a weekend in this luxe hotel and spa, and I have to take it before the end of the month. I have no one to go with, obviously, so I wondered if you fancied coming with me next weekend?’
Nena thinks through the Rolodex in her mind and sinks a little in her chair, hiding her face behind the menu so she doesn’t give herself away. Next weekend is a weekend Tom will have Arlo and Nena doesn’t want to miss out on a weekend with Tom and Arlo, although she can’t admit that just yet either.