by Zoë Folbigg
Maya sobs into Christopher’s chest, the thought of Velma on her own as she left the world she lit up. She didn’t ever get to be a grandmother. Maya pulls away and looks up at Christopher’s blue eyes. He looks so strong and solid, standing there needing to be comforted.
‘I’m so sorry,’ is all Maya can say. Muffled, teary, snot-filled.
Maya composes herself, releases from Christopher’s arms and goes into the mode Maya knows best.
‘You’re not alone. What can I do to help?’
‘Nothing now. I can’t face going through her things yet.’
‘Oh I totally understand. Sorry.’
‘That makes it real. I guess I have to start planning a funeral, but that can wait for the morning. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Right now, I need a drink.’
‘I’ll get you one,’ says Maya, breaking away from their bubble in the middle of the chaotic living room to find a glass in the kitchen.
‘Stay with me?’
Christopher gently pulls on Maya’s arm and she turns back to look at him and nods reassuringly.
A classroom of eight students dust down biscuit crumbs and place empty cups of tea on the table at the edge of the room, awaiting their teacher who won’t be back tonight.
*
Maya wakes on the sofa. Christopher lies on the floor next to her, both draped in blankets, shawls and throws that were dotted all over the room. They were up for hours, Christopher telling Maya stories about his childhood in Brooklyn; his visits to his mother on her overseas adventures; how he and Conrad felt as proud of their mother as she clearly was of her sons when she introduced them to her colourful friends.
Maya looks up at Velma’s grandfather clock in the corner and sees it’s already 8 a.m. She’ll miss the 8.21. She’ll miss Train Man.
‘Shit, I left my bag at college. It has my keys and train pass in it, I’d better go.’
‘Can’t you stay?’ says Christopher.
‘I have to go to work.’
Maya looks at Christopher’s forlorn face.
‘I’ll call my boss and see if I can take compassionate leave.’
Christopher walks through the glass doors to the kitchen and scratches his head while he looks in the cupboards for coffee. He’d hoped it was all a bad dream. That he was in New York and his mother was in England just fine. He feels sick and slams a cupboard door shut.
Maya, having slept in one of Christopher’s roomy T-shirts, throws on yesterday’s pink houndstooth-check capri pants and black polo neck and ties her hair into a high pony. Christopher watches her clutch the phone to her ear as she talks.
‘Hi Lucy, it’s Maya, I was wondering… I’ve had some bad news…’ Maya looks towards Christopher and feels guilty for using his mother’s death as a reason to skip work, even though he has asked her to.
Maya turns away and stands in front of bookshelves that line an entire wall.
‘A friend of mine died on Monday and I only found out last night, I kind of need a day to get my head around it and help the family sort through things for the funeral.’ As she says the word family she nods to the solitary man in the kitchen.
‘OK, bye.’
Maya ends the call and unfurls the twisted polo neck around her neck that’s making her feel claustrophobic.
‘My boss wants me to go in. She says my company only gives compassionate leave if it’s a direct relative who has died. I’m sorry, Christopher.’
Maya feels wretched. Christopher was doing OK until Maya said the word ‘died’ but now he’s starting to cry. Maya walks over to Christopher and puts her arms around strong shoulders as he slumps over the kitchen counter, his face in giant palms. Maya rubs the expanse of Christopher’s bare back as she leans into him.
‘I’m so sorry.’
She kisses his warm cheek and leaves.
Chapter Thirty-Three
May 2014
It is the last hour of the last day that Maya will be twenty-seven and she is lying on the living-room floor. The television is on mute and she’s not paying attention to the CIA agent in the asylum. Prince oozes out of speakers that are too small for this large and airy room. Maya flips open a white unlined notepad, one she’s never used before, but now seems like the right time to christen it. Virgin A5 paper. In Maya’s right hand is a black Stabilo OHP pen for permanence and neatness. Maya’s words need strength but they should not be imposing.
In her left hand is the birth announcement card that arrived through the door this morning. Audrey Evelyn Velma Diamond was born two weeks ago, on the day her grandmother was interred. Christopher gave a heartfelt eulogy at St Anne’s Church in Soho. Radio producers, book and magazine editors, journalists, politicians and key movers in the feminist movement turned out in Velma’s signature black and grey and squashed into the modern-looking chapel within Wren’s historical church. Maya looked around, thinking it was the perfect venue for an ageing yet thoroughly modern thinker who had spent much of her life in London, in an apartment just a stone’s throw away.
Maya wasn’t surprised by how revered and respected Velma was. Words such as ‘passion’ and ‘wisdom’ and ‘independence’ tinkled across the piano bar at the wake. Maya walked around the room, smiling at people but not knowing anyone. Except Christopher. Maya felt fraudulent being there. She had only known Velma for a few months of her long and full life. People who had known her for many years had flown in from all over the world to be there.
I’m just a girl from the suburbs.
In the church, Christopher spoke about Velma’s love for his father, how their marriage had made him believe that there is one true love for everyone in the world. Maya looked down at her shoes on the cold stone floor, knowing Velma had thought otherwise, she had said so just a few weeks earlier with laughter and custard emanating from the corners of her mouth. Christopher spoke eloquently about what it was like to have a mother whose spirit you couldn’t stop from soaring, even when he and Conrad thought she should settle down, be around the corner harassing them with hot dinners like a ‘normal mom’. But she wasn’t a normal mom and they were proud of that.
He spoke about her youth as a journalist in Paris and Buenos Aires, their childhood with her in New York, her career as an agony aunt and writer, and how she was still making new friends in her last days. He referred to his mother’s afternoon tea dates with Maya, and how Velma would call Christopher or Conrad on a Sunday lunchtime in New York, full of cake and the joys of life. He looked up at Maya and gave her a smile that spoke a thousand words more.
He talked about Velma’s excitement on the eve of becoming a grandmother, of her big move to Miami and how the family had been looking forward to breaks in the sunshine with her. How heartbroken he and Conrad were now that they were robbed of these.
But as Maya walked the piano bar, smiling but not knowing, she felt the atmosphere was upbeat. A room full of gratitude. And Maya met more interesting people that day than she had met in her entire life. She felt privileged to be there.
As the sun was setting over Soho, Christopher found Maya on her own on a little balcony facing a cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue, its façade lit in electric blue.
‘Hey,’ he said, handing Maya a glass of fizz, the knot of his tie loose around his broad neck.
‘Hey.’
‘Sorry we’ve barely had a chance to talk, I wanted to catch up with you,’ Christopher said, blue eyes shining in the twilight.
‘Oh god don’t worry, you must know so many people here, you’ve had to run it all.’ Maya paused to sip her Prosecco. ‘You’ve been amazing, Christopher, your eulogy was just beautiful.’
Maya wrapped a floral shawl around her shoulders, hugging her body and enveloping her dark grey tulip dress as the evening chill started to settle. Christopher put an enormous arm around Maya and took in the view of Soho’s twilight rooftops by her side. Maya leaned in to the warmth of his body.
‘Where on earth do these come from?’ she said, nud
ging the side of her temple into Christopher’s huge bicep. ‘What did your mum feed you?’ They both burst into laughter.
As Maya walked away from Soho and towards the train home, she knew the biggest tribute she could make to Velma would be to ask Train Man out for a drink.
Now the card with the photo of a tiny newborn on a vast fluffy cushion is in Maya’s left hand and Velma’s advice is ringing in her head, as it has been since she died.
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
The pen shakes in her right hand. Maya has seen Train Man every weekday morning since the funeral but has barely been able to register him, so nervous is she at the prospect of what she knows she is going to do. How can Maya sound sexy, friendly and sane all at the same time? How can three sentences and a friendly sign-off make someone realise you are their soulmate?
Maya decided not to write the note on the train in case the chug, click, jolt made her writing look spidery or silly. She wants to give Train Man the impression of having written an off-the-cuff note, breezily penned by an über-confident yet down-to-earth goddess. This needs to be legible. So Maya casts aside six pieces of paper into crumpled balls on the floor around her before crafting the final note:
Hello,
It’s my birthday today, and I think everyone should do one crazy thing on their birthday, so here’s mine:
I think you look lovely, so I was wondering if you’d like to go for a drink sometime? If not, don’t worry, I’ll leave you in Solitude and wish you happy travels.
Cheers,
Maya x
[email protected]
Three sentences and a friendly sign-off. And a kiss. And her email address so he doesn’t have to reject her by phone.
Be positive.
Maya puts Solitude in title case so Train Man gets the literary reference and realises that she too has read it. Although if they ever do go on a date, Maya will never tell Train Man that she didn’t enjoy One Hundred Years Of Solitude as much as she thinks she ought to.
Maya examines attempt number seven. Lucky number seven. She has written clearly and with satisfactory neatness, so she tears the page away and places it back into the notepad, just to ensure the note has a clean tear but stays flat until morning. With a shaky hand, she picks up the phone to call Nena and tell her what she is going to do tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Maya sits facing forward, chugging into twenty-eight. She hopes that the associated glow of her birthday teamed with the bow on her new green ankle boots will give her an air of allure and – more importantly – confidence that is lacking on this mid-May morning. She peeps into the sanctuary of her slouchy brown leather bag and opens the notepad to check that the note is still there. Still pristine. She deliberately doesn’t touch it yet so clammy palms won’t sully it.
Train Man sits far away from her in the carriage, also on an aisle seat but on the other side of it. Facing backwards next to the automatic Superior Train door that goes through to the next carriage. He is looking down, almost-black hair slightly shorter today, beautiful straight nose lost in a book, although she can’t see what it is from this far.
Maya’s phone dings with congratulatory birthday texts. One from Jacob, one from Clara, one from Herbert and Dolores, another from Nena. She reads them all and smiles, feeling loved but unloved at the same time and wondering whether Train Man might notice that her phone keeps pinging from that far away – she likes the feeling of looking popular. Still he reads. Black rectangular glasses folded on the table in front of him.
Maya likes her birthday, she is happy to have completed another year. She knows she won’t always feel so strong, so appreciates that today, she is. Maya likes other people’s birthdays even more than her own. She loves to bake for them, thoughtfully picks presents and cards and loves to make a fuss. She looks up the carriage at Train Man and wonders when his birthday is; how she would love to make a fuss of him, to make him happy.
With another ding of her phone – Sam this time – it occurs to Maya she has never seen Train Man send or read a text. She has never heard him talk on the phone. She has never heard him calling a special someone to tell them he’s going to be late home. Or to discuss a meeting. Or to make plans for dinner. Or to just hear someone’s voice. He only seems to use his phone to listen to music. If indeed that is his phone he’s plugged into. Maya has never actually noticed.
Suddenly Maya has a feeling of hope.
If he’s not on the phone to a wife or a girlfriend then perhaps he doesn’t have a wife or a girlfriend.
And her stomach trembles a little more, knowing that the moment is approaching, not knowing that in eleven days’ time her worst fear will be confirmed and she will feel small, crumpled, rejected.
The train approaches industrial outskirts and starts to slow as Maya’s heart hastens. The grand shell of Alexandra Palace is her cue to stand up. She will gather her things, slink down the carriage, hand Train Man the note, and confidently ooze into the next carriage; nonchalantly, casually, breezily, like a goddess with green bows on her shoes. She will get off the train at the station and walk as best she can at this height, weaving her way into the bookshop on her left to regain and regroup. That’s the plan anyway.
Maya stands and her legs don’t feel as strong as she expected they would. Metal screeching, snaking towards the terminal. Clickety click over canals towards Camden. Other people are starting to shuffle and stand, eager to get to their coffees and their emails. Maya feels a sense of urgency in her bladder as people begin to stand between her and her beautiful target, unaware, lost in his book, totally oblivious to the turmoil Maya is going through as she approaches him from the other end of the carriage.
‘Excuse me please,’ Maya murmurs to the woman blocking the aisle, moving slowly to reach up to her bag on the luggage shelf that runs along the top of the carriage.
As Maya waits for the woman to move to one side and let her pass, she takes the note out of the notepad and folds it neatly in half.
Train Man is still absorbed, unaware that the woman sitting next to him by the window is starting to gather her duffel bag from the floor between her feet.
Maya reaches the end of the carriage, just before the automatic doors that slide satisfactorily through to the next carriage, and pauses at Train Man’s right knee. Hesitant, clammy, sick.
Train Man folds the top right-hand corner of the page he’s reading, closes his book and leans down to open his grey backpack.
Maya presses the button on her side of the internal door with the clothed elbow of her floral bomber jacket. Her blue high-waisted circle skirt fills the aisle. Doors hiss open and Maya walks on through, as pretty and as unsure as she was on her eighth birthday in a big flouncy skirt, knees trembling. Note still shaking in her hand.
*
‘I froze, it was impossible,’ says Maya. ‘He was totally looking into his bag, I would have had to shake him to get his attention. I’m not on his radar at all.’
‘Don’t be sad Birthday Girl,’ pleads Nena. ‘There’s always tomorrow. Fuck it, give him the note then.’
‘But it won’t be my birthday.’
‘Doesn’t matter. If you end up going on a date, you can fess up then. If you don’t, he’ll never know. Bingo.’
Nena says ‘bingo’ like it’s a good thing but Maya feels sad at the prospect of Train Man never knowing when her birthday isn’t.
‘True,’ she sighs.
Maya looks at the menu but can’t take in the words.
‘I guess I have no choice, it’s my only idea. And I owe it to Velma.’
‘Well then do it. Dress as if it’s your birthday tomorrow and give it another whirl. You look gorgeous by the way.’
Maya doesn’t feel very gorgeous sitting in a burger bar with its metal chairs and plastic red checked tablecloth draped over her big blue skirt, although everyone did their best to make her feel special today.
Lucy took the team out for lunch at a French bistro d
own Baker Street, and on the walk back to FASH HQ she quietly hinted that a verdict on the site editor job would be imminent. Mid-afternoon, Chloe nipped out and bought a caterpillar cake that everyone stood around a table eating in the communal kitchen, but not before Emma and Sam made everyone sing ‘Happy Birthday’. It was a good work day, but all day Maya had a feeling of failure and emptiness. She won’t go home to someone who loves her, unlike Nena.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Flowers.
‘Enough about Train Man, tell me happy news. What about the wedding? Any developments?’
Nena is bursting with excitement. ‘We’ve set a date!’
Maya is grateful for the shift in focus.
‘Amazing! When?’
‘December!’
‘Ahhh I love a winter wedding! So cool, Nena. Oh hang on, that’s, what, seven months?’ Maya says, counting on her fingers. ‘We’d better get moving. Where have you booked?’ Maya unzips her floral bomber, hangs it on the back of her chair and rubs her palms. She revels in planning mode.
‘Here in London. Simple, elegant, bloody expensive. The venue itself is costing a fortune so we need to keep costs down everywhere else.’
If Nena was ever going to get married, Maya thought it would be Elvis doing the honours in Vegas, or on a dreamy beach in Bahia with her Brazilian relatives. A city wedding to a TV exec is not what Maya expected. But then Nena has always managed to surprise her.
‘Right, well leave the dress with me. We have loads of designer wedding dresses at work, and I have a forty per cent discount.’
‘Bingo.’
‘I could sort Tom out with a nice suit too.’
‘I love you.’
Two Coke floats arrive, and as Maya takes a pen and the spiral ring-bound notepad out of her bag and opens it carefully so as not to reveal Train Man’s note, her Brilliant Imagination skills help her float out of the burger bar and away on a sea of tulle.
Chapter Thirty-Five