Hello, Again

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘I was just about to send one,’ she spluttered, registering heat in her cheeks and wondering if she had gone full plum, or merely radish. ‘I was busy,’ she added, turning so he could see her bulging rucksack. ‘Shopping.’

  ‘At the market?’ he guessed, and she nodded, swallowing as she took in the muscular shape of him beneath the wet material of his T-shirt. Thank God for the rain – the longer it fell, the longer she and Finn would be trapped here together.

  ‘Will you show me?’ he asked, nodding at her bag. ‘I want to see what I missed.’

  Pepper extracted her spoils one by one, explaining that no, she wasn’t a weird collector of old mismatched cutlery and broken jewellery, but that she was planning to put everything to good use. Finn smiled politely as she handed him one item after another, only becoming more animated when she unwrapped the ceramic key holder.

  ‘Nice,’ he said, holding it up so he could examine it in more detail. ‘I like this very much.’

  Pepper told him about the girl and Finn listened, his fingers testing the join of the hooks and the quality of the edging. Josephine was right – he really did have impeccable nails.

  ‘Can I buy it from you?’ he asked, and Pepper was so surprised that she laughed.

  ‘Um, OK, I suppose so – but wouldn’t it make more sense to buy a different one? That way the girl would get the money, rather than me.’

  ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘Or, you could just give it to me.’

  ‘You want me to give you my new key holder? The key holder that I found, from in amongst all those stalls – my pearl in a pile of old oyster shells. You want me to just hand it over?’

  Finn folded his arms, his T-shirt becoming even tighter as the damp material was pulled downwards.

  ‘It will make up for not sending me a message – and for pretending that you were going to.’

  ‘I was!’ she insisted.

  Finn was shaking his head and tutting now, his mouth still open in a smile. His features were so alive – there was so much expression in his face, and playfulness in his eyes.

  ‘I have changed my mind – you can keep it,’ he said, his head cocked at a slight angle. ‘In exchange for a drink.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible.’ Pepper zipped up her bag.

  Finn shone his headlight-beam smile.

  ‘I know where we can go, there is a good place not very far from here.’

  Pepper peered out at the continuing downpour.

  ‘You mean right now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  ‘We’ll get drenched – even more drenched!’

  ‘OK, so we get wet. So what?’

  He was even worse than Josephine when it came to accepting no for an answer.

  ‘Come on.’ Finn held out his hand. ‘I know a shortcut.’

  There was a beat or two where Pepper considered refusing, telling him thanks, but no thanks – that she had to be somewhere and it couldn’t wait. But then another feeling stole through her, one that she had been doing her best to bury ever since she first saw him.

  Hope.

  Chapter 10

  When it came to relationships, Pepper had always struggled.

  It wasn’t that the boys – and later men – she dated were all bad people, more that the elusive connection she so longed to find never seemed to materialise. Once those heady first few weeks were over, her feelings started to slowly but surely drain away. And it wasn’t always the partners she chose that let her down, so much as herself. The little niggles that she tried so hard to suppress always squirmed through and demanded to be heard. Sure, they would say, this man is nice and everything, but are there fireworks going off in your heart? Do you long for him every moment of every day? Do you feel like the heroine in a romantic film?

  The answer was always no.

  She had laid out a challenge to the universe yesterday after bumping into Finn, telling both Josephine and herself that this time, she was not prepared to give chase. This time she wanted a concrete assurance that fate was pulling the strings, and that the stars were finally ready to align in her favour.

  The universe, it seemed, had been listening.

  She and Finn sought refuge from the rain in a tiny café, where they ordered a large pot of fresh mint tea to share and sat facing each other on low stools. Finn’s bare knee kept brushing against Pepper’s whenever he shifted position, and every time, she felt currents of tantalising warmth trickle through her body. Their conversation was mostly polite at first, but because they could not stop smiling at each other, every other reply was punctuated by tinkling laughter. Finn was open yet interested – and unlike many of the men Pepper had met, he really listened when she spoke.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ he said now, lifting a hand to push his still-drying fringe off his forehead. Pepper admired his symmetrical features – a wide expressive mouth, large but pleasingly shaped nose and deep-set smiling eyes – and wondered where to begin.

  ‘There isn’t all that much to tell,’ she said. ‘There’s just me and my parents. Dad left when I was a teenager and has had a series of younger women in his life ever since, and my mum . . .’ She paused, debating how much to tell him.

  ‘She has remarried?’ Finn asked.

  ‘No.’ Pepper cast her mind back over the few men her mother had dated since her divorce. All of them had been nice enough, none had lasted beyond a few months. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘So, you are an only child like me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pepper coughed to mask the croak in her voice. ‘But I didn’t used to be. I had a younger sister. She died a long time ago.’

  ‘Ah.’ Finn looked momentarily downcast. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What about you?’ she replied, keen to divert attention away from the subject of Bethan.

  ‘I am an Army brat,’ he told her. ‘My father was a captain in the Royal Engineers – he is English – while my mama is German. I was born in Hamburg, but I spent some time in England as a boy. We moved around the place quite often.’

  ‘That must have been hard?’ she guessed, but Finn seemed nonplussed.

  ‘Not especially. I think, when you are a child, you are more adaptable to change. I travel a lot still – I like to discover new places, see new things.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here in Lisbon?’ Pepper fished a mint leaf out of her cup and laid it carefully on the saucer. ‘Just a holiday?’

  ‘Partly.’ Finn gave her a half-smile. ‘But also, to do some work.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘What do you think that I do?’

  Pepper sat back on her stool, her hands raised.

  ‘I have no idea!’ she exclaimed. ‘I barely know you after all.’

  ‘You know me enough to make a guess,’ Finn said. ‘I will give you three questions, then you must make your guess.’

  ‘Same deal for you?’ she checked, and he nodded.

  ‘Ja – why not?’

  Pepper thought for a moment, allowing herself the luxury of looking him up and down, examining his hands, his clothes, and his expression for clues. Then she remembered how much he had liked the ceramic key holder she’d bought from the flea market.

  ‘Would you describe your job as creative?’ she asked, waiting while he mulled this over.

  ‘Ja – at least a little bit. But I am no artist. I appreciate art, and when I was younger, I tried to become good at it. But some people are not born with the right talent.’

  ‘Talent can be taught.’

  Finn looked across at her, his beam now back to full capacity.

  ‘I know a lot of artists who would disagree with you,’ he said.

  ‘Are you a gallery owner?’

  ‘Nein.’

  ‘Gah! As if I just wasted a whole question with that guess.’

  ‘One question remaining,’ he prompted.

  Pepper wracked her brain, searching in vain for something to ask. Finn was far too clean and well-groomed to work with animals or machinery. He di
dn’t give off a teacherly vibe, or a particularly outdoorsy one either. Despite his upbringing, there wasn’t so much as a whiff of the military about him, and she doubted very much that he did anything as beige as real-estate agenting or insurance brokering.

  ‘My turn,’ he said then, taking his time to scrutinise Pepper as she had him.

  ‘You are a designer,’ he decided. ‘Perhaps you make prints and patterns for clothes, or logos for big businesses.’

  He wasn’t exactly wrong, but he hadn’t guessed quite right either. Pepper drank some tea.

  ‘Sort of,’ she told him. ‘But also, no – and no.’

  Finn squinted in mock exasperation.

  ‘My final question is this,’ she said. ‘Do you love your job?’

  Finn smiled easily.

  ‘Ja! Of course. I would not do it if I hated it.’

  ‘Many people do,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Then I feel sorry for them. Life is too precious a thing to waste being sad, or bored.’

  Pepper could not help but think about all the weeks and months she had spent feeling nothing but the former, driven half-mad with grief.

  ‘I think you work in advertising,’ she said. ‘That would make sense – it’s a bit creative, could easily involve travel, would account for the lovely neat nails.’

  ‘These nails?’ Finn examined his fingertips and laughed. ‘I just have a good set of clippers.’

  ‘Artists notice these kinds of things,’ she protested, then slapped a hand over her mouth as she realised she’d given the game away. Finn bellowed with even more laughter, then reached across and put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I had a pretty good idea that you were an artist the first second I saw you.’

  ‘But I’m not!’ Pepper was very aware of the heat rushing into her cheeks. ‘I teach art, but I’m nothing special, really – nothing.’

  Finn still had his hand on her shoulder, but as Pepper continued to blabber, he removed it, letting it hover in the air beside her face for a moment.

  ‘You are not nothing,’ he said, returning his hand to the handle of his cup.

  ‘I think you are really, you know . . . something.’

  Chapter 11

  They finished the mint tea just as the sun came back out, the bright shafts that poured in through the front windows of the café enticing them back out onto the curved cobbled street.

  Lisbon was drenched, but rather than appearing dreary, it seemed to sparkle even more than before. The rain had washed away the dust coating the azulejos, and Pepper sighed with contentment as she took in yellows intertwining with blues, curls of red and fronds of green, purple and pale pink. The uniformity of the patterns pleased her; she liked the way every line matched up, and the way the tiles had been laid, so neatly, each beside the next.

  ‘Shall we walk?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Up to the Castelo?’

  ‘Good idea.’ He turned towards her. ‘How long do you have?’

  Pepper pulled her phone out to check the time and saw she had missed a call from her mother, but nothing, as yet, from Josephine, who she presumed was still resting back at the hotel. It would be so easy to spend the rest of the day with Finn – or the rest of my life, for that matter, Pepper could not help but add internally – but she mustn’t forget her real reason for being here.

  ‘I have an hour or so,’ she told him.

  He didn’t reach for her hand again, as he had when they ran together from under the orange tree, and Pepper tried not to feel too disappointed when he slipped his own into the pockets of his shorts.

  ‘I am afraid you were wrong, by the way,’ he said as they set off. ‘I do not work for an advertising firm. I part-own a restaurant and wine bar back home in Hamburg. My friend Clara, she is the chef, and Otto, he runs the bar. I do all the other stuff.’

  ‘Other stuff?’ she echoed, emitting a small yelp of surprise as a drip fell from some sodden washing hanging high above them and landed right on her nose.

  ‘Marketing, events, social media, finance,’ Finn said, before adding, as Pepper wiped at her face, ‘Better than a bird poo.’

  ‘People always say that it’s supposed to be lucky,’ she said. ‘But how can it be? It is literally being shat on by a bird – and it happens all the time to me back in Suffolk. I live by the beach,’ she explained, telling him a bit about Aldeburgh as they clambered up a steep flight of rough-cut steps. The houses on each side slotted in against the stonework like pieces of a Tetris game, some painted in the softest peach, others a blend of raspberries and cream. The higher they climbed, the broader the streets became, and the more of the city’s dark-orange rooftops came into view. Everywhere Pepper looked, she noticed another detail – a half-moon window winking like the closed lid of an eye, pots overflowing with plump trailing leaves, stained wooden shutters, sprigs of wildflowers and polished brass doorknobs, as well as tall, weary-looking palm trees and decorative wrought-iron balconies.

  There was so much to see that Pepper could easily have found herself overwhelmed, but rather than fret about taking photos or committing every last inch to memory, she simply let the whole tableau settle over her, concentrating on how pleasant it felt to be amongst all this beauty, and relative stillness. She and Finn had somehow managed to find a route that drew them away from other travellers and locals alike, and it was nice to have their own small corner of the city.

  ‘So, you said you travel as part of your job,’ Pepper said, pausing to catch her breath as they finally reached the top of the steps. ‘I’m curious – how does that work exactly?’

  ‘Ah.’ Finn fiddled with his fringe. ‘The travel is linked to my other job – my secret occupation.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – you’re a spy!’

  Finn pointed a finger at his chin.

  ‘With this awful poker face? No chance!’

  ‘Nothing awful about your face,’ Pepper blurted. ‘I mean, speaking as an amateur artist, you have great bone structure.’

  Finn beamed.

  ‘Danke.’

  ‘Is your secret job to do with art?’

  ‘Ja! Good guess.’

  Pepper felt her smile widening as he talked her through his business plan – a website to rival Etsy, showcasing all the best purveyors of art in the world, but with a new twist. This work, he explained solemnly, would all be handpicked by him. A bespoke collection that he himself had seen, touched and – perhaps in some cases – even helped create. He wanted to source pieces that moved him and give a platform to artists who may not have the means to reach as big an audience as their work deserved.

  ‘There are so many talented people all over the world,’ he said. ‘I want to find as many of them as I can.’

  ‘I think that’s amazing,’ Pepper told him, only just stopping herself from adding, ‘And I think you’re amazing, too.’

  ‘I wish my papa agreed with you – he believes that the art world is full of “sissies and work-shirkers”.’

  ‘It is not!’ Pepper was affronted. They had reached the final stretch of road leading up towards the Castelo now, and were surrounded on all sides by groups of tourists. Where before there had been quiet and calm, now there was noise and chatter, but the melee did not seem to bother Finn. His attention was solely on her, and Pepper wished her hair hadn’t dried quite so crinkly. When she had escaped to the bathroom in the café, she had actually sworn at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Mascara had been smeared under each of her eyes, her ponytail was a frizzy disaster, and her waterlogged Converse squelched with every step.

  ‘When my website makes me a millionaire,’ Finn went on, ‘he will be forced to apologise to me. But for now, it must remain a secret. If Mama and Papa ask me why I am travelling so much, I tell them it is to source wine. The restaurant and bar are doing very well, so they are happy. When Papa sees a queue of people waiting to eat or drink, it helps him to feel as if his son is a big deal.’

  ‘And if it wa
s an art gallery?’ Pepper asked, and Finn lifted his shoulders in a gesture of defeat.

  ‘Then, I think, less proud.’

  Pepper thought of her own parents, of her father’s donation to help her start up Arts For All and her mother’s muted yet genuine pride when she heard it was doing well, and her heart went out to him.

  ‘I know it is his problem,’ Finn went on, ‘but knowing that does not help me care less about his opinion. I don’t know why I still let it bother me so much.’

  He sighed, then looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Why is it, do you think, that we must forever try to please our parents?’

  Pepper came to a stop outside a gift shop packed to the rafters with colourful ceramic plates, bowls, dishes and ashtrays, blinking as she looked up at him.

  ‘I guess, because at the point where you pass from childhood into adulthood, you feel responsible for them? Or maybe it’s simply an ego thing – the better you do, the more they praise you. And nobody’s praise means more than a parent’s – at least for most people.’

  Finn looked at her with new respect.

  ‘I think you are right,’ he said. ‘And if I was holding a drink right now, I would toast to that – to our big egos.’

  She laughed. ‘OK . . . Anything else?’

  Finn considered.

  ‘Ja. To Lisbon, and to art, and to rain!’ He glanced up at the sky as he said it, and his hair fell away from his eyes.

  ‘And to Josephine, too?’ suggested Pepper. ‘I would not be here at all if it wasn’t for her.’

  ‘Is she your grandmother?’

  ‘God, no! Although, she’s much nicer than either of mine were.’

  Finn looked sympathetic, but before he had a chance to reply, Pepper barrelled on.

  ‘Josephine is just a friend. She came to Lisbon in the sixties and wanted to see it again, and kindly invited me along as her companion.’

  She stopped short of explaining about Jorge. That was Josephine’s story to tell.

  ‘She seems like fun,’ Finn said. ‘The same as you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Pepper muttered, ready to brush the compliment away. Finn quickly silenced her by folding his arms across his chest.