by Kiley Dunbar
‘I forgot it was a single bed,’ Mirren said, a little guiltily.
‘You’d never fit a double in this space,’ Kelsey shrugged, nowhere near as bothered as Mirren. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Mirren stepped forward and opened the Perspex shower door at the foot of Kelsey’s little white bed and listened to the knock it made as it met the bedframe, leaving a gap of only eight or so inches for bodies to squeeze through. ‘I’d forgotten about the weird shower situation as well.’ She forced a smile, telling herself it was only temporary and Kelsey was being generous, but the compact quarters of her friend’s tiny apartment brought it home to her that she really couldn’t impose on Kelsey for longer than a few days.
‘Mind out the way,’ Kelsey said as she opened the fridge door behind Mirren’s knees and put away the bottle of prosecco, the bag of salad, coleslaw and the rotisserie chicken they’d bought from the deli on the way home. Mirren had insisted on paying in spite of Kelsey’s best efforts and they’d agreed that from now on they’d split everything they shared fifty-fifty.
Mirren pressed herself against the closed door that led to the cramped toilet cubicle, looking down at the draining board, microwave and small portable hob on the kitchen work surface. ‘I’d forgotten cooking wasn’t much of an option.’
‘Hence the rotisserie chicken,’ Kelsey said with a laugh. She was used to living a cosy, contained life here and was secretly enjoying Mirren’s efforts to suppress the dawning horror that was clearly showing on her face.
‘Oh well,’ Mirren pressed on breezily, ‘I’ll still be able to rustle you up some scrambled eggs and toast in the mornings.’
Kelsey laughed again. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
But Mirren didn’t join in. She slumped on the bed and clasped her hands. ‘Aren’t you going to ask how long I’m staying for?’
‘Nope. Stay as long as you want.’
Mirren looked at the head of the bed and Kelsey’s white pillow, everything in the room was, by necessity, neat, compact and orderly. ‘I arrived thinking I’d hide away here for a while, but…’
‘I know. It’s scary. Believe me, I know.’ Kelsey was thinking of her first nights spent alone in this room so far from home with all its comforts and routines. ‘You’ll find your feet if you stick around. You have to give new places time.’
‘You make it sound like I’m moving to Stratford permanently.’
Kelsey threw Mirren a knowing smile that she didn’t catch. ‘This town has a way of keeping people here.’
Mirren didn’t answer; she was lost in trying to remember exactly how much money was in her bank account and how long a stay she could actually afford. Could she meet the expense of a room in a cheap B&B for a few weeks and get out of Kelsey’s hair as soon as possible? Could she find work here, temporarily, to help pay her way? Maybe she could write articles on spec for online magazines and try sending them off in the hope one or two would be picked up? Or should she bid for freelancing work online like some of her writer friends did to make extra money outside their more regular employment?
The idea of scouring through ever-changing lists of writing jobs all day, every day and then competing with other interested journalists to see whose bid would be chosen didn’t appeal to her all that much. She’d heard how this new trend in acquiring writers had driven down rates and some of her friends were providing daily copy for bestselling magazines or multinational corporations’ websites for far less than they’d earn in a Saturday job at the supermarket. But if she was staying in England she’d have to get money fast. She’d have to pay her way even if she was only hiding out for a few weeks.
Kelsey joined Mirren on the bed, slipping her hand into her friend’s and grasping it tightly. ‘You’ve gone a funny colour, Mirr. Don’t panic yet. This is a holiday, OK? You should enjoy it. You need a rest.’
‘I don’t think resting’s very likely, but thanks. What’s that?’ Mirren nodded to the bundle of envelopes in Kelsey’s free hand. She’d emptied her little compartment in the mail rack downstairs when they got in.
‘Dunno, let’s see,’ Kelsey replied, sorting the mail on her lap. ‘Water bill.’ Now it was Kelsey’s turn to look worried but she soon forgot it. ‘A postcard from Jonathan.’ She held up the image of a beautiful Ontario park looked over by a statue of Shakespeare. The back was marked only with her address and the words, ‘I’ll be home soon. Hang on in there. J, x’. They both smiled at that, and Kelsey paused over it for a moment before remembering she had company. ‘And there’s this… from Italy, oh, it must be from Norma.’
Mirren released Kelsey’s hand, allowing her to tear into the white envelope. She read aloud in a shrill English accent which made Mirren – who had met Norma twice and would never forget her – smile at the likeness.
Kelsey, dear,
I hope you’re not wasting away longing for that American of yours, not when there’s work to be done and pictures to take.
Thank you for the email with the lovely images of the studio, you’ve made it your own and I’m simply thrilled for you. Gianfranco wants me to tell you he’s delighted for you too! We’ve just returned from quite the honeymoon on the Veneto and we’re settled into Gianfranco’s mother’s Amalfi pension. Well, it is a dream, dearie, and I’ll expect you to come and visit once you’ve given Diane Arbus a run for her money and made your fortune. Until then, do you remember I mentioned the barge?
‘Oh no.’ Kelsey’s comedy accent faltered. She did remember Norma saying something about letting her rent out what had been the tour agency’s ticket sales boat on the marina but she hadn’t thought of it again, not when she had the studio to manage and everything that came with starting a new business to attend to. She read on quickly and in quieter tones now.
I’ve instructed my solicitors to prepare the papers and hand over the keys. They’ll be with you in a few days. You’ll need a second premises, something more accessible and in amongst the tourist biz – as I expect you’re already learning? Same agreement as the studio: peppercorn rent for six months starting this week until you’re established. Let me know when the grand opening is, we’ll pop over and smash some Bolly on her hull.
I’d say good luck, but as my mother told me when I was your age, luck is nothing compared to grit, and I know a gritty woman when I see one. That doesn’t sound quite as encouraging now I see it written down.
Must go, Gianfranco’s loading up the yacht for a sail to Capri, and I’ve cocktails to mix before we haul anchor,
Pip pip, Norma, x
‘She’s still absolutely barking then?’ said Mirren, reaching for the fridge door and the prosecco inside while Kelsey gaped in shock at Norma’s astounding generosity and her world-leading meddling skills. And just what was Norma expecting her to do with a barge?
The cork popping brought her focus back and the two friends set about finding glasses and preparing their meal which they ate cross-legged on what was now their shared bed, shaking their heads and marvelling at the strange twists and turns their lives seemed to be taking.
Chapter Fifteen
‘I am as constant as the Northern Star’
(Julius Caesar)
Sunday morning dawned misty and cool. Kelsey and Mirren, both in shades to help with their prosecco hangovers, strolled into town wrapped in coats and scarves on the hunt for early morning espressos and intending to take a look at the barge Kelsey was somehow now in possession of.
Holding her head as still as she could while walking along gingerly, each footstep resounded like gunshots in Kelsey’s head. ‘I’m done with prosecco, Mirr.’
‘Me too.’
‘New life, new rules.’
They made slow fist bumps at their resolve just as Mirren’s phone sounded a loud pinging notification that made them wince. Mirren squinted at her phone before turning it towards Kelsey so she could read the one-word message she’d been sent.
‘Pics?’ read Kelsey, confused.
‘It’s some random geezer
on this dating app. I get lots of these,’ Mirren said dryly, just as another message appeared from the same guy, who if you believed his profile picture was a dead ringer for Ryan Reynolds.
‘Knockers!’ the message read.
Mirren let Kelsey read it while saying, ‘Who says romance is dead, eh?’
‘I think you should send him what he wants.’
‘Eh? Not likely.’
Kelsey had stopped outside the front of the rambling Tudor house where the theatrical gala had been held in the summer. With her lips quirking wickedly, she took the phone from Mirren, snapping a close-up image of the pendulous brass knockers on the property’s ornate front door. She’d clicked ‘send’ before Mirren had time to register what was going on. ‘Aaand block,’ Kelsey said with a nod of finality and still grinning before handing Mirren’s phone back. The pair fell into as raucous a fit of laughter as their headaches would allow before strolling off down towards the theatre gardens on the riverside.
One of the coffee chains was open and they were soon making short work of their take-away pastries and double shots. As they approached the marina with its colourful narrowboats moored beside the little bridges and locks in the lush, dewy green public gardens, flanked on one side by the main road into the town centre and on the other by the grand cluster of theatres, Kelsey kept an eye on Mirren, waiting for her friend’s reaction to the beauty of the town at this time of day.
The river Avon, wide and smooth, swollen with yesterday’s rain and dotted here and there with elegant swans, glittered in the misty morning light. Only locals got to see the town like this; dog walkers and joggers, up with the chirruping robins and hungry cygnets.
Kelsey always woke up early, even on Sunday mornings, and even after a night’s laughter and drinking with her best friend. She was glad to see the look of awe spreading across Mirren’s face as she took in the view from left to right from the shuttered canal boats inside the lock gates all the way downriver past the theatres to the mists hugging the spire of Holy Trinity church in the distance. They only briefly let their exclamations about how pretty it was interrupt Mirren’s tales of her recent encounters with dating apps back home in Scotland.
‘I should have known when this one guy suggested we meet at the petrol station at four in the afternoon that it wasn’t going to be a dream date,’ Mirren was saying between sinking her coffee and twirling between her fingers a rusty-orange leaf she’d lifted from the grass. ‘The first thing I noticed, after the car door opened, was his Crocs. I mean, who wears Crocs on a date? With socks? Then there were the sweatpants, the mullet, and the bag for life.’
Kelsey grimaced.
‘His dating profile said he was thirty-six but I swear, Kelse, he was sixty-six if he was a day. He said, “I’m just nipping inside for a pint of milk”, and I was left standing by the sacks of barbecue charcoal feeling like a right plum. When he came out again he looked at me, all wide-eyed and disbelieving and said, “You’re still here? Usually, my dates have left at this point.” That was when I left.’
‘Oh, Mirr! What are these blokes thinking?’
‘Then there was the farmer. Out of all of them, he’d sounded the most promising. I went all the way to Fife to meet him. Arranging to meet in a nightclub is never ideal though, is it? I mean it’s all right for meeting someone for the first time, if you know what I mean, before maybe possibly leaving with them, but it’s not an environment conducive to an actual date, especially when the nightclub in question is above an Argos on the high street and half the people in there are just knocking off from their shift in the warehouse downstairs and are still wearing their work tabards.
‘The first thing he said was, “You can buy your own drinks, if you don’t mind.” So I told him of course I didn’t mind, but I realised when the barman came over that this guy didn’t have a drink and he wasn’t reaching for his wallet either, so I ended up offering to get him one, like an idiot.
‘We only got as far as one drink though. He started quizzing me on what I do for a living. He kept saying, “So you’ve got money of your own?” because, apparently, he was fed up with the local women thinking he was a millionaire just because he was a farmer with two thousand acres, a vintage Lotus Elise, six luxury holiday lets and an award-winning farm shop on site.’
‘Right, so he was a millionaire then?’ said Kelsey.
‘Aye, and with zero personality and a complex about gold-digging women, or any women really. I was out of there by half nine, just as the S Club 7 medley was starting. He said he’d walk me down to the street only I’d probably expect him to spring for a cab, so I left him sitting by the bar. I heard him ordering himself a beer as I walked away.’
‘Charming.’
‘Right? But that wasn’t even the worst one this month.’
‘You’ve been on three dates this month? It’s only the twenty-sixth today.’
‘Two evenings, one lunch. Oh, and there was another one in a bar, didn’t go well either.’ Mirren tried not to think about Andrew and his grabbing hands and red face. ‘What of it? Anyway, I never really got the chance to date, what with meeting Preston at school, so I’ve tried making up for it.’
Kelsey assumed a blank expression.
‘Anyway, me and this army recruiter guy were supposed to meet at the pub for a ploughman’s and we’d had a really nice chat setting it up, see?’ Mirren flashed her phone screen at Kelsey long enough for her to glimpse an alternating sequence of coloured boxes indicating a long conversation, but not long enough to catch any specifics. ‘But he never showed up. I’d been there long enough to order and eat my food – I wasn’t going to pass up a ploughman’s – when he messaged, just as I was getting ready to leave, saying he’d been delayed at work and could he come now, but I didn’t reply. You either show up for our date as planned, or you don’t. No second chances.’
‘Wow, Mirr, that’s tough.’
‘If that’s his attitude to a first date what would he be like in an actual relationship? Naw, hard pass for me. But it’s a shame, I was imagining him as the nicest looking one of the bunch.’
‘Hotter than Crocs man?’
‘Hah, Funny. No, look at his profile.’ Mirren enlarged the picture and passed her phone to Kelsey.
She squinted. ‘OK, promising.’
‘I had high hopes based on that jawline and that army buzzcut.’
‘Sounds like you liked this one. Maybe you should give him another chance?’
‘Nope. I am as constant as the North Star. Once I’ve made up my mind, it’s made up.’
They came to a stop in front of a fountain with a silver swan at its centre. Mirren stepped up onto its little raised platform so she towered over Kelsey. ‘In fact, Kelse, that’s what I want to tell you. I thought about it all the way down on the train and I am now completely, utterly, decided. Drum roll please.’
Kelsey obliged, tapping out a rhythm on her empty espresso cup.
‘Thank you.’ Mirren stretched her spine and proclaimed dramatically to the sky, ‘I’ve come to a resolution. Henceforth, Mirren Imrie is swearing off men. I’m clearly no good at picking them and no good at keeping them either, and frankly, I’m sick of the weirdos and the perverts and the liars and the Flash Harrys and…’
‘I get the picture,’ said Kelsey.
‘Right, good. I’m done with the lot of ’em.’ Mirren nodded her head sharply only to wince at the hangover pain, but they both still laughed and sat down on the edge of the fountain.
Kelsey watched as her friend’s curling smile slowly faded. A dullness sneaked across her previously animated face. Kelsey knew exactly what Mirren was thinking. ‘Preston?’ That was all she had to say.
Mirren nodded, shrinking a little. ‘I did the right thing there, but still, regret is a horrible feeling.’
‘You regret breaking up with him?’
‘No, it’s not that. I just regret not being better with him, kinder, more… committed.’
Looks passed between them;
Kelsey’s sympathetic, Mirren’s self-recriminating and pained.
‘You tried, for a long time you tried. All the romance was gone, you said it yourself, and you found yourself wanting to see other guys, to “play the field,” you said. Remember? You couldn’t stay together feeling like that.’
Mirren winced again, scrunching up the paper bag her pastry had come in.
‘No. Stop beating yourself up. There’s nothing wrong with liking men and enjoying their… erm, company?’ Kelsey said, trying to coax Mirren’s smile back.
Mirren merely shrugged. She loved Kelsey for many things, and the way she never judged her was topping the list right this second. She was right; loving the thrill of meeting new guys and enjoying hooking up with them wasn’t wrong, not at all, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if Mirren had really, actually enjoyed her encounters with them, but every one had been laced with something other than pleasure and empowerment. It wasn’t guilt exactly and it wasn’t shame either – in spite of years spent absorbing her mum’s unkind comments about her personal life. It had been instead a kind of sadness, sadness that even after breaking up with Preston she hadn’t come close to getting what she actually wanted.
It was only becoming clear to her now that she was in England and seeing her old habits as through a rear-view mirror, receding away and less worryingly close, that Mirren fully realised what that was. What she wanted was the kind of love and security that Preston had given her since her mid-teens, combined with the deep attraction and excitement she’d felt with other guys in more elicit circumstances. Why couldn’t she have both combined? The best dating app designers in the world couldn’t find that guy, it seemed. That guy didn’t exist.
Mirren’s shoulders heaved then relaxed as she exhaled. ‘I can’t change what’s happened, and I wouldn’t, not really, but I can take better control of what’s to come. So, I want you to witness this, Kelsey…’ Mirren hovered her index finger over the ‘delete profile’ button on the app and let Kelsey watch as her online dating life disappeared. ‘While I’m in town with you, I am single, I’m not dating, and I’m concentrating on me.’