by Kiley Dunbar
‘Nice one, Mirren,’ Kelsey grinned. ‘You’ve had a big break-up and it makes sense to take some time for yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ Mirren sniffed. ‘If I’m really being honest, it’s not so much about not wanting to date anyone, it’s about not wanting to feel anything at all. I just want some peace, to be alone with myself and not to always be swinging between extremes of excitement, then disappointment, and guilt or embarrassment. If I only have myself to focus on I can control my life better, actually be in the driving seat for once. That’s the idea anyway. I’m just… so tired, Kelsey.’
‘I know. I’m here for this, with whatever you need, OK?’ Kelsey was a little alarmed to see Mirren’s smile slipping again and her bottom lip wobbling. Mirren never cried in front of her. She was always the brave one, the one with all the answers, the confidence, and the smart comebacks. How had the tables turned so much? Kelsey pulled her friend close and for a few minutes they held their heads together while Mirren sniffed away tears.
‘Come on, let’s walk along the riverside and see if we can find this mooring,’ Kelsey said, at last, clutching Norma’s letter with its pencil sketch on the back showing the old ticket barge’s new position down river. Even if she didn’t yet have the key they could look the boat over.
‘OK,’ agreed Mirren, and the pair set off, Mirren looping her arm in Kelsey’s. ‘I only hope your mum has better luck with dating than I ever did.’
‘Me too. Wait, what?’
‘Ah, yeah, about that. I might have encouraged your mum to sign up for a dating app. Just the one, Kilted Cupids, and uh… I didn’t know if she’d mentioned it to you yet, so…’
‘She hadn’t, no. When I called home on Friday night Calum said she was out and…’ Kelsey’s eyes widened with the realisation. ‘Do you think she was on a date?’
‘I hope so.’ Mirren had found her smile again.
‘I’ll have to ring home, get the details.’ Kelsey’s eyes flickered with wonder as she adjusted to the idea.
‘Ask her to send the guy’s profile picture over,’ Mirren grinned. ‘What? Just because I’ve sworn off men forever doesn’t mean I can’t be excited for your mum.’
‘I know. I just don’t want her to get her hopes up only to be disappointed. The way you describe these apps makes choosing a partner sound like a blood sport.’
‘Oh honey, it can be, but your mum knows what she’s doing, and… Kelsey, are you all right?’
Kelsey’s grasp increased in pressure on Mirren’s forearm. They had stopped in front of a wide, high-roofed barge painted in burgundy, green and gold. Kelsey’s breath seemed to have stilled. ‘This is it.’
‘You’re sure?’ Mirren replied.
‘Yes, look, there’s Norma’s old A-frame sign with the tour prices and times on.’ Kelsey pointed at one of the low windows.
‘It’s bigger than I remember,’ Mirren said, watching Kelsey swallowing a nervous lump and still gripping her arm tightly.
Kelsey wasn’t speaking, but her lips moved silently as her mind worked. Mirren would have to reassure her and fast.
‘You can do this, Kelse. You renovated the studio, right? You can make this… nice too. Oh look, a nest!’
Sure enough, there on its roof was a mess of sticks and feathers topped with a sleeping mallard.
‘A barge, Mirren? What exactly am I supposed to do with a forty-foot riverboat with peeling paint and ducks with squatters’ rights? It’s been hard enough trying to make money at the studio! Add to that a second premises – and one I have to keep afloat, literally – how am I going to manage?’
‘We’ll think of something,’ Mirren said. ‘And you’ve got your pumpkin shoots idea, and the Christmas parties. Come on, you’ve got this!’
Kelsey swung her head to peer at her friend, not at all convinced.
Swans, hopeful of some bread, appeared from every direction, gliding slowly across the water’s surface casting widening ripples as they sailed, honking loudly for their breakfast, blissfully oblivious to Kelsey’s spiralling panic.
Chapter Sixteen
‘I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me’
(Much Ado About Nothing)
Mirren Imrie, Stratford’s newest resident, settled in to a quieter kind of life. The days were growing shorter and the window of time she spent out of pyjamas and in the fresh air was decreasing with each day. At first she’d been full of energy, sending out speculative CVs and queries to magazines and papers across the country with ideas for articles, and she’d subsisted on the hope and excitement that at any moment her cell might ring.
She’d helped Kelsey as much as she could too, handing out the hastily designed and printed leaflets for pumpkin patch photo shoots on Stratford’s chilly, windy high street for two whole days and there had been a brief flurry of bookings that was now keeping Kelsey occupied at the studio.
Somewhere in between refreshing her emails in the bedsit and watching her phone, Mirren realised no work was coming her way and out of sheer embarrassment at finding herself idle after years of non-stop striving, Mirren let herself morph into a kind of proxy housekeeper to Kelsey, having nothing else to contribute.
She took over launderette duties and learned how to cook up one-pot hob recipes so at least Kelsey had something delicious waiting for her when she came home in the dark afternoons, and at night they drank wine and streamed box sets on Mirren’s laptop, trying not to look at the evening’s sauce-streaked dishes in the sink only two feet away from the little bed which Mirren suspected was somehow shrinking a little more each night.
By the time the rather lacklustre Halloween afternoon rolled around, and after a series of little imperceptible shifts, of niggling inconveniences piling up, of never having enough space to store anything or to spread out and really work on her writing – especially now that the rooftop terrace at St. Ninian’s was cold and slippery and out of bounds – Mirren was feeling the strain of bedsit-sharing.
Kelsey had come home, buzzing with excitement after a busy day.
‘Sorry I’m late, is it ruined?’ she said.
Mirren stirred the pot of congealed goulash on the hob. ‘Well, it was definitely more appetising an hour ago.’
‘Sorry, I just had such a good day, I was fully booked all morning and all of the customers wanted real prints as well as the digital file emailed to them, so I had to run to the chemist’s three times! There were twins in today, only nine months old. Their parents had dressed them in little Halloween onesies. Oh my God they were so cute, wobbling all over the place. One of them fell asleep and we had to prop him up against one of the pumpkins. Here, I’ve got the pictures on my tablet.’
Mirren served up the meal and took a few cursory glances at the pictures. ‘Adorable,’ she agreed, reaching for the wine in the fridge and knocking Kelsey’s knee with the door. ‘Sorry.’ She threw her hands up and Kelsey saw how exaggerated the movement was.
‘I’ll get out your way.’ Kelsey held her coat and satchel up in the air attempting to squeeze between the bed and Mirren bustling at the little kitchen work surface. As she made her way through the door to the little loo to wash her hands, Kelsey knocked Mirren’s dresses that were hanging over the doorframe, and they all fell off their hangers, again.
They both spent a few moments silently rehanging them. ‘We’ve got to find somewhere else to put these,’ Kelsey said gently.
‘But where? There’s no wardrobe.’
‘I know, this place is daft.’ Kelsey attempted a laugh, but noticed the area under Mirren’s eyes was a burning red and she was close to tears. ‘I never really minded just keeping my stuff folded in my open suitcase under the bed. We could go to IKEA one day and buy loads of storage bits?’
Mirren turned back to serving dinner. ‘That reminds me, I put away all your jumpers, but some of your tops are still damp, they’re hanging inside the shower cubicle.’
Kelsey glanced at the limp laundry inside the Perspex box. �
��Right, great. Thank you.’
‘Something wrong?’ Mirren’s voice was pitchy.
‘Nope. Why would there be?’ Kelsey said with a shrug, hoping to defuse whatever this was. They never fought and she didn’t want to start now. She made a show of dumping her satchel and coat on the floor at the end of the bed to show how easy she was with all the clutter, and for a moment they both looked down at their feet and the piles of CVs and envelopes neatly stacked on the white carpet.
‘They’ll be gone tomorrow, I promise,’ Mirren said in a small voice.
Kelsey only smiled. ‘Let’s eat. I’m starving.’
And so another little moment of tension passed. There was no point talking it through. The bedsit was just too small but there was no other solution, right at that moment. Not until Mirren found a job and she could go wherever her new employer was. Kelsey settled on the bed with her food, saying twice how delicious it was, and tried not to think uncharitable thoughts. Not when Mirren had no one else to turn to.
The wine helped and Kelsey chatted breezily about how with a bit of luck she could buy herself a decent photo printer of her own, maybe after Christmas, if the Osprey parties paid off. She certainly wouldn’t miss bolting down the high street to the big chemist’s to use their expensive, clunking machines.
* * *
After dinner, neither of them were willing to be the one to decide what they watched and the tension was rising again when Kelsey’s phone rang. She took her mobile outside the bedsit door, feeling every inch like that one undergraduate in halls who was always on the phone to her boyfriend but glad of the respite from the stuffy humidity of the room.
‘Trick or treat?’ Jonathan’s voice was a dopamine hit and Kelsey felt the tension in her shoulders melt a little.
‘I’ll take the treat please,’ she said wistfully. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the matinee?’
‘No show ’til tonight, for a change, so I thought I’d try to catch you before you hit the town and go wild with Mirren.’
Kelsey laughed. ‘Some chance. What with neither of us having any spare cash and Mirren’s new life as a nun to consider, it’s just another night of streaming movies and crisps for us.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine, just… a bit cooped up. There’s not a lot of room for guests and the weather’s taken a turn for the worse.’
‘Tell me about it; it snowed here at the weekend.’
‘Oh, I meant we had some drizzle but sure, October snow in Canada means winter’s on its way.’
‘Not long now and I’ll be there with you. Fifty-three days.’
‘You’re still counting?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Course I am. Did you book your flights?’
‘Uh-huh. I’ll arrive early December twenty-third so we can step right into Christmas, OK?’
Kelsey let out a long breath. ‘That sounds perfect.’
‘Don’t get down about it. It’s not forever.’
‘I know, I just… sometimes it feels like it might be, and having Mirren here is amazing and everything but we seem to have gone from being best friends to being an old married couple in the course of a week and a bit. If she were busier, or if we had better incomes maybe it wouldn’t feel so…’
‘Claustrophobic?’
Kelsey nodded guiltily and Jonathan understood the silence. ‘It’s not your friendship; it’s the bedsit. It’s too tiny for you guys, and you’ve grown used to living alone so sharing was always gonna be tough, even if you were in a bigger place. But I admit, I’m kinda jealous.’
‘You are?’
Jonathan sniffed a laugh. ‘Wishing it was me getting under your feet.’ Again, he understood the silence down the line and the new shift in feeling. ‘I wish I could turn around and always find you there, close to me.’
They listened to each other’s breathing.
‘Me too,’ Kelsey said at last.
‘So what are you gonna do?’
‘Wait it out? Hope Mirren gets a job soon? I don’t like to say it but she’s been getting sadder since she arrived, and this was supposed to be her big escape. She’s lonely and… her stuff is everywhere.’ Kelsey blurted this last part and Jonathan laughed again. ‘I mean seriously, it’s everywhere! Cotton wool pads around the sink in the mornings and her vitamin bottles, and the clothes! She’s not messy, it’s just the flat’s definitely designed for one.’
‘How will you manage when I fly in?’
A new kind of silence fell, betraying Kelsey’s panic.
‘I’m hoping she’ll have got herself sorted by then.’
‘And if she hasn’t? Sounds like she really needs a friend right now. I can look around for some place to stay if—’
‘There is one solution,’ she interrupted, not liking where this was going.
‘Already with the solutions. That sounds like my Kelsey Anderson.’
‘You know the barge I’m renting from Norma? Well, I got the key this week and its huge inside, I mean, relatively speaking. After the squeeze here at the bedsit anything where you can stretch your arms out and stand up straight feels big. Not that you’d be able to stand up straight, you’d definitely bump your head.’ For an instant Kelsey’s brain ran its show reel of Jonathan’s tall, lean body and the image of him with his arms outstretched lying on his back on her bed with his head tilted back and his lips parted. For a moment she struggled to think of anything else. ‘Yeah, you’re so tall… tall and…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘Ontario to Stratford? Is Kelsey there?’ Jonathan laughed, but there was heat in it.
Kelsey jumped at a sound behind her, cutting her off.
Mirren, on tiptoe and making a show of quietly sneaking past, handed Kelsey her keys, shrugging on her black leather jacket. ‘I’m heading out for a walk,’ she mouthed. ‘Back in a few hours.’ Her face was stiff. Had she overheard?
‘Oh, all right,’ Kelsey replied. ‘It’s dark, will you be OK?’
‘Course I will. Try to have a nice quiet evening, get some rest. Don’t watch any scary movies.’ She kissed Kelsey’s cheek and headed downstairs, turning as she descended to call back, ‘Oh, and give Jonathan my love.’
Now Mirren was out of sight, Kelsey’s smile faded into a worried frown. She made her way back into the bedsit. All the dishes had been washed and put away and the bed covers were straightened. The dresses over the bathroom door were gone.
‘Did you hear that? Mirren hasn’t gone out on her own since she arrived. Do you think she knows I’m suffocating?’
‘You’ve been best friends since you were kids, there can’t be much she doesn’t know about you, and she must be feeling it too.’
Kelsey sighed and sat on the bed, ruefully eyeing Mirren’s little black suitcase zipped up and stowed neatly under the bedside table.
‘Go easy on yourself. OK?’ He waited for her reply, but didn’t get one. ‘So, what were you going to say?’ Jonathan’s words reached her through the sinking feelings of being a horrible friend.
‘Oh, I was going to say, there’s a bed on the barge.’
‘There is?’
‘A double one. The whole boat’s nice really, if a little dated. There’s a big step down into an open area – that’s where the big window hatch is and the ticket sales used to happen; then there’s a door through to a galley kitchen and a little foldaway table – that’s where we’d all sit on lunch breaks, sharing our guiding stories from that day and counting out our tips – and beyond that there’s a bedroom with little painted cupboards and shelves all around the walls.’
‘Sounds idyllic.’
‘It’s not as fancy as all that, but Norma had it all professionally cleaned so it’s spotless inside, even if the outside is in need of some TLC.’
‘So what were you thinking?’
‘That maybe when you come back to Stratford in April to do your run of Love’s Labour’s Lost we could live in it together? We could try it out when you’re here for Christmas and
when you visit for Valentine’s Day…’
‘Uh…’
‘What is it?’
‘Kelsey, I can’t live on the water.’
‘You can’t?’
‘I get seasick, real bad. I mean it. I couldn’t even ride Bricktown water taxis back home without throwing up.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know that about you.’
‘Hardly surprising, we didn’t have all that long to get to know each other over the summer, did we?’
A flutter of anxiety troubled Kelsey’s chest. What else didn’t she know about the man she hoped to spend her life with once this long wait was over?
‘Are people even allowed to live in it? Didn’t Norma say you should use the boat as business premises?’
‘Mmm.’ Kelsey was still distracted thinking of the sea sickness bombshell.
‘Well then… can you make it a second business premises?’ he pressed, but she wasn’t hearing him properly.
‘Jonathan I…’ Her words failed. ‘How will we… I mean, where…’ The words were all there, lining up, wanting to spill out, but she gulped them back. Where will we live? How will we live? Where will our money come from? Can I even say ‘our’ money? Is it too early to even think about combining our lives like that? And how exactly do two people who don’t know each other very well, but really, really love each other, merge their separate lives and make it work when everything’s so new and they’ve never done anything like it before?
She didn’t say any of it. Instead, she let her unsettled feelings swell and get mixed up with her guilt and irritation about living in such close quarters with Mirren, which really had proven that the bedsit wasn’t fit for two people to cohabit comfortably – even if Kelsey could lay upon Jonathan’s chest and they could squeeze into the shower together and be closer in a thousand ways that she and Mirren couldn’t.