by Fay Keenan
39
The rest of the Christmas holiday seemed to pass in a haze of marking and seasonal television for Florence. Still shocked by Sam’s extreme response to her thoughts on his situation with Aidan, she had absolutely no idea how to approach him again. Perhaps she had been too forthright, too keen to put things into neat little pigeonholes that were, in actuality, un-pigeonholeable. It was the dual curse of a teaching job, she thought; the desire to find solutions, to fix things, whilst trying to accept that some things, and indeed some students, were often unfixable, at least by her. Sam’s situation with Aidan wasn’t quantifiable, wasn’t measurable, and offering her so-called ‘wisdom’ had created the opposite effect to what she’d intended. She saw now why Sam had felt angry and patronised.
To try to take her mind off it all, she’d spent some more time getting the rest of the boxes and cases down from the attic and immersed herself as best she could in the details of the story of Aunt Elsie and Henry Braydon. They’d both been in their early twenties, and seemed to have been planning for the rest of their lives when he’d been killed in action. From what she could piece together, they’d been part of a group of friends who’d formed the first group of actors for the Willowbury Amateur Dramatics Society, and they’d been particularly fond of putting on farces, with the odd abridged Shakespeare play thrown in for good measure. Among the ephemera that Elsie had stashed in the boxes were several programmes for productions, a few clippings from the local newspaper and even one or two small props, feather headbands and the like, that she’d obviously seen fit to keep.
What a life they would have had, Florence thought sadly, if things had been different. Her vision blurred as she found a note from Henry’s own sister, Joan, which she’d evidently written to Elsie when she’d passed on Henry’s uniform and the telegram that the family had been sent to inform them of his missing, presumed dead status over Korea. ‘Mum would have wanted you to have these,’ it read. ‘And I can’t bear to look at them any more.’ At some point, Florence thought, Elsie must have felt the same, when she’d made the decision to box everything up and put it in the attic.
She still had trouble reconciling the images of Elsie and Henry with the woman she’d known as Great-Aunt Elsie, but, as she found out more about their brief life together, felt as though she was growing closer to them both, and understanding their decades-old love affair.
Over coffee with Josie, ostensibly to go through their shared classes for the spring term, Florence filled her friend in on what had happened with Sam, as well as what she’d been piecing together about Elsie and Henry.
‘I’m not so sure the received wisdom of an education trainer is completely applicable to those boys,’ Josie said, ‘although, the culture of dependence stuff is thought-provoking.’
‘I still think there’s something in it,’ Florence said, ‘but perhaps my timing, since Aidan was still in that hospital bed, wasn’t great.’
‘You think?’ Josie smiled sympathetically.
‘So what should I do?’
‘Give him time. They’ve been through a hell of a lot in the past couple of years. Perhaps they both need to heal.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Florence conceded. ‘It’s just, after finding out all that stuff about Aunt Elsie and Henry Braydon, I’m so aware of time not being on their side. They thought they had forever; they were so, so wrong.’ Florence blinked back sudden tears.
‘I think you both need some space to breathe,’ Josie reached over the table and gave Florence a gentle hug. ‘Give him until the New Year, let him cool down, and then maybe you should talk.’
‘Sounds sensible,’ Florence conceded reluctantly. ‘It’s just doing my head in, knowing he’s the other side of the terrace wall and I can’t reach him.’
‘You always said it would be awkward if you dated and then split up, sharing a party wall,’ Josie said philosophically. ‘But maybe when you’ve both had the chance to think things through…’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Florence sighed.
Heading home, she tried to put the whole situation out of her mind and focus on planning for the term ahead, which helped, to a certain extent. Eventually, though, she staggered upstairs in need of some sleep.
But it was no good, Florence thought, hours later, as she pummelled the memory-foam pillow for the fiftieth time since she’d turned in. It was two-thirty in the morning and she was just going to have to resign herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get any more sleep. Whether it was the pressures of work that were keeping her up – her target reports for Year 8 were due on the first Monday back to school and she wasn’t even halfway through yet – or the more immediate issues with the man on the other side of the wall, she could take her pick.
She’d suffered from bouts of insomnia since she’d begun her teaching career, and although they were far less frequent now, when she felt the work starting to pile up they tended to occur. It was that, or the anxiety dreams when she did sleep, she thought irritably.
And now she and Sam had, it seemed, gone their separate ways, she didn’t feel that sense of optimism she’d begun to feel, that flush of attraction that made things all the rosier, and, of course, that post-sex deep sleep that she’d come to enjoy.
Florence glanced at her phone. Two thirty-two a.m. Lying staring at the ceiling wasn’t helping at all. With a growl of resignation, she threw back her duck-down duvet and pushed her feet into the cosy slipper boots she kept by the bed. Reaching for her dressing gown, which she’d slung over the pine footboard of her bed, she decided she might as well crack on with those pesky Year 8 reports; then, at least, she’d have some more free time during daylight hours.
A habitual wearer of contact lenses, she opened her bedside drawer and found the tortoiseshell spectacles she kept for hangovers and eye infections (and now, it seemed, middle of the night report writing) and padded downstairs to where she’d left her school laptop on the kitchen table. She made a huge mug of tea while the laptop was booting up, and tried not to think, while the kettle was boiling, of what Sam might be doing right now. Was he even at home? He did rotating shifts, of course, and she couldn’t recall what he’d been doing when they’d had that stupid row and he’d stormed out. It still made her angry and very sad to think of it. Both his reaction and her own tactlessness in broaching the subject during an emotionally charged time felt all wrong now.
She imagined him, if he was home, lying in his bed, perhaps clad once more in that shorts and T-shirt combination she’d found so appealing and she had to admit, if only to herself, that she’d fancied him even then. And now, too late and just as they’d ended things, she’d realised that she was actually falling in love with him, much against her better judgement. But there was no point in dwelling on Sam; she had to take a step back from it all, and focus on other things. There was nothing she could do right now to fix the situation.
Tea made, she settled down at the laptop and tried to remember what she was going to say about her noisy but lovely Year 8 class. The trouble was, so many of them were at the same stage, it was a real struggle sometimes to be original and not to repeat herself. She knew that students, as well as their parents, often exchanged notes, and it could get embarrassing if she’d written something similar or even identical for friends, especially as an English teacher.
Setting herself a target to do at least five reports before she headed back to bed to stare at the ceiling a little longer, she started as the security light came on in her back garden. It was probably just the nocturnal wanderings of a fox or the family of hedgehogs she knew lived at the bottom of the garden, but she couldn’t help standing up and wandering over to the French windows that opened up directly onto the patio area, the footpath that bisected the back gardens and her stretch of lawn. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the notoriously shy wildlife, she carefully unlocked the doors and pushed one open to let in the cool night air.
Padding out onto the patio, feeling the chill through her slipper boots, sh
e pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her and focused her attention on the sweep of garden in front of her. She couldn’t see anything moving, and, somewhat thankful she wasn’t coming knees to snout with one of the local foxes, she hesitated a little longer. Perhaps it had been a breeze that had triggered her sensor light. But the night was utterly still and clear, with not even a breath of wind. The stars above looked pricked out by a silver pin, and for a moment she wondered if Sam was up there somewhere, night-vision goggles on, flying to or from an incident, unaware that there was someone down on the ground thinking of him.
She remembered something Sam had told her over coffee after one of the rehearsals for the play, back in early November. That was when she’d found out about the night-vision goggles he had to wear for flying in the dark, and he’d shown her a video on his phone of what fireworks looked like from above. It was one of the perks of the job, he’d said, to be flying above the beautiful explosions of light on Bonfire Night and New Year’s Eve. A member of the crew had taken the video of the Guy Fawkes night displays and put it on the SAA’s well followed Twitter feed. Seeing it had fascinated her, and, fired up by the video and the conversation, she’d been inspired to create and teach a lesson to her Year 9 class about experiencing events from a different angle; seeing things from an alternative point of view. It had gone down really well with them, and she’d meant to tell Sam about it. But it was probably too late, now.
God, she missed him.
A slight sound to her left made her jump. The night was so still, every sound seemed amplified. She turned her head, not wanting to frighten whatever it was. It sounded like the snuffle of a hedgehog, but she couldn’t see anything immediately around her on the lawn or the patio. Often she’d leave out a plate of cat food for the family of hedgehogs who lived at the bottom of her garden, but she’d only actually seen them once. She remembered Aunt Elsie mentioning that hoglets liked the garden, and had taken her word for it that they were, indeed, eating the food she left out and it wasn’t just vermin, that was responsible for the empty plates she found each morning. When Elsie was alive, Florence had thought it was probably Hugo the Highland Terrier sneaking out into the garden at night and eating it.
There was another sound, and as Florence moved vaguely in the direction of it, she suddenly froze. There, on the other side of the garden wall, was Sam, sitting on one of the cheap patio chairs he and Aidan had bought at the end of the summer season, his head in his hands.
Ever since Sam had disintegrated so spectacularly and heartbreakingly in her arms the day that he’d flown his own brother to hospital, Florence knew that he would have slowly been building his mental and emotional walls back up. But seeing him looking so desolate, so in need of a friend, Florence’s heart went out to him once again. He seemed completely alone, sitting there in his bed shorts in the cold, she just wanted to wrap her dressing gown around him and take him back inside.
Slowly, she approached the wall, but just as she was about to call out to him, his head snapped up and she ducked away behind the protruding wall of the house. It was perfectly obvious he’d been crying from his reddened eyes and Florence knew that tears could be a very private thing, especially for a man like Sam. They weren’t always an invitation or a plea for comfort. She’d had a boyfriend once, who, on the death of a close friend, had only ever cried in private, and the one time she’d attempted to comfort him, when she’d visited him unexpectedly, he’d pushed her roughly away and shouted at her to leave. Some people just weren’t comfortable with sharing their emotions like that. She sensed that Sam may well be one of them.
Should she reveal herself, or was it better just to pad away, to leave him to it? Drawing a deep breath, and given that the last time they’d been close, things had not ended well, she decided to exercise the unwritten rule of terraced houses, and pretend she hadn’t seen what she’d seen. If Sam needed her, he knew where she was, despite the way they’d parted. She was feeling the cold, as well, and really needed to get some sleep.
Reaching out a hand to touch the rough stone of the dividing wall between the two properties, which was as close as she felt she could get, she turned and headed back into the house.
40
Florence slept, eventually, after seeing Sam on the patio, and woke as it was getting light. She decided to venture out onto Willowbury High Street in search of fresh air, and, possibly, a cure for the insomnia. After all, Willowbury was the hub for all things herbal and alternative; perhaps one of the local shopkeepers could point her in the direction of a peaceful night’s sleep that wasn’t just pills from the doctor.
As she wandered up the street in the crisp morning air, she once again smiled to see all the different winter celebration customs being exemplified by the eclectic mix of shops. Willowbury was a hub for the spiritual, and all manner of believers and religions managed to rub along in the town without conflict. The town had an all-welcoming ethos, and at no time was that more evident than in the winter season. From every doorway hung bits of greenery – holly wreaths, evergreen fronds and bunches of mistletoe.
Passing the doors of The Travellers’ Rest, which was already open for coffee, she headed further up the High Street until she came to ComIncense, the health and well-being shop run by Holly Renton, cystic fibrosis campaigner and wife of the local member of parliament. Florence had heard all about Holly and Charlie’s wedding that past summer from Josie, who, despite her job as a teacher, was surprisingly enthusiastic about her local MP. In truth, Florence herself had only heard good things, and Charlie had visited the school a couple of times this term, keen to get involved in supporting it where he could.
She stepped through the doorway of ComIncense and was immediately hit by the pleasantly pungent scent of cinnamon and spices, emanating from an electric aroma humidifier on the counter at the back of the shop. It, combined with the decorations on the High Street itself, made Florence feel that Christmas wasn’t quite over, despite her tiredness.
‘Morning!’ a cheerful voice called from one side of the shop.
Florence stepped further in and smiled to see Holly standing on a set of wooden steps, tidying up the top shelf of her selection of well-being books.
‘Give me a shout if you need anything.’
‘I will,’ Florence replied, smiling back at Holly. She hadn’t met Holly Renton before, although she’d seen her at a distance. Florence was immediately struck by two things; firstly, her friendly nature, and secondly, that she was about as far away as it was possible to get from the stereotypical image of a politician’s wife. With her cascading dark red hair pulled up in a messy bun, her ripped jeans and patchwork waistcoat, she looked stylish but definitely a part of Willowbury rather than Westminster life.
Not quite knowing where to start on her hunt for a remedy for her insomnia, Florence decided just to browse; after all, there was plenty to see in ComIncense. The shop had been transformed for the Christmas season, with seasonally scented votive candles, bags of cinnamon and dried-orange-infused pot pourri and something rather amusing called ‘Festive Wellness Tea’ on the shelves. Many of these now had discounts, since the day itself had come and gone. Florence wondered if some of the tea might knock her out.
‘Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?’ Holly had come down off the steps and approached Florence. ‘Sometimes this place can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not sure what it is you need.’
Florence’s stomach flipped as the thought ran, unguarded, through her mind that what she really needed to sleep was to be wrapped in Sam’s arms. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. So she smiled back at Holly.
‘I’m having some trouble sleeping,’ she confessed. ‘I should be absolutely shattered each night, but I just keep staring at my bedroom ceiling until about two or three o’clock in the morning.’
‘Sounds like a real pain,’ Holly said. ‘Are you under a lot of pressure at work?’
‘I’m a teacher,’ Florence replied, ‘so pres
sure kind of goes with the territory.’
Holly grinned. ‘Rather you than me! Where do you teach?’
‘Willowbury Academy,’ Florence replied. ‘The new school just on the outskirts of the town.’
‘I know it,’ Holly replied. ‘My husband Charlie’s been there a few times to help out. He loves visiting it, as it’s so new, and seems to have been a real hit with the locals.’
‘It was a great investment,’ Florence replied. ‘Now the kids can really feel part of their town, instead of being bussed to Stavenham.’
‘I’m glad,’ Holly smiled. ‘I’ll tell him you approve.’
‘We’ve still got some teething troubles,’ continued Holly, thinking of the somewhat intermittent broadband and the issues with getting the public buses to run at a decent time so that the kids could get to school in time for registration. ‘But it’s a great asset to the area.’
‘He’s always happy to hear about local issues,’ Holly said. ‘Drop him an email or tweet him if you like.’
‘My ears are burning,’ a voice emanated from the doorway and Florence turned to see the tall, handsome figure of Charlie Thorpe himself crossing the threshold. Reaching his wife, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘All good stuff, I hope.’
Holly smiled. ‘You know me,’ she said. ‘I can’t be seen to be slagging you off in public!’
Charlie grinned back at her, and then at Florence. ‘My wife and I don’t always see eye to eye on policy,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
Florence shook his hand and also smiled. ‘And you. I was just going to say to Holly that I’ve seen you around school a couple of times. It’s nice to see the local MP taking an interest. In my old school, we only saw the guy who held the seat at election time!’