Homecoming

She lived in jeans and cardigans, didn’t wear make-up or even bother to brush her hair: it was so short, it didn’t need brushing. She ran her fingers through it and it settled. She was still astonished every time she looked in the mirror to find this dark-haired, wary stranger looking back at her. But the glory of her new look was that it gave her some privacy.

In London, she was used to paparazzi following her every move at film premieres and parties. After her hit Britflick, they’d trailed her for a few weeks, selling their pictures of her to the celebrity-watching magazines. She’d made an effort to dress up, had even enjoyed it.

‘You mean they papped you buying coffee in the local shop?’ Pippa had said the first time this strange phenomenon had occurred and Megan phoned immediately phoned her to report.

‘Yes,’ said Megan proudly. ‘I mean, I know it’s intrusive, but wow!’

‘What were you wearing? Not your pyjamas, please.’

‘No,’ said Megan, laughing. ‘I’m wearing my skinny jeans, a cream T-shirt with chiffon sleeves, that Vuitton scarf everyone wants – they sent it to me! – and a beret with a flower brooch on it.’

‘All that to go round the shop to get a latte?’

‘I made an effort, Pippa,’ Megan said, suddenly irritated. ‘That’s why they papped me. I’m not Julia Roberts, you know. I’m only good if I look good. I dressed up on purpose.’

‘Oh.’

Megan remembered that conversation now and felt a small dart of unease. She’d been angry at her sister for not understanding her world. A world where getting papped mattered; it meant you were somebody. Now she saw the downside of that world. She missed what she had once had. Here, apart from Nora, nobody thought Megan was anybody. That was hard.

Instead of her old glamorous life, her days involved coffee, smoking, walking the dogs, more coffee in Titania’s Palace if she could face being out in public, and then staying home watching daytime TV. Hiding. It was soul destroying.

‘Come on, walkies over,’ she shouted crossly at the dogs.

From the distance, they quivered at this new, tough Megan, and stayed away.

Oh, let them run on for a minute longer, she decided.

If anyone had changed it wasn’t her, it was Pippa. She’d once understood Megan’s life. She’d gone to the movie parties, she’d hung round with Megan’s friends. And where was she now? Not holed up with Megan, sympathising about what had happened. No, she was at home with her kids, slowly sliding on to the side of the moral police.

She’d only rung twice since Megan had come to Golden Square. That said something, didn’t it?

Nothing had happened in the few weeks since she’d come to Golden Square. Nothing had changed in her life, except that the trees in the small square were showing new growth, and early daffodils were starting to come out. She was just waiting in limbo. It was horrible.

A small, fat brown dog of indeterminate parentage lollopped along to greet Cici and Leonardo. Fed up, and just to do something, anything, Megan got off the bench and walked through the square to the play area, which was cordoned off from doggy poo by a low fence. Two young women with toddlers in pushchairs had just arrived and were starting the complicated business of unhooking the children. It seemed to take ages, this clip and that clip. Megan had watched Pippa do it with Kim when she’d been younger, but she’d always found it too hard. She’d put Kim into the pushchair, but someone else had to fasten the harness.

‘She’ll fall out if I do it,’ Megan said.

‘Just do it,’ Pippa had said once, then sighed furiously and rushed over to do it herself. Megan had been upset. Pippa never used to speak to her like that, but instead of saying sorry, her sister concentrated on her daughter. Like it was some strange motherly ritual, this pushchair thing. Settle Kim’s solid little body in properly, manoeuvre her arms through the straps, click them up, all the time talking in a soft, soothing voice.

Megan hadn’t wanted to speak, she was too hurt, but all the same she found herself mumbling, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just no good at that sort of thing.’

Pippa hadn’t even turned round. ‘You’d be good at that sort of thing if you wanted to be,’ she’d said shortly.

Megan had gone home soon afterwards. She couldn’t bear cross words or confrontation. Better to leave. She’d hopped in her sporty little MX5 and driven off, music blaring.

She’d never tried to do anything much with Kim after that, or with Toby when he came along. Megan was no good with children: she was like her mother. Ready to please men, not so good with kids.

One of the children in the playground reminded her of Kim as a squirming toddler. Same dark hair, same solid little body. Kim had grown taller now, and was all legs and skinny arms, but once she’d been a sturdy little person like this child.

The woman extracted her daughter from the pushchair, gave her a kiss, then set her down to toddle off to the sandpit.

Megan burst into tears. She’d never felt more lonely in her whole life.

At the end of January, St Matilda’s third and sixth-year students sat mock exams in preparation for the real state exams in June. In a cruel twist of fate, the mock exams coincided with a twoday rock festival and a severe strain of flu.

‘I’d edit ten books before I’d do exams again,’ said Nicky with feeling. ‘Those poor girls. And they’re missing the festival. If I was doing my exams, I think I’d bunk off to go to the festival. You need time out, right?’

‘Just as well you’re not a teacher,’ said Connie, shocked. ‘Nothing should make you miss your mocks.’

But the flu had other plans for her. On the morning the exams were due to start, Connie couldn’t go in to the school to cheer on her girls as she was stuck in bed feeling violently ill. Her whole head ached, her eyes couldn’t bear any light at all and the very notion of food made her want to retch.

For three days, she had to lie in bed motionless.

‘Apparently, it’s only flu if it’s raining fifty euro notes down outside and you’re too sick to run out and pick them up,’ Nicky said to her sister, from the sanctity of the doorway, on Connie’s fourth day off work.

‘It’s flu,’ moaned Connie, who couldn’t have moved even if entire gold ingots were raining down outside. Was that in the Bible? A plague of gold ingots? Or was she delirious and bewildered after spending too much time in a Catholic girls’ school?

Sister Lavinia had lots of mad Bible stories, one for every occasion, and Connie often got them mixed up. There was one about foolish virgins and lamps, and she still couldn’t recall the moral of the story.

‘Do you want me to get you anything before I go to work?’ Nicky said.

Connie shook her head.

‘OK, see you later. And phone if you feel really bad or something. I could come home, you know…’

Connie shook her head again. She was incapable of speech.

She rolled over in the bed, pulled the duvet up to cover her head and went back to sleep.

Miraculously, she woke at noon feeling strangely recovered. Still weak, after three and a half days in bed and no food apart from flat lemonade and toast, but better.

Cautiously, she sat up. Still better.

And suddenly, she was ravenously hungry. She was shaky on her feet when she made it into the kitchen to ransack the fridge. Without her to fill it, the fridge was a wasteland of old yogurts, a few slices of ham, and some milk. There was only one slice of bread left, no cheese, and worse, no chocolate.

She quarter-filled a bowl with the remains of a box of cereal and ate in front of the telly. She was still hungry but there was literally nothing else to eat, except things like cans of beans or soup. Connie longed for a toasted cheese sandwich followed by something sweet.

Titania’s Palace, she decided; she’d go there.

She brushed her teeth and her hair, pulled on her red fleece and a coat, and stepped out into the bitter January air to cross the square. She looked like hell on earth, but who’d be looking at her?

Megan liked the fact that the staff in Titania’s Palace were all friendly but not nosy. Nobody tried to engage her in conversation. They were welcoming, but perfectly happy to let her sit at a window table with her Americano with its extra shot of espresso. She could pretend to look out the window and stare off into the middle distance, lost in her own world.

They played cool music too, generally female torch singers from the 1930s and 40s. If Titania’s Palace was a person, she’d be a throaty, comforting lady with sex appeal, a hugehearted person who was utterly comfortable in her own skin.

Megan wondered if there was an actual Titania? The motherly woman who ran the place was called Rae, so perhaps she’d just liked the name.

Megan had watched Rae a few times when she’d been there and it was obvious why the place was such a success with her running it. She appeared to know everyone, and had a smile and a word for them all. It wasn’t like a coffee shop: it was like being welcomed into someone’s house.

Megan had seen Patsy from the hair salon in there too. Patsy’s hair was a darker, more vibrant red this week. She had a way of nodding hello that said she’d totally understand if you wanted to be alone, but she was there, if you felt like talking.

Rae and Patsy weren’t there today, but the place was jammed with the lunchtime crowd. Megan kept her baseball hat low on her head, and snagged a two-seater window table when a couple of people got up to leave.

She put their dishes on one side of the small table, and settled herself on the other side.

Conversations flowed all around her.

‘…She’s useless around the office. Can’t type for peanuts because she has gel nails. The filing system’s shot to hell, and when the boss comes back from his holidays, who’s going to be to blame? Not her, oh no. She’ll say it’s all my fault…’

‘…three stone. Imagine losing that much weight! They deliver food to your door and you can only eat that. It’s expensive, she told me, but it’s worth it…’

‘…I don’t know what to buy him. Would cufflinks be special enough? I want it to be special…’

The gentle ebb and flow of conversation was interrupted by a woman’s voice: ‘Do you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’

A tall woman with a cloud of beautiful dark brown hair stood at the other seat. She was muffled up in a big coat and held a tray bearing a toasted sandwich, a frothy coffee and one of Titania’s enormous lemon-and-poppyseed muffins.

In London, Megan would have said no. Here, things were different.

‘Of course,’ she said, and began to move the previous occupants’ dishes into the middle of the table.

‘Normally, I wouldn’t interrupt, but I can’t stand at the counter. I need to sit. I’ve just had flu,’ the woman explained. ‘It’s OK,’ she added quickly, ‘I’m not toxic any more. I met the doctor at the counter and he said not to cough my guts up on to anyone, but I should be fine. I love GPs, don’t you? They’re so laid back. Unless your leg is hanging off, they tell you to take an aspirin and call in the morning. Wouldn’t you love to be that relaxed?’

‘Er…yeah,’ said Megan.

She’d thought she was giving a seat to another solitary diner. It appeared she’d said yes to a companion.

The woman wriggled out of her ginormous coat. She was late thirties, Megan reckoned, and from her clothes to her unpainted nails, was clearly the very opposite of high maintenance. Even though her round face was shiny and make-up free, there was a wonderful vitality to her. And she had such smiling brown eyes.

Megan used to be impressed by high-achieving thinness and Botox undetectable to all but the most knowing eye. Nowadays, she found she liked people who smiled at her without recognition.

‘You’re probably relaxed anyhow,’ the woman went on, unloading her tray. ‘Young people are. My sister’s always telling me that my generation are going to drop dead with clogged arteries by the time we’re fifty. It’s all the worry, all the stress.’

She sliced open her sandwich and gazed at it happily.

‘Buddhism’s very good for stress, they say. I’ve always liked the sound of Buddhism,’ Connie went on. ‘But there’s a lot of work to it. If only you could get it inserted or something. A painless operation and you’d wake up with inner peace and the ability to remember a mantra.’

Megan laughed.

Connie bit into her sandwich and moaned in pleasure. ‘Bliss, I love these.’

She was glad she’d chosen to sit here. She’d seen the pretty dark-haired girl walking those dogs and the poor thing always looked so lonely. Besides, Connie hadn’t felt up to talking for three days, and now she wanted human company.

There was silence as Connie ate and Megan decided it would seem rude if she now stared out the window again. The conversational tennis ball was in her court. She’d almost forgotten how to do idle chitchat.

‘Do you live around here?’ she asked finally.

‘Across the square,’ Connie said. ‘With my sister, in the first-floor flat of that pale green house.’

Megan peered through the trees. ‘Pretty,’ she said. ‘I live over there with my aunt. The redbrick one on the end. I’m staying with her for a while,’ she added.

‘The chiropodist,’ exclaimed Connie delightedly. ‘I’d love to see her professionally, but my feet are terrible. You’d need an industrial sander to get close to them and I’d be so embarrassed. It’s like pedicures. I’ve never had one.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Megan, who’d had pedicures in some of the world’s most glamorous spas and had never worried for so much as a second as to the state of her toes.

‘You’re not a chiropodist too, are you? I didn’t mean that you’d use industrial sanders, it’s just that, for hard skin…’

Megan shook her head. ‘Lord, no. I’m not a chiropodist. Can’t stand feet.’

‘I had someone massage my feet a few times,’ Connie said thoughtfully. Her eyes glazed over and Megan could swear she saw tears appearing.

Thinking of Keith massaging her feet always made Connie think of pregnant women. ‘Put your feet up, love,’ the prospective daddy would say, gently massaging his pregnant partner’s feet. The idea always made her cry. She even hated looking at foot spas.

‘Goodness, that old flu makes you weepy at the oddest things,’ Connie said brightly.

But Megan, who never normally noticed other people’s pain, had the strangest sense of seeing through the fake chirpiness. Suddenly, she felt a sense of kinship with this woman. She’d been hurt too. The man who’d massaged her feet was in the past, there was no doubt about it. Megan wasn’t foolish to have had her heart broken: it happened to other women too.

In her old life, Megan would have ignored the glint of tears on another woman. In her experience, other women generally ignored her tears. But that was the old life. The old Megan.

Impulsively, she reached out a hand. ‘I’m Megan Flynn,’ she said.

‘Connie O’Callaghan,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know what came over me. Must be the flu,’ she said, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. ‘It was years ago. The feet-massaging thing.’

‘I’m not sure that time matters much when your heart is broken,’ Megan reflected.

‘Yes!’ said Connie. ‘You’re right. Nobody else agrees with me. They all think there’s a statute of limitations on love, but there isn’t.’

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