The Last List of Mabel Beaumont(19)

‘This is Olly,’ I say, not sure what else to do.

‘Olly!’ She crouches down, her loose, blonde curls swinging. ‘Ha! Olly the Collie?’

‘My late husband’s little joke. Oh, but I’d be careful, he’s a bit…’

But it’s too late, because she’s tickling him under the chin, which he has never once allowed me to do, and he’s tilting his head back to let her. It’s as if he likes her. The little traitor.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ she says, standing up again. ‘I’m Kirsty.’

‘Mabel.’

‘Hi, Mabel. And this…’ She points to the buggy, and I see that there’s a sleeping baby inside. ‘This is Dotty.’

‘Oh, I…’

She looks at me with concern. ‘Are you all right, Mabel?’

‘Perfectly, it’s just…’

‘What?’

‘I have a friend, I mean, I had a friend with that name. Well, Dot. Dorothy.’

‘Oh, that’s nice!’ She claps her hands together. ‘Unless, oh, you said “had”, didn’t you? I’m so sorry you lost your friend.’

‘No, it’s, I mean, I did lose her, but she didn’t die, at least not that I know of. And I’m going to find her again.’

I stop and realise she must think I’m a madwoman, telling her half my life story in the middle of the street like this. But her expression is kind. ‘I’d better get going again, she tends to wake up if I stop, which isn’t ideal. But it was so nice to meet you, Mabel. And you, Olly. I hope you find your friend.’

She reaches down again and strokes his back and he seems delighted. And then she’s gone.

‘What was all that about?’ I ask him, once she’s out of earshot.

When I get in, Arthur’s standing against the bookshelf in the front room. I put a hand to my chest, blink rapidly, but he’s there, really there.

‘Arthur?’

He doesn’t reply, just leans. And then a moment later, he’s gone, and I can’t be sure he was ever there at all.





10





There was this segment I saw on Top of the Morning, about people who have a tendency to tell you the intimate details of their lives within minutes of meeting you. Oversharers, they’re called. Michael Silver was on, looking all serious like they were talking about cancer, his hand on his chin, and he was talking to a psychologist who’d written a book about this phenomenon, why people are much more likely to overshare now than in the past. The psychologist was a woman in her forties, with round glasses and a frumpy suit. Half my age, and all these qualifications. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Anyway, Michael Silver said he’d known a few oversharers and told this story about a friend of his second wife’s who came round to dinner and talked endlessly about her hysterectomy and her history of depression, and a colleague he once had who liked to go into great detail about his bedroom antics. Michael Silver put his hands up in the air and mimed quotation marks when he said ‘bedroom antics’. It’s a daytime show, after all.

It sounded to me like neither of those people had anything on Julie. By the end of the first week, I knew all about this Martin she’d been married to for over twenty years and how he just decided one day he wasn’t happy and that was that. And he swore blind there was no one else and a week later she ran into him in the supermarket – buying muesli, of all things, when he was a Crunchy Nuts man through and through – and followed him to that new estate near Overbury and saw him go into a house and straight into the arms of a tall redhead called Estelle.

I asked how she knew the redhead was called Estelle, and she said, ‘Well, that’s another story.’ And then she launched into it before I could say whether I wanted to hear it or not. She followed this woman, then, to the community centre in Overbury, and went in after her with no idea what she was volunteering herself for, and it was a ballroom dancing class. Heard the teacher calling her Estelle. When Estelle saw her boyfriend’s ex-wife walk in, she had a sudden bout of queasiness and had to leave. She hasn’t been back since.

‘But that’s how I met Patty,’ Julie says today.

She always picks up where she left off, like she’s been on pause since her last visit.

‘At the dancing class?’

‘Yes, she’s the teacher.’

‘What sort of a name is Patty? Sounds American.’

‘She is American.’

‘Well.’

‘Well what?’

I don’t know what to say to that, because ‘well’ is something I fall back on when I don’t know what else to say. I give her a little shrug. Thankfully, she moves on. She’s easy that way. Doesn’t pick you up on things you get wrong or keep asking what you meant.

‘So what’s she got that you haven’t? This Estelle?’

Julie looks wistful for a minute. ‘She’s a decade younger and a couple of stone lighter, for a start.’

This obsession with youth, it’s always riled me. A woman Julie’s age, she’s seen things, done things. She knows what she wants and has something to say.

‘I think he’s a fool,’ I say, and she thanks me and covers my hand with hers, which feels a bit too intimate, so I pull away. She’s growing on me, though, I have to say. That first day, I didn’t think we’d last the week.