I take a step back and a memory flashes up. Bill, up in a tree, wobbling the branch he was sitting on to scare me. Waving. Was Arthur with him? Probably. They were thick as thieves for years. And yes, if I look again, beyond Bill, I can see him there, laughing and twisting side to side to keep his balance. I’ll go across the graveyard to his plot, let him know I’m thinking about him.
It takes me a few minutes to find it. The headstone hasn’t gone up yet.
‘I found the note you left,’ I say. ‘The list. I think you want me to find Dot. That’s what I’m going to try to do, anyway. I’m not sure why you’d want that, but maybe it will become clear as I’m doing it. I don’t know. I wish you’d stayed around long enough to tell me, Arthur. I wish you’d stayed.’
I know I’ll break down if I stay any longer, so I blow him a kiss and turn away, walk home without looking back. As I walk, I indulge myself in a memory. Arthur and me, somewhere in our sixties, sitting on our bench watching the sun set on a bitter, winter day like this one. Must have been a weekend. We had mugs of tea by our feet, and the steam was mingling with the puffs of air that came out when we spoke.
‘Christmas is coming,’ he said. ‘Anything you’d like?’
There were things I wanted. But nothing I could reveal to him.
‘I don’t need anything.’
‘It’s not a case of need, is it, when it comes to Christmas? We could go to Overbury, choose you some new earrings or a dress.’
‘What about you?’ I asked.
He paused for a little while, and in the space, I listed in my head the things I knew he wanted, or had wanted. A son, a daughter. A wife who didn’t shrink away from his touch.
‘I wouldn’t mind a new radio for the shed,’ he said.
Since he’d retired, he’d started spending a fair bit of time out there, fixing things. The neighbours had found out about it, somehow, and people often brought him things to glue and mend. He seemed to enjoy it.
‘A radio,’ I repeated.
And I wondered, was marriage always like this, with so many truths hidden beneath the conversation you were having? So much hiding, and pretending.
I’m almost home when I hear a shriek and look up to see a beautiful young woman with a buggy standing in front of me, her hands covering her mouth. I notice her nails, navy blue and perfectly shaped. She looks like she’s stepped out of an advert, all flawless skin and designer handbag.
‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Your dog!’ she says.
I look down at Olly, who looks back up at me, and we’re each as bemused as the other.
‘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.