‘I like that cardi,’ Julie says. ‘Lovely shade.’
I give her a smile but it’s half-hearted.
‘Have you changed your mind?’ she asks.
‘No.’ I’m clear on this. If I back out, I’ll never do it. ‘What time is Patricia getting here?’
Julie shakes her arm until her watch slips out from under her coat. ‘Any minute now.’
‘Well then, come in. I was just sorting out my handbag.’
It’s not until Patricia’s arrived and Julie’s driven the three of us to the station that she brings up her date. ‘Last night,’ she says. ‘Bloody awful, it was. He looked so normal in his photos.’
‘What was wrong with him?’ Patricia asks.
‘He was a lunatic. Claimed he couldn’t be tied down, that he was dating lots of women and if I couldn’t handle that, he wasn’t the man for me.’
We’re on the platform, on a bench.
‘Sounds like you’re well out of that,’ Patricia says. ‘How did you leave it?’
‘I walked out,’ Julie says. ‘And he ran after me, tried to get me to pay him back for the drink he’d bought me!’
They both burst out laughing and I try a smile, but my heart’s not in it.
‘Are you all right, Mabel?’ Julie asks when she’s got her breath back.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You’re just a bit quiet, that’s all.’
‘Well, it’s a long time since I went anywhere further than Overbury.’
‘Big day,’ Patricia says.
She must think I’m mad. She uprooted her life and moved to a different continent, and here I am worrying about going on a forty-five-minute train journey. I watch the pigeons pecking at crumbs on the platform edge, the way they fight and push at one another. The way they go for what they want, no questions asked.
‘Tell me the route again,’ I say.
Julie takes her telephone out of her pocket and consults it. ‘We get into Waterloo, then we take the Jubilee Line to Green Park, then the Piccadilly Line to Hammersmith. The address is a ten-minute walk from there, so we’ll see how we’re feeling at that stage, and if we want to, we can get a taxi.’
It’s kind of her to pretend it’s about how all of us are feeling and not just whether I’m too tired for the walk. The train pulls in, and Julie stands and offers me her arm. Once we’re on board and we’ve found a table to sit around, she fixes me with one of her serious looks.
‘We can turn around and go home at any point,’ she says.
Patricia nods her agreement.
‘It’s all up to you, Mabel. Just keep us informed. This is your day. We’re just along for the ride.’
I feel tears prick at my eyes. Because they know I’m scared and they’re offering me a way out. It would be so easy to take it. But I won’t. I look out of the window at the edge of our town rushing past and I feel something pressing against my chest wall. It’s hope, I realise. It’s anticipation.
I don’t say much on the train journey. Julie and Patricia talk some more about Julie’s date and the man from Patricia’s dance class who always stops at the end to chat but hasn’t got the nerve up to ask her out yet. I just look out of the window, letting the chatter wash over me, and immerse myself in memories of other train journeys. After our wedding, we had a few days in Christchurch, and Arthur didn’t let go of my hand the entire time we were on the train. It was as if he couldn’t believe he’d got me and was frightened to let me go. I wanted to read my book, but it seemed rude when he was content for us to spend the entire journey gazing into one another’s eyes. I remember feeling in my gut that I’d done the wrong thing, but excusing myself because of how happy he seemed. As if his happiness would cancel out my misgivings.
Waterloo’s mayhem, like it always was. Years ago, I would have just plunged into the crowds. But not now. We wait until almost everyone’s got off the train so we don’t have to fight to walk along the platform and through the ticket barriers. The station smells like sweat and cooked meat and the noise is deafening. Julie does a great job of ushering us to where we need to be without rushing me. If I was trying to do this on my own, which I never would, I’d have got lost a dozen times just trying to find the right tube line. Down underground, waiting for a train, I’m hot in my big coat, but I don’t want to go to the trouble of taking it off. A train screeches into position and I’m relieved to see it’s fairly empty. We manage to get seats, three in a row.
‘Do you come to London very much?’ I ask them.
‘When I first moved over from the States, I lived and worked in London, but then I had Sarah and moved out,’ Patricia says.
‘What sort of work did you do?’ Julie asks.
‘I was a model.’
‘Hold that thought,’ Julie says, one finger in the air. ‘Time to change.’
We make the change, me just following their lead because the signs and the noise are confusing me.
‘A model,’ Julie says, once we’re sat down again.
I didn’t realise Julie didn’t know this. It does make perfect sense, her having been a model. At seventy, Patricia still has incredible cheekbones and those long, long legs. She blushes and nods.
‘Are we talking Littlewoods catalogue or catwalk shows?’ Julie asks.
‘A bit of everything, really. But a lot of shows, for a while.’
Julie’s told me that Patricia lives in one of the biggest houses on that new estate, and I could tell she was curious about where she’d got the money from, having been a single mum for most of her life. Now it’s starting to make sense.
‘Did you meet a lot of celebrities?’ Julie asks.
Patricia rolls her eyes. ‘Tons. Most of them were awful.’
‘And then you gave it all up, to have Sarah?’
Patricia looks away, above the heads of the people opposite at the map, and she pretends she’s checking our route, how many stops we have to go, but I can see she’s gathering herself.
‘I met someone, started seeing him, and found out I was having Sarah. But then it turned out he didn’t want to know. And he was married.’
‘What a bastard,’ Julie says. ‘These men, they’re all the same. Your Arthur excluded, Mabel.’
Patricia shrugs. ‘I wanted to have her, wanted to be a mum. So I took the money I’d made and set us up in Broughton, started a new life.’
It’s brave, I think. She’s brave. Going it alone with no family around her.
‘Did you think about going home?’ I ask. ‘To America, I mean.’
‘I did, but I wasn’t all that close to my parents, and they didn’t approve of me moving here in the first place. I didn’t want to go home, pregnant and asking for help. I didn’t want to give them that opportunity to say they were right all along.’
Is that stubborn, I wonder, or stupid? Either way, she’s still brave.
‘So who was he, the father?’ Julie asks. ‘Was he famous?’
Patty goes a bit red and doesn’t answer, so it’s clear that he was. But then I forget all about it because we’re at our stop, at Hammersmith, and it’s me who notices this time, and Patricia takes my arm and laughs and says we might have ended up at Heathrow if it had been left up to her, what with her getting lost in the past, and then we’re out in the fresh air, on the street, and we’ve done it, this journey I’ve been fearing.