‘Now,’ Julie says, finding us a bench to sit on while we make our plan. ‘How are you feeling, Mabel? Remember we’ve got the journey home to do, too. I don’t want you to do too much.’
I feel fine. I feel alive and excited and scared, too, but not tired. I think of my armchair, of Olly wandering the rooms of our little house on his own, of how easy it would have been to stay there and not do this. Of how pleased I am, that I did. Still, I’d hate to overdo it and curse myself. ‘Let’s get a taxi,’ I say. ‘I’ll pay.’
I took cash out at the supermarket yesterday especially for this. Erin had seen me counting out the notes and asked whether I was off to a casino.
‘Nonsense,’ Patricia says.
And I think about her modelling, strutting down a catwalk, having lots of money now because she was beautiful and tall. It’s a funny old world.
Julie hails a cab and we get in, give the driver the address. He nods, says nothing, and we’re there in a matter of minutes, back out on the street, after a brief argument over who was paying, which I managed to win.
We stand on the street, looking at the building. It’s a shop, like Kirsty said. There’s a row of them. A newsagent, a betting shop, a charity shop. And the one with the address written in my old book is a cake shop, with big buns and pastries in the window. I look up to the flat above, and the frontage is pebble-dashed and there are two small windows with white paint flaking off them. Was she here, Dot? Did she stand here, and go through that door and up some hidden stairs? Did she work in the shop? And was it even a cake shop, then?
‘Are we going in?’ Julie asks, and I realise I’ve gone off into my own world, there on the street. People are bustling past. And Julie is holding my arm, and her voice is gentle, and I feel lucky to have her.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course we’re going in. We didn’t come all this way just to stand on the street outside, did we?’
A little bell sounds when we go through the door and a man behind the counter looks up from his telephone. The shop is otherwise empty. He’s in his thirties, this man, and he looks like he might have Mediterranean heritage. Spanish, possibly.
‘What can I get you?’ he asks, and his voice is all London.
‘Oh, we’re not here for cake,’ Patricia says, and then Julie says, ‘Speak for yourself,’ and we all laugh, but the man doesn’t.
‘Is there still a flat above this shop?’ Patricia asks.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Well, I am. My friend Mabel, here, is trying to track down a very old friend. And we believe she used to live in the flat upstairs from 1961.’
He looks at us, no expression.
‘So we wondered,’ Patricia goes on, ‘whether you know anything about previous owners.’
The bell rings again and we all turn to see a pretty young woman coming into the shop.
‘What can I get you?’ the man asks.
‘Hold on, you were in the middle of talking to us!’ Julie says.
‘Lady, this is a shop, and this,’ he gestures at the young woman, whose face goes pink, ‘is a customer. Customers come first.’
Even Julie doesn’t have anything to say to that.
The woman’s doing a cake run for her office and spends ages choosing different doughnuts and eclairs, and it makes me smile because she’s so slim she looks like she’s never eaten a cake in her life. I go over to the wall, lean back against it. It smells sweet in here, like icing sugar. I remember Dot and me making a cake once, for her mother’s birthday, the fine mist of icing sugar that hung in the air, that we tried to catch on our tongues.
‘Do you need to sit down?’ Julie asks. She looks concerned, her brow furrowed.
‘You look older when you do that,’ I say.
She laughs.
‘That’s better. I’m fine, just needed to lean for a minute.’
When the woman is gone, Julie steps up to the counter. ‘Well? Can you help us at all?’
‘Look, lady, I took this place over three years ago. It was a cake shop then. Before that, I haven’t got a clue. I wasn’t even born in 1961. Hell, my mother wasn’t even born in 1961!’
‘And the flat?’ Julie asks. I admire her persistence.
‘Flat comes with the shop. I live up there. It’s a bit of a shithole, to be honest. Might not have been back then, of course.’
‘Thank you,’ Julie says. ‘Shall we choose a cake, ladies?’
There’s a slight wobble to her voice and I see that it’s come to mean something to her, this search. That it’s become important. I opt for a custard slice and Julie and Patricia have jam doughnuts, and we find a park with a bench nearby to eat them.
‘Shame,’ Patricia says. ‘And he wasn’t exactly helpful, was he?’
‘It’s such a long time,’ I say. ‘It’s so many years. A lifetime, almost.’
‘Maybe we should have just phoned, rather than coming all this way,’ Julie says.
Telephone. Why didn’t I think of that?
‘I just had this idea,’ she goes on, ‘that she might still be here. Not running the shop, but tucked away upstairs, with maybe a daughter or granddaughter behind the counter. Stupid, I suppose.’
But it doesn’t sound stupid to me. It doesn’t sound stupid at all. I think a tiny part of me had imagined the same.
18
On the train home, I decide to bring up something I’ve been mulling over. ‘Do you think Kirsty’s happy?’ I ask.
I may not have been tired earlier, but I am now. I feel like I could curl up and sleep here, on this grubby, carpeted seat, with the crumpled up crisp packets and squashed drinks bottles kicked into corners, the windows smudgy and flecked with dirt. The atmosphere is different on this journey home, because of the hope being sucked out of us, I suppose.
‘Happy?’ Patricia asks. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This Ben of hers, is he good to her? I just get this sense from her that something isn’t right.’
Patricia sits back, thinks about it.
‘Do you know, I’ve never met him properly. They’re just next door but he’s always working. I’ve heard him, in the garden, and I’ve seen him getting into his flashy car and zooming off, but we’ve never been introduced. I’ve never felt worried about her, though. And I spend a fair bit of time with her.’
Perhaps that’s not it, the relationship thing. What else could it be? I remember what she said to me when we were talking about Dot, about everybody having their secrets and not being quite who you think they are. It’s a puzzle, but I’m determined to piece it together.
Julie’s on her telephone, scrolling through potential men for her next date.
‘What about this one?’ she asks, turning the telephone around.
The photo is of a middle-aged man, his hair greying, his face lined. There’s no sparkle about him, nothing special.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not him.’
‘You seem very sure,’ Julie says, and she sounds a bit offended. ‘Do you know him or something?’
‘No, I just don’t think he’s right, that’s all. I think you’d be better off finding out when that husband of yours is going out with his friends and then getting dolled up and accidentally on purpose running into him. He’ll see how good you look and how well you’re getting on without him and hey presto, he’ll be back.’