The final stretch before home is like walking into the sunset and it hits me that I haven’t gone outside to see it for weeks. And that realisation makes me feel removed from Arthur. He rarely missed one, liked to see the colours in the sky and say goodbye to the day. It was something we did together, when we could. He’d take hold of my hand and we’d watch it in silence.
Once, a couple of years ago in spring, when we’d seen the most spectacular display of pinks and reds and it had seemed ridiculous that there were people inside their houses, not watching, he’d said this: ‘I wouldn’t choose any other life, Mabel. You and me, and Olly, and the sunset. That’s me content.’
It’s later, after I’ve eaten my tea, when I remember another one, a sunset that looked like someone had painted it. Dot and Bill were walking ahead, on the way to the dance hall, and I saw him reach for her hand. Arthur was beside me, mostly quiet. And then he spoke.
‘Who could ever be fed up of a world like this one?’
I turned to look at him, and a few strands of hair got caught in my lipstick, obscuring my view. He gestured at the sky, swept his arm from side to side.
‘That view,’ he said. ‘I could look at it forever.’
I thought it was romantic. I put it in the mental list I was keeping, of reasons to be with Arthur Beaumont, if he asked me. And something came over me, something that was almost certainly affection but felt more like love.
‘Let’s,’ I said. It was quiet, but he heard it.
26
I’m ready half an hour before Reg is due to come, and by the time he knocks his sharp rat-a-tat on the door, I’ve packed and unpacked my handbag three times. I’ve got everything I need. All the usual things like my purse and keys, plus my spiral notebook and pen in case Cathy has information I need to write down. I open the door with my coat on and buttoned up, hoping that will make it clear I’m not inviting him to come inside.
‘Ah, Mabel, you’re all ready. Shall we, then?’
He holds out an arm and gestures to the shiny red Honda parked on the street. It’s one of those cars with ideas above its station, high up so it’s hard to get into and space in the back for lots of kids or sports equipment or suitcases. What’s Reg Bishop doing with a car like that? I don’t need his arm to guide me the ten or so steps to the car, so I don’t take it.
‘Where does she live?’ I ask when we’re both seated, seatbelt clicked into place. The car smells of synthetic air freshener, and I spot one of those tree things hanging from the rear-view mirror. Like his house, Reg’s car is unbearably warm, and I immediately wish I’d carried my coat rather than putting it on.
‘You know those old terraced houses behind the Red Lion?’ he asks. ‘She’s in one of them.’
‘On her own, or…’
‘Widowed,’ he says.
I can’t imagine Cathy Milton as an adult, let alone one old enough to be widowed. It’s funny, how you age and watch those around you aging, but if you come across someone you haven’t seen for decades, you struggle to imagine them having done the same.
It only takes us ten minutes or so to get to Overbury but I’m desperate to get out of the stuffy car, and it almost kills me to stay quiet through Reg’s three attempts to do a parallel park outside her house.
Cathy Milton is expecting us. I see her curtain twitch while the parking business is going on, and she opens the door before we’ve even had a chance to knock.
‘Catherine!’ Reg Bishop greets her like they’re old friends, rushing up the path to kiss her on both cheeks. She looks a little alarmed and I warm to her immediately.
‘Hello, Cathy,’ I say.
She wrinkles her nose a tiny bit. ‘I go by Catherine these days.’
As she ushers us inside and asks what we’d like to drink, I try to see the child I knew in this old woman’s face, and it is there, just about. But I wouldn’t have known her, if I’d met her on the street. Is it the same with me? Have I come so far from who I was that I’m barely recognisable? Cathy’s home is warm and welcoming, cluttered with photos and bits and pieces that look like they’re souvenirs from holidays or things young children might have made. Probably grandchildren. It smells faintly of baking, as if she whipped up a batch of scones after breakfast. If she did, she doesn’t offer us one. There’s a Christmas tree in the corner of the room and it’s full of mismatched, homemade decorations.
‘You have a lovely home here,’ Reg says, taking the mug she indicates from the tray she brings in with one hand and helping himself to a biscuit with the other.
‘Thank you, we’ve been here for over thirty years.’
I spot the ‘we’ and I’m sure Reg does too, but neither of us says anything. For a short while, there’s no sound in the room besides the sipping of tea. Or slurping, in Reg’s case.
‘So,’ I say, keen to get things moving in the right direction. ‘I believe Reg has told you I’m hoping to find Dot Brightmore, and he says you stayed in touch with the family for a long time.’
Cathy nods. ‘I did, yes. And it’s Dot Black.’
I feel a jolt of something. This is new information, and she seems sure of it, too.
‘Dot got married?’ I ask stupidly.
‘She did. In 1962. To a Thomas Black.’
‘And you’re sure about that?’
She looks a bit affronted. ‘I was at the wedding.’
I want to ask her to tell me all about it, what Dot’s dress and flowers were like, where it was held and, most importantly, about her groom – this Thomas Black. Whether he was kind, and good, and worthy of her. But I can’t see Reg being keen to sit through that.
‘Was she living in London, then, do you know?’
Cathy sits back and puts a finger to the side of her lips. Thinking.
‘The wedding was near here. Trenton. But I think they were living in London, yes.’
Dot got married in Trenton, five miles from here, and I didn’t know about it. Didn’t get an invitation. It’s so much to take in.
‘Do you know whether she’s still alive?’ I ask.
Because at the heart of it, that’s what I need to know. Is this entire search, which I’ve put so much into, and which has brought me joy and companionship and disappointment, in vain? Are we looking for a woman who’s been buried or cremated? I wince at the thought. And that’s when I realise that I don’t hold a grudge against her for not replying to my letters, or for not inviting me to her wedding. She would have had her reasons. I knew Dot. Really knew her. She wasn’t the type to just turn away from a friendship without looking back.
Cathy shakes her head. ‘I don’t, I’m afraid. You see, it was my mother and her mother who were close. Always in and out of each other’s houses, they were. After Dot left, the Brightmores lived in that house for another twenty years. But then they retired, Dot’s parents, and they went to live near the sea. Somewhere in Hampshire. His lifelong dream, apparently. They got a boat. And still, our mothers kept in touch. My parents went down there to see them a handful of times, and they came back for visits, too. I used to always hear about what Dot and her brother Charles were up to. But then my mother took ill and died, quite quickly, and I think I heard that Dot’s mother died fairly soon after that. The men didn’t keep up with one another – they don’t, do they? So that was that.’