‘I’ve never eaten Chinese food,’ I say, gathering myself and going back into the room where she’s still sitting at the dining table.
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘No egg fried rice?’
‘No.’
‘No sweet and sour chicken?’
‘That sounds awful.’
She’s already fiddling with her telephone. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll order a feast. You should try everything. You won’t regret it.’
Those are the words that stay with me, even after we’ve eaten until we’re completely stuffed, and discovered that I do, in fact, like Chinese food, after we’ve played classic songs from my youth and danced stiffly around the front room, the way we did in Patty’s class.
You should try everything.
You won’t regret it.
It’s so different from the way I’ve lived my life. But I’m starting to think it’s right.
33
I wake from a fitful sleep with my heart thudding and my brain trying to grasp something before it slips away. That day, that last day with Arthur, at the market. Pies, fruit. What was it? And then it hits me. Joan Jenkins. Or, what was it she said her married name was? Joan Gardner, Joan Garner? Joan Garnett. That’s it. When we were talking about her afterwards, Arthur said she knew Dot, didn’t he? I’m certain he did. I could go back to Overbury, try to find her, see if they stayed in touch.
Just over an hour later, I’m waiting for the bus. It’s one of those bitterly cold February days, and I’m wrapped up with a hat and scarf and gloves and still I have to keep my head down to protect my face from the wind. It’s market day again, so I’m just going to retrace our steps and hope for the best. I’ve gone back over the conversation she and Arthur had a hundred times, trying to remember whether she said anything specific about where she lived, but there’s nothing. I tuned out, didn’t I? I had no idea that it would come to be important. When the bus pulls up, it splashes puddle water on my tights, and I’m almost ready to call it a day and go home, but I think of Dot, how she used to try to turn situations on their head by dancing in the rain or being overly nice to someone awful, and I grit my teeth and get on.
If I’d told Julie I was doing this, she’d have offered to come along. I thought about it. But there’s something quite nice about only me knowing, for now. I imagine telling her I’ve cracked it, that I’ve got an address or a telephone number for Dot. She would grab me by the wrists and dance me around the front room. And then what? I haven’t dared to think beyond this bit, to think about going there, to where Dot lives, or talking to her on the telephone. What if she doesn’t want to see me? What if those years we spent together weren’t as important to her as they were to me, and I’m just one of a long list of people she’s no longer in touch with? What if she turns me away, closes the door, slams down the telephone? Because sixty-two years is a long time, by anyone’s reckoning. Both of us have lived a whole life in those years, and we might not fit together the way we once did.
It’s a risk, a gamble. But isn’t everything? Isn’t marriage, and career, and friendship? Isn’t love? Isn’t getting on a bus, on a sharply cold late winter day, to look for a woman who might have known a girl who was once your best friend?
‘Overbury town centre,’ the driver calls, and I gather up my bag and get up, careful not to trip. A fall at this stage, when no one knows where I am, would be a disaster.
‘Thank you,’ I say, stepping off.
He pulls away, splashing my tights again.
The streets are crowded. Were they this crowded last time? Funny how things seemed different when I had Arthur at my side, his arm threaded through mine if I needed it. Now, I’m frightened. Of being knocked or having my bag taken or tripping. But I’m more frightened of dying without finding Dot, I realise, so I press on.
There’s an aroma of sugar coming from a van selling hot doughnuts and candy floss, and it takes me back to the time we went to the fair. Mum was dead against it, said there’d be all sorts there and it wasn’t safe, but Bill talked her round. He always knew what to say to make her change her mind.
Girls at work had been saying the man who took your money for the waltzer and started them going was nice looking. Said that if he liked the look of you, he’d reach out when your carriage came past and spin it a little faster. But rides made me sick, always had. So I stood at the side and watched Bill and Dot and Arthur clamber into the carriage, Bill and Dot’s knees touching. He was nice looking, the waltzer man. He watched me watching them, and asked if I was spoken for, and I didn’t know what the answer was.
‘Seems to me like those two are a couple,’ he said, pointing to Bill and Dot. Dot was shrieking but there was more joy in it than fear. ‘So that other fella, is he your man?’
Was he my man? It wasn’t clear, not at that stage. It was a delicate balance. My brother and his best friend, me and mine. I could see how Bill felt about Dot, any fool could, but I wasn’t sure whether it was reciprocated.
‘No,’ I said, still unsure whether that was correct.
‘In that case, can I take you for a drink sometime?’
I felt the blood rise up in my face. Looked at him from under my lashes, this strong man with eyes like an ocean and jet-black hair like Elvis that everyone was talking about. Did he ask someone different every night? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter, not really. He’d chosen me.
The ride stopped and I watched the three of them step out, giddy and clutching at one another, the way Dot and I sometimes did when we’d been drinking.
‘Well?’ the man asked me, as they came towards me.
‘Well what?’ Arthur asked.
I saw them size each other up, saw that, in Arthur’s eyes, I was already his.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
And I walked away with them, happy to be part of something, part of a group.
‘What was all that about?’ Arthur asked, taking my arm and pulling me into him.
‘It was nothing,’ I said.
But later, when we were walking home, Dot sulked, and I couldn’t work out why. Could it have been to do with me and Arthur, and the way our group was shifting?
That was just one of a series of choices I made that led me here. To Overbury market, to the man selling pies. He is a big man, jolly-looking, his face round with fat lips.
‘What can I get you, my love?’
There are people all around us, not so much a queue as a general buzz, and I know he won’t give me much of his time. Know I have to get it right, what I say, make it as concise and specific as possible.
‘I was here a few months ago, with my husband, and we ran into a woman called Joan Garnett, and now I need to find her, and I wondered whether she’s a regular customer?’
‘Could be,’ he says. ‘But I don’t take names.’
He laughs. He isn’t laughing at me, but it feels a little like he is. I take a step backwards, colliding with someone who tells me to watch it. I am ready to flee.
‘I’m sorry,’ the man says, ‘just messing around. What does she look like, this Joan of yours?’
‘She’s about my age,’ I say. ‘A bit taller than me, a bit plumper. Curly white hair. Very white teeth.’