Ted looks thoughtful for a moment, then he says, “Someone once told me that growing up feeling loved allows you to go on to love other people. Maybe love is simply a huge chain letter, passed down through the generations. The details of the stories begin not to matter.”
The sentiment of his words surprises me. I’ve never heard a man talk about love so plainly, with so little coyness. I wonder if all the men I’ve known have actually been boys.
“That’s a lovely way to look at it,” I say with a smile, then reach forward to drum a hand on the dashboard. “Sorry, Ted, I’m holding you up.”
“It’s fine. Your cave—” Ted reaches across to turn the page to the picture of my mother standing in a cave in a red bikini—the place where they got engaged. “Follow the footpath around the cliff and you’ll get down to the beach. This cave is at the far end, right around to the left.” Ted looks at his watch. “Don’t hang around there after one forty-five. The sea comes in quickly at Plémont, and you can get cut off fast. There’s a café at the top of the steps, I’ll meet you there at two.”
I’m pleased he wants to come back, but I scribble my mobile number on one of the cards in the glove box, just in case he needs to change the plan.
“I hope your dad is OK.”
As I get out of the car, I shiver. The sun has gone in and I’m only wearing a strappy sundress. I don’t want to be cold, especially if I’m going to be out here for an hour and a half. In the absence of anything else to wear, I grab the cream fisherman’s jumper from the suitcase in the boot. Putting it on, I inhale the smell of it again, then I catch Ted watching me in the rearview mirror. Something tells me he doesn’t approve of me borrowing it.
“What did I say about the cave, Lady Muck?” he shouts after me as I start walking away up the footpath.
“Don’t stay there too long, or I’ll get washed up the blowhole, gotcha!”
I turn to wave as he drives away, and he gives a salute, which makes me smile, then I hug my arms around myself as I set off up the dirt footpath.
I try calling Gran back, but she doesn’t answer, so I leave a message saying I’ve bought her some black butter. I’m surprised how downbeat she sounded about me being in Jersey, but then Gran has never been one to get sentimental about the past. “Fiercely practical,” Mum called her.
The headland feels truly wild with its tangle of ferns and sun-bleached grass overlooking the wind-whipped sea. The only stark reminder of a human footprint is the remnants of an old concrete bunker, left behind from the wartime occupation. I take photos of the headland, a selfie to contrast then and now, then spend some time trying to work out from the pictures where the holiday resort would have stood; my mother’s apartment, where Dad’s kitchen might have been, the hall where they danced. It’s impossible. Nature has taken the headland back so entirely—there isn’t even a trace of the resort’s foundation.
From the footpath that hugs the cliff, a powerful swell is visible, pulsing toward the island, then churning white over craggy brown rocks as it reaches land. To my left, the sharp coast softens to sand and Plémont bay comes into view below me—an enormous sandy cove, guarded on every side by steep rock. There is something hypnotic about watching waves break on sand. They are so reliable in their behavior; not one breaks rank, refusing to adhere to the ebb and flow.
My phone interrupts me from being mesmerized by the sea. It’s Vanya.
“Hey, I was just calling to check you were OK after that Insta live?”
“It was bad,” I say with a wince.
“Personally, I loved it, super kitsch, but Suki dropped a few f bombs in the office. How’s the stalking going?”
“Not well. The airport thinks I’ve stolen this guy’s bag, I’ve managed to accidentally throw one of his shoes off a cliff, oh, and now I am wearing the guy’s clothes because my only dress is covered in mud and chocolate, like I’m a five-year-old in an advert for washing powder. On the plus side, I have found out that his mother’s name is Maude and that her birthday is tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s a start. Forget the Insta live. Suki loves your coin story, everyone does, it’s exactly the feel-good romantic content the website needs right now. Don’t get thrown off your stride, just get what you need to write the best article you can.” I’m not used to Vanya giving me serious pep talks like this, maybe she’s been talking to Dee. “How far have you got with Tiger Woman?”
“I’ve started it,” I say evasively.
The truth is these kinds of books scare me. They make me feel inadequate for not being the self-possessed, fiercely independent woman I know I should be, or at least should aspire to be.
“Laura, it’s going to change your whole outlook,” Vanya says. “It talks about this idea of being roar, like raw—R-A-W—but spelled the tiger way, it’s about following your instincts rather than the narrow path society has presented us with.”
“Do you think it’s possible to be a romantic and also a feminist?” I ask, my eyes drawn back toward the foaming waves.
“Of course it is.”
“Because sometimes I feel conflicted; like I want to stand up to the patriarchy and everything, but I’d also quite like to be in love and have a boyfriend.”
“Look,” Vanya says with a sigh, “Michelle Obama is queen of modern feminism, but she’s still a wife and mother and she still has great hair. It’s about having the right to choose—you can choose to put on a pinny and be a fifties housewife if you want, you can choose to travel to Peru and join a commune or enlist in the space program and be the first woman on Mars. You can live how you like; but the point is we should have the chance to choose, not get railroaded into a role society dictates for us.”
She is right. Vanya surprises me sometimes. She is this dichotomy of Tinder and hangovers and looking for love in all the wrong places, but she is also self-possessed and self-aware and radiates this inner strength I sometimes fear I have lost. I feel surer of myself when I am around her, and that is a valuable attribute for a friend to have.
“Like, this search for Hot Suitcase Guy,” I say. “Do you think even believing in fate or destiny feels dated now somehow? Like, it’s a little nineties Meg Ryan, rather than twenty-first-century ‘take control of your own destiny.’ ” I screw up my face, unsure what my point is, my mind fizzing with unformulated philosophies.
“If you want to be nineties Meg Ryan, I am so here for that,” says Vanya firmly. “People have believed in fate for longer than they’ve believed the world is round—it will never go out of fashion.”
The conversation with Vanya reassures me; I’m not crazy, I’m just a romantic. Once we’ve said good-bye, I look up Maude Le Maistre on my phone while muttering under my breath, “If I want to be Meg Ryan, I can be Meg sodding Ryan.” I find an address and a phone number. YES! Screw you and your “data protection,” Keith, I found her anyway, ha!