Ted flexes his fingers on the wheel. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I asked.” I pause, watching his face. “Besides, you know all about my crazy suitcase chase. Rule of the cab—it’s a safe space.”
He smiles at me then. There must be something about sitting next to someone, both your eyes on the road, that allows you to express what you might not say face-to-face.
I find myself hoping we don’t arrive at our destination too quickly; I want to hear more.
“You know, two years on, I still wear my ring, even though she left hers behind.”
I can’t believe someone would just walk out of their life like that. How could you do that to someone you had loved?
“Do you miss her?” I ask, then clench my jaw, worrying it’s too personal a question.
“She was a part of me,” he says softly, the pain palpable in his voice. “When you are with someone for a long time, you grow into each other, like adjoining trees with tangled roots. It’s hard to extricate yourself and find the part that’s left—who you were before.”
“Especially when she hacks her tree down and runs off with it,” I say, indignant on his behalf. This makes him smile. His shoulders fall, and he rubs his neck with the heel of his palm as though releasing tension.
I pull the fisherman’s jumper, which is too big for me, down over my hands. Then I find myself pressing the soft wool to my nose and breathing in the smell. I wonder if the owner of this jumper really is the person my tree roots might grow into like that.
“I haven’t talked about it much with anyone,” he says, looking sideways at me without turning his head.
“Well, people do say I’m very easy to talk to,” I say, in a singsong, jokey voice.
“You are,” he says, earnestly, and I feel the warmth of the compliment fill the car.
Ted turns down an avenue lined with trees and pink and purple hydrangea bushes. As we emerge from the tunnel of foliage, the sea comes into view again, and I have the sensation of being at the top of a roller coaster. This must be the west coast; there’s a huge sweep of golden sand, miles long, almost the length of the island.
“Is this St. Ouen’s?” I ask.
“Yes, it’s pronounced St. Ones, Jersey has some strange spelling,” Ted says. “My dad’s place is just around the corner. I’ll grab some clothes and then we’ll head to the next place in your album. You won’t be able to go back to the cave until low tide now.”
As we drive down toward the sea, the road fenced in by steep fields and a few old granite houses, I think about what Ted has told me, about his runaway wife. I can’t imagine what that would feel like, to have found your person and then have them abandon you. I think of Mum losing Dad when I was only three, how hard that must have been for her. Then I think about the strange version of events Monica told me and wonder again how she could have it so wrong. What would I do if someone left me the way Ted’s wife had? I don’t think I would be able to move on until I knew where they had gone.
* * *
* * *
Ted pulls the car into a driveway in the middle of a line of houses all facing the sea. It’s a detached granite house with a forked roof. It has a modern-looking porch at the side but otherwise looks as if it’s been here for hundreds of years. There’s a sloped garden running down to a tiny white cottage, not much bigger than a garden shed, then a plowed field, before the beach and the wild expanse of sea beyond. To our left, the rocky escarpment of L’Étacq headland rises up, as though standing sentry over the long bay. There’s something timeless about the scene—neither the view nor the houses here can have changed much in centuries.
“What a place to live.” I sigh.
“Do you want to come in?” Ted says. “Have you eaten?”
His whole demeanor has changed. He pulls his back straight, perhaps aware he’s been hunching over the wheel, and gives me a bright-eyed grin. It’s as though he’s turned the page on our conversation about his wife and wants to get back to more cheerful ground.
“You don’t need to feed me as well as everything else you’re doing.”
I follow him past the yellow skip in the driveway, in through the porch. The place is a mess of boxes and belongings. I see marks on the floor where furniture must have stood, a bureau and a chest of drawers in the middle of the room and labeled plastic boxes stacked high against the walls. I ask Ted if I can charge my phone, and as I’m plugging it in, a small, wiry white dog darts in and jumps up at my dress.
“Oh, hello, little guy!” I say, bending down to pet him.
“Scamp, down. Sorry,” says Ted. “He’s a bit feral.”
“Hi, Scamp.”
Scamp is a terrier cross of some kind, with one ear in the air and the other flopping over his friendly little face. I notice he’s left dirty little paw prints on my dress. Someone calls Ted’s name from the garden, and we walk through the narrow, box-cluttered kitchen out of some French windows onto a gravel terrace overlooking the steep garden and the sea beyond. A woman in her early forties with a cheerful round face and short peroxide hair is sitting at a table with a whippet-thin, elderly man who is nursing a bandaged arm.
“Ah, sorry, you got Scamped before I could tie him up,” says the woman, jumping up and trying to catch the dog. Then she notices Ted is topless. “Why are you half naked, man?”
“Long story. I’m going to get changed. Dad, Sandy, this is Laura, Laura—Sandy and my dad, Gerry. Do you like crab, Laura?”
I hold up a hand in greeting to Gerry and Sandy.
“I adore crab,” I say, grinning at Ted as he retreats inside. I turn to catch Sandy’s eyes shifting between us. Her gaze settles back on me, and she enthusiastically offers me a chair.
“Sit, sit! Oh no, look, Scamp ruined your lovely dress!” Sandy covers her mouth in horror.
“Oh, don’t worry, it was already ruined.”
The sun is beating down on the patio, and I’m now too hot in Hot Suitcase Guy’s jumper, so I take it off and hang it on the back of my chair. “Look,” I say, pointing to the chocolate stain with a smile, “testament to a disastrous day.” I turn to Ted’s father. “I’m sorry to intrude like this, Gerry. Ted went in the sea looking for me, so it’s my fault he got soaked.”
“You’re this Laura then,” says Gerry. His voice is quiet, lacking resonance. I can see a shadow of Ted about his features, but Gerry’s face is softer, less expressive. Both his hands shake with an obvious tremor. “I’m pleased you persuaded him to take you around the island and have a break from all these boxes.”