‘So what’s everyone up to, dear?’ Olive accepted the (half-full) cup from Maddie who had learnt not to fill it too high in case Olive spilt any. Maddie pushed the little coffee table nearer to Olive and then sat down on the navy-blue bucket chair opposite with her cup of tea.
Maddie placed the two eclairs on a plate each, one for her and one for Olive, and popped them on the table with two thin white paper napkins.
‘Well, Ed’s still away in Bali. He’s working at a surf school there, working in the shop, but when he can he’s in the water learning to surf himself. Says it’s great fun.’
‘Bet it is,’ Olive replied with a mouthful of eclair. ‘And how’s Tim?’
‘Tim’s fine – um, he’s away again. He’s sorry he can’t visit—’ Maddie licked some cream from her fingers.
‘Maddie, don’t apologise for him. He can do that himself, if he ever bothers to visit me.’ She wiped her hands on a napkin. ‘He’s always away, Maddie, don’t know how you put up with it.’
‘Well, yes, the wine business takes up a lot of his time.’
She glanced over at Olive. She wasn’t a hundred per cent sure if Olive was smiling beneath those grey eyes, but she thought perhaps she was. Olive looked different today. Maddie couldn’t quite place it – maybe it was her hair colour? Slightly blue?
‘Your hair looks nice.’
‘Oh, does it, dear?’ asked Olive, touching it at the side. ‘That lovely chap, the cheeky one with a nice bum, Julian, he did it for me.’
Maddie giggled. ‘Well it does, but it looks slightly different.’ Maddie took a sip of her tea.
‘That’s a dip dye. I told him to shove some on today – A Touch of the Sea was the name on the packet!’ Then she put her plate down and turned to Maddie. ‘Imagine, a hair colour about the sea, Maddie. Oh, I miss Maris Cottage,’ she sighed, clutching her necklace. ‘I really do.’ She gazed at Maddie intently then suddenly sat up. ‘Don’t get too lonely Maddie, what with Tim and Ed away, will you, promise me?’
Lonely. Yes, she was lonely, more than she realised.
Maddie had an idea. She whipped out her iPhone and showed Olive a few pictures Ed had posted on Facebook, and found herself getting quite animated explaining what Ed had been up to.
‘There’s a twinkle when you talk about him, Maddie, about what he’s doing.’ Maddie stared at Olive’s papery skin.
‘He’s really living his life, isn’t he?’ Olive sighed, leaning back in her chair.
Maddie stood up to look out the window. How could Olive stand it in here, she wondered, these yellow walls closing in on her. They made Maddie feel smaller every time she visited. And yet Olive had to be safe. Maddie stared out to the beech trees in the garden below. A woman was being wheeled across the lawn in a wheelchair. The garden was in full summer bloom: bright orange begonias, ruby-red fuchsias, patches of burnt-orange nasturtiums billowing in the border, the branches of the trees etching long green fingers into the milky blue sky.
The heat reminded Maddie of the endless summer when she’d first met Greg. Down at Tregardock beach – a little bay tucked away from the tourists on the north coast. You had to take a small rocky track down the hill from the farm. Sometimes they’d been the only ones there. The waves at that bay used to be enormous, foamy. She’d been dumped a fair few times on that beach, but more times than not, she’d ride the waves, feeling like the bravest girl on earth. And the luckiest girl, as she’d sit wrapped in scratchy blue-and-red stripy beach towels, wetsuit down to her waist, with Greg after their surf. Pressed together on a blanket, sand in her hair and between her breasts in her skimpy bikini, not a care in the world. When had she last even been in the sea? They’d been magical memories. Freezing cold water and the hot chocolates at the café afterwards, salt on their skin, to be licked off afterwards. Licked off everywhere…
‘You know, I’ve just been thinking, Maddie.’
Maddie turned around to face Olive. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair. Quite often, Olive’s thinking was taking more and more detours, but it was bound to, at eighty-seven. Yet Maddie had noticed little things, like forgetting the word for ‘buttons’ (the round things, Maddie, on my jumper) to bigger ones like not knowing her room number. Maddie was worried that one day she’d get a call from Clare (or Kind Clare as Olive called her) telling her that Olive had left the kettle on.
Maddie looked around the room. There was a framed black and white photo on the small side table – a smiling, gutsy-looking woman with her head thrown back in laughter in a fifties floral dress, pinched in at the waist – clutching the handles of a bicycle with a basket. It had been taken on the Isle of Wight. Olive had told her it was when she was ‘courting’ her husband, Stan. Where was that woman now, that life? Maddie scanned the room. She was here, her world reduced to a few photos and memories within four touch-of-lemon walls in matte.
‘Yes, Olive?’ Maddie sat back in the chair and crossed her legs.
‘Ed’s living his life and I think you need to too. You don’t want to have any regrets, do you? Especially not any big ones.’ She narrowed her eyes at Maddie.
Somehow this eighty-seven-year-old could see right through her, and what Maddie wanted to know was: how did she know?
6
She walked home with a new sense of purpose. No more regrets. She was going to mend her ways with Tim and she was going to take charge of her life.
She knew Tim would be tired tonight. It was either sales conferences or visiting bespoke wine outlets across the UK on Tuesdays. Her shoes sunk into the chippy stones on their front path, crunching the gravel beneath. He worked very hard. And she was extremely grateful. Wasn’t she?
Once she’d shut the door behind her and patted the frenzied terrier (and done a double take over how bad his halitosis was today – she must book him into the vet), she realised her phone was buzzing.
It was Rachel. ‘Maddie, how are you? What time shall I meet you tonight?’ She could always lift Maddie’s spirits, with her lively voice. Rachel had been the one to get her to go to choir earlier that summer. Once Ed leaves home you’ll need something else. She’d known Rachel ever since they dented each other’s cars as they were both reversing out of the tiny car park at the back of the corner shop. Rachel Andrews-Lee it had said on the Police Witness form, and Maddie had thought she’d be aloof and tricky to deal with – but it turned out swapping details led to coffee, which had led to a firm friendship. Neither had pursued the insurance claim. Rachel had lived in Little Rowland forever, and was married to ‘her rock’, Alan, who ran a small catering business.
‘Hi, Rach. I’m bushed! Feeling ancient!’ Maddie sat down with a sigh.
‘Less of that! You’re only forty-one!’ screeched Rachel. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’re buying “comfy shoes”!’
Maddie peered down at her brown brogues.
‘Very funny. OK, see you about eight.’
She wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Taffie was bouncing up and down by her feet, so she opened the back door. He ran out to the back garden as a cool breeze came in, along with some leaves, dancing in the doorway whilst her mind drifted to the first day of next term. Usually she got excited about it, couldn’t wait. Now… she felt – what? Well, exhausted, really. Bored. She’d started as a voluntary teaching assistant, then, a paid job came up as a dinner lady. You can’t do that, Maddie, Tim had said at the time. Why ever not? she’d swiped back at him.