‘Shhh,’ Sascha says with a smile, nudging me.
‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘When’s the scan?’
‘Next Monday afternoon,’ she whispers back. ‘So if everything’s OK I can tell everybody at next week’s Knitting Club.’
When everyone has left, I lock the café door and pull the blinds across before putting the dishwasher on and making sure everything else is turned off. I’m just turning the Christmas tree lights off when there’s a knock at the door.
‘Just a minute,’ I call, assuming that one of the Knitting Club has left something behind, although I didn’t see anything when I cleared up.
The knocking gets louder.
‘OK, OK, I’m coming!’
I pull back the blinds and unlock the door.
‘What did you forget?’ I begin before I see who’s standing there.
‘Ellie,’ he says. ‘It’s so good to see you.’
‘Marcus?’ I stare at him feeling as though all the breath has been knocked out of my body. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Ellie, I think I made a terrible mistake.’
13
The first time I heard Marcus speak it reminded me of the old Simon & Garfunkel records my parents used to listen to, of the books I loved as a teenager – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wharton – of all the dreams I had but was too scared to follow. In five years of living away from New York, he hasn’t lost any of that accent. He still speaks in exactly the same way that he did on his first day of post-doctoral research at York University.
He had asked me, later on that first day, why I’d stayed at York. He had asked me the same question that my PhD supervisor had asked, that my father had asked: “You could go anywhere, Ellie. You could do your PhD at the Sorbonne, at Columbia, anywhere in the world. Why do you want to stay here?”
I stayed because York was safe and it was the nearest thing I’d ever had to a home since I’d lived in Paris. After I met Marcus I lived vicariously through him. I didn’t think I needed to be anywhere else. I thought I had everything I’d ever wanted.
On that first afternoon I fell in love with Marcus’s accent and his smile and his sparkling blue eyes – in that order. Later on I fell in love with him. Properly head-over-heels-this-will-last-forever love.
Until it didn’t last forever after all.
That accent, that smile, those eyes are standing on the doorstep of my café now, the one place I thought Marcus would never come.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask again.
‘Can I come in, Ellie?’ he says. ‘It’s freezing out here.’
It is freezing and there’s snow on the air. Marcus pushes his blond hair, hair that has grown much longer in the twelve months he’s been away, out of his eyes. ‘Please, Ellie,’ he says.
He’s wearing a thin cotton jacket and a ridiculous pair of trousers that appear to be made of patchwork. I step aside to let him in and wonder why on earth he isn’t wearing something warmer.
I shut the door behind me and lock it, pulling the blinds to again.
‘Thanks, Ellie,’ he says rubbing his hands together. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ He smiles and his eyes glint and I can’t help myself – I never could resist him.
I go behind the counter and switch everything back on again.
‘Sit down,’ I say. ‘And tell me what tea you’d like.’
‘Do you still have the tea you first made for me?’
He couldn’t sleep when he first arrived in England. At first he thought it was just the jet lag but after a few weeks he confided in me that whenever he was at home on his own, particularly in bed at night, he couldn’t switch his brain off. He said that thoughts and images just played over and over in his head – thoughts about not fitting in, about not being good enough. The next time I was in Sanderson Bay I made up a tea for him, one that I hoped would quieten his mind: rosehip, peppermint, chamomile, elderberry with dried apple pieces for flavour.
He came back to my flat after dinner to try it. He said he slept much better from then on but neither of us ever knew if it was the tea or the fact that after that night he didn’t sleep alone again. At least, not until he decided to leave.
I spoon the herbs into a tea infuser to make him a cup of the tea he always swore by and pour over the hot water. I set a timer for six minutes and try not to think about Ben timing himself doing the crossword.
‘Let it steep until the timer goes off,’ I say putting the cup in front of Marcus.
‘I know, El,’ he replies. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’
‘And while we wait perhaps you’ll answer my question.’
‘Why am I here?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s complicated,’ he says. Everything is always complicated with Marcus. ‘I’ve come straight from Manchester airport. I didn’t know where else to go.’
‘Marcus, you can’t just walk back into my life like nothing has happened. You’ve been gone nearly a year. I’ve moved on.’
‘So I see,’ he says looking around the café. ‘Did you just give up your PhD?’
‘We both know that I was never going to finish it.’
‘You could have done if you’d wanted to, El.’
‘Maybe I didn’t want to,’ I admit. ‘But we’re not here to talk about my lack of a doctorate. Why the hell have you turned up in Sanderson Bay, a place you’ve always claimed to hate, on a freezing cold Monday night in December when you’re supposed to be in Thailand?’
He opens his mouth to speak but before he gets there someone starts banging on the door again.
‘Hold that thought,’ I say as I get up. ‘And don’t think you’re getting out of giving me an explanation.’
I pull back the blinds for the second time that night and unlock the door. Sascha is standing on the doorstep shivering. She hasn’t put her coat on.
‘You have to help me, El,’ she says. ‘I’m bleeding.’
*
I usher Sascha into the café.
‘We need to get you to a hospital,’ I say.
‘I know but how?’ she replies. ‘You don’t have a car and Geoff has our car.’
‘Have you told Geoff?’ I ask.
She shakes her head.
‘Have you told your mother-in-law?’
‘No, Ellie, I can’t bear to wake her up. Please help me, I don’t want anyone else to know.’
‘We’ll have to call an ambulance,’ I say taking my phone out of my pocket.
‘I could drive you,’ Marcus says.
Marcus. I’d almost forgotten about him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Sascha asks.
‘Sascha, this is Marcus,’ I say and Marcus holds out his hand. Sascha doesn’t take it, she just stares at me.
‘Your Marcus?’ she asks. ‘The Marcus your aunt and uncle hate?’
‘Charming,’ Marcus mutters.
‘Marcus who broke your heart?’ Sascha goes on. She sounds almost hysterical. ‘What about Ben?’
‘Sascha,’ I say quietly putting an arm around her waist. ‘I’ll explain everything later but right now we need to get you to a hospital.’