‘Sit down again,’ Agnes said. ‘Before you fall.’
I said that I was fine, absolutely fine. I let go of the chair, but I knew I was as pale as paper, even without looking at myself. ‘I just stood too quickly,’ I said. ‘And I can’t stop thinking about Mrs Honeyman losing her baby. I can’t imagine anything more awful.’
Agnes shook her head. ‘I don’t think there can be,’ she said. ‘My Frankie went missing when he was little, and it was the worst few hours of my life. Thank God someone kept him safe until I found him again.’
I looked back at the room. The photographs on the mantelpiece. Weddings, grandchildren, holidays. All those moments of happiness, held behind glass, like treasure. Elsie seemed to know I was looking because she turned back when she got to the door. And we smiled at each other, over the ticking of a mantelpiece clock.
HANDY SIMON
‘I’m not sure this is a good idea.’ Handy Simon looked through the box of cassettes. They were all people he’d never heard of. Sing-Along-a-Wartime, one of them said. Twenty Songs That Made Britain Great. ‘It feels too much like a celebration.’
‘It’s not a celebration.’ Anthea Ambrose was up a stepladder with a string of bunting. ‘It’s called carrying on as normal. Old people like routine. It makes them feel safe.’ She wobbled on the ladder and held on to a pelmet for support. ‘I did it. On a course.’
Handy Simon didn’t say anything, because he was certain he’d ended up in Miss Ambrose’s notebook over the Joan of Arc conversation, but he wasn’t entirely sure what normal was any more. He didn’t think it would ever be possible to feel homesick for Cherry Tree, but he felt as though he actually wanted to be back there in the staff room with his Pot Noodle, and not a glimpse of a seagull in sight.
‘Does Miss Bissell think it’s a good idea?’ said Simon.
Miss Ambrose drove a drawing pin very violently into the wallpaper. ‘The hotel always has a dance on a Saturday night, so we might as well make the most of it. Who knows, Simon, you might actually enjoy yourself.’
It was something his mother always used to say to him when he was younger. ‘Who knows, Simon, you might like it if you give it a try.’ He didn’t, usually. Like it. He’d tried lots of things. Spanish guitar. Judo. Chess. Once, he spent a whole afternoon trying to get on a horse, but the horse was having none of it. His father suggested rugby, but just being in the changing room made him clammy. ‘Bell-ringing?’ said his mother, but Simon just shook his head. Nothing he had a go at seemed to fit. Life sometimes felt like trying on the entire contents of a shoe shop, but all of them pinched your toes.
‘Perhaps I’m just not good at anything,’ he said to his mother. ‘Perhaps I’m not a hobby person.’
‘Nonsense. Everyone is good at something. You just haven’t found yourself yet.’
She died whilst he was still searching.
Simon put the cassette back.
‘Unless …’ He sniffed the air and did a little finger wave at the ceiling.
‘Did you say something, Simon?’ Miss Ambrose looked down from her stepladder. ‘Only if you didn’t, make yourself useful and pass me the end of that Union Jack.’
The room looked quite pleasant when it was finished. Someone had pushed all the furniture back to make a dance floor, and there was a drinks table set up at the far end. Miss Ambrose’s bunting stretched all the way around the room, except for a small gap in the corner due to an oversize painting of the Princess of Wales. Simon and Miss Ambrose both stood with their hands on their hips, admiring their efforts.
‘Shame about Diana.’ Miss Ambrose looked over at the corner.
‘I could get the Sellotape,’ said Simon.
Miss Ambrose stared at him. ‘I meant passing away so young.’
‘Oh. Right. Yes. Although.’ Simon hesitated, but once he’d grown a thought, he felt it was wrong to let it go to waste. ‘There isn’t really a good age to die, is there?’
Miss Ambrose folded her arms. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be ready for it, when I’m old.’
‘But when you’re old, you probably won’t agree. You’ll probably feel just like you do now.’
Simon wondered if he should have shared that particular thought, because he saw fear sail through Miss Ambrose’s eyes.
‘You might not, though,’ he said. ‘You might be completely up for it.’
An edge of bunting escaped from its drawing pin and floated on to the windowsill.
‘Pin that back up,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘I’m going for a snowball and a lie-down.’
Simon tested the stepladder. You could never be too careful, especially on holiday. After he’d pushed it a few times for good measure, he made his way to the top and reached over for the bunting. That’s when he saw them. Sitting on one of the benches on the promenade, looking out across the sand. They were having some kind of animated discussion and every so often, Jack waved his arms about and pointed towards the North Sea.
Simon tried to remember where he’d put his notebook.
FLORENCE
‘Terrible way to die. Drowning,’ Elsie said.
I looked at her.
‘I would imagine it’s terrible,’ she added. ‘Although I suppose it might be quite peaceful. Once you’ve accepted it.’
‘Every death is peaceful, according to the local newspaper.’ I tightened the belt on my coat. I had to listen very hard to hear Elsie’s voice, because the wind skated across the water and stole it away. ‘But I don’t see how any death can be peaceful. Although I don’t suppose you really know until you get there. It’s not as though we’ve got anyone to ask.’
Elsie sighed. ‘Perhaps that’s just as well.’
‘It must have been Gabriel Price who drowned and not Ronnie. Yet I was so certain.’ My scarf was wound tight around my chin, and when I spoke, I could feel all the warm air fall back into my face. When I looked up, Elsie was staring at me. ‘We all were,’ I said.
Jack had gone to get us a takeaway tea from one of the kiosks. I’d watched him walk across the grass. I wasn’t sure if it was the light, or if it was the visit to the fisherman’s cottage, but he’d looked smaller somehow. Not as significant. As though he was taking up so much less space in the world.
‘I’d quite like to go in my sleep,’ I said. ‘The woman from number sixteen died in her sleep. She did very well.’
‘You make it sound as though she should be awarded some kind of certificate.’
‘Just to close your eyes, to do what you do every night, but the next time you open them, it’s all done and dusted. I think that’s what I’d plump for.’
‘It’s not a travel agents, Florence. We’re not choosing a holiday.’
We sat in silence for a while, and watched the sea. The tide had gone out, and it left behind fresh sand, smooth and unspoiled. It always amazed me to see that happen. How a wash of the ocean took away a day’s worth of footsteps and conversations, and arguments. How it made everything new again. When I was a child, I liked to walk the unmarked sand with Seth. He would bark his lopsided bark at the waves and we would make the first footprints on the beach, but then I would look behind and feel sad that I had broken it, but my father would laugh at me and say, ‘How do you think sand is made in the first place?’ I wondered if Seth’s footprints were still there, somewhere underneath all those days of other people.
The bench was cold and hard, and unkind to old bones. The wind was getting up too, and the waves made knots of white, flickering in the distance as we watched. Below us, a woman walked along the beach with her dog. I tried to think what breed it might be. It was one of those excitable, energetic dogs that crash through the waves with no fear, chasing sticks and finding joy in the unlikeliest of places.
‘Try to think, Florence,’ Elsie said. ‘What kind of dog is it?’
I followed the marks they made in the sand.