Julie gets out her telephone and logs into the website she was using to search. Patty and I just watch her as she taps away. I feel like we’re close to something.
‘Two,’ Julie says, looking up at us with bright eyes. ‘Two Charles Brightmore of the right sort of age. One here in Surrey, one in Scotland. Makes sense to start with the one in Surrey, I guess?’
I nod. For a minute, I think she’s going to have an address or a telephone number, but she explains that it just tells her there’s one here. We still have to find him.
‘I could try Facebook,’ she says.
There’s one result for the name, and it doesn’t have a profile picture, just the shadow silhouette. But Julie goes onto his profile and scrolls through, holding her telephone out so I can see it, too. There isn’t much on there, just birthday greetings and links to articles he’s shared. But then she stops scrolling, because there’s a photo he posted three years ago, an elderly man and woman. Is it him? I stare, knowing that Julie’s expecting me to confirm it or say no, it’s someone else. I look at the woman. I don’t know her. But I wouldn’t, would I, if she was his wife? So I look at him, at the high slope of his forehead and the length of his face. At his conker-brown eyes and his strong nose. I have a memory of Charles putting his head around Dot’s bedroom door, saying tea was on the table and his mum wanted to know whether I had a home to go to, then dashing off before either of us could catch him.
‘It’s him,’ I say.
I feel breathless, because this is the closest we’ve come. Julie sends a friend request, and we wait. She laughs, and there are nerves in it.
‘It could be a bit of a wait,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t look like he’s an avid user. It could be days.’
We relax a bit after she says that, because it’s true. It’s unlikely that we’ll know anything right now, today. But it’s possible. We start, slowly, to chat about other things, but I notice that Julie keeps sneaking looks at her telephone.
When I go home, I ask her to let me know if she hears anything.
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this, Mabel.’
And I have, too. I walk home feeling light and carefree. A couple of times, I find I’ve started to whistle. So when I get home to the smell of burnt toast and find Erin sitting at the dining table with a grim look on her face, it takes a minute for me to be dragged back down.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask her.
Usually, if I go anywhere, I return to find her in the kitchen, music coming from her telephone. Or shut away upstairs, music leaking under the door. I’ve become quite accustomed to it. But today, there’s silence, and that expression, like she isn’t sure whether to be angry or burst into tears.
‘I think I should go home,’ she says.
It stings. It’s silly, I know, but I’d thought this was a semi-permanent arrangement. I’d started to imagine the university holidays, when she’d return and tell me all about what she’d been learning and doing.
‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Are you not happy here?’
‘I am. But I just don’t think I can avoid them forever. I didn’t tell them I was leaving, not properly. I just stormed out. And then I snuck back to get my stuff when no one was at home and sent them a text saying where they could get hold of me in an emergency. It’s not fair to them, is it?’
I want to say that what isn’t fair is her being made to feel like she doesn’t belong in her own home. Her feeling that who she loves makes her less of a daughter or a sister.
‘It’s up to you,’ I say, and I try to keep my voice neutral but I know a bit of disappointment has slid in.
‘I think it’s the right thing to do. I’ll message them, ask when they’re all free, and then I’ll go back and properly talk to them about all of it, including about me and Hannah. And as long as they’re all right about it, I’ll move back.’
‘What if they’re not?’
‘Not what?’
‘Not all right about it?’
She looks despairing. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘I hope it doesn’t come to it, but you know you’re welcome here.’
‘Thanks,’ she says. Her expression changes, lifts. ‘If you’d told me this would happen, that day we first met, you know, with the piccalilli, I would have said you were mad. It’s funny, sometimes, how things work out, isn’t it?’
It is. What was she to me, then? A surly-looking teenage girl who did me the favour of not telling her manager I’d slipped something in my bag. And now? I like to listen to her pottering about the place after I’ve gone to bed, or watch her expression when she’s on the telephone to one of her friends. It’s partly about having the company, having someone to share the house with again, but it’s more than that. It’s like having a second chance, to be young.
‘Funny,’ I agree, and then I get up and go into the kitchen, put the kettle on.
It’s just for something to do. It’s just so she doesn’t see how derailed I am at the thought of her leaving.
‘Hey,’ she calls out.
‘Hey what?’
‘We should have a special evening. Chinese takeaway, a good film, or music, whatever you prefer. We should mark the occasion.’
If she’d never been here, what would I be doing this evening? Nodding off in front of the television? Combing back over old memories, wishing things had been different? Trying to get myself into a new novel? But she is here, and she wants to celebrate this time we’ve had together, and it doesn’t matter that I’m sad, because I owe this to her. She’s saved me from myself.
‘I’ve never eaten Chinese food,’ I say, gathering myself and going back into the room where she’s still sitting at the dining table.
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘No egg fried rice?’
‘No.’
‘No sweet and sour chicken?’
‘That sounds awful.’
She’s already fiddling with her telephone. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll order a feast. You should try everything. You won’t regret it.’
Those are the words that stay with me, even after we’ve eaten until we’re completely stuffed, and discovered that I do, in fact, like Chinese food, after we’ve played classic songs from my youth and danced stiffly around the front room, the way we did in Patty’s class.
You should try everything.
You won’t regret it.
It’s so different from the way I’ve lived my life. But I’m starting to think it’s right.
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