‘And is that… a permanent thing?’
I challenge her with a look. I know she worries about me, about it being too much for me to have someone staying here, but it really isn’t like that. Erin doesn’t make things harder for me, she makes them easier.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I hope so.’
For a moment, we look at one another, and then she goes into the hallway.
‘Erin!’ she calls up the stairs. ‘I’m putting the kettle on. Do you want tea?’
Five minutes later, we’re all sitting together, Erin’s feet up on the coffee table, holes in both of her stripey socks. She has a bowl of fruit on her lap and she offers it to Julie and me.
‘Mango?’
I remember the mango Arthur bought at the market the day before he died. How I let it shrivel and rot. And then I reach forward and take a piece, and it’s delicious, cold and sweet. Why have I shied away from things all my life, and what else have I been missing out on?
‘So, what, they just won’t accept that you’re gay?’ Julie asks.
Erin nods. ‘It’s a religion thing. Mum thinks it’s evil.’
Every time she says that word, I shudder.
‘And you can’t see it being resolved?’
Erin opens her mouth to speak, but I hold up a hand, because I have something to say. ‘How could it be resolved, if her mother thinks she is evil?’
‘She didn’t say her mum thinks she’s evil, she said her mum thinks homosexuality is evil,’ Julie says.
‘But she is homosexual. And that’s not something she’s chosen, it’s just who she is. So if homosexuality is evil, she is evil.’
Julie’s eyes are wide. ‘I never thought of it like that.’
The doorbell rings and Erin and Julie both rise to answer it.
‘It’s Hannah,’ Erin says, then turns to Julie. ‘My girlfriend, or, the girl I’m seeing. Whatever. A girl. For me.’
When she returns, Hannah is with her. I’ve met her once or twice. She’s got beautiful blonde curls, a wide mouth and a compact, athletic body, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Erin is infatuated with her. My instinct tells me she’s not the one, not good enough, but I don’t know whether that’s just me being protective. They seem to have put that business with Hannah seeing someone else behind them. It’s none of my concern. They’ll make it, or they won’t, but at least they won’t not make it because they’re too scared to be open about who they are.
‘Shall I make another cup?’ Julie asks. ‘The kettle’s just boiled.’
Erin shakes her head. ‘We’ll go up to my room.’
And they disappear, their feet heavy on the stairs. Julie waits a full minute before she says anything, and in that time, music comes on. It’s not overly loud but you can hear it through the ceiling.
‘I’m worried she’s taking advantage,’ Julie says. I smile, and it riles her. ‘It’s not funny! You’re an old woman, Mabel, and she is a young girl. She’s taking over your house, with her music and her girlfriend.’
‘She’s doing no such thing.’
She purses her lips, and for a minute we’re at stalemate.
‘Do you know why I care so much about Erin?’
‘Yes, because you’re lonely and you want to be helpful.’
‘Both those things are true, but they’re not why.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because she’s me.’
Julie furrows her brow. ‘She’s you?’
I nod.
‘If I said Dot was my Hannah, would that clear things up at all?’
I wait, and when she claps a hand to her mouth, I have to stop myself from laughing.
‘You, and Dot?’ she asks. ‘You were in love?’
‘Well, I was,’ I say. ‘I don’t really know about her. She left before we got to the bottom of that. And then I married Arthur, and that was that.’
She is quiet. I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them, she’s gazing at me intently.
‘But all those years, you were married. So, were you, are you, bisexual?’
There are so many names and labels now. It’s a good thing, people can choose how they identify and find people like them, but it makes me laugh, too. In our day, there was just right and wrong. Normal and queer. And very few admitted to being the latter.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t love Arthur like that. Dot was the only one, for me.’
‘I didn’t know,’ she says, a little helplessly. ‘I didn’t guess, even when you told me about Reg Bishop and what he said at the funeral.’
‘You couldn’t have. No one did. But yesterday, I went up to the churchyard and I told them.’
‘Told who, Mabel?’
‘Arthur, and my parents, and Bill, my brother. I finally told them, and it was like coming out from under a great weight.’
She looks at me like she’s worried I’ve gone mad. Like perhaps I’ve forgotten that all those people I listed are dead.
‘I know it’s not the same as doing it when they were still alive, but it’s better than nothing. It’s still something.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Of course it is.’
There’s a clattering noise and then Erin and Hannah appear again. Hannah’s hair is a little more unruly than it was when she went upstairs, and they keep reaching for one another’s hands, both of them grinning. And I feel a sudden stab of jealousy, because I recognise that dazed, fuzzy look. It’s the look I saw in the mirror after Dot and I kissed. It’s lust and wonder and confusion and elation and pleasure so sharp it could be pain. And they have a whole lifetime of it ahead, while I only felt it once.
‘We’re going out,’ Erin says. ‘Just for an hour or so. Do you need anything?’
She is considerate, and I will point to that if Julie has any more of her worries about this setup.
‘No. Have fun,’ I say.
I wonder whether Erin has told Hannah about me. Whether she lay upstairs, her head on Hannah’s chest, hot and frenzied from kissing, and said ‘You’ll never guess what.’ I don’t mind if she did, if she has. I don’t mind, now, who knows. All my life, it’s been above me, looming, threatening, and all I ever had to do to diminish its power was to say it aloud.
‘So Dot was the love of your life?’ Julie asks, when they’ve gone.
I consider this. She was, of course she was. But Arthur was too. It was such a different love, one like fire and the other like cool stone, steady and dependable. I don’t know what would have happened if Dot and I had tried to make a life together. It would have involved so much deception, so much secrecy. I don’t know whether we would have been able to withstand that. And, despite what happened that day on that walk, I don’t know how she felt, either. Whether that kiss was a moment of madness rather than a moment of truth. Can the love of your life be someone you didn’t really get to love at all?
‘I thought she might be. I was hoping I might get to find out.’
‘That’s why you waited until after Arthur was gone to look for her,’ she says. ‘Out of respect?’
‘I didn’t think to do it earlier, truthfully. Didn’t consider it as an option. It was him who suggested it, in the end, with that note he left. I think once I married Arthur, I convinced myself that that was that. I’d made my choice.’