‘Hang on,’ I said, throwing the bedcover round her like a cape and drawing it tight around her neck. ‘Just stay like this, I’ll explain later.’
She obeyed the command without questioning, and I wondered again how complicit we were. When Kit emerged she looked bizarre, her dark curly hair a volcano’s plume above a white mountain of bedclothes.
‘Hi,’ she said shyly to Kit. ‘It’s nice to see you again. Sorry for monopolising your futon.’
‘That’s ok,’ said Kit mechanically, then disappeared into the bathroom, almost slamming the door behind him.
‘He’s not really a morning person,’ I said, filling the kettle. ‘Sorry, d’ you mind taking off that T-shirt? It’s one of his best, he’ll go nuts if he finds out you’ve slept in it.’
She shrugged off her shroud, looked down at the raggedy garment in puzzlement, then turned away to change into last night’s clothes. She had a huge tattoo across her back and shoulders, a pair of vast, spread angel wings, beautiful in their pen-and-ink detail, like something from an eighteenth-century zoology textbook. They flexed with the muscles on her back. I forced myself not to stare. After I’d stashed Chile ’91 back into the wardrobe – really, he should have wrapped it in tissue or something if he didn’t want people to wear it by accident – I found Beth, arms folded, standing in front of Kit’s huge map of the world.
‘What are all the lines?’ she asked. ‘Aeroplane flight paths?’
I’d forgotten what a puzzle it was to the uninitiated. ‘It’s the path of totality for all the different eclipses of Kit’s lifetime,’ I explained.
Beth’s smile faltered as she lined up her finger next to mine and traced the shadow path across the English Channel and into Europe. ‘That’s last year,’ she said, resting on Cornwall. ‘But why all the others?’ she asked.
‘He follows eclipses around the world; well, we both do now. He’s been doing it since he was a kid. We’ve got trips lined up into the next millennium; the festival movement seems to be growing. Next one’s in Zambia in a couple of years, so I should actually get to see it this time.’ I heard myself through Beth’s ears and could have punched myself in the face. I wanted to pull the map off the wall; it seemed so crass that the worst day of her life was reduced to a souvenir diagram. ‘God, I’m sorry, that’s so insensitive. Here I am moaning about being clouded out, after what you went through.’
She waved my apology away, but her bottom lip was clamped tight between her teeth. Her attention moved away from the map towards the framed photograph underneath it. Ling had taken it a couple of months before the Lizard. It was the evening of my graduation, and in the photograph Kit and I were entwined on the grass in hired finery; Kit in black tie, me in a pale gold ballgown. Our legs were locked together, our fingers linked, and an empty bottle of champagne lay beside us. We were surrounded by other people but utterly careless of their existence. We will never have another picture taken like it. It’s not just the dewy complexions and tight jawlines that can’t be recaptured.
‘We didn’t know anyone was watching,’ I said. ‘That’s why she got such a perfect moment.’
‘I want this,’ she said, and it was clear she didn’t mean the photograph but what it represented. I straightened the photograph on the wall and walked two paces to the kitchen, where I dropped teabags into hot water. ‘How long before we know if the appeal’s going ahead?’ I said.
‘Months rather than weeks, apparently.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘You know where I am now.’
‘Indeed I do,’ she said, looking around her, like she was trying to memorise everything about our little flat.
Kit darted from the bathroom to the bedroom, emerging seconds later in his work clothes: Adidas Gazelles, jeans and a lumberjack shirt; the young man’s equivalent of corduroy and patched elbows. He grabbed a slice of dry bread from the worktop and shoved it between his teeth.
Beth picked up another photograph, one of a rainbow over the common, a seven-lane highway in the sky.
‘Where did you buy this?’ she asked me.
‘Kit took it,’ I said.
‘Seriously?’ said Beth. ‘What with? I know a bit about photography, I did it for art foundation.’
‘An old Nikon Prime,’ he said, thawing at last. ‘They’ve fallen out of favour, but I still love them.’
‘The Prime’s a good machine,’ she agreed. ‘Have you got a super-telephoto lens? They’re really good for shooting the sky.’
‘Yeah, well, one day, when we win the lottery,’ he said. He wasn’t friendly, exactly, but at least he wasn’t rude. ‘Laura, come on, we’re going to be late.’
I was in and out of the shower in ninety seconds. I Febrezed a dress with no visible stains and then gave my hair the same treatment. Kit was halfway down the first flight, his tuts amplified by the echo chamber of the narrow stairwell.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Beth, stepping into my work shoes.
‘I don’t suppose I could grab a shower?’ she asked. I looked at the clock. Ten to nine. I was cutting it fine as it was.
‘It’s ok, I can see myself out.’
My hesitation was momentary. I wouldn’t normally leave a virtual stranger alone in my flat; but then I reasoned that this friendship was on fast-forward.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘There’s a spare towel on the back of the bathroom door. Hang it over the banister when you’re done.’
I caught up with Kit at the entrance to Clapham Common Tube.
‘Where’s Beth?’ he said, looking over my shoulder.
‘Having a shower.’
He raised his eyebrows in reply.
When I got in at half past five, Beth had done the washing up and tidied the flat so thoroughly that it almost looked rearranged, although a glance at the bookshelves told me they were ordered as they had been that morning, only straight and somehow cleaner. The bookshelves disturbed me even more than the gleaming glasses or the made bed; I got the feeling she’d been through them too, read them, like she was trying to read us. At six, a text came through.