* * *
Somehow, without there ever being an explicit invitation, I found myself making her dinner. Not in the café: I closed early, as Enoch had removed himself to the pub early to avoid the chatter. I took her to the cottage. At least here, time had been kind. Trailing ivy and a tumbledown porch made it more becoming. Instinctively, she bent low as she stepped through the door. With interest, she took in the lounge, and I felt myself flush as her eyes rested on a faded snapshot of us. Suddenly, I was ashamed. There had never been anyone else since she had left. I had stayed in our cottage, on our island and run our café. Time had passed, and I had not noticed. Like a faithful lapdog, I had waited for my mistress to return. Or so it seemed now. Two-thirds of my life had been spent paused here, living out the shadows of our dying dream. I didn’t want to talk anymore; in my discomfort, I let her continue.
I had never imagined that she would actually stand in her spot by the kitchen door again. She leant gracefully against the door frame, and somehow the room looked right once more, as though someone had returned a beloved piece of furniture that had been missing. She gazed on me kindly as she made a nonsense of my life without her. I wasn’t really listening to what she was saying; I was just watching her face move as she spoke. I was beginning to regret not quite inviting her here.
Her eyes followed me around the room as she kept on talking. I went in to the kitchen to start cooking, and she spun around in the doorway to keep up the stream of conversation. I could tell from the way she was speaking that she was using this speech as a diversion from what she really wanted to say. She had always done that, meandered slowly towards the heart of the problem. I had thought that this habit irritated me. When she had gone, I discovered the awful truth: I wanted to find it irritating, but actually I didn’t.
She talked about her travels abroad and watched me prepare salad. Without thinking or even pausing in her sentence, she reached into the cupboard behind her and handed me the colander. She seemed content to rattle away about Egypt and her son, who sounded a bit pompous. I wished I could confront her head on, stop this incessant drivel and find out what had really brought her here. It wasn’t sight-seeing, and by the sound of it she didn’t need a holiday. But I wasn’t sure where I stood. The years made such a wide gap that I didn’t dare jump it. I didn’t want to risk offending her.
She picked over her plateful, moving pasta with her fork. At first I thought she was trying to politely cover up the fact that she didn’t like the food. Then I remembered. She had always eaten, or more accurately not eaten, like this when she was distracted. She was still talking, rattling on about this and that, but if she thought I was still listening, then she was a fool. We both knew that she was trying to use the words to bridge the intervening years.
I realised after a few minutes that I was letting my own dinner get cold. With little grace, I began to shovel pasta into my mouth, chewing ferociously. There was no point in me speaking. It was clear that she had no interest in recounting the last forty years; she hadn’t said anything of any actual importance since she had arrived. It was all just bus-queue chatter. She had come here to rewind her life, not to bring it full circle. She did not want me to hear the rich tapestry of the life she had woven, without me, on the mainland. She wasn’t going to validate her decision to leave. I would have been surprised if she had, but then again, age mellows the heart, and the headstrong become the regretful.
Eventually, she talked herself out and fell silent. I cleared the plates away once I had finished. She didn’t argue with me when I took the nearly full dish from her. She just put her fork down, almost grateful that she could stop pretending. I brought the wine bottle in from the kitchen and filled her glass, then sat deliberately on the sofa and waited patiently. She didn’t move from her chair; she just turned sideways on so that she could lean on the back rest and see me. It wasn’t as though the room was big enough for the distance to be a struggle. For five minutes, maybe more, she wouldn’t meet my gaze. She just swirled her wine in the glass, watching as it clung to the smooth sides for a second or so. It was a strange, still silence, forlorn, yet not sorrowful. Then her voice, clear but quiet, cut through. She said:
“I have cancer.”