Kit flashed the understanding grimace of survivor humour Gina knew too well from the occasional support group she’d been to after her discharge from the cancer unit. ‘There’s always someone who was literally about to die until he literally decided to pull his socks up, right?’
‘Or took herbal remedies. Or started drinking nothing but pomegranate juice.’
‘Yeah, magic pomegranates, thanks. Someone tell the NHS.’
He managed a laugh, and Gina felt the ghost of their old familiarity. Like the buildings outside, it reminded her of an older time, a different one. Something that had been nice when it was alive, but was gone.
‘Should we get something to eat?’ he asked. ‘Since we’re here?’
The waitress had been circling their table for a while and was now approaching again. Kit gave her a ‘Two minutes?’ signal that spoke of lots of lunches out, and turned back to Gina, his eyebrow raised.
‘Um . . .’ She struggled for a moment: she hadn’t meant this to be a long meeting, just long enough to hand over the letters, but it hadn’t turned out as she’d expected. Kit wasn’t angry or bitter like last time, and part of her did want to stay.
Maybe if she stayed, she’d know whether or not to give him the letters.
‘I’d like to catch up,’ he added. ‘You threw in an ex-husband there that I don’t remember hearing about.’ He smiled, and something about the hopeful look in his eyes, as if he too wanted to close the circle, tipped the balance.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, when the waitress had gone with their orders. ‘Coming back.’
‘How do you mean?’ Kit regarded her over the top of his coffee cup.
‘Well, Oxford. It’s like a backdrop to a play. It’s so unchanging and beautiful. Every new student who arrives thinks they’re special, but really you’re just passing through. Nothing changes because you’re too small to change it.’ Gina groped for the right words. ‘I don’t mean to sound negative. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just . . . When I walked through college, I think I expected to be blown away with memories, but in a way it was a relief when I wasn’t. It was just a very lovely place. Where someone I once was, was once.’
He smiled. ‘The idea is that you’re the one who’s meant to be changed by college, not the other way round. Unless you’re Shelley or Margaret Thatcher or someone.’
That wasn’t what the old Kit would have said. He’d have put himself in the same bracket.
‘That’s probably true,’ she said. ‘If it was too nice, we’d never leave.’
‘I suppose it’s different for me – I’ve been here all the time,’ said Kit. ‘My office is just down the road.’
‘Do you get used to seeing all the new students and thinking, Oh, my God, they look so young?’
Now he looked wry. ‘No.’
‘Good,’ said Gina. ‘They made me feel very old today.’
‘You don’t look old,’ he said. ‘We’re not old.’
‘We are, though. We’re at that point where we really should know what we’re doing. It struck me walking down here – in my head I felt like one of the students, but they probably looked at me and saw a grown-up. When does that stop?’ Dur, she thought. What a dumb thing to say to a married father of two, with his own business. Stop projecting.
‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing,’ he said gallantly. ‘Did you say you’d started your own business last time I saw you? What was it again – interior design?’
The salads arrived, and the mood changed, as Gina let Kit lead her through a description of her job this time. He seemed particularly interested in the Magistrate’s House, in the building-consent side of things, and in the added value the Rowntrees’ renovations would be putting on it. He was surprisingly knowledgeable about building regulations, having converted his listed vicarage into a wheelchair-friendly home, and they chatted about the house, the gardens, the options available to Nick for his studio.
The common ground made things smoother, and as they talked, two old friends joking about the intransigence of conservation officers and how to deal with damp, the image of an unbroken Kit and a more artistic, Oxford-polished version of herself floated tantalisingly in front of Gina’s eyes.
Would they have married? Would they have stayed here in Oxford and had angel-haired, musical children, gone home to visit Gina’s mum, driven past the Magistrate’s House and fallen in love with its potential? Would they have been the ones renovating it, with Kit’s City salary, and her interior-design skills?
Or not, she thought. Despite the accident, or because of it, the moshpit-happy creative Kit had grown up into this man who wore suits and talked about tax relief on home offices. And what about her? Would she have taken her 2:1 and got some milk-round job in a bank or a legal firm, instead of accidentally setting up the one business that she was really good at? Would she and Kit have grown snappy with each other as the easy, carefree days of their relationship slipped further and further away and they turned into people they didn’t recognise? And would she ever have been good enough for Anita?
She felt cold at the thought of living in a slowly dying dream, as the memories faded around them. Somewhere, years in the past, a tipsy Gina lay back in a punt as Kit pushed them away from the bank, and let the sunshine bleach her closed lids, oblivious to anything else but that happiness. Time had preserved that as it was. First love in amber.
‘So . . . the business sounds great.’ Kit looked up from his salad when she fell silent. ‘How about other things – have you got kids?’
It snapped her back to reality.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It didn’t happen for us. What with one thing and another.’
He didn’t get the clanging hint. Instead he gave her what Gina and Naomi called a ‘new dad’ look. ‘It’s not too late for a family, you know. There are lots of routes to parenthood. We’re thinking about a third. That or a really big dog.’
‘I’ve just got one of those,’ said Gina. ‘Although I think my mother would prefer a grandchild. Like I said before, she never really got her head around what the chemo actually did to the bits of me that didn’t have cancer. She prefers to pretend things haven’t happened.’
Kit speared the last bits of avocado on his plate, then put his fork down. ‘You know, you should talk to your mother. Be honest, you’re both adults. It doesn’t do your relationship good to have gaps like that.’
‘There’s a lot she still won’t talk to me about,’ said Gina. ‘Like about my dad.’
‘Still? Seriously? After you’ve been through cancer, she still won’t talk about him?’
‘I think she’s just one of those people who can only deal with a certain amount of emotional detail.’
He jutted his lower lip in a ‘You sure?’ way. ‘You’d be surprised. Parental love is stronger than anything else you ever experience. Talk to her.’
Gina felt a faint irritation, and part of her was pleased because it had been going far too well. ‘Not everyone has this saintly parental love I keep hearing about.’
‘It could be a defence mechanism. She’s had a lot to deal with over the years.’
‘Well, if it is a defence mechanism, she should patent it and flog it to the MoD because it’s proved pretty resistant to my questions for the past twenty-odd years.’
The waitress was back, hovering beside them. Gina wondered if they were getting swifter service because Kit was in a wheelchair or because he was cutting a strikingly handsome figure in the café. Probably the latter. She’d almost forgotten he was in a wheelchair at all. The longer she spent in his company, the more his new charm emerged: it was a more conscious, harder-edged version of his old easiness. The suited version.
Would I fall for it? she wondered.
Would I, not am I.
‘Coffee? Pudding?’ said Kit.
Gina shook her head. ‘No, I should make a move. If I leave the dog too long with the sitter he gets all excited and thinks he’s moving in there for good.’
>
She still hadn’t decided whether or not to give Kit the letters. They felt increasingly irrelevant but she didn’t want to go home with them in her bag. And she couldn’t leave them in a bin.
Kit signalled for the bill, then looked at her, as if he was trying to find the right words.
‘I was glad when I saw your email this time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like the way we’d left things but I didn’t feel it was my right to be in touch. I wasn’t sure what you wanted to say – I was worried you were going to tell me the cancer had come back, and you wanted to give me the tongue-lashing you meant to give me last time, before I laid into you.’
Gina smiled. ‘No.’ She found herself reaching for her handbag, and the decision was made for her. ‘I wanted to give you these. I’ve been moving into a smaller house and I found them – I couldn’t throw them away.’
She put the letters on the table in front of them, tied up in their red ribbon. A solid bundle of memories, sitting between them, like something that had come up from the Titanic.
‘The famous letters,’ said Kit, half humorously. ‘Really?’
‘All of them. You don’t have to read them, obviously, but . . . if you’re going to bin them, then at least wait till I’ve gone.’
She watched Kit’s face for a reaction but he was staring at them, a smile playing on his lips as if he couldn’t decide whether to be flattered or horrified, given what he’d said before.
‘They’re our memories,’ said Gina. ‘Joint responsibility for them. I kept them. You can decide what to do with them now.’
‘And what about my letters to you? Do I get those back?’
‘Sorry. Mum threw them out before I got married.’ Gina didn’t need to say why. ‘Bar the ones I kept in my old French dictionary. She never looked there.’
Kit touched the stack of envelopes reverentially, then picked them up, weighing them in his hands. ‘You wrote a lot of letters.’
‘I had a lot to say.’ She paused. ‘I loved you a lot.’
He didn’t speak at first. He seemed to be struggling with more emotion than she’d seen so far under the smooth adult surface. Then he looked up, and his expression was unguarded, illuminated with snapshots of wild parties and late nights and first fumbling kisses. It wasn’t because Kit wanted to relive those moments with her now, Gina knew, it was more that her presence was releasing the memories from a locked part of his mind where they’d been hidden away for years. Only she understood: those memories only existed with her. She and Kit were opening the door and letting them fly away.
‘I know it’s a lifetime ago, but it’ll always be special to me, you know,’ said Kit. ‘All those things we did together. Even if I don’t think about it a lot, it’s still there.’ He touched his chest, just above his heart. A familiar Kit gesture. Sweet. Slightly pretentious. ‘Part of me.’
‘I know. Part of me too.’ Gina smiled. ‘It was exactly what first love’s supposed to be like. I’m glad it happened.’
He reached across the table, took her hand and held it this time. They sat like that for a long moment, saying nothing, until Kit cleared his throat and looked momentarily uncomfortable.
‘There’s one more thing I want to say before you go,’ he said. ‘I nearly wrote to you myself but every time I wrote it down it just looked so bloody pious. I think it’s one of those things you have to say aloud.’
‘Do you?’ Her skin tingled, as she braced herself for something awkward.
‘Yup, I do.’ Kit held her gaze. ‘When I saw you last time, you said it was your fault, the accident. I should have told you that it wasn’t your fault. Or at least it was as much mine as yours. I could have got us both a taxi to the station, and taken you home on the train, and you’d have said goodbye to Terry. But I didn’t. I wanted to drive you there, because I loved you – I’d have driven you even if you hadn’t been pissed. I wanted to be the hero who got you home. And instead you missed him.’
Kit looked torn. Gina realised he’d been carrying that thought around in his head for the past thirteen years: she was the first person he’d been able to tell. Her hand tightened around his, and she had to force herself not to say, ‘It’s OK,’ because she knew that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, not really.
‘There’s no fault, Kit.’ Her voice choked in her throat. ‘We are what we are. Forgive yourself.’
He raised his eyes to hers, and an understanding passed between them. Gina felt a weight lift from her chest, and she realised it was the guilt of wanting to change the unchangeable. There was no point: it was what it was. Without warning, the accident, the bitterness towards Anita, the helplessness of loving into a painful silence – they were just scenes on the tapestry of her life. They’d happened, she’d been through them, but they no longer pinched her with the same physical regret.
She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward.
Kit smiled brokenly, and Gina blinked away tears. They were two adults again, two people who might be friends or who might never see each other again. Whichever way, they were linked by something that had made both of them what they were, for better or worse.
‘I have to go,’ she said, getting her things together. ‘I really need to catch the three o’clock train.’
‘I’m going to stay here a while. I might have a coffee. I’ve got some reading to do.’ Kit put a hand on the letters and pulled them over to his side of the table. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added. ‘I’ve got plenty of work too.’
‘Don’t tell me whether you throw them away or read them,’ she said quickly.
‘I won’t.’ He tilted his head, the last in-joke. ‘But thank you for writing them. I hope there are sketches.’
Gina smiled again, then turned away as an entirely new feeling swept over her. She actually wanted to get back to Longhampton.
Chapter Twenty-three
ITEM: a seashell necklace from a beach seller in Thailand
April 2007, Koh Samui, Thailand
Gina is now hotter than she’s ever been in her life, to the point where she can actually feel the shell on her necklace imprinting itself onto her factor-thirtied skin.
Jason and Stuart have gone off to some kite-surfing activity, leaving Naomi and Gina on the hotel deck, where guests can choose to be shaded under umbrellas or expose themselves to the sizzling rays of the Koh Samui sunshine while Beach Ambassadors float about with trays of green drinks.
Gina’s under an umbrella with a book. Naomi is basting next to her with her headphones in.
This isn’t really Gina’s idea of an ideal holiday (no old houses, no trains, quite a lot of lying around followed by bouts of grumpy tennis) but Jason’s mate at BA got them a deal on the package, and Stuart offered to treat them with his bonus. Hard to say no, really. Gina hates the wounded look Stuart gets when she tries to explain that she’d be perfectly happy with a week in France. He thinks she’s making a point about saving up for a house deposit; she’s just being honest.
Gina gazes at the sea, through her duty-free sunglasses, as it glitters and sparkles in the distance beyond the hotel’s decking. There’s something tactile about its blueness: it could be glass or a huge pool of blue jelly. She feels a sudden urge to touch it, to see if it would be solid under her fingers.
She rolls onto her side. Naomi is lying flat on her stomach, trying to get her back the same colour as a Caramac. It’s ambitious, given her pale Celtic colouring, but she’s determined. So far, she’s the colour of early rhubarb.
Gina leans over and pulls out one of Naomi’s ear-buds. It seems she’s listening to some sort of I Can Make You Calm CD, not music.
‘I want a swim,’ she announces.
Naomi’s head lifts groggily. ‘What? In the infinity pool?’
There’s an infinity pool in front of them, perfectly clean and turquoise with a regular ripple every three seconds. No one’s been in it in all the time they’ve been on the deck.
‘No, in the sea.’
‘Why?’
/> ‘Because I want to see if it’s the same kind of sea as the one we have at home. Full of jellyfish and six-pack plastic.’
Naomi sits up and re-adjusts her triangle top, which has spent more time undone than it has tied. ‘I didn’t buy this bikini for swimming in, you realise. It actually said on the label that it’s not meant for water-based activity.’
‘I’m not asking you to swim home.’ Gina stares out at the water, twinkling invitingly at her. ‘I just want to feel it. I’ve never swum in the sea before.’
‘I think the sun’s gone to your head,’ Naomi grumbles, but she gathers up her stuff anyway, ramming the straw Stetson over her chestnut mermaid plait and finding the complimentary hotel flip-flops, as Gina heads off down the beach towards the sea.
The sun’s much hotter away from the shady decking, and Gina can feel the rays tingling on her skin. The fact that she only has thirty minutes before she burns makes it all the more urgent, and her feet slip on the soft white sand as she hurries towards the aquamarine shallows.
She gasps with delight as the first ripples of water lick her toes.
The sensation is gorgeous and she dashes in, loving the splashes that tingle on her shins. It’s a private beach, and there’s no one else around, so Gina undoes the sarong covering her hips and throws it back up the sand, plunging in so the water covers her knees, her pale thighs and her stomach. It’s a delicious sensation, and it makes her feel naked, despite her swimsuit.
For a moment Gina stares out to sea and feels a surge of complete freedom, as if there’s nothing between her and the edge of the world. She pushes on, the water now a solid weight against her legs, rising up her body, and all she can see ahead of her is the horizon, a dark blue line against the perfect cloudless Thai sky, and something inside her seems to be rising to meet it.