It had been fun while it lasted. Jay escaped with her heart and her pride intact, and the delicious knowledge that their relationship had scandalised some and annoyed others. They'd stayed in touch - Ella had been one of the first journalists to get behind doitnow.com and, later, 24/7.
Jay was still thinking about Ella when she got home. It was more enjoyable than the other things on her mind. She needed to maintain the distraction, but Magda was working late. Since she was in a romantic mood, she decided it might be time to navigate the treacherous shoals of what she could tell the world about how she and Magda had connected after so long. This would be tricky. Things she didn't want Magda to know; things she definitely couldn't afford for the world to know; and things that needed to be spun like spider silk to keep the rest of the world happy.
For a moment, she felt a flutter of annoyance. This was supposed to be her story, but even here she couldn't be honest. The truth was, the truth was impossible to share with anyone else. But maybe for now she could write the real story of what happened between the two of them on Magda's wedding day. Nobody else would have to see it, not even Magda. Jay could edit it afterwards. It might even be easier to do it that way. In black and white, she would recognise the things she must not say.
My first job at the conference that Saturday afternoon was to deliver a seminar on viral marketing. I'd be lying if I said I had enjoyed myself. Afterwards, trying to cool down on that stifling July afternoon, I walked back along the river, breathing in the same heavy scent of lilies that had perfumed those heady summer nights when I was a baby dyke. But before I could sink too far into the slough of memory, the grumble of car engines pulled me back into the present. I looked up the bank and watched a trail of cars led by a white Rolls-Royce drive past the Sackville Building and down to the meadow. Someone had mentioned earlier there was a wedding in college that afternoon. I couldn't have been less interested.
I carried on along the riverside to the end of the path, where steps cut into the steep grassy bank led back up towards the Sackville Building. I was about halfway up when the wedding party started to spill out of the narrow pathway from the meadow. The bride and groom led the way. He was the tall husky type, dark hair so freshly barbered I could see a thin white line between his tan and his hairline. Although it didn't look as if there were much spare flesh under his morning suit, he had the cheerful, chubby face of a pre-adolescent schoolboy, all turned-up nose, chin round as a plum and cheeks like a latex puppet. He resembled a Bunter whose postal order has finally arrived.
The bride could not have been a greater contrast. Tall, with most of her height in long shapely legs, she wore a sleeveless knee-length sheath of ivory slubbed silk revealing arms evenly tanned the same golden colour as her legs. The Cossack-style toque on her head was of the same material, toning perfectly with a swatch of honey blonde hair. I have always been a sucker for blondes with long legs. But this afternoon it was far, far more than a momentary stab of lust that knocked the feet from under me. Literally.
I knelt by the steps, ravished and ravaged. The instant I recognised the bride, some self-defence mechanism kicked in, telling me, 'It's not her, it's not her! You're hallucinating; you're kidding yourself. You can't recognise someone after sixteen years. She was only twelve the last time you saw her. This woman only looks like she could be her. Don't be stupid, get a grip!' I tried to convince myself and forced myself upright. I got as far as staggering up another step before the revelation that clinched it.
A couple of yards behind the bride were her parents. I might have made a mistake over Maggot Newsam sixteen years on, but I could never have been wrong about Corinna and Henry. Henry looked like an exaggerated version of his younger self, an exemplar of the wreckage drink makes of a person. But Corinna was timeless. Unmistakable, from the shellacked hair to the unfashionable shoes.
I stood there watching the wedding guests pass, a whirling kaleidoscope of memories blurring my vision. Snatches of music from Crowded House, Corinna's favourite band, kept fading in and out of my head like a badly tuned radio station. Dazed, I eventually managed to walk calmly up the remaining steps. One or two of the conference attendees sitting under the shade of the cedars looked at me oddly, but I did not know any of them, so I did not care.
I carried on past the Sackville Building to the punt station. Patsy Dillard, the conference organiser's wife, waved as I approached. 'Jay, we've got the cushions and the pole, but we didn't realise the punts are locked up,' she called. 'Can you go to the lodge and get the key for the padlock?'
'Of course. I'd be happy to.'
'Are you all right?' Patsy demanded when I came back with the key for the heavy padlock that fastens the anchor chain of the punt to the dock. `You look as if you've seen a ghost.'
I forced a smile. 'It's a long time since I graduated from this place, Patsy. It's wall to wall ghosts for me. I can barely see today for the shadows of yesterday.' I took the key back, but the lodge was empty so I left it lying on the counter where the porter was sure to see it as soon as he returned. It's funny, I remember all the details so vividly, even the small unimportant stuff.
Since I was near Magnusson Hall, I decided to slip inside and revisit the Junior Common Room. This had been the domain where I reigned as president of the JCR. The room was surprisingly little changed since the days when I presided over meetings there. Certainly the smell was still the same: stale cigarette smoke and alcohol overlaid with the synthetic lemon of furniture polish and a whiff of chlorine bleach wafting in from the neighbouring toilets. The dartboard was still there, though by then they had run to a spotlight.The table football still lurked in a gloomy corner by the bar, where they had replaced the wooden hatch that served in my day with a metal grille. Bizarrely, the chairs looked exactly as decrepit and uncomfortable as they always did; it was hard to believe they were the same ones, but equally hard to work out where the Domestic Bursar might have managed to acquire a roomful of doppelgangers, or indeed why she might have wanted to.
More importantly, the French windows were still there, leading out on to the long lawn shaded by a pair of cedars. That day they were wide open, providing a short cut for the wedding guests from the marquee to the toilets. I watched for a few minutes, eyes roving over the peacock colours of the guests. But the face I was searching for was nowhere to be seen. Oh well, I thought. Busy bride.
I turned away and walked back towards the front entrance of Magnusson Hall, making a detour to the ladies' toilets. Nothing much had changed there either. Everything was still institutional cream paint and white porcelain. Even the rape crisis line sticker was still there. Improbably, it looked identical to the one that had been there fifteen years earlier, its adhesive specially formulated to make it impossible for the cleaning staff to scrape it off.
Inside the cubicle, I sat for a few minutes, relishing the cool of the cistern against my back, feeling it lower the heat of my body by a degree or two. The sound of the next-door cubicle closing disturbed my relaxation, and a quick glance at my watch reminded me I didn't have much time before my panel on growing an online economy. I flushed the toilet and let myself out, turning on the tap to splash face and hands with refreshingly cold water.
As the other cubicle door opened, I raised my head and looked in the mirror. Beside my dripping face, the ivory silk and golden skin of Magda Newsam appeared like the mirage of an oasis. Our eyes connected in the mirror, inevitably. I watched Magda's expression change from indifference to shock. Her mouth opened as her face flushed.
I wiped the back of my hand over my mouth and said, 'Hello, Maggot.'
Magda shook her head in disbelief. 'Jay?' she said in the tone of childhood wonder, eyes still locked on mine, mouth moving hesitantly towards a smile.
I grabbed a paper towel without looking and sketchily wiped my face, keeping my eyes on Magda. I couldn't get enough of how lovely she'd become. Magda had been a gawky but interesting child, never called beautiful. She is now, and I saw that clearly, no doubt
about it. Some strange twist of genetics had taken the unpromising raw material of her moderately attractive but very different-looking parents and turned it into planes and curves that photographers would fight over. I found it hard to credit that this beautiful face was smiling so radiantly at me.
'It is you, isn't it?' Magda yelped, her voice rising through an octave with excitement.
'Who else would it be with this face on?' I turned to meet the grin head on.
Magda took a step towards me, then stopped. 'I can't believe it,' she breathed. I imagined I felt the disturbance of the air on my skin.
'Why not?'
'It's like seeing a ghost. Some manifestation of my subconscious mind,' she said softly, her voice rich with music that had always been there, but which was now the controlled modulation of an adult, not the artless piping of a child.
'A dream?' I said, trying for sardonic and failing.
'Come true. You just disappeared out of our lives. One day, you were always there, then suddenly, you were gone. No warning. Just gone. No explanation, no goodbye.'
Magda wasn't the only one with vivid recall of the sudden exile. 'It wasn't my choice, Maggot,' I said softly.
'My God, nobody's called me Maggot for years,' Magda exclaimed, laughter bubbling under. 'Not even Wheelie. But what are you doing here? Is this a surprise for me? Did Ma invite you?'
Not bloody likely, I thought but didn't say. 'I'm here for a conference,' I told Magda. 'I had no idea about . . . all this,' I added, my voice cracking unexpectedly. Without conscious thought, we'd both moved a step forward. There were less than a dozen inches between us. I could smell something sharp and spicy on Magda's skin, like lime and cinnamon. I could even see the dilated pupils of her eyes. My stomach hurt.
'Jesus, Jay,' Magda said, her voice bewildered and tense. 'I wish to God you'd come back before this.'
'Me too,' I croaked. I wondered if my face mirrored Magda's mixture of awe, confusion, fear and wonder. 'Better late than never?' I asked. It felt like a plea, a prayer, a supplication.
'I got married this afternoon.' It sounded like a confession.
'Sorry. I should have offered my congratulations.'
'Oh Christ, what have I done?' Magda's voice was low and angry.
Suddenly, I felt afraid. The emotions dancing around us were too powerful, like live cables snaking across the floor, sparking and threatening. I took a step backwards. I did not want to walk that way again. I could see something opening before my feet and it looked more like a pit than a path.The last time, I'd sworn it would be the last time. 'Good luck, Maggot. It was good to see you,' I said, pulling down the shutters behind my eyes.
'Wait,' Magda cried. 'You can't just go. I've only just found you again.'
'It's your wedding day, Magda. There's a marquee full of people waiting for you.' Don't make me feel this, Magda. Please, was what I thought.
'Meet me later,' Magda said urgently, her hand reaching out and gripping my wrist. 'Meet me later, Jay. Please? Just so we can catch up? Swap addresses?'
'I'm not sure that's a good idea,' I said, dry-mouthed at the touch of her. I'd never felt the way I was feeling right then, never anything so instant, so terrifying.
Magda grinned, an open, unselfconscious beam of generous mirth. 'Of course it's not a good idea,' she said. 'But I'm the bride. You're supposed to humour me.'
I was hooked. 'Give me a time and a place.'
Magda frowned, as if calculating something. 'Nine o'clock? The far end of the meadow? You know the old boathouse? It's virtually fallen down now, but if you go round the blind side, no one can see you.'
So saying, she let me know that she understood that any meeting involving me was something no one should see.That was fine by me. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation with the mother of the bride. 'I'll be there,' I said, wondering even as I spoke whether I'd taken leave of my senses.
'Promise?'
'I promise.'
Magda's smile lit her up like a beacon. 'Till then,' she said, moving round me, still holding my wrist. Then her mouth was on mine.
It wasn't the sort of kiss a new bride should give anyone except her husband.
And then Magda was gone, just as suddenly as I had been excised from her life all those years before.
Writing it brought it all back in its immediacy. Jay could feel the shivery suddenness of it all, the bewildering baffle of emotions she didn't expect to experience in a ladies' toilet in Schollie's, of all places. And Magda's reaction. Still it blew her away to remember the look on Magda's face as all the pieces of her personal jigsaw finally fell into place. It was the kind of moment that happens in movies and musicals, not in real life. Or so she'd thought.
Until it had happened to her.
It had been a beginning. Standing by the sink in the ladies' toilets, Jay felt like she'd been sandbagged. But that was just the start. There were still miles to go before she would sleep.
2
Driving to from Glasgow to Skye on a sunny day was one of the more visually spectacular experiences of Charlie's life. Mountains and water, conifers and bracken, tiny communities dotted randomly on the landscape and - the icing on the cake - driving over the bridge across the Atlantic to the island itself. It was all picture-book perfect. The sort of experience that made the most hardened urbanite long for the simple life. Charlie understood herself well enough to know that she'd go crazy in a week, but for the duration of the long glamorous drive it was possible to enjoy the fantasy. It didn't hurt that she had Maria there to share the driving. But enjoying her partner's company didn't stop the perpetual consciousness that there was another woman absorbing her attention. What was it Lisa had said in her last email? Perhaps the clear island air will help you clear your heart. You can't move forward until you know what's past and what's coming with you on the journey. Sometimes things are only attractive because we know in our hearts we can't have them. I want you to be sure about all the possible consequences of your choices, Charlie. Some things there's no going back from.
As usual, Lisa's words left Charlie with more questions than answers. Was it all a game, or was it a series of tests designed to help Charlie draw out the right answers from inside herself? Whatever was going on, she needed to stop dithering. It was beyond unfair to Maria, who didn't even know her future was in the balance. Charlie had no instinct for cruelty and she was uncomfortable with what Lisa called the possible consequences of her choices. But Lisa was like a fever in her blood. The trouble was, Charlie didn't know whether she wanted to resist or to succumb.
They stopped to eat in Fort William, Maria leaving Charlie to finish her meal alone so she could have a quick walk round the town. She came back as excited as a small child. 'It's so different, ' she said. 'Why have we never come to the proper Highlands before?'
'We went skiing at Aviemore one year,' Charlie said.
'That's not proper, though. Skiing, you could be anywhere as long as the snow's half-decent. But this place is lovely. We need to do this sort of thing more often.'
'What? Spend two days driving on crappy roads to have one day on a Scottish island interrogating mountain men?' Charlie wasn't quite sure whether she was pretending to be curmudgeonly or if her grumpiness was genuine. Maria was right, though. There was something special about moving through this landscape, even if the reason for their trip was unusual.
'You're loving it,' Maria said. 'And it's your turn to drive. Once you're behind the wheel, you'll be too busy enjoying the challenge to complain about the crappy roads. Come on, let's go.'
Charlie thought it would be hard to beat the grandeur of the Great Glen, the hump-backed whale of Ben Nevis on their right as they drove up the lochside. But when she saw the Skye Bridge, she had to recalibrate her scale of breathtaking. Sleek, elegant and somehow organic, it had the wow factor. Beyond, the dark ridge of the Cuillins was outlined.
'How could you drive through all of this knowing you were going to kill someone?' Maria said. 'I mean, it's kn
ockout, isn't it? It makes me feel insignificant. How can you experience all this and feel that your concerns are important enough to kill for?'