my stare and looked up from his paper. There was a moment of eye contact and he smiled. He actually smiled at me. And then there was suddenly no resemblance to Lee at all, and he was just a stranger, a friendly man who was enjoying a coffee and smiling at me.
I smiled back.
“Better?” said Stuart, when I sat back in my chair.
“Yes,” I said.
“You can do this, you know,” he said. “You’re braver than you think you are.”
“Maybe,” I said, drinking my tea. It was warm and delicious.
I was still smiling when we went out of the café back into the Laines. The sun was shining, weakly, but it cheered everything up. We walked back down toward the pier.
The wind had dropped a little but it was still gusty on the pier. We sat in a shelter on the quiet side, watching the waves and the gulls trying to balance on the railings. Out at sea the clouds were black and immense, behind us the sun making everything bright and shiny, reflecting off the wet planks with glistening brilliance.
“Bit breezy, innit?” an old chap said to me. His hat was pulled down low over his ears, fluffy tufts of gray hair waving madly. His glasses were flecked with spray from the waves.
“Just a bit,” I agreed.
He was holding tightly to his wife’s hand. Their hands were old, the skin spotted and wrinkled, his wife’s wedding ring worn paper-thin and loose behind the big knuckles. She had rosy cheeks and blue eyes, a patterned headscarf keeping her hair neat and her ears warm. He chuckled and pointed as a juvenile gull, all brown spots and huge webbed feet, blew off the railings and took flight, swooping madly and fighting against the wind.
We continued walking as far as we could go. The fairground rides were mostly closed, tarpaulins flapping and seats wet. Walking down the other side of the pier was madness—the wind whipping our jeans around our legs, the spray like horizontal rain. The ghost of the West Pier floated on the surface of the rolling sea like the bones of some long-dead sea monster.
We crossed back to the other side and walked back to the seafront, into a steaming fish and chip shop full of people in damp coats, laughing about the wind. We had a big portion of chips out of the wrapper and sat on a wall outside, eating chips with our fingers and listening to the gulls shrieking and calling around us, waiting for us to drop one. I was half expecting one of them to actually snatch a chip from my fingers.
I was listening to Stuart telling me stories about seaside trips he’d had as a child, penny arcades at the end of the pier, sunburned legs and fishing nets on bamboo poles.
“What happened to your parents?” I asked.
“My mum died of cancer when I was fifteen,” he said. “Dad lives near Rachel. He’s all right—getting on a bit. I saw him a couple of months ago, briefly. I’m going to see them next month, I’ve got a few days off from work.”
“Rachel’s your sister?”
“Yes. Older and much wiser. What about your mum and dad?”
“They died in a car accident. I was at university.”
“That must have been tough. I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
“No brothers or sisters?”
“Just me.”
We were down to the last few chips, the rock-like bits at the bottom. Ignoring the signs about not feeding the seagulls, Stuart emptied the last few into the gutter and put the paper in a trash can.
“I feel like booking a vacation,” he said, as we walked back up the hill toward the town center. “Let’s go and find some brochures.”
Friday 27 February 2004
He took me straight home, which was both good and bad. I didn’t even know what it was I wanted anymore.
We didn’t speak all the way home in the cab, even though he was holding my hand, gently but firmly. I kept my eyes focused out of the window, looking but not seeing as the raindrops chased their way across the window, sparkling like orange jewels in the light from the streetlamps.
He took my keys and opened the front door for me, standing to one side and letting me go first. I didn’t sit down, and neither did he. I caught a glimpse of his face, and to my surprise he looked so broken that I couldn’t look at him again.
“I think we should cool it a bit,” I said. As soon as the words were out