Afternoon tea? Olive was always cheered by the mention of afternoon tea. Jam or cream first? She could never remember. Everywhere did it differently. Some places had warm scones, some cold (imagine!), some establishments served the jam in a little pot, others had tiny jars of raspberry or strawberry jam in miniature jam jars. She’d been to one place that served chocolate brownies too – oh, and egg and what’s-its-name-green-stuff sandwiches. The what’s-its-name stuff always got stuck in her teeth. Olive sat back in her seat and looked out the window.
The bus left the small car park of Maybank View, and trundled down the high street, past the fish and chip shop, past the Happy Hen with its stupid logo of a hen pecking in a field. She could feel every bump in her bony bottom; bother these wretched minibus seats. Cress! That was it! Then, out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of someone who looked extremely familiar. She started to bang on the window and wave at her! Yes, it was Maddie!
‘Clare, look! It’s Maddie.’
And then Clare gave her one of those looks like a doctor does when they are delivering bad news, when the cheery smile on the lips does not reach the eyes, where words are swallowed up in a pretence of smiles and gestures as the hidden meanings are processed.
‘Oh, Olive,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s not your niece. She’s in Bali, remember? She phoned last night, on Skype.’
Skype? Of course it was Maddie! Bali? What was she talking about? Maddie must have changed her hair or something, that’s all. Clare was just being silly. Olive banged on the window again. The stupid girl seemed to hardly recognise her!
18
Maddie
It was now September. She’d texted Tim that she would just be another week. He hadn’t replied. She’d been out body surfing a few more times, had spent long, lazy afternoons on the beach with a book, developing a golden hue all over her body. Her normal life had faded to the back of her mind. But then she thought of Olive and felt guilty. That last Skype call had been a bit of a disaster. The lovely nurse Clare had tried hard, but Olive really couldn’t get the hang of it and had kept asking why Maddie hadn’t visited.
It was 10 p.m. and her head was thumping. Her feet had been trodden on about a hundred times. Ed had convinced her to go with them to a music festival that night. She would have rather had a cup of tea and read a good book in her room – she knew her limits. Her toes were black and blue.
She focused on a group of girls gathered at a high table. Twenties, shiny long hair. They were golden from the sun and were in bikini tops and either shorts or small sarongs with fringes, tied around their waist. Flesh on display everywhere. They wouldn’t put up with mediocrity, would they? She studied their long legs, laced around the bar table legs, the green-painted toenails, the studs in their eyebrows, and wondered what happened when they had sex. How those long legs would entwine around someone’s hips, how the eyebrow studs would be crushed onto a pillow in passion.
How did those girls get so confident – at twenty she hadn’t been that confident. But something did change one day on the beach. She must have been about nineteen. Seeing Greg that first time had awakened a yearning in her that was primeval. She’d never seen anyone like him before, his wide shoulders, tanned forearms, as he waxed his surfboard.
Up till then she’d only seen sex on the TV – or what they artificially showed of it. She’d been far too afraid to do what the other girls at school had been doing. In fact, she had no idea what they were all giggling about mostly, but she used to join in, pretend she was worldly-wise, when really she was a virgin in regulation navy nylon knickers. She wanted to lose her nickname, Mediocre Maddie, and so she’d brag about what she’d done. Really, though, she didn’t have a clue.
But then things changed: she knew. That surge of passion and feeling that was hard to control. She could hardly drag her eyes away from him that day on the beach. After that, sex was all she could think about. He was like a wild animal that she wanted a part of, the likes of which she’d never