bus home from the clubs at three in the morning, singing at the top of her voice, unable to sit down until the bus driver had shouted up at them all, leaving them in a fit of giggles? Sure, you grow up, you have responsibilities like a mortgage and toilets to clean. But what about fun?
She replayed today in her head. She’d been irrationally disappointed that he’d turned up. After everything Tim had done for her…
You said we don’t do anything together! She remembered their previous row. She glanced over. He was silent now, his face expressionless under those ‘driving’ sunglasses – the ones he kept polished in the glove compartment. She put a hand out to touch his leg – a peace offering. And what did she feel? She felt hollow – especially as she remembered the charge of two thousand volts when Greg had accidentally brushed her cheek last night.
They pulled up at some traffic lights; they changed from red to amber then green. Tim pulled away slowly. In the magazine there was a piece about a woman having an affair. She flicked past the page hurriedly and nearly ripped it in the process. Somehow, lately, thoughts of sex were all that were on her mind, whirling around like dandelions in the wind.
The countryside whizzed by in flashes of colour – first yellow rapeseed, then a brushstroke of azure-blue, and then field after field of sheep grazing. She used to point out sheep to Ed on any long car journeys to the coast, asking if he knew what they ate, letting him unpack the picnic. Later, they’d build Lego helicopters with multi-coloured pieces.
After about half an hour they passed signs for Tregardock beach, the place where it all started. No. She wound the window up and turned to the horoscopes. Life is there for the taking. Is it? She studied the coastal landscape as it passed her by, the rugged, rocky stretches of coast, the bluey-green sea laced with pale sand down below. The weather had put on a show today – it had hit nearly twenty-five already.
‘I got a call from Olive’s nurses,’ Tim said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘They said her drugs need topping up.’
Tim’s aunt Olive was incredibly dear to her. Ever since Ed was a tiny baby, she’d been a part of their lives. From the trips to her cottage on the Isle of Wight, to Ed’s christening, Olive’s charm had been woven into many of their family celebrations. She was more like Maddie’s blood aunt, really, than Tim’s. Maddie felt connected to her on so many levels. Olive was in a care home near them – the one where Maddie’s dad had been – rather than on the Isle of Wight, so they could both see her.
Glancing out to the sea, Maddie recalled all the happy times she’d had with Olive and Ed down at Olive’s old home, Maris Cottage, right by the beach. It lay empty now. She’d promised Olive she would visit and look after it, for when Olive ‘got back’. They were both kidding themselves, of course; Olive was never going back. It looked like she was at Maybank View till – well, Maddie wouldn’t think about that.
She wanted to make Olive’s life better in any way she could. She smiled, thinking of her feisty spirit – the dark rimmed glasses and grey hair always ‘tinted’ with a new colour, a dash of purple at the ends or a pink rinse, always more trendy than twee; Olive had been edgy before the word was even invented.
They passed a road sign telling them it was fifty-five miles to Little Rowland and then she spotted the ‘Hampshire’ county sign. The last time she’d visited, Olive had been quite agitated and had asked Maddie to water all the flowers at the cottage. Maddie didn’t want to remind her that there were no flowers there now – that Maddie and Tim had cleared out the rockery, and that they’d donated most of the furniture from inside the house to charity.
But she knew Olive wanted to cling on to some of her old life. That’s why she’d told her a few white lies about watering plants, about everything being OK. It was hope, wasn’t it? Hope that things would return to normal. Olive’s new normal was four beige walls to stare at instead of crashing waves beyond the cottage garden. How had Olive coped all those years after her husband Stan had died? Maddie couldn’t