side, perched on a box. She took a sip of her tea and looked at me through the steam, without saying anything else. Her hair had grown out of its highlights whilst she’d been in the hospital, and a strange two-tone effect of grey was now mixed with the blonde and auburn streaks, making her look like a badger that had had a respray.
‘She’s a nice lass, your Poppy,’ she said at last, reaching for another biscuit. ‘You’ve done a good job there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t think much of her father, mind. What were you thinking? He carries on like he’s still a teenager! A fancy accent will only take you so far, I told him that.’
I thought of Luc meeting Mary, and my lips twitched. He would have tried to charm her, but Mary was impervious to any charm that didn’t come wrapped in silver foil and with a calorie content written in red.
‘He’s living with a twenty-six-year-old,’ I said, ‘and he’s trying to keep up with her, I think.’
Mary scoffed. ‘He’s got to be forty if he’s a day.’
‘Forty-four, actually. He’s ten years older than me.’
‘And that was what you fell for, was it? Older man, swept you off your feet, gave you a reason not to go home?’ Her mouth twisted. ‘And then, whoops, you’re pregnant, married, whole new life…’ She stopped speaking suddenly and drank a large mouthful of tea.
I looked at her through the gloom. A little glimmer of realisation twinkled at the back of my mind. ‘Who was he, Mary?’ I asked, gently, but I was ready to duck in case she threw her mug at my head.
She sighed, but didn’t reply.
We sat in the quiet for a while. I could hear the blackbird trilling in the bare branches and the squelch and rip that was Patrick grazing, but, apart from that, everything was still and calm. Mary was drinking her tea but looking down at the table; every so often she’d look up at the square of grey that was the window, and then back down again. She looked as though she was trying to make a decision.
Eventually she stood up. Without saying anything she went to the back of the van and rummaged around the bed area, then came back carrying something wrapped in a shawl. I really hoped it wasn’t going to be a crystal ball.
With no flourish, in fact with a matter-of-fact air that was slightly belied by her hand shaking, she put the bundle down on the table. ‘You’re not as green as you’re grass looking, are you?’ she asked.
I presumed it was rhetorical and didn’t reply.
Mary unwrapped the bundle. It was a framed photograph. Two women on what looked like a seaside promenade, windswept and arms linked. The older lady wore a fitted dress and a hat pinned onto swept back hair, the younger wore a smart blouse and skirt, her hair was long and blowing in the wind and she was laughing.
‘Taken by one of those beach photographers that used to set up studios in seaside towns,’ I observed, picking up the picture and tilting it to get some light on.
‘Yes, this isn’t a social history lesson, thank you,’ Mary snapped. ‘It was 1960. That girl is me.’
I looked again. Yes, I could see a foreshadowing of the Mary I knew in the face of that laughing girl, a curve of the chin and the mouth. In black and white I couldn’t see the penetrating blue of her eyes, but beneath the laughter there was a hint of that direct gaze.
‘And the other lady—’ She stopped and took another mouthful of tea. ‘That was my Rose.’
Rose was pretty in a stern, almost 1940s groomed way, and, although she was smiling too, there was an awkwardness about her. ‘She doesn’t look too happy about being photographed,’ I observed.
‘Yes. She was worried her husband might see us,’ Mary said, almost as though she was daring me to pick up on this. ‘He was my lecturer at university. She was the only person I ever found worth loving. And – well, clearly someone else had got there first.’
‘Oh, Mary.’ Suddenly so much of her prickliness made sense.
‘And if you’re thinking that having had one brief love affair with a married woman way back when I was twenty-two scarred me for life and put me off ever falling in love again, then you are wrong, my girl.’ She took the picture from my hands and wrapped it, almost tenderly, back in the