Autumn always brought with it a ‘back to school’ feeling of renewal that Kelsey never failed to get caught up in.Thiswas the start of the new year as far as she was concerned. A time when, if she was lucky, she treated herself to new boots to see her through the cold months; a time when, inspired by the changing colours around her, she’d feel inclined to experiment with her make-up palette, not something that interested her much at other times of the year, and she started reaching for her berry lipsticks instead of her pink nudes.
She’d bemoaned her situation to Mirren over the phone, telling her, ‘Jonathan’s missing the three weeks of the year where I look ace,’ and she just knew Mirren was rolling her eyes and readying herself for an emphatic speech about how Kelsey looked great every day of the year so she’d better stop putting herself down like that.
But Kelsey, like all autumn-born babies with an affinity for this magical time of year, knew what she was talking about, and it was the weather that did it. October’s dry days were perfect for her Celtic hair, prone to bedraggling in summer heat and winter damp. These few weeks between seasons were the Goldilocks time for her golden-brown locks, and she made the most of it.
Her autumn bloom always coincided with her birthday, and Kelsey had turned twenty-nine only days ago. Mirren had phoned to wish her well and, noticing her friend was down, Kelsey tried her best to draw out the reason why, but Mirren wouldn’t say a word other than her usual breezy, ‘You know me, Kelse, I’m always fine, just busy.’ So Kelsey had dropped it and thanked Mirren for the big bags of Percy Pigs chewy sweets – which hadn’t lasted long at all – and the Netflix gift card which Kelsey had immediately splurged on a Keanu Reeves marathon.
Her mum, little brother Calum and grandad, all living together back home in Scotland, had posted a big package of things they knew she’d love to her little bedsit.
There was a new jar of moisturiser, and a book about photography her mum had doubtless found in a charity shop and which was perfect inspiration as Kelsey settled into her new job. There was a new jumper too, big, baggy and super soft in sapphire blue, a departure for Kelsey from her reliance on autumnal browns and oranges all year round. Best of all, there had been a gift card for a hair salon in the town centre.
Kelsey had walked past its doors many times that summer as she’d beaten the streets leading her tour groups from ancient building to hidden garden, but she’d never set foot inside. The salon always looked intimidatingly trendy to Kelsey, but she had delightedly pushed through the doors to make her appointment.
Only this morning she’d left through those doors, an eighty-quid gift token and ten inches of wild, tawny-blonde hair lighter.
‘Like it?’ she said, peering at Jonathan’s grinning face on her tablet now she was home again, swishing her hair and enjoying the novelty of the neat ends skimming her shoulders.
‘Beautiful. You look beautiful.’
‘Like someone who owns their own business? You’d trust this woman with your wedding photos, right?’
‘I’d trust you with anything, my heart included.’
They smiled at their screens, Jonathan’s straight white teeth flashing beneath curling lips in the American smile that had kick-started Kelsey’s slow-burn attraction to him the day she had, literally, bumped into him at the café with the pink awnings by the marina; the slow burn that had soon turned into a loved-up inferno no distance or time apart could extinguish.
After a moment she turned her phone, angling it to the table and vase in the corner of her tiny white bedsit, showing Jonathan the lavish flowers he’d sent her for her birthday. ‘They’ve opened up even more. Aren’t they lovely? I wish you were here to smell their perfume.’
He’d taken care to contact the florist in the town’s smart shopping arcade that she had admired so often, and he’d listed every flower he’d ever seen mentioned in a Shakespeare play or poem for the florist to choose from. When the delivery arrived at St.Ninian’s there was a note attached in Jonathan’s handwriting listing each flower in turn. The whole thing must have taken days to orchestrate.
For Kelsey, my love and my leading lady, on your birthday. Here’s flowering rosemary for remembrance (Hamlet), sweet musk-roses and eglantine (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), lady-smocks all silver-white (Love’s Labour’s Lost), and carnations and streak’d gillyflowers (The Winter’s Tale). I hope you like them. They’re sent with all my love, J, x
The whole spray was bold and bright and a little untidy with a hint of wild nature about it, much like Jonathan himself. He really couldn’t have sent a more appropriate gift.
‘I’m wishing the days away until Christmas and you flying in, but I wish I could freeze this bouquet in time and have it last forever,’ said Kelsey, letting him see her face once more.
Jonathan smiled fondly, his eyes shining. ‘I’ll just have to send you more when those ones fade.’
‘Does acting pay that much?’ she laughed.
‘Ah, well, let’s not talk about that.’ He flashed his smile again, his cheeks making his eyes close in crescents and showing Kelsey that dimple on his chin, the one that should have been illegal it was so appealing.
‘I wish you were here,’ she said in a quiet voice. Not for the first time she felt the miles between them. So often as she walked through town she’d see their old haunts and be struck with the knowledge of how depleted her everyday life was without the possibility of running into him there, so closely was he linked to her sense of the place, and yet she’d forced herself to carry on and discover new sides to Stratford, and herself, and to keep testing out her independence all the more. Still, she was allowed to sulk sometimes and this was one of them.
‘I wish I was there too,’ said Jonathan. ‘But I’m with you all the time, and I’m not going anywhere. Just hold on. You keep working on the studio, and I’ll keep dying on stage every night as Hamlet.’ He mimed his body recoiling from the sword-stabbing action of his fist towards his chest and pulled a face at his own joke. Kelsey couldn’t help but smile at his goofiness. ‘It’ll be December twenty-third before we know it, ’kay?’
‘All right.’
‘Talk to you tomorrow?’
‘Sunrise?’
‘Sunrise. I love you.’
His image disappeared from her phone screen and she sat back on her bed with a sigh. This waiting was proving harder than she thought. Last month she’d been convinced that the morning he left had been the hardest part, but this was a whole new kind of longing.
She thought back to the last time they’d been in touching distance, trying to bring back the feel of his hands and the scent of his skin. That night, their last together until midwinter when Jonathan would return for the briefest of Christmas vacations, had proved to be the most intense of their short relationship.
It was September the fourth. His flight was at five a.m., so he’d be setting off from Stratford in a cab in the pre-dawn light. Neither of them intended to sleep that night.
