Kelsey jumped at a sound behind her, cutting her off.
Mirren, on tiptoe and making a show of quietly sneaking past, handed Kelsey her keys, shrugging on her black leather jacket. ‘I’m heading out for a walk,’ she mouthed. ‘Back in a few hours.’ Her face was stiff. Had she overheard?
‘Oh, all right,’ Kelsey replied. ‘It’s dark, will you be OK?’
‘Course I will. Try to have a nice quiet evening, get some rest. Don’t watch any scary movies.’ She kissed Kelsey’s cheek and headed downstairs, turning as she descended to call back, ‘Oh, and give Jonathan my love.’
Now Mirren was out of sight, Kelsey’s smile faded into a worried frown. She made her way back into the bedsit. All the dishes had been washed and put away and the bed covers were straightened. The dresses over the bathroom door were gone.
‘Did you hear that? Mirren hasn’t gone out on her own since she arrived. Do you think she knows I’m suffocating?’
‘You’ve been best friends since you were kids, there can’t be much she doesn’t know about you, and she must be feeling it too.’
Kelsey sighed and sat on the bed, ruefully eyeing Mirren’s little black suitcase zipped up and stowed neatly under the bedside table.
‘Go easy on yourself. OK?’ He waited for her reply, but didn’t get one. ‘So, what were you going to say?’ Jonathan’s words reached her through the sinking feelings of being a horrible friend.
‘Oh, I was going to say, there’s a bed on the barge.’
‘There is?’
‘A double one. The whole boat’s nice really, if a little dated. There’s a big step down into an open area – that’s where the big window hatch is and the ticket sales used to happen; then there’s a door through to a galley kitchen and a little foldaway table – that’s where we’d all sit on lunch breaks, sharing our guiding stories from that day and counting out our tips – and beyond that there’s a bedroom with little painted cupboards and shelves all around the walls.’
‘Sounds idyllic.’
‘It’s not as fancy as all that, but Norma had it all professionally cleaned so it’s spotless inside, even if the outside is in need of some TLC.’
‘So what were you thinking?’
‘That maybe when you come back to Stratford in April to do your run ofLove’s Labour’s Lostwe could live in it together? We could try it out when you’re here for Christmas and when you visit for Valentine’s Day…’
‘Uh…’
‘What is it?’
‘Kelsey, I can’t live on the water.’
‘You can’t?’
‘I get seasick, real bad. I mean it. I couldn’t even ride Bricktown water taxis back home without throwing up.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know that about you.’
‘Hardly surprising, we didn’t have all that long to get to know each other over the summer, did we?’
A flutter of anxiety troubled Kelsey’s chest. What else didn’t she know about the man she hoped to spend her life with once this long wait was over?
‘Are people even allowed to live in it? Didn’t Norma say you should use the boat as business premises?’
‘Mmm.’ Kelsey was still distracted thinking of the sea sickness bombshell.
‘Well then… can you make it a second business premises?’ he pressed, but she wasn’t hearing him properly.
‘Jonathan I…’ Her words failed. ‘How will we… I mean, where…’ The words were all there, lining up, wanting to spill out, but she gulped them back.Where will we live? How will we live? Where will our money come from? Can I even say ‘our’ money? Is it too early to even think about combining our lives like that? And how exactly do two people who don’t know each other very well, but really, really love each other, merge their separate lives and make it work when everything’s so new and they’ve never done anything like it before?
She didn’t say any of it. Instead, she let her unsettled feelings swell and get mixed up with her guilt and irritation about living in such close quarters with Mirren, which really had proven that the bedsit wasn’t fit for two people to cohabit comfortably – even if Kelseycouldlay upon Jonathan’s chest and they could squeeze into the shower together and be closer in a thousand ways that she and Mirren couldn’t.
‘I just don’t know how we’ll manage,’ she said weakly.
