Wilbur plucked up the courage to ask her out on a date and she agreed. The Ghost, at his next stop, followed Wilbur as he headed to the Palace to pick Maggie up.
She’d got changed in the back of the cinema and was wearing a beret and a polo neck and a slightly awkward smile.
The date didn’t go the way he wanted it.
Maggie had a distance, that evening. A protective politeness that became clear over drinks at the Stone House pub, when she told him the news. Two days after he had asked her out she’d had an incredible offer. She was moving to London. She’d got a job that her tutor had told her to apply for with a design firm called Trapezium. ‘I can’t turn it down. They’re the best in the country …’
So the date led nowhere. They were in limbo. There was no kiss in the rain. He never invited her dancing at the Penny Farthing nightclub, as he’d planned. It took Wilbur every single atom of strength he had not to tell her what he felt about her. Not to tell her that he needed her in his life. It was hard to fight for a relationship that didn’t yet exist.
The closest he came was during their goodbyes.
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Aye. I’ll miss you too.’
And the hug lasted a little longer than formality expected. And then they looked at each other in silence for a few seconds, and they both watched as all the possibilities they could share evaporated into the night.
Nineteen Months
Charlie in the pub after work telling Wilbur about the end of the Beatles … Wilbur on his bike making an unnecessary right turn to avoid going down Ecclesall Road … Launching a children’s section with displays of Dr Seuss andA Wizard of Earthsea… Working, working, working … On the distant horizon there was a World Cup in Mexico … a satellite in China … a cyclone in Pakistan … Then in the foreground Edith swallowing her pills down with her milky tea and a slice of cake … On his own on the bench at the cemetery … working in the back office with Charlie … lying in bed awake and alert and hearing the milk float drive down an empty morning street … packed crowds in the bookshop on a Saturday … passing the waterfall in Endcliffe Park … Wilbur getting a phone call from Maggie, saying she was unhappy in London and coming home … one thing rushing and fading into another… a whole life of ellipses … every arrival its own departure …
Warm White Wine
The Ghost was standing in the lobby of the brand new Sheffield Crucible Theatre.
The place was full of people dressed in brown suits and kaftan dresses. It was a wine reception held for opening night. He saw his living self, in a jacket and mauve shirt, and with a new and short-lived moustache under his nose, chatting to a large red-faced man from theYorkshire Post.
‘Despite that monstrous moustache,’ said the Ghost to no one, ‘I scrubbed up all right.’
And then he remembered what this was. He was there for the precise moment when Wilbur realised that Maggie was in the room.
The Ghost watched his living face light up at the sight of her, like a window catching the light. He tried hard not to be too obvious, but kept stealing glances. And soon he was just gazing, hoping she would see him. He thought ofAnna Karenina, how Levin’s love for Kitty is confirmed when he sees her on the ice.
For Wilbur, seeing Maggie felt like relief, as though a part of him hadn’t been breathing this last year.
But that relief he felt on seeing her was the terrifying moment he realised he loved her. It wasn’t that he had been thinking of her night and day. He’d thrown himself into work and the shop was now thriving. But even as work became a kind of anaesthetic, she had never fully left his mind. Every time he was sitting near Dougie’s grave he thought of her. Every time he was passing Endcliffe Park he thought of her. Every time he wanted to tell someone about the pain he felt inside he thought of her. He always hoped she wasdoing well, and happy, but it was never a hope that he acted on. His assumption had been that she didn’t need him complicating her new life in London.
So it was a kind of shock when she phoned to say she was coming home. She’d said she’d got a job at the Crucible as their in-house designer and wondered if he was going to the opening night.
He tried to pay attention to what the journalist was talking about but had lost the drift. He was just looking at Maggie, who was wearing a burgundy corduroy dress and chatting with ease and grace to some people he didn’t know.
‘It was a big mistake though, wasn’t it?’ the man from theYorkshire Postwas saying.
‘Sorry,’ said Wilbur. ‘What was a mistake?’
‘The decimalisation of our national currency! They’ll be back to pounds, shillings and pence next year, mark my words. Bet it’s bedlam right now running a shop …’
Wilbur’s eyes met Maggie’s across the room. ‘Oh, we haven’t found it too bad. Listen, Terry, I’m ever so sorry but I’ve just spotted an old friend …’
He weaved his way through the crowd until he was there.
‘Hello, trouble,’ she said, politely peeling herself away from the people she’d been talking with.
He recognised Claudette. ‘Hi, Wilbur!’ she said, raising her eyes at Maggie with an excited smile, as if he’d been the happy subject of a conversation he didn’t know about.
‘Oh, hi, Claudette! Hope you’re well.’
Claudette couldn’t hear him. He turned to Maggie. Felt a little rush of adrenaline.
