‘Nothing is right any more,’ I sob, blowing into a tissue and tossing it into the wicker bin.
‘How do you mean?’ Despite my distress I can still make out the look of puzzlement in Elsa’s hazy blueeyes, and the soft crinkle of her brow below her grey-blond fringe.
‘I haven’t got a book deal, the house is falling to bits and is completely unaffordable, and now it seems my marriage is falling apart too.’
Nodding along gently, she offers me a compassionate if confused look.
‘Shall we unpack the book deal part first?’ she asks.
‘What’s to say? I’m out of contract, I haven’t any ideas worth pitching. I’m not sure I can write any more, or if I want to.’
‘Uh-huh,’ nods Elsa, looking for more.
‘It used to make sense,’ I continue. ‘In writing for hundreds of thousands of readers I knew I was touching lives in some way – if only enabling escape for a half-hour in someone’s day. I felt I had a purpose. Now . . .’ I pause, uncertain what it is that’s really troubling me. ‘What’s the point of it all?’
Elsa sits contemplatively as I dab my eyes and blow my nose, regaining some sense of composure.
‘Tell me about the house,’ she says.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I ask, expecting her to agree but she doesn’t. ‘The roof leaks, the chimneys are blocked, the windows need repairing. The bookshop needs to be gutted, our apartment looks as if it’s been ransacked, and Carly’s space is filled with furniture older than I am.’ I glance around Elsa’s living area, her yellow and white kitchen shining like a pin towards the back of the L-shaped space. ‘It’s only your flat that’s in good condition, and that’s because you’ve shouldered the cost of repairs.’
‘The garden needs an overhaul,’ she says then adds, realising she’s just added another thing to my mental list, ‘but that’s not important; vegetation is good for the wildlife. I can contribute more to the upkeep of the house, it’s not a problem.’
‘No,’ I say instantly, the part of my brain that isn’t in overdrive working clearly enough to know that Elsa needs all of her pension and inheritance to help with Bill’s care. ‘We’ll manage. I’m just overwhelmed with the worry of work, and the house, and then Robin came in this morning making some claim about how love and life are both traps and that if something doesn’t change it will be the end. I don’t know if he meant the end of the business, or of our marriage, or both.’ I pause, still unable to process it, panicking about how we’d cope without the business or each other.
She offers me a look that asks me to elaborate and I recount how the conversation played out.
‘Hmm,’ she says, by way of a full stop, then gathers up her long gypsy skirt and goes to the kitchen.
‘What you need is tea,’ she declares, gathering the necessary items from the cupboards.
‘I just had one,’ I say, slightly irked that Elsa hasn’t understood the gravity of the situation.
‘Did you?’ she asks, and I wonder how she knows that I threw most of it down the sink.
She returns with a tray set with a simple earthenware teapot, which I recognise immediately as having been made by her husband, Bill. Carefully she fills the handle-less cups and hands one to me with a homemade Speculaas biscuit.
‘Let us sit a while and simply hold our cup,’ she says.
I do as she asks, my mind abuzz with all Robin said. After a while, when I can take the silence no more, I ask what she’s thinking.
‘I am calming my thoughts by focusing on the cup.’
For a moment I think Elsa has lost her mind, but as I focus on mine, its warmth radiating out over my skin and its smooth, blemish-free glaze, I begin to notice my thoughts subsiding, my heart rate reducing.
‘Now notice the colour of the tea without labelling it. Just see. And then, when you are ready, lift the cup higher and absorb the aroma. Only once you have observed both those things should you take a small sip and hold it in your mouth.
‘Good, Frances,’ she says after a while, and although I should be focusing on the taste, my mind flits to my mother, the only other person who called me by my full name. ‘When it feels as if the world is out of control, it is good to come back to your senses.’
‘Thank you, Elsa,’ I say, not exactly sure how a cup of tea is going to find me my next book idea, repair the house and business, or my marriage, but Elsa seems so composed, despite all her own troubles, that I’m prepared to lean into the moment.
3.
ELSA
‘Cooee, only me,’ calls Aleks, arriving at the bottom of the stairs as she does every weekday morning around this time.
‘Good morning,’ I reply, always warmed by the sight of her, resplendent today in a long padded jacket and colourful scarf despite the clement weather.
