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The bubble of pleasure we have found in each other has distracted us from the realities of both our situations. The real world was always going to creep back in sooner or later. I have not opened any of the angry emails from work, nor answered the work phone. What will I do now – dust off my old contacts from when I was a freelancer, or temp for a while until I can work out a better plan? I don’t know what Ted is thinking. He told me he has a review meeting with the hospital in a few weeks, about going back to work. If he doesn’t return straight away, will he even want to be in London? I guess if he stays here for a bit, it’s a short flight for me to visit. Do I want to be in London now that Vanya is moving out of our flat? If I’m not working at Love Life, do I even need to be there? As my mind dances down all these avenues, I try to rein it in – focus on today. Whatever happens, it won’t be impossible for us to keep seeing each other.
‘I will keep it with me wherever I am,’ Ted says with forced jollity. ‘The perfect way to remember this house, to remember all the life lived here.’
Then I think of the story Gerry told me – the birds.
‘Can I see the carvings in the beams of the attic?’ I ask. Ted looks surprised that I know about this. ‘Your dad told me about the Ukrainian man who was hidden here during the war.’
Ted takes me up to the loft, hands me a torch, and says I need to lie on my back and shuffle backwards through to the narrow space behind the water heater. It takes me a while to locate the drawings on the beams, and when I find them, at first I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but then I make out wings, scratches for feathers, the distinct angle of a beak. Though they are rough, there is a real sense of motion in these drawings – the person who made these longed to take flight.
‘Do you know if he survived the war, if he ever got home?’ I ask Ted through the wall.
‘I’m not sure. I think he survived but I don’t know what happened to him. It was my great-grandmother who knew all the details. We should have written it all down while she was alive.’
I crawl back out of the small space and sit next to Ted at the top of the stairs.
‘You must write down everything you do know about him being here and give the story to whoever buys the house. Some things are too important to be forgotten.’ I wipe my eyes, which are swimming, suddenly inexplicably emotional about the idea that these birds, and what they meant, might be lost.
‘You’re right,’ Ted says sombrely, ‘we must be guardians of stories more significant than our own.’
He puts an arm around me. The sound of a car crunching on the gravel rouses us from our moment of reflection. We look at each other – wondering who that could be. Walking downstairs and through to the porch, we see a cab driver, the one who brought me back from Maude’s party yesterday. He waves my phone out of the driver’s window.
‘I assume this must be yours, love,’ he calls. ‘I’ve been retracing my steps from yesterday to see who might be missing it.’
I’d forgotten all about my phone.
‘Oh, thank you so much!’ I say, running over to retrieve it. I’m amazed any cab driver would go out of his way like this – perhaps it’s only possible when you live on a small island. ‘That is so kind of you – I must give you some money, let me get my wallet.’ I start to head to the cottage to find my bag, but he waves me away.
‘Just pay it forward,’ he calls, then clocks my tear-stained face and says with a wink and a wave, ‘and cheer up, eh, now you’ve got something to smile about.’ Then he reverses far too fast back up the drive. Ted and I catch each other’s eye and start to laugh, the kind of laugh that once you’ve started, it’s hard to stop. It isn’t even that funny, but it might be our first ‘in joke’, and those are the most delicious kind.
Back inside the house, once we’ve composed ourselves, I plug in my phone.
‘Can I take you to my favourite beach now?’ Ted asks, but I’m distracted by my phone lighting up with messages. I realise I’ve enjoyed being out of contact for a while, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to let the outside world back in.
There are messages from Suki, from other people at work, all trying to track me down yesterday. Then messages from today that Suki has sent to both my phones, ‘We need to talk Laura. Call me ASAP.’
‘What is it?’ Ted asks. ‘All OK?’
‘Everything’s fine. I think I might leave the phones here today.’
Ted doesn’t say anything, but he raises both eyebrows and then reaches to rub the space beneath his chin, his hand searching for the beard that is no longer there.
Ted and I pack a bag of beach things, and he drives me to Portelet, a cove on the south-west of the island. There are so many beaches here I have yet to explore. Flying in, the island looked so small from the window of the plane, an accidental rock protruding from the endless sea, but now, the more I explore, Jersey’s size feels deceptive, like a Tardis.
We walk down some steep steps to get to the beach. There is something Enid Blytonesque about the scene, the walk down and the picture-perfect bay, the ideal setting for a Famous Five adventure. A tiny island sits in the middle of the bay, with an old fortification on top. Ted tells me it’s a Martello tower called Janvrin’s tomb.
‘Janvrin was a sea captain returning from France in the early eighteenth century,’ Ted says, as we walk down the last of the steep steps. ‘He fell ill, then because of plague quarantine restrictions, he wasn’t allowed to land in Jersey or see his family. He had to stay out on his ship, where he died a few days later. He was buried on this islet right here – his wife had a tomb erected as a monument of her love and to preserve his memory.’
‘What a sad story,’ I say, looking out at the tower.
‘It served its purpose, though,’ Ted says, taking my hand as we walk across the sand, ‘because I’m telling you the story now, three hundred years on.’
‘Do you think anyone will remember us in a hundred years, let alone three?’ I ask wistfully.
‘If you are saying you want me to build you a Martello tower, Laura, I’m not sure I have the skill set,’ Ted says, leaning in to kiss my shoulder.
‘It’s never too late to learn a new skill,’ I say, leaning my head into his.
We walk down to the water’s edge and swim around the islet of Janvrin’s tomb, the sun glistening off the dark blue water. Ted’s a far stronger swimmer than me, and I claim to need a lift for the last bit, so I can wrap my wet limbs around his warm, broad back. We have pizza on the beach at Portelet Bay Café, a gentle breeze drying our wet hair, and we talk animatedly about nothing of consequence. We don’t discuss what this is between us, or our plans for next week or even tomorrow; we just tell silly stories and get lost in the pleasure of each other’s company.
