The Story of Us (11 page)

I walked back quickly to my fiancé and friends, and Caroline, who was the only one facing in the right direction to have seen my brief encounter, opened her mouth to say something as I approached. I darted a meaningful look at Richard and shook my head almost imperceptibly, before resuming my position in the queue, beside him. Caroline obediently closed her mouth on whatever she'd been about to say, while a look of understanding lit her eyes. Friends do that.

Loss is a funny thing. It was a word I heard a lot in those early days, from just about everyone I spoke to. ‘I'm sorry for your loss'
seemed to be the go-to phrase, followed by a good deal of arm patting, after which people started to look vaguely uncomfortable and unsure of what to do or say next. That's the trouble with death, there's no etiquette book on the protocol for grief or condolences. No one really knows how to react; also no one wants to get too close to the raw gaping wound that's visible on those left behind, as though – who knows – it might just be catching.

The dictionary defines loss as
the
state
of
no
longer
having
something
because
it
has
been
taken
from
you
or
destroyed
.
I guess that's fairly accurate. Except ever since the night of Amy's death she wasn't lost at all. She was everywhere
.

She was in the silver bangle bracelet I wore every day, her gift to me on my eighteenth birthday. She was in the fast-food wrapper carelessly discarded on the floor of my car, when she'd insisted we pull into a drive-in for burgers after shopping for wedding shoes. She was in the mirror when I slipped earrings through my ears, because it was fourteen-year-old Amy who'd persuaded us to get them pierced, while Caroline had timidly refused to even enter the shop. She was the first name on the directory of my mobile phone, and I was
never
going to be able to delete that.

Amy wasn't gone at all. She was omnipresent, which was sometimes comforting, and could sometimes make me smile, but more often just made the pain of losing such a bright and beautiful flame the very worst tragedy I could ever imagine.

Someone who
was
lost, however, was Richard. Well, not in the real and physical sense, but definitely missing. In the days before the funeral, when I was still off work, he had come straight from school to our house each afternoon, and I could chart the change in him like the world's most depressing graph. It was as though a doppelgänger Richard had invaded our lives. The person who sat at our table for dinner each night, or beside me on the couch as we stared unseeingly at the television, was not the same man who had slipped the diamond ring on my finger on Christmas Day. Although I'd unburdened my grief in Richard's arms many times since Amy's death, I felt as though he was holding back from me. For the first time in our relationship, past and present, I couldn't get to the source of the problem. ‘What does he say when you ask what's wrong?' Caroline had asked, setting down two mugs of coffee on her kitchen table – and a plate of biscuits, that neither of us would touch. Appetite, that was something else we both seemed to have lost since Amy's death, and in consequence a fair amount of weight. My wedding dress would probably hang off me now, I remember thinking, and then braced myself against the onslaught of grief when I thought of the two midnight blue bridesmaids' dresses, hanging in their cellophane shrouds in our spare room.

‘Emma?'

I'd shaken my head, trying to jostle my thoughts back to Caroline's question. Attention deficit. Another loss. ‘Sorry. My concentration is shot to pieces these days. I think it must be lack of sleep.' Loss of sleep, the list just kept growing.

‘Richard says nothing is wrong,' I had replied eventually. ‘He says it's just his way of dealing with things.'

The solution to the problem came from an unexpected source, when a teacher at his school had fallen ill, leaving them without a leader for a skiing trip.

‘Of course I said no when they asked if I could stand in,' he explained.

Richard was the obvious person to have asked. He and his whole family had skied for as long as I could remember.

‘Tell them you've changed your mind, that you'll do it.'

He'd looked shocked at my suggestion. ‘But I can't go. I can't leave you now. You
need
me here.' But behind the protests there had been a look in his eyes like a prisoner who'd seen an open jail door, which was slowly closing shut.

I reached for his hand, curling my fingers through his. ‘Go. I think you need to get away. I'll be fine. I'm back at work next week and I have Caroline and Nick and Mum and Dad. It's only ten days.'

He had pulled me towards him and kissed me with more enthusiasm than he'd shown in several weeks. That alone told me I'd just done the right thing.

Working in a bookshop can hardly be termed as arduous, but apparently the simple task of standing behind a counter and interacting with the general public was still too much for me to cope with – according to my employer, that was.

Monique, my boss, had been on the second rung of a small stepladder, filling shelves with glossy hardback books when I walked into the shop on my first day back. She swayed a little alarmingly on the ladder, and I instinctively dashed forwards. She batted away the hand I held out to her, but stepped down to envelop me in a massive hug. She wrapped her short plump arms around me, the voluminous sleeves of her kaftan billowing around us like massive floral sails. Her dangling shell earrings caught in my hair, and I was grateful that by the time I had disentangled myself, the tears her greeting had generated were almost gone.

‘Now why the fuck have you come back so soon?' There were two things I loved about Monique: that despite living in the UK for over forty years she still had a thick French accent; and that she swore like a sailor. To hear them both in her opening sentence had been a double treat.

‘I need to keep busy. Being at home gives me too much time to think,' I confessed. I smiled sadly at the woman in front of me. She was more than just my employer; she was a confidante and friend.

She nodded, and the shell earrings clattered like mini percussion instruments. ‘Your fiancé called me before he left on his trip, did he tell you that?'

‘Richard phoned you? Why?' Her words were surprising, for it was a poorly kept secret that they didn't particularly like each other. Monique was the only person who had looked less than delighted when she heard I had accepted Richard's proposal.

‘Ah ha! I suspected you did not know this,' my boss declared, sounding like Poirot and looking like Miss Marple. ‘He said that I should look out for you and not work you too hard. Pwah! As if I am an imbecile who had to be told these things.'

‘I think his meaning may have got lost in translation,' I suggested, instinctively springing to Richard's defence.

Monique gave me a long hard look and I realised again how many people underestimated this woman with her apparently broken English and heavy accent. I knew only too well she had perfect command of my native tongue as well as her own. I'd seen her reading highly complex English literature with complete understanding and knew that long ago, for reasons she chose not to disclose, she had decided to conceal this fluency.

She softened then, and I saw the sympathy shining brightly in her hazel eyes. ‘Take time to heal, my Emma. All will be well, but it will take time.'

I nodded dumbly and with no conscious thought tumbled into her open arms, as she held me against her pillowy bosom in the way my own mother hadn't been able to do, with any real meaning, for the longest time.

It was midday on Thursday and I had already drunk my fourth cup of coffee and was starting to climb the walls with boredom and caffeine overdose when Monique entered the back room, making a big show of mysteriously shutting the door behind her.

‘Tell me the truth, Emma, are you in trouble with the law?'

I looked at her blankly for several seconds. ‘What? No, of course not,' I replied, trying to think if I'd even got as much as a parking fine in recent years. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘Because there is a man in the shop asking if you work here. He looks extremely serious and actually rather 'andsome. But he is American, and wearing sunglasses on a dull day, so I figure he must be FBI.'

My heart inexplicably began to beat faster, and it wasn't because I was afraid I was about to be apprehended as an international felon. ‘What did he say, exactly?' I asked, already getting to my feet and stepping out from behind the desk.

‘I already told you. He asked if you worked here. I said yes. He said could he speak with you. We didn't make the chit-chat.'

I went to open the door that led to the back of the shop, pausing at the small mirror hung by the coat hooks on the wall. I smoothed down my hair, making sure the newly cut fringe covered the scar on my forehead, and ran a finger under each eye to check for smudged mascara. Monique watched with open interest and fascination.

‘What?' I challenged, as her scrutiny transformed into a knowing smile.

‘Nothing. I say nothing at all,' she replied with a very Gallic shrug of her shoulders.

He had his back to me when I entered the shop, with Monique only two steps behind. Not for her the discretion of leaving us alone for a moment or two of privacy. She was far too curious to see who my visitor was. It would serve her damn well right if he
had
come to arrest me; and her too for harbouring a criminal!

‘Jack,' I said in greeting, pleased to hear that my voice sounded relatively normal.

He was smiling as he turned, and I could easily see how he had earned Monique's ‘'andsome'
classification. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a plain white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal arms that I had good reason to know were every bit as strong as they looked. I was suddenly glad that the bruises on my legs had faded enough to allow me to wear a dress to work that day, even though I'd thought the only person who would see it was my slightly eccentric French employer.

Sometime during Monique's absence, Jack must have pocketed the sunglasses, for it was easy to see the warmth in his eyes as he left the display stand he had been studying, and walked up to the counter.

‘I remembered you said you work in a bookshop, and as I have some research to do for my novel, I thought I'd try and source a book on the subject.'

I could have questioned why he hadn't used the internet, which surely would have provided him with whatever answers he needed to find, but that would have sounded like I wasn't pleased to see him. And I was. Perhaps more than I should be.

‘Well you've definitely come to the right place,' I said with a smile. ‘For books, I mean… we have books here.' Dear God, I was actually babbling. I cleared my throat and tried to sound a little more professional. ‘Are you looking for any book in particular?'

‘What? Oh yes. Something on local lakes, if you have one.'

I stepped out from behind the counter, extremely glad that I'd worn heels and not flats, when I stood beside him. He was so tall he actually made me feel petite, which was quite a pleasant novelty.

‘Are you writing a book about sailing?' I enquired politely, walking over to the stack which held our local geographical volumes.

‘No. Actually, it's about a murder. I need a lake deep enough to hide a body in.'

‘Of course,' I replied smoothly, shooting Monique a furious glare at the small eruption of laughter that escaped from her lips. She was making absolutely no pretence at being otherwise occupied, and had settled herself on the stool behind the counter to observe us, as though watching an episode of her favourite soap.

‘Do you write crime thrillers?' I asked, because that's what I
would
ask him, if I hadn't already Googled him extensively, checked out the catalogue of titles he had released, and was actually awaiting delivery of a copy of his first book. I blamed Monique for that, leaving me alone with the internet and not enough to do to keep me busy.

‘Mostly, yes,' he confirmed, moving to stand beside me at the rack of books. I could smell again the distinctive aftershave he wore, not in an oppressive wave, but as a subtle undertone to a smell that I guessed would be called ‘manly' if we were in a trashy romance novel. The thought sobered me. I wasn't a character in a novel. And it really didn't matter how handsome or mysterious Jack might appear to me, Monique, or anyone. I was engaged to someone else, and I had no business thinking the kind of thoughts that kept coming unbidden into my mind whenever he was around.

‘We have a couple that I think might be suitable,' I continued, pulling two large colourful hardbacks from the shelf and passing them to him. He scanned the front covers for a brief moment, and scarcely even glanced at the blurbs on the back.

‘This one will be fine,' he said, passing me the more expensive of the two. It was, actually, probably the best choice for what he was looking for, but he couldn't possibly have realised that from such a cursory glance. He followed me back to the counter, and must have seen the meaningful glare I threw Monique, when still she didn't move from her stool-top sentry post and actually forced me to squeeze behind her to reach the till. She smiled beatifically at Jack and then me. I rang up the purchase, took the notes he held out, and was extremely careful that I counted back the change into his outstretched palm without once touching his skin. I passed his book across the counter, wrapped in tissue paper and nestled within one of the shop's distinctive colourful bags, hoping Monique hadn't noticed that I'd stretched out the entire transaction for just a minute or two longer than necessary.

‘It was really nice seeing you again,' I said truthfully.