can’t be very happy with what you’re doing.’
‘No.’ More guilt that his aspirations for her had been so cruelly dashed. But she couldn’t help it. ‘The thing is, Ben, that while cleaning, waitressing, helping out people who need a spare pair of hands occasionally, may not be an intellectually rewarding career, not something that Dad wants to boast about to his buddies at the golf club, it does have its good points.’
‘It does?’
‘Absolutely. For instance, apart from the occasional bag of ironing, I never have to take work home with me. I don’t have to spend my weekends marking. There are no lesson plans to prepare, and the paperwork is practically zero.’
She started early, and even while she polished, ironed and vacuumed her mind was her own, free to take imaginary journeys, live a different life in her head.
‘I start at seven, I’m usually finished by two. Then I have a clear run through until bedtime to write,’ she explained.
‘Even so…’
‘Life is too short, too uncertain to put dreams on hold, Ben.’ She glanced at him. ‘Losing Sean, my husband, taught me that. I don’t want to look back and say “I wish…”. I’m taking the balloon ride.’
She felt rather than saw his look as he absorbed the information that she was a widow rather than just another girl who’d married in haste and lived to repent it, as so many of her friends had done.
‘The balloon ride?’ he repeated, after a moment.
She couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud. Maybe it was the fall, or the painful realisation of just how cut off she’d become from her family, her friends, that had brought the words bubbling to the surface now.
‘We used to watch them, the hot air balloons, drifting along the valley on summer evenings. Sean wanted to book a champagne ride for our first anniversary, but the electricity bill had arrived and I said…’
She shook her head, not wanting to think about what she’d said.
‘I’d spent my entire life doing the sensible thing, choosing the solid degree in English over some airy-fairy notion of taking Art. Waiting to get married until I finished university, had my teaching qualification.’ Putting babies on hold until they could afford them…
‘What happened to him?’ She looked up. ‘Sean?’
‘Oh, it was one of those ordinary Sundays. We got up, had a row about the fact that he’d used all the milk in a midnight raid on the fridge. He told me not to get excited, put on his headphones, jogged off to the newsagent’s to fetch a pint…’
They had come to a halt at traffic lights and she knew that Ben was looking at her.
‘He bought a paper, was looking at the sports headlines instead of the road. He always did that. Jogged there, walked back reading the paper, quite incapable of waiting until he got home to find out how Melchester United were doing in the league. He was football mad. I was always telling him he’d walk into something…’
He’d used to laugh, tease her that she was turning into a nagging wife…
‘He stepped off the pavement without looking. The driver never stood a chance.’ Then, ‘Someone ran to fetch me…’
For a moment she was back there with Sean, kneeling in the road, milk and blood soaking into the triumphant headlines proclaiming that United would move up next season. Cradling him in her arms as he said, ‘We aren’t going to get our balloon ride, Ellie…’
Then, as the car behind them hooted impatiently, she snapped back to the present, turned to him, and said, ‘You can’t stop time and re-do the bits you got wrong. The bits you missed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Sorry he’d asked…
‘It was three years ago,’ she said, used to people lost for words, unable to cope with her loss. As if time made it any easier. Then, briskly, ‘What about you, Ben? What’s your life plan?’
He raised his hand in apology to the driver behind, pulled away, said, ‘Can you plan life? When so much is out of your control?’
‘Maybe not, but you shouldn’t be passive. Wait for things to happen to you. Keep putting stuff off until the time is right.’
‘Exactly! Seize the day. That’s what I told my father when I gave up teaching.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said that fish were damn slippery things and I’d be better occupied sorting out a pension plan.’
Ben Faulkner laughed. She turned and stared at him. Mistaking her startled reaction for offence, he shook his head, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s okay. I laughed too.’ Although suddenly it wasn’t so funny. Even when things went right it wasn’t always as ‘right’ as it might be. Witness her
Finally she had something to show for all her hard work-but who could she tell? Share it with? Not her sceptical father who, proud as Punch, would buy copies of the magazine and give them to everyone he knew. Not her mother who, even sworn to secrecy, wouldn’t be able to resist sharing the news with her best friend, which would be the equivalent of placing an ad in the
She hadn’t even told Sue. Her own very best friend. The one person with whom she’d shared every secret of her heart.
Only Stacey knew, and she wouldn’t tell. Although she and her sister had precious little in common, they did know how to keep each other’s secrets.
‘Adele wasn’t expecting you back until next year,’ she said, not wanting to think about the kind of person she was turning into. ‘What happened to your plans?’
‘Riots, mayhem, civil disturbance. I was working in Kirbeckistan.’
‘But isn’t that where…?’ She recalled the graphic scenes of violence she’d seen on the news. ‘But the civil war started weeks ago. Where have you been?’ Then, ‘Did you have trouble getting out?’
He shrugged. ‘When it finally blew, it all happened very quickly, and the airport was overrun before anyone could get away. A group of us walked out over the mountains. It took a while.’
‘That must have been tough.’
It certainly explained the state of his hands.
‘Not as tough for me as for the poor devils who had to stay there,’ he said. ‘The political situation being what it was, I’d taken the precaution of scanning and sending back the texts I was working on via the internet, so they’re not totally lost. I can at least continue my work here at the university.’
‘Are they important?’
‘They take us back another thousand years.’
‘And you can read them?’
That did produce a smile. ‘Let’s say that it’s a work in progress.’
‘It can’t be the same as having the original documents to refer to,’ she sympathised.
‘No.’
‘But it’ll be over in a few weeks, won’t it?’ she said hopefully. ‘You’ll be able to go back, carry on?’
He turned into the drive, pulled up by the kitchen door.
‘I can understand your eagerness to see the back of me, Ellie, but since the rebels burned the museum down around me I fear that your optimism is misplaced.’
She’d been right about the burns, then. ‘Were you hurt?’
‘Nothing to make a fuss about.’
His jaw tightened momentarily, and she was sure that other people he knew hadn’t been so lucky. He didn’t linger to discuss it, however, but climbed out and came round to open the door and help her to her feet. For a moment he continued to hold both of her hands, steadying her.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Will you be able to manage the stairs?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.
She’d have to be. Besides, she wanted him to know that she wouldn’t be a nuisance, wouldn’t be continually under his feet.
‘Thank you again for the lift. And the first aid.’
