“Can I bring my friend?” I asked David.
“Is that who you’re seeing now?” It sounded so juvenile, as if he wouldn’t let Timon come along if he was my lover. David realised what he sounded like. “You’re buying expensive bread!” he said. “I can’t afford that stuff, even though this is my corner shop.” Of course, I thought, the flat up the fire escape was at the back of this alley. That hadn’t even clicked with me.
When we sat at the metallic green table in the café next door, Timon was telling David how he’d known me for years. He was giving the whole spiel: how wonderful I was, his best friend, a loyal and true companion. Timon thought he was helping out: throwing salt on the fire of David’s affections, making grand sparking flames lap up. But David looked shifty. He wanted to ask why I had never phoned him. As we sat there, I didn’t know. Something about his flat, maybe. The narrowness of his bed, the cramped floorspace taken up with laundry, the unwashed sheets. I couldn’t imagine he’d been waiting on my call.
“Do you think I should be on the Net?” Timon asked. He looked at the punters at their consoles, all along the café’s front window. “Maybe that’s my true form. Not a big, cohesive narrative. Snippets, fragments, cryptic bits sent out for free on the web, or whatever they call it…”
“I had a go on that, me and Colin. We looked at nude lesbian Barbie dolls with their rude bits blacked out and censored.”
“I thought it might put me in touch with someone, with people,” said Timon. “I’d probably do it all wrong.”
“I like your letters,” I said. “Even the short, crappy ones.”
“You can’t beat instant connection,” said David.
“I don’t suppose you can.” I looked at him. “You’ve become very pally with Colin, haven’t you?”
“He’s a great fella,” David smiled. “He knows what it’s all about.”
“He does?”
“He tells me about you sometimes. He said you were right, though. We’d never have worked out together.”
Colin had been mixing it. Wendy felt that he’d been shoving his oar in and telling David these things if not out of malicious spite, then out of some odd desire to explain. She didn’t see why he should bother. She didn’t want her doings explained to David. And she never said, to Colin or anyone, that she and David ‘weren’t right together’. That was a cliché for Colin’s collection and she was insulted he’d put it in her mouth.
All these men and the things they said to each other. Like a load of maiden aunts.
She left the café with Timon shortly after this. She finished her frothy coffee in one hot glug and told him they were going.
“So I’ll see you, anyway,” said David, “on the outing.”
There was to be a minibusful of them going to the beach that weekend. Everyone. It was Aunty Anne’s plan. Wendy wanted to ask David where he came into this, but he pre-empted the question. “Colin’s roped me in. I come with the mini-bus, you see. It belongs to a friend of Rab’s. And I’ve got the special thing on my license. So I’m taking you all to the beach.”
“Good,” she said. “Come on, Timon.”
That night they ate Colin’s soup, which hadn’t turned out quite right: it was a chunky brown and orange broth. He thought that his father—only a few days out of hospital—should be eating easy things like this, but Pat was craving his takeaways. He wanted to phone his favourite Chinese in Toll Cross to send out one of their motorbike boys. It was his favourite Chinese in town because he found the handwritten notice in their window poignant: ‘Carry Outs Are Welcome’.
Gamely they ate their soup. Captain Simon had joined them once more, evading the lovers downstairs and their noisy, ravenous supper. They still made him sick.
“What’s all this about a trip to the beach?” Wendy asked.
Aunty Anne dropped her spoon with a clatter. “That’s a surprise! Or it was meant to be!” There was still sticky soup on her spoon and lips.
“What?” asked Uncle Pat.
“We might as well tell them now,” said Colin, with a sigh. Colin and his mother had been plotting together. It was evidence of a closeness between them that might have pleased Wendy, if she hadn’t already been cross with her cousin.
“Well, whatever it is, I can’t go anyway,” said Pat decisively. “How can I go sitting on a beach in November? It’s ridiculous! I’ll be a frozen old man on the beach. They’ll take me away.”
Briskly, Aunty Anne sad, “We’re taking advantage of the warm spell. You need some colour in your cheeks.”
“Where are we going?” he asked weakly.
“Up to Yellow Craigs. It’s only half an hour. Lovely, empty beach.”
“You’ll love it, Pat,” said Captain Simon.
“Are you in on this?”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
For devilment, Aunty Anne said: “We’ve asked Timon and Belinda, too.”
Captain Simon grunted. “I’ll have to see how I’m fixed.”
“We’ve even asked Astrid,” smiled Colin. “’Jesus God’,” he said, pulling his face.
“It’ll be a right bloody circus,” said Pat. “Us lot turning up.”
Yet he looked pleased.
TWENTY-SIX
Eventually Timon would tell her it was true: she was affected by everything. She took whatever materials, the substances she found about her, crumbled them and used them like—he shrugged—one of those earthy, gritty skin moisturisers from the Body Shop. Granules got into her pores, replenishing and altering her.
“I went for a job interview in that shop,” Wendy told him, smiling. “When I was looking for a job. Did I tell you? They had twelve interviews all at the same time, in the cellar store room. They made us play silly games with each other and that’s how they decided who they wanted. They had a big flip chart to tell us what qualities they were looking for. They didn’t want me.”
“You’re not listening to me,” Timon said.
“Sorry.”
She knew he was going to
