The locks were still there, gathering rust and significance. Row upon row of indecipherable gestures of love, regret and remembrance. Eloise stopped and ran her hand across the padlocks, enjoying the metallic clicking noise they made. Megan stood and watched, asking nothing.
Nostalgia bout over, Eloise turned around. ‘Shall we double back to the café? Get a drink?’ The response from Megan was a non-committal shrug.
It was fuggy with warmth in the café, so much so that Eloise had to strip off her coat on entering. Where everyone had come from was a mystery. Megan declined food and went off in search of a table. Eloise ordered for them both, coffee and sandwiches. Her appetite, if not Megan’s, was still healthy. The young girl behind the counter said she’d bring their food over to them when it was ready. In the Ladies, Eloise washed the metallic taint of the rusty padlocks off her hands.
Megan had found a table in one of the back rooms. The other customers all seemed to be elderly couples. Eloise and Megan stood out, by virtue of their age and gender. Two friends, out for a spot of late lunch and a catch-up? Hardly.
Eloise sat down. She was unsettled. A stroll down memory lane had not been her motivation for their little jaunt. Curiosity, that was the real reason. Megan in the flesh. On her own. Eloise’s nemesis. The focus of so much hatred and bile, and not only hers. The person who was now positioning herself as Megan the Magnanimous – waiving her rights to any of the inheritance, in a bid to draw the family together. She was such a conundrum of a woman.
What Megan’s motivation was, for agreeing to come along on this little trip, Eloise couldn’t begin to fathom, other than an understandable desire to put as much distance between herself and Jonathan’s squabbling children as possible.
The café windows were steamed up. The sea view obscured. There was nowhere to look, other than at each other. Eloise served up the first question. ‘I wonder how they’re getting on back at the house?’
Megan refused to return. ‘I really don’t care. Not any more.’
‘No. I gathered that.’
Already their conversation was teetering on the brink.
It was Megan’s turn to set up the next point. She attempted an ace. ‘Why did you come this weekend?’
At last, a proper question. Eloise went for a short return. ‘They invited me.’ Megan pulled a face, seemingly doubting Eloise’s motivations. Correctly. Another sign of life? ‘And because I was curious – to see the house again.’
‘Just the house?’
‘No.’ If Megan wanted to go there, Eloise wasn’t going to stop her. ‘I suppose I thought it was time you and I met in person.’
Megan nodded. They looked at each other, eyeball-to-eyeball, raw inspection, no niceties. Only the arrival of the young girl with the food stopped it becoming some sort of juvenile staring competition. ‘Thank you.’ The girl unloaded a cafetière, mugs, cream and milk, and two plates of what looked like very nice sandwiches.
‘I said I wasn’t hungry.’ Megan seemed to be surviving on grief and thin air. Was that proof of true love, or just the signalling of it?
‘I know – but I am.’ Eloise bit into a sandwich and poured herself a drink.
‘I don’t know what you want from me?’ There it was again: the sharpness that gave the lie to Megan’s pretence of calmness.
‘An apology would be nice. The kids may not deserve one, but I think I do!’ It came out before Eloise could stop herself. She hated how petulant she sounded.
‘Okay.’ Megan brushed her hand against her cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’
Eloise couldn’t read her tone. ‘For…’
‘For falling for Jonathan. For breaking up your marriage. For making you leave your home. For causing all that heartache.’
The woman at the next table actually leant forward, shameless and fascinated. Her husband was far more interested in his crab sandwich. Eloise was glad to hear the apology out loud, but felt deeply unsatisfied by it. The words were too pat, too slight, too abrupt. But if not now, when? It was time for Megan to offer up some answers as well as some contrition.
‘Why on earth did you get involved with him in the first place? You must have known he was married. I can’t see Jonathan being the type to slip his wedding ring on and off at every opportunity. Though what do I know? I was stupid enough to believe he would never cheat on me.’ Megan looked about to say something, but it was Eloise’s turn to control the game. ‘He was old enough to be your father, for God’s sake! Go on, tell me: what was it that made a middle-aged married academic with a bit of a paunch so irresistible?’
‘Do you really want to know, or are you just shouting at me to make yourself feel better?’ Megan asked.
The cheeky bitch! ‘No. I really want to know.’
Megan went very still. She looked past Eloise at the steamed-up window, composing her answer carefully. ‘It was his voice that first attracted me to him; that, and his passion for his subject.’
Eloise felt vaguely nauseous. ‘That’s everything you need in a TV evangelist, not a… lover.’ The word was like a hairball in her mouth, distasteful, liable to make her gag.
Megan was not distracted by her barbed comment. ‘I loved the way he talked about all sorts of things. And he listened.’ He hadn’t, at least not to her. Eloise must have snorted, because a flash of defiance flared in Megan’s eyes. ‘Do you really want me to tell you? Or not?’
Eloise found herself nodding. She wanted the story that had for so long been denied her.
‘I met him at a conference. He was one of the speakers, and he ran one of the workshops I
