Once Ant had headed off, she returned to the table. ‘If not, we could maybe take him into town later,’ she suggested. ‘I totally get how frustrating it is.’
‘We probably need to get some bits anyway,’ Heather said.
‘You mean food, or . . . ?’
‘Yeah, you know, just this and that,’ Heather said.
‘Oh, I think we’re OK for food,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve got the next three meals planned, at least.’
‘There’s still a few bits I’d like to get,’ Heather said again. ‘There are things Ant likes, his little habits. You know how it is.’
‘Non-vegan things,’ I said, explaining it for Amy, who seemed to be missing the point.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, of course. Sorry.’
‘Just some proper milk and some cheese and stuff. You know.’
‘Sure,’ Amy said again. ‘No problem. There’s a public pool apparently, too. So we could take the kids, maybe. Make an outing of it.’
They left just after lunch, and for the first time in ten days I found myself alone.
Initially, I went to lie down, but when sleep didn’t come I got up again and sat beneath our olive tree. A dragonfly was flitting over the surface of the pool and the cicadas were making so much noise it was on the verge of annoying – something I would never have thought was possible.
I thought of Ant and his phone addiction, and I’ll admit that in that instant I judged him for it. He’d been here less than twelve hours, after all. How urgent could it be?
But then I made an effort to understand him. I thought about the fact that, like me, he had his own business. Maybe he was waiting for important news. I remembered that his mother was elderly and lived alone. Perhaps he was worried about her.
I thought of Dad then, and wondered if there was any news of his romance.
Despite the heat, I decided to go for a walk. I felt pretty sure that I could find a sweet spot somewhere with a phone signal even if nobody else could. And if I could solve that, it would make things easier for Ant, too.
I packed the e-reader I’d bought for the trip and a bottle of water; I slipped on a T-shirt and a hat and set off.
I didn’t have to walk far before my phone picked up – in fact, no further than the same group of trees Amy had mentioned. I sat down on the ground in the shade and called Dad, but there was no answer. He was out, and I wondered if that was a good sign.
The four trees were situated at the point where the track curved around the ‘corner’ of the hill our house had been carved into, and there was a gentle breeze coming from the north that felt good. I pulled my e-reader from my bag, but I’d forgotten to charge the damn thing. Long live paper, I thought, returning it to my little backpack.
I swigged at the bottle of water and fiddled with my phone instead. But though there were two bars of reception, there seemed to be no data connection. This meant no emails, no Facebook, no Guardian . . .
I wondered if there was anyone I needed to call, but the truth was that, other than Dad, I’d got out of the habit of speaking on the phone. Nearly all of my communications happened via text messages or emails these days. In fact, if I did get an incoming call, as likely as not I’d ignore it and wait for the follow-up text message to arrive instead. I wondered when actual calls had come to feel like an intrusion.
I remembered when phones had just been phones and felt a bit melancholic for the calmer, simpler times when you could be unaware for hours of everything that was happening in the world.
I slipped it back into my bag, took another swig of water, and wiped my brow on my sleeve.
I looked out over the plain – it was shimmering in the heat. A single, unreasonably cute cloud – like a cloud in an animated kid’s film – was moving slowly towards the mountains, casting a shadow over the countryside as it wafted by.
A movement caught my eye – it was a beetle, dragging what looked like a rabbit dropping. It passed in front of me, right to left, pausing to rest or to change its grip from time to time. I wondered why it wanted that dropping so badly. It looked like bloody hard work.
I thought of my own life then, and how hard I worked, and wondered what I was striving for. I checked the time on my phone and wondered why I’d done so. It was 15.32, but so what? What possible meaning did 15.32 have here, today?
I thought about time, and how important it had become in my life. Every job I undertook seemed to take longer than I expected, and the available time was always slightly less than I hoped. I seemed to be living in a perpetual state of negotiation with myself, constantly checking the time, calculating how long whatever task I was doing was taking, and judging if that was acceptable or not, and whether I should be moving on to the next thing yet. Even just sitting here now, thinking, felt illicit, as if someone might come and ‘catch me’ doing nothing and tell me off.
And the weeks, the months, the years . . . Everyone tells you that time goes faster as you get older, but no amount of warning can prepare you for the reality. In my twenties I used to pray for Friday to come around. In my thirties I’d be surprised that the end of the month had already arrived. But nowadays it was the years. It was spring, summer, winter again, and I’d think, Winter? Again? When the fuck did that happen?
And Ben, above all Ben, that special time went by so
