The Flatshare(15)

‘So what’s the plan, then?’ I ask Katherin, nibbling the crusts off the sandwich. The fishiness isn’t so bad at the edges. ‘What do I need to do?’

‘I’ll demonstrate how to take measurements from you first,’ Katherin says. ‘Then I’ll talk through the basic stitches for any beginners, then I’ll use my pre-prepared bits to show them the tricks of compiling yourself a perfectly fitted outfit! And of course, I’ll show them my five top tips for measuring as you go.’

‘Measuring as you go’ is one of Katherin’s catchphrases. It has yet to catch on.

In the end, when it’s finally time for us to kick off, we gather quite a crowd. Katherin knows how to do that – she probably practised at rallies and things, back in days of yore. It’s largely a crowd of old ladies and their husbands, but there are a few younger women in their twenties and thirties, and even a couple of guys. I’m quite encouraged. Maybe Katherin’s right that crochet is on the up.

‘A big hand for my glamorous assistant!’ Katherin is saying, as though we’re putting on a magic show. Actually, the magician in the other corner of the entertainment area is looking pretty miffed.

Everyone claps me dutifully. I try to look cheerful and crochet-ish, but I’m still chilly, and I feel drab in my neutral clothing – white jeans, pale grey T-shirt, and a lovely warm pink cardigan that I thought I’d sold sometime last year but rediscovered in my wardrobe this morning. It’s the only colourful element to this outfit, and I can tell Katherin is about to . . .

‘Cardigan off!’ she says, already undressing me. This is so undignified. And cold. ‘Are you all paying close attention? Phones away, please! We managed without checking Facebook every five minutes in the Cold War, didn’t we? Hmm? That’s right, a bit of perspective for you all! Phones away, that’s it!’

I try not to laugh. That’s trademark Katherin – she always says bringing up the Cold War startles people into submission.

She starts measuring me – neck, shoulders, bust, waist, hips – and it occurs to me that my measurements are now being read out to a really quite large group of people, which makes my urge to laugh even more powerful. It’s the classic, isn’t it – you’re not allowed to laugh, and suddenly that’s what you want to do more than anything.

Katherin shoots me a warning look as she measures my hips, chatting away about pleating to create sufficient ‘room for the buttocks’, and no doubt feeling how my body is beginning to shake with supressed laughter. I know I need to be professional. I know I can’t just burst out laughing right now – it’ll totally undermine her. But . . . Look at me. That old lady over there just wrote down my inner thigh measurement in her notebook. And that guy at the back looks—

That guy at the back . . . That . . .

That’s Justin.

He moves away when I clock it’s him, slipping off into the crowd. But first, before he goes, he holds my gaze. It sends a shock right through me, because it’s not your ordinary eye contact. It’s a very distinct sort of eye contact. The sort you get locked into in the moment just before you toss a twenty on the table and scramble out of the pub to make out in a cab home, or in the moment when you put down the wine glass and head upstairs to bed.

It’s sex eye contact. His eyes say, I’m undressing you in my head. The man who left me months ago, who hasn’t picked up one of my calls since, whose fiancée is probably on this very cruise with him . . . He’s giving me that look. And in that moment I am more exposed than any number of elderly ladies with notebooks could make me feel. I feel completely naked.





10


Leon

Me: You could have found each other again. Love finds a way, Mr Prior! Love finds a way!

Mr Prior is unconvinced.

Mr Prior: No offence, lad, but you weren’t there – that’s not how it worked. Of course, there were lovely stories, girls who thought their lads were long dead, then came home to find them traipsing up the path in their uniform, fresh as a daisy . . . but for every one, there were hundreds of stories of lovers who never came back. Johnny’s probably dead, and if he’s not, he’s long since married to some -gentleman or lady somewhere, and I’m forgotten.

Me: But you said he wasn’t on that list.

I’m waving a hand at the list of war dead I printed, unsure why I’m pushing this point so hard. Mr Prior hasn’t asked to find Johnny; he was just pining. Reminiscing.

But I see a lot of elderly people here. I’m used to reminiscing; I’m used to pining. Felt this was different. I felt Mr Prior had unfinished business.

Mr Prior: I don’t think so, no. But then, I’m a forgetful old man, and your computer system is a new-fangled thing, so either of us could be wrong, couldn’t we?

He gives me a gentle smile, like I’m doing this for me, not him. Look closer at him. Think of all the nights when I’ve arrived to chatter about visitors from other patients, and have seen Mr Prior sitting quietly in the corner, hands in his lap, face folded in neat wrinkles like he’s trying hard not to look sad.

Me: Humour me. Tell me the facts. Regiment? Birthplace? Distinctive features? Family members?

Mr Prior’s little, beady eyes look up at me. He shrugs. Smiles. It folds his papery, age-spotted face, shifting the tan lines like ink on his neck, left there from decades of shirt collars of precisely the same width.