The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(18)

Okay, Sunday afternoon, we’re done here. My sister has gone home to her husband, and I have someone else to be with too.





Monday 21 May


It takes me a few seconds to recalibrate and realize we’re in Sheila’s, the tiny backstreet cafe around the corner from home, and the waitress has just placed two full English breakfasts down on the table even though it’s after twelve. It’s our usual order in here; Freddie likes it more than I do and always wolfs half of mine. I’m comforted by the familiarity of sliding back into our old routine.

‘Best thing about Bank Holiday.’ He forks a sausage from my plate to his. ‘Extra breakfast.’

It’s a plastic-chairs-and-chipped-Formica kind of cafe. Builder’s tea and instant coffee in mismatched mugs. The paint on the sign outside is faded and flaking, but for all its shortcomings the food is hearty and the welcome warm from Sheila, whose husband hand-painted the sign forty years ago. He died a couple of years back, dropped down while flipping bacon in the cafe kitchen; just as he’d have wanted, by all accounts. It was standing room only in church for his funeral. I remember being squished between Freddie and a neighbour from a few doors down who leaned heavily against me and sobbed that he’d never known anyone more talented with black pudding. I’m genuinely not making this up. I catch Sheila’s eye when she appears through the beaded curtain from the kitchen and she throws me a smile. Freddie is treated to a wink, and he sticks his thumb up in reply.

‘Better bacon than my mother,’ he grins, making her preen. ‘Don’t tell her I said so though.’

He has a way of doing that, of making people feel like his favourite. I’ve seen him do it countless times over the years, catch someone momentarily in his spotlight.

‘I’m just going to grab the ketchup,’ I say, compelled to speak to Sheila. I’m on my feet and at the counter in five steps, not long enough to formulate my thoughts into words.

‘Everything okay, love?’ she asks, glancing around me at my barely touched breakfast. Sheila is a woman who’s fiercely proud of her cooking, despite the unpretentious appearance of the cafe.

I nod, biting my lip.

‘More tea?’ she guesses, confused.

I shake my head, feeling stupid. ‘I just wanted some ketchup.’ I pause and then stumble on. ‘And to say how sorry I am about Stan.’

I’ve startled her; I see something familiar move through her eyes. I recognize the fleeting rawness, how she takes an extra breath before she speaks, as I often do when someone unexpectedly mentions Freddie’s name. She still hasn’t said anything, so I fill the void.

‘It’s just … I haven’t forgotten about him. That’s all.’

It’s my own fears spoken aloud, that the world will forget Freddie Hunter. I won’t, of course, but someone else sits at his desk at the office now and someone else wears his number on the Monday night five-a-side football team. It’s perfectly right that the world has kept turning, but sometimes I just want people to say they remember, so I say it now to Sheila and then instantly feel as if I’ve overstepped the mark.

‘When you’re young you think you’ve got all the time in the world,’ she says. ‘And then suddenly you turn round and you’re old and one of you isn’t there any more and you wonder how the years went so fast.’ She nods towards Freddie and shrugs. ‘Make hay while the sun shines. That’s all I’m saying.’

It’s such a pat phrase, and yet it isn’t to me any more because it’s a pretty damn accurate way to sum up my waking world: someone turned my sun off. I take the ketchup Sheila holds out to me with a small nod and head back to Freddie.

‘Fancy making hay this afternoon?’ I say softly, running my hand over his shoulder before I sit down.

‘Making hay?’ he says, perplexed. ‘Is that girl code for sex? Because if it is, then yes.’

I smile, putting the ketchup I didn’t really need in the first place down on the table. Luckily for him, he’ll never know what I mean.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he says. ‘Promise me you won’t go mad.’

‘I can’t promise,’ I say. ‘Not until I know what it is.’

He butters his toast as he shakes his head. ‘Uh-uh. Promise first.’

That’s so Freddie. ‘Fine,’ I relent. ‘I promise not to go mad.’

He’s instantly wreathed in smiles. ‘I booked our honeymoon.’

My heart lifts with joy and then sinks because it’s entirely possible I won’t be able to come back here this time next year; all of this could stop tomorrow. I actually feel it tumble, slow-motion somersaulting behind my breastbone.

‘You did?’

He looks so pleased with himself. He’s bursting out of his skin to tell me. ‘Do you want it to be a surprise?’

I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak. I hope he takes the sheen of tears in my eyes as joy.

‘Where are we going?’

He pauses as if he’s seriously considering not telling me, but then he can’t keep the words in. ‘New York!’

Ah, of course we are. I’ve always wanted to go to New York. I’ve seen every episode of Friends, I want to be bezzies with Carrie Bradshaw, and I long to walk barefoot in Central Park. I don’t even chastise him about the cost, because in my head we’re already on the ferry to Staten Island. It’s ridiculously, perfectly us.