Three Things About Elsie(83)

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘You know, the only problem with dying in your sleep is that you die alone.’

‘You’re never alone, Florence,’ she said. ‘Just because you can’t see someone, doesn’t mean they’re not there with you.’

I looked at her, but Elsie’s gaze rested on the sea.

‘Milk, no sugar.’ Jack handed me a cardboard cup. It had a little corrugated waistband and a lid.

‘Put your hands around it, keep yourself warm.’ Jack sat at the end of the bench. This seat wasn’t dedicated to anyone. I checked before we chose it. Perhaps they made sure there were spares, in case they thought of someone who needed remembering right at the last moment.

I wrapped my fingers around the cardboard. ‘It’s strange Mrs Honeyman didn’t say anything. About someone turning up with her husband’s name.’

‘Mrs Honeyman slept through most things,’ Jack said. ‘And when she wasn’t sleeping, she was in a little world of her own.’

Elsie said, ‘Best place to be, if you ask me,’ and sniffed away the cold air.

‘And I don’t suppose she’d think anything of it.’ Jack swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘Someone turns up with a name your husband used occasionally. A husband who disappeared sixty years ago. In a different place and a different time.’

‘Who looked nothing like him,’ I said.

The woman and her dog were far in the distance now. Little specks of people, like biscuit crumbs near the pier. I thought I could still spot her, but I might have been wrong.

Jack rested his tea on the arm of the seat. ‘What are you thinking about, Florence?’

‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘we could go for a walk on the beach?’

Sand is surprisingly difficult to walk on. You wouldn’t think so, would you? From a distance, it looks like it would be a piece of cake, but once you’re there, your legs become heavy and tired so much more quickly and it doesn’t take many minutes before each step feels like an enormous achievement.

Jack didn’t last very long before he found a rock to lean on.

‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit.’ He waved his stick about. ‘You carry on, if you want to.’

I was a little ahead of Elsie. I made slow, deliberate footprints, and every few minutes, I looked behind me and checked on them, and made sure she was still following.

‘Whatever are you doing?’ she shouted, but the sea stole her words again and carried them away. As I walked, I watched the waves. The tide had changed and it pulled at the beach, as if the water was trying to persuade the sand to go along with something. Each time a little closer, a little more successful. It must be an instinct that makes us always stare at the ocean. Perhaps because we realise how important it is, and so we need to keep an eye on it to make sure it hasn’t left.

I stopped to look at my footprints again, and Elsie caught up.

‘Aren’t you tired?’ she said, but I said, no, no, I’m fine. I want to keep walking, I told her. To make more footprints.

She asked why, but I carried on further up the beach, and she shouted, ‘Why do you keep marching off, Flo? What’s got into you?’

If we’d stopped to think when we were younger, that one day we would be back here, stooped and grey, if we’d given a moment to think how we would struggle against the wind to stay upright, and how our feet would feel afraid and uncertain; perhaps, then, we would have taken a little more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy days of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.

It was cold on the sand, much more so than on the cliff-top, and I fastened the top button of my coat. Elsie saw me do it. ‘It’s freezing, Florence,’ she called out. ‘We need to go back.’

‘You should have worn your scarf,’ I shouted back. ‘The one Gwen knitted for you. The red one.’

I slowed down.

I could feel a memory making a path from the back of my mind, trying to find its way. I wasn’t even sure what it was at first, but I knew it was important. It was like waking in the morning knowing a terrible thing happened the day before, but at first, you can’t quite reach the thought and work out what it is. I knew it would only be a moment before it arrived. Before everything was changed.

When it did, I realised I had stopped walking and I was staring at the sand. I turned to look at Elsie; we were both still. Just the breeze, catching the edge of a coat, a strand of hair.

She moved towards me.

I said nothing. I pushed my hands into my pockets and looked for clues on her face, because when the memory appeared, it brought all the others along with it.

‘It was you,’ I said.

She didn’t reply.

‘It was you,’ I said again. ‘You were in the car with Ronnie that night. The red. The red that Mabel saw. It was your scarf.’

‘Yes, it was my scarf,’ she said.

The air was cruel and salted. It made my eyes and my lips smart. It buried itself into my skin, and filled my mouth with the taste of nothing else.

‘Why didn’t you admit it? Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘We said everything we had to say back then. We talked about nothing else for days.’