Our Last Summer by Jennifer Joyce
Chapter 12
Seeing Sacha and being reminded of the night Ronnie arrived has put me on edge. It isn’t as though I’ve ever forgotten that night – how could I? – but I don’t allow myself to dwell on it. If my mind ever wanders there, I snap it back to something else: cleaning, taking on mundane tasks at work that I’d usually delegate, compiling shopping lists – anything so I don’t have to picture the night Ed died. But there’s no real escape here in the past. There are reminders everywhere and I can’t cope with it. I need to go back. To the plane. To real life. To the time when my only real worry was having to attend my sister’s wedding. At least then the terrible thing had already happened and I didn’t have to dread the day it would play out all over again. I wish I knew for certain that I could change the past, but what use would I be here, years before the accident? I don’t think begging Ed to never ever get on a motorbike without a sane explanation will work.
‘What did he say?’ Yvonne plonks a couple of pints down on the table and flops down onto her seat. ‘Did he say anything about me?’
‘What didn’t he say about you?’ Ed slides one of the pints across the table so it’s sitting in front of him. ‘We couldn’t shut him up. It was Yvonne this, Yvonne that. The man’s smitten.’
Yvonne heaves a sigh as she slumps back in her seat, crossing her arms aggressively. ‘Shut up, you clown.’ She narrows her eyes at Ed for a moment before she turns to me. ‘What did he really say?’
I take the pint Heather is proffering and set it down on the table. ‘He was looking for Tomasz.’
‘Oh.’ Yvonne unfolds her arms, resting her elbow on the table and resting her cheek on her upturned palm. ‘Boring.’
‘Sorry.’ I try to sound convincing, but I’m not sorry. I wish Yvonne had never met Sacha. I wish none of us had. He’s poison. At least he won’t be here when I’m back to my normal life. Little Heaton will be safe in that respect. ‘How did it go with Mrs Gacey this afternoon?’ We need a change in topic, even if we do run the risk of straying into crotchless panty territory again.
Yvonne scrunches up her nose. ‘Did you know her grandson is visiting? Because I do – she told me fifteen million times. And she wasn’t in the chair for long – she only had a shampoo and set. I sometimes wish Shaz would sell up so I wouldn’t have to put up with Christine and her tales of her super-duper grandson.’
‘But then you’d be out of a job.’
Yvonne shrugs off Ed’s point. ‘I’d find a new job. There are other salons out there. More modern ones, where the average age of the clientele isn’t seventy-two.’
‘Sounds like you love your job.’ Heather hides a smirk behind her glass. It’s the look of someone who has yet to start their career and discover it isn’t quite what you thought it’d be.
‘I do. Or I would if the salon was run to its full potential. Shaz is never going to make any real money from pensioner specials.’
‘And how is she going to make any real money in Little Heaton? We’re a tiny village with rubbish access. Nobody is going to make a special journey here, no matter how modern the salon is.’
Yvonne opens her mouth to argue, but the door to the pub opens and she’s distracted as she strains her neck to get a better view. I can see the moment she realises it isn’t Sacha returning: her face falls and she slouches back down in her seat, snatching up her pint for an angry swig. I slouch down in my own seat, my eyes focused on the table so I don’t catch their attention, because it’s Tomasz and his grandparents. I cover my face with my hands and will myself back on the plane.
‘Are you falling asleep?’
Ed has poked me in the side, and he’s looking at me with his head tilted to one side, the corners of his lips lifted slightly in a bemused half-smile.
‘Sorry.’ I fake a yawn, too loud and too dramatic. ‘Early start at the hotel.’
‘I used to work at the hotel.’ I could kick myself as Irene Nowak stops besides us, smiling fondly. ‘Back during the war. It wasn’t a hotel back then. I’m not sure what it was before it was requisitioned, actually.’ The lines on her forehead crease as she tries to remember. She beckons her husband over and my heart drops when Tomasz follows as well. He is way too cute to be standing there unkissed. ‘What did they use the castle for, before the war?’
Irene’s husband shakes his head. ‘No idea. A residence, maybe, for someone very wealthy?’
Irene smiles and pats him on the hand. ‘I bet that was it.’ She turns to me. ‘How’s it going working there now? I bet it’s posh, isn’t it? Franciszek has promised to take me for afternoon tea, but we’ve been here for a year and it hasn’t happened yet.’ She nudges her husband, but you can tell from her tone and the smile playing at her lips that she’s only teasing him. ‘You used to work at the shop, didn’t you? With Christine?’ Irene stoops and lowers her voice. ‘She seems like a bit of a battle-axe to me. Reminds me of my old neighbour, Mrs Newton. She was always telling us off when we were little. Said we were making too much noise. We were only playing, the miserable old goat. Then there was the lady at the butcher’s who never had a kind word to say about anybody, not even her long-suffering husband. She disappeared one day, you know. Rumour had it that the husband had snapped and strangled her before feeding her through the mincer.’
‘That’s a bit grim, Gran.’
Irene dismisses Tomasz’s qualm with a wave of her hand. ‘It wasn’t true. The postmaster had also done a flit at the same time. Turns out they’d run off together. Been carrying on together for months, apparently. You’ve never seen a man as happy as that butcher when he was set free.’ Irene chuckles, her cheeks plumping up and her eyes almost disappearing behind the crinkled-up skin. ‘Happy as Larry, he was. He ended up having a great love affair with a lady from up the road. They were never married but they had three strapping lads – quite scandalous, back then – and they were together until the butcher died in his nineties. Went peacefully in his sleep with his lady by his side.’
Tomasz’s grandfather smiles fondly at his wife. ‘You always were one to spin a good yarn. The stories you used to tell to keep us entertained while we stuck in that hospital. Like a little ray of sunshine, you were.’
I sit up straighter, fully alert now as I realise I’ve never heard the story of Franciszek and Irene from her point of view. It’s always been through her husband or its retelling via Tomasz or his mum. It’d be nice to hear the story from Irene’s perspective.
‘Can you tell us the story of how you and Mr Nowak met?’
Irene smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners again. ‘My favourite love story of all time. You can keep your Romeo and your Prince Charming. This man is the only hero I’ll ever want.’ She turns to her husband and even though I can only see part of her face, it’s lit up with adoration. ‘Obviously, it didn’t start off so well. There was the war on and everything.’ Ed has given up his seat for Irene, and she sits down, tucking her wellington-boot-clad feet under the table. Ed spies a couple of free chairs, which he squeezes around the table. He and Franciszek sit down to hear the story while Tomasz leans against the wall behind me. I can’t see him but I can feel him there. I focus intently on Irene’s words to try to dispel the discomfort of having him so close without being able to touch him.
‘I had two choices back then: work in one of the munitions factories or help out at the castle. They’d turned the place into a temporary hospital and while I’d never had any aspirations for nursing, it seemed like the better option.’
‘All those young soldiers.’ Franciszek wiggles his bushy eyebrows up and down. Behind me, Tomasz makes gagging sounds while Irene taps her husband lightly on the arm.
‘Don’t be saucy. It was the travelling. We didn’t have a car between us back then, so my sister and I would have had to cycle miles to one of the factories. The castle was right there, up on the hill, so that’s where we decided to do our bit. Those young soldiers were an added bonus.’ Irene winks, and there are more gagging noises from Tomasz while his grandfather whoops with laughter.
‘Now who’s being saucy?’
‘But I only had eyes for one soldier.’ Irene smiles at her husband, her head leaning in towards him, and her adoration for him is written all over her face. I’d loved like that once and it takes every ounce of energy I possess to not turn around to look at Tomasz. It had been inconceivable that our love story would ever end, but life can be cruel.
‘It was that Martin Fellowes, wasn’t it? All the ladies fell for his classic handsome looks.’
Irene tuts at her husband. ‘I’m talking about you, you old fool, and you know it. It was love at first sight.’ She turns back to her audience around the table. ‘At least for me. I used to practically run up that hill every morning to see him and I’d practise saying his name, over and over again. I’d never heard anything so exotic.’
‘You were still getting it wrong up to our wedding day.’
Irene taps her husband on the arm again. ‘I was not. I’d mastered it long before you left to go back fighting.’ The light from her eyes dims. ‘When we had to say goodbye. I never thought I’d see him again. We’d fallen in love and then he was gone. Back to fighting. Back to Poland if he survived.’
‘What did you do?’ I know what Franciszek did – he secured a future for the pair, working to afford a home for them to start their new life together. But what about his wife?
Irene shrugs. ‘What could I do? I got on with life. There was no other choice. The war ended. The hospital closed. I started working in the post office. Got engaged.’
My eyes widen. ‘You got engaged? To someone else?’
Irene chuckles, her cheeks at full plump. ‘Why not? I never thought I’d see Franciszek again. I didn’t even know if he was still alive at this point.’
‘Why didn’t you write to Gran?’ Tomasz’s voice is full of accusation, despite the years and the happily ever after that passed.
‘Because I’m a fool.’
Irene nods at her husband’s assessment of himself. ‘A big fool, but he got there in the end.’
‘So what happened?’ I lean forward in my seat in my eagerness to hear more. ‘You were engaged to another man and then …’
‘Then this great lump showed up, out of the blue.’ She smiles indulgently at her husband. ‘And it was love at second sight. I knew I couldn’t marry Sid, lovely as he was. It was Franciszek who my heart belonged to and this was our second chance at love. I took it with both hands and I’ve never regretted it for a second.’
I think about what would happen if I was given a second chance at love. Would I take it with both hands, or would I run away all over again? Tomasz is right behind me and I can’t bear to not look at him for a second longer. I could start our love story early. Or snog his face off one last time before I’m dragged away to the present. I brace myself to do it. To turn around and ask Tomasz if I can have a word with him outside. Once alone, I’ll tell him how I feel, or at least a watered-down version because I don’t want to scare him away with a full-on declaration of undying love before we’ve even had our first kiss.
I turn around, my heart beating painfully hard and fast. I’m going to do it. No more scaredy-cat Elodie Parker.
‘I need to get going.’ Tomasz is looking at his watch. He pushes himself away from the wall and shuffles over to kiss his grandmother’s cheek.
‘Meeting Holly?’
Irene’s question glues my mouth shut. I won’t be asking Tomasz for a private word. I won’t be confessing anything tonight. Because Tomasz has a girlfriend.