Our Last Summer by Jennifer Joyce
Chapter 30
Yvonne and Sacha have been together – officially – for six months. They had a handful of one-night stands between the summer I just left and the day after Valentine’s Day, when Sacha wooed Yvonne with a bunch of roses from the reduced bucket in the supermarket and a half-price mug with ‘Boobalicious Babe’ printed on the front. And that was that. They were an item. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Yvonne had only waited nearly three years for it happen.
I wish I’d been able to prevent it from happening, because it isn’t going to last. It’ll come out about Ronnie and everything one day and Yvonne will be crushed. It’s hard to believe how much devastation there will be looking at them now as they sit out in the garden, Yvonne’s fingers lightly stroking the stubble on his cheeks, Sacha bringing the fingers of her other hand to his lips. They don’t look happy – that isn’t a word I’d use today – but they look comfortable with one another, as though they fit, that underneath the grief they are content.
‘Pint?’ Ed holds up the glasses in his hand as we approach the picnic table. ‘We can go back inside if you’d rather be on your own for a bit?’
Sacha shakes his head. His curls would usually bounce around his face but he’s had them cut back, tamed, so they’re still long on top but clipped at the sides. For once, he isn’t wearing his shades.
‘It’s okay.’ He nods at the bench opposite, and Ed and I sit down. He takes a sip of the pint Ed’s placed in front of him. ‘Is Tomasz all right? Mum and Dad? Grandad?’
I nod, deep lines furrowing along my forehead. I’m surprised by his concern for his family, but I shouldn’t be. I guess I’ve built him up to be a narcissistic villain over the past few years after what happened with Ronnie and Ed, but he clearly cares about his family when it matters, and Yvonne believed he cared about her too, right up until the night Ronnie turned up at the pub.
‘Tomasz is with your mum, and your dad’s chatting to your grandad.’ Franciszek had finally allowed someone to settle themselves next to him in the corner, and they’d sat looking at the defiant photo of Irene on the front cover of the newspaper in silence for a few minutes until a conversation started to flow, stuttering at first but now unstoppable. When we’d passed with the drinks, Franciszek had been clutching his stomach as he laughed about something his son had said.
‘Are you okay?’ Yvonne reaches across the table and takes Ed’s hand in hers. ‘You look … lost.’
‘Nah, I’m good.’ A smile flickers on Ed’s face. ‘Just thinking.’
Yvonne pulls a face, baring her teeth. ‘So that explains the steam coming out of your ears. The old brain’s working overtime. Careful, there.’
Ed sticks his tongue out at her. ‘I was thinking about me and …’ His eyes slide towards me. ‘I’ve told Elodie about me. About me being gay.’
I’m shocked again. That he would say it, just like that, in front of Sacha. But Sacha doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest. He doesn’t react at all, unlike Yvonne who leaps out of her seat with a little shriek and somehow squeezes herself onto Ed’s lap on the picnic bench. I watch Sacha as Yvonne smothers Ed’s face and hair with kisses, telling him how proud she is of him. Nothing. No smirk. No jibes. No arsehole behaviour at all. No sense of revelation at all.
‘You knew.’ I turn to Ed and Yvonne, who stops pecking at Ed but keeps her lips puckered up as though the kiss has been frozen in time. ‘He knew before me.’
‘I didn’t exactly tell him.’ Ed looks down at the table as Yvonne slides off his lap and returns to her seat beside her boyfriend. I glare at her until she puts her hands up, palms out. How could she tell him? How could she betray Ed like that?
‘I didn’t tell him either.’
This time there is a flicker of a smirk on Sacha’s face. ‘I walked in on him going at it on the sofa.’
Ed’s mouth gapes open. ‘We weren’t going at it.’
Sacha snorts. ‘You always have your trousers round your ankles then?’
Ed looks at me, his eyes rolling. ‘He’s exaggerating. But yes, we may have got carried away. But you were home early.’ He aims this at Yvonne, his eyebrows arching. She holds her hands up again.
‘But you never said anything.’
Sacha looks up and meets my eye. He shrugs. ‘Not my place. Not my business.’
But he didn’t say anything to anyone. No snidey remarks. No sly digs. No unsubtle hints. This is not the Sacha I’ve painted in my head for the past four years.
‘Does Tomasz know?’ Or Heather? My parents? Christine Gacey from the minimarket? Because everyone seemed to know but me.
‘Nope, just these guys.’ Ed indicates Yvonne and Sacha with his pint glass. ‘And now you.’
Yvonne grins as Ed takes a sip of his drink. ‘And Dominic.’
Ed keeps his eye on his pint as he sets it down on the table, but I can see him fighting a smile.
‘Did something happen with you two that summer? Is that why you stayed in touch?’
Ed squirms in his seat, which tells me everything I need to know. ‘Maybe a little something.’
Yvonne arches an eyebrow. ‘If it was only a little something, why did you bother staying in touch?’
I lean my head on Ed’s shoulder. ‘Ignore her. I’m glad you kept in touch and I’m so happy he’s coming to see you again. Who knows – maybe he’s your soulmate.’
At which point, Sacha reverts to form and makes vomiting sounds as he leans over the lawn.
More people start to drift out into the beer garden as the intense heat starts to die down. It’s still hot but not quite as breathtakingly fierce. Jackets are removed. Top buttons undone. An old friend of Irene’s, who chose to wear black tights in mid-August, peels them off and pads around the garden in bare feet, the abandoned tights and court shoes tossed under a table. Tomasz and his mum wander outside and Tomasz asks me if I’d like to go for a walk. It must be such a difficult day for him, supporting his parents and grandfather while dealing with his own grief. We slip out of the pub and my eyes stray straight to the salon: Berkely’s Hair & Beauty, looking strikingly sophisticated sandwiched between the café and the hardware shop that haven’t seen an update – inside or out – for decades. But Yvonne’s vision seems to be right – there is a market for a more youthful clientele in Little Heaton.
Tomasz takes my hand and we stroll along the high street, turning off to cross the footpath over the canal. We follow the lane until we reach a gap in the bushes, where a small dirt path leads to a cluster of buildings. There’s a For Sale sign poking out of the bushes.
‘What are we doing?’ Tomasz is leading me along the track, which I know doesn’t lead to anywhere beyond the buildings.
‘Playing make-believe.’ He leads me past the single-storey building and a couple of smaller outbuildings until we’re standing in front of the main house. ‘Just imagine living here.’
I splutter. ‘We’d have to win the lottery first.’ The house is huge – five or six bedrooms, easy.
Tomasz lets go of my hand so he can put his arm around my waist. ‘It’d be nice though, wouldn’t it?’
I look at the house. At the vastness of it. I think of my little loft room at Mum and Dad’s. Of the tiny apartment in LA, where the ‘utility room’ is a cupboard with a washer and dryer stacked one on top of the other, which is a plus point in itself as most apartments in the area don’t have their own laundry facilities. Would I prefer this massive house, with so many rooms I wouldn’t know what to do with them? Hell, yes.
‘I bet the utility room is huge. With a sink and enough room to set out your ironing board so you don’t have to lug it about.’
‘Absolutely.’ Tomasz nods. ‘And I bet they have a mud room.’
‘And a library. With one of those ladders on wheels.’
‘A home cinema. They have to have a home cinema.’
‘Which is just a room with a stupidly big telly. I can think of better uses of a room.’
Tomasz tilts his head as he looks at me. ‘What would you use it for instead?’
I pull my chin back. ‘A huge walk-in wardrobe, obviously.’
‘A whole room, just for clothes?’
I tut. ‘Of course not. There’ll be shelves and racks for my handbags and shoes as well.’
Tomasz shakes his head. ‘What a waste of a room.’ He takes my hand again and we make our way back to the lane. The sun’s still beating down but there’s a cool breeze that makes it much more bearable though my feet are throbbing after a day of heels in the heat.
‘That big house would be amazing.’ Tomasz stops and turns to look at another house. ‘But I think this would be more my thing.’
We’ve reached the new horseshoe-shaped road. The houses are finished now, most of them already sold, and there are young trees planted along the new grass verges. Tomasz has stopped and is looking at one of the smaller houses on the inner side of the curved road. The door is cherry-red and there are wild flowers bursting from the overgrown lawn.
‘This would be the ideal place to bring up a family.’
‘I thought we were going to America.’ I rest my head on his shoulder, still looking across at the cherry-red door, still caught up in make-believe despite my words.
‘We are. But you never know – you might miss Little Heaton so much you want to come home.’
‘Maybe.’ I never thought it was possible, but I haven’t hated being back and I’ve found it isn’t as void of joy and interest as I’d thought it was. I think of the past few summers with Ed and Yvonne and Tomasz. And of the summer with Dominic where we explored and discovered and enjoyed all that Little Heaton and the surrounding area has to offer. It isn’t a bad place, I realise now, and it doesn’t deserve the hostility I’ve shown it all these years.
‘Not long now.’ Tomasz kisses the top of my head and we start to walk along the horseshoe-shaped path again.
‘No, not long now.’ The sale of the small chain of hotels in the US had gone through as smoothly as could be expected, and when Gillian had accepted a managerial role overlooking the running of the three hotels in California, she’d offered me a promotion to trainee assistant manager at one of them. And it had felt like a promotion in every possible sense – career-wise and an upgrade from Little Heaton to Los Angeles. Tomasz had agreed to come along with me, to stay for a little while and then, once his visa was sorted, on a more permanent basis.
‘Two weeks.’ Tomasz squeezes my hand. ‘You excited?’
I nod. ‘So excited.’ But though I try to conjure the flutter of excitement I’d felt the first time round, I can’t quite manage it.