It was much easier than Joseph thought it would be.
Summer again, but no hot days yet. He’d been down in Brighton, finishing Clive’s house, and he came home to a message from Alice, the first in months. She left a number, a new one, said she’d moved. He phoned her back the same evening and she asked if she could come round one day after work. Familiar and unfamiliar, that voice, and no edges to it. She said she’d left some things behind. A jacket and a hairbrush, a bike pump and the spare key to her lock. He knew where they all were: he’d left them where she had. Went round his flat collecting them into a box, chose a small one he reckoned would fit on the back of her bike. Put the map in there too, at the bottom, with the small beach and the wood above it marked.
They sat on the chairs in the big room the day she came, something they’d never done when they were together. Always sat in the kitchen then, because it was the only room he’d got anywhere near finished. Alice gave him the news about Martha’s baby, due in a few weeks, and then she shifted a bit in her chair before telling him she was going to see her grandparents at the weekend.
– My Dad’s parents. I asked them up to London last time, and they’ve returned the invitation. My Dad knows about it. He won’t be there, but we’ve started writing again. I think so anyway, a couple of letters.
Joseph thought: one way got blocked so she found another. Alice was smiling, and it was hard not to smile with her. She lifted her hands to her face. He knew those fingers, that skirt and T-shirt, old trainers and bare legs.
She never said anything about the colour on his walls, or the furniture, although he saw her looking, and she didn’t bat an eye when he asked after her grandad either, just said he was up north at the moment, visiting her mum and step-dad.
– A long weekend. They’ve lined up a garden to visit every day. All over Yorkshire. Poor Alan.
She laughed. And then:
– My mum’s got this idea of us going to Africa. To Kenya. See the places Gran lived, I think the hospital she worked in might still be there. Mum’s talked about it on and off over the winter. I don’t know how far she’s really got with planning it or anything.
Alice rubbed at a smear of oil on her shin.
– She’d love my Grandad to come with us, basically. Show us the places they got to know each other. He says he’s too old now, but she reckons she’ll wait a year, let him come round to the idea. I’m not sure he will, though.
She smiled at him and Joseph remembered something Jarvis had said. About another Corporal he’d served with, a bit older than him. He’d been in Ireland, early in the seventies, and after he’d finished his twenty-two years, he went back there. Got himself a job selling advertising on beermats, with a company car and a hospitality budget. Drove around the province from pub to pub, and after he’d got through his business with the landlord, he always stayed for a couple and tried getting into conversation with the locals. Sounded like the worst idea to Joseph. But Jarvis said he went to all areas, loyalist and nationalist. Always told them he used to be in the army. Didn’t get into as many fights as you might think.
Alice was still sitting, but pulling her bag and jacket onto her lap, and the box, and it occurred to Joseph that she’d been gathering her things together for some time. He stood up, to let her go, and then she smiled. Alice went ahead of him down the hall, and she nodded goodbye after he’d opened the door, backing the first few paces down towards the stairwell.
Joseph stepped out onto the walkway and looked over the side, waiting for her to get to the bottom of the stairs. It was a bright day, and the air was warm on his face, but the concrete still felt cold through his socks. The courtyard below him was full of sun, only the stairwell door was in shadow. Alice came out and he thought she might look up. She crossed the courtyard, into the sun, a brief flare of red, and then she was gone.