Back to my own romance. To give Mark the coveted keys to the bicycle, which Jack had relinquished, is an important scene. You need a good setting in a book, so Mark and I went for a romantic walk across the Heath and from the top of Kite Hill the pigeon-grey city was spread out like a frieze on a pale sky. Mark was talking about Yosemite. Yosemite was cold in November and Mark was making sure we had the appropriate layers for the weather conditions.
‘And we need to keep alert for bears,’ he said. ‘We’ll get bear-repellent, pepper spray. They should be ready for hibernation at this time of year but not all of them keep to the timetable. It’s been a good berry year,’ he added. ‘It makes a difference.’
I only heard one word. ‘Bears?’
‘We have to lock our food in bear-proof containers.’
‘You mean like our cabin?’
Mark laughed and pulled me closer, kissing the top of my head. He whispered in my ear, ‘You want to know how easily a bear can get into a cabin?’
‘Not really.’ I didn’t remind him that I was even scared of cows.
He went on blithely, ‘Mountain lions can be a problem too. The advice is to puff yourself out, make yourself look bigger.’
Baffling. ‘Why would you want to do that? Wouldn’t a hungry predator prefer his prey to be on the large side? It’s asking for trouble.’
We stood looking at the view beyond the trees, his heavy arm on my shoulder, our coats whipping in the wind and our breath clouding in the cold air. It seemed the perfect time to give him the shiny keys to the bike lock.
‘Hold your hand out.’
I dropped them into his palm. In my mind’s eye, he, the hero, was going to be noble in victory, and perhaps give some heart-warming speech about the power of love.
He looked at them and said, ‘What are these?’
‘They’re the keys to the bike lock.’
‘You’ve got a bike now?’
‘No, they’re for your bike, the Trek bike. The bike I sold to Jack.’
‘Oh, Jack’s bike.’
I shrugged his arm off my shoulder and faced him. ‘Mark, he’s giving it back. It’s yours again.’
‘Why?’
That’s the problem with symbolism; it doesn’t necessarily translate to real life.
‘I don’t know. He just thought you ought to have it back, I guess.’
Mark shrugged. ‘Okay. Although I wasn’t planning on riding it in the winter anyway and I’m sure as hell not taking it to California.’ Being the well-brought-up guy he was, he added, ‘But thanks.’
Because I too was well brought up, I said, ‘You’re welcome.’
It was a bit of an anticlimax, though. I suppose I’d imagined the scene differently. His dialogue needed some improvement – I’d have scrawled through it with a big black line by now.
As we sat on the bench watching magpies squabble in the bushes I suddenly wondered if I was turning into the kind of person who swaps people for a new and similar model, because what I actually wanted Mark to do was run down the hill with me, hand in hand, and go and fetch the bike right now. Then I wanted him to ride off on it and do a big circuit and come racing back along Swain’s Lane, put me on the seat and take me for a ride around the block. That now seemed to me to be the appropriate reaction when one is given a bike back.
Well, it was just a bike.
Still, I was irritated by his reaction – not badly enough to actually start an argument, but I had taken him to a high place to look over the city to give him a gift – it cost me not money but a friendship this time round – and he hadn’t exactly made it a moment to remember.
As I headed down the path towards the café, suffering from extreme anticlimax and kicking the leaves, I started thinking of our relationship and how independence was our thing. I turned my back into the wind and waited for him to catch up with me.
‘Nancy’s funeral is on the fifteenth,’ I said.
He hooked his arm in mine. ‘Is it? That’s when we’re travelling.’
‘I know. But I’m thinking of changing my ticket. I’ll fly out on the sixteenth instead.’
‘Why? It’s not as if she’s family, is it?’
I accept that sexual frustration could have contributed to our mood. It was nothing to do with staying with his parents – it had just seemed safer, somehow, to hold back a bit, and my engagement ring was proof that it hadn’t put him off.
‘No,’ I conceded, ‘she’s not family, but—’
‘So it’s not as if you actually need to go to her funeral. You were there for her when she was alive. Now she’s dead it doesn’t matter to her whether you’re there or not, does it.’
I couldn’t argue with the logic. ‘I suppose.’
We hugged by the bandstand and I closed my eyes and leant into him. Mark was the perfect partner. I would marry him and become part of his lovely life where no one thinks badly or lets reality overshadow fantasy; I would travel with him and we could live it all again through my stories and his prints, always showing the best of ourselves.
In his arms I was part of that lovely warm world of Stephen, Judy, Mark and his friends, where nothing awful happened, where they were supportive of my writing and full of praise and admiration; there’s nothing nicer than being with nice people and if I was with them long enough, I would become like them – likeable, easy to be with, living an easy life.
As usual, I was packing for the trip right up to the last minute. I’d begun methodically enough but I started getting separation anxiety, trying to stuff a pair of FitFlops into a side pocket of my backpack because you never know, I could easily get fit just by walking to the toilet block and back. Our cabin in Yosemite didn’t have an ensuite.
I could hear Mark cursing from his room as Judy tapped on my door, waving a blue packet and a small nylon bag.
‘Have you got Imodium? And Mark said he doesn’t want this mosquito net, so I thought you might like it. It’s a double.’
‘I think it will be too cold for mosquitoes. I’ll take the Imodium, though. Thanks.’ I tucked it in my pocket.
‘Are you going to be climbing, too?’ she asked, looking at my bulging backpack.
‘No, I’m mostly on the support side of things.’
She smiled warmly and patted my cheek. ‘I’m so glad you’re going with him, darling.’ She headed for the door and turned to look at the backpack again, shaking her head dubiously. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to carry that, though.’
Good point. When she’d gone I put the straps over my shoulders and straightened up, taking the strain in my thighs like a bodybuilder. I’d packed Nancy’s papers and they weighed more than I’d realised.
Mark came in looking flustered – quite a rare emotion for him. ‘Good! You’re ready!’
‘I hope so. I feel as if I’ve forgotten something,’ I said.
‘Got your passport?’
I patted myself down. Passport, laptop, ESTA, pills, notebook. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got all the important things. Anything else you can get at the airport.’ He checked the time. ‘The cab will be here in a minute.’
I took a last look around the bedroom and straightened the bed, unable to shake off the hollow, nagging feeling I’d forgotten something vital.
Mark’s phone pinged. ‘That’s the car. You want a hand with that?’
‘No, it’s fine.’ I bumped it down the stairs, gave Judy a goodbye hug and the driver manhandled my backpack into the boot.
I got into the car and sat back on the beige leather seats clutching my laptop bag.
Mark slid in beside me and we looked at each other. He squeezed my knee. ‘Happy?’
I nodded and smiled back at him. ‘Yes.’
And the driver set off and we waved to Judy until she was out of sight.