Maddy is out with Luna for her early-afternoon stroll around the graveyard. She’s been taking the little dog out every day since New Year to help Matteo out, but also because she likes having an excuse to get out of the flat. Talking to Matteo on the doorstep is becoming the highlight of her days.
She wishes she could talk to a girlfriend about this little flirtation going on. Is she being a crazy menopausal woman thinking that Matteo might find her attractive, like she finds him? There’s such a big age difference between them. Surely someone as hot as Matteo would go after younger women? He’s confided to her that he wants children and that’s why it could never have worked out with Shauna, who didn’t feel mentally stable enough to be a mother, so Maddy is at completely the wrong life stage for him. So what could he possibly see in her? Nothing, surely? But then … the way he looks at her …? She can’t help thinking that something might be there. Not that she would have the guts to do anything about it, but it’s making her feel like a bloody teenager when she imagines what he might look like naked.
Lisa would help make sense of it all, but Maddy can’t reach out to her. Lisa’s deception still stings too much. The fact that she knew about Trent’s affair with Helen feels too huge a betrayal. Because she must have known all the details. All the dates, all the … wait … holidays? Maddy can’t help raking over the past for evidence, feeling a jolt each time she thinks of a new moment that she must have been lied to about – like Trent’s golfing trips. How he used to tell her every boring detail so that she tuned out … as he knew she would. And she remembers too, at the golf club dinner – how Trent’s friends were always so charming towards her. Had they known that he was cheating on her? One man – Geoff – sticks in her mind. How he made a joke she hadn’t understood and Trent had brushed over it.
With a little distance, she can see that maybe the signs were there, but she’d deliberately ignored them. Maybe it was to do with her menopause, or just that she and Trent had got too used to each other and he’d got bored. But it’s so hard to untangle it all and her feelings about her marriage and Jamie without feeling floored by helplessness and shame.
It doesn’t help that it’s already a fortnight into a new year and she’s drawn a blank on her hunt for Jamie. She’s starting to think that maybe he’s changed his name. Or maybe he’s not even living here. Maybe he’d just been passing through at Christmas. She’s taped a hundred ‘missing’ posters to lamp posts around the town and in the phone box from where Jamie made the call on Christmas Day. She’s shown his photo in every shop and to practically everyone she’s met, but … nothing.
She’s just taping a laminated photo to the graveyard’s notice board, when she notices a woman smiling at her. She’s the one with the two boys who have gone off around the looping path on their skateboards and she’s coming towards her by the gate. They must be about nine and eleven, Maddy thinks, staring wistfully at the boys. They both have a mop of black hair and are clearly brothers. The older one is tall and gangly and she can remember Jamie at exactly that age. How he grew suddenly, sprouting legs and hair overnight. She remembers too, what a ninja he was – how sure-footed and daring. He’d had no fear, just complete confidence in his physical abilities.
‘Oh,’ the woman says, ‘you were the lady on the beach. I recognise the dog.’
Maddy is startled. She doesn’t know anyone here, apart from Matteo, so it feels odd to be recognised.
‘Oh, Luna, yes.’ Maddy remembers the woman, recognising her Irish accent. She’s wearing a pink woolly coat and the wrong shade of lipstick, and her smile is friendly. She looks expectantly at Maddy.
‘I was so impressed you went in,’ Maddy says. ‘I thought it was nice you had a gang.’
‘Oh, yes. I suppose we are a gang. I guess swimming together does instantly bond you. I’ve lived here for ten years and being down at the beach is the first time I’ve really felt part of a wider community. The women in the Sea-Gals, they’re really lovely.’
Maddy smiles. The Sea-Gals. She remembers the older one mentioning that now. She likes the playful pun. These are obviously not women who take themselves too seriously. ‘They were very good-natured about the dog.’
‘Dominica totally fell for Luna.’
Dominica must have been that tall striking one, Maddy thinks, remembering how Luna had crawled onto her lap.
‘Why don’t you come down and join us sometime? Helga had been about to ask you to join the group. I can take your number if you like and get her to add you?’ the woman says, taking out her phone.
Maddy is about to refuse, but the woman seems insistent and, before Maddy knows it, she’s given over her details.
‘How long have you lived here?’ Claire – as she now introduces herself as – asks.
‘A few weeks.’
‘Is that all?’ She sounds shocked.
‘Yes, I’m … I’ve … I’ve left my husband.’
Claire bites her lip, embarrassed. ‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s been coming for a while.’ It’s only now that she says these words that Maddy realises how true it is.
‘Are you all right? Are you staying with family?’
‘No, no, I’m alone, although I’m trying to find my son. He lives here. I think.’
‘You think?’
‘We’ve lost contact and …’ Maddy feels her voice break and a rush of emotion, making tears spring to her eyes. She nods to the picture she’s just taped up.
‘Don’t apologise. Honestly, I complain about those two the whole time, but I couldn’t bear to be separated. That must be so tough.’
Her genuine compassion feels so comforting. ‘I’ve tried really hard to find him, but I’ve drawn a blank so far.’
‘Come for a swim. Or at least come down to the beach and meet the others. They’ve all been in Brighton for years. One of them might be able to help. We’re going in the morning. Nine o’clock. You’d be most welcome.’ Claire smiles brightly and squeezes her arm, as if they’ve already arranged it.
Maddy smiles back at her and gives her a little wave as she leaves through the gate with her sons. Where she lives, her friendships have taken years to build, alliances carefully formed through friends of friends, new women vetted for their credentials as having the right balance of looking the part, whilst being fun. All of them are wealthy. All of them have designer homes. All of them, she thinks now, unhappily skinny.
It’s been a very long time since she’s formed a spontaneous friendship, certainly with someone like Claire. Someone normal. She can well imagine the derogatory comment Trent would make about her appearance. He’s always been such a body fascist – one of the reasons that Maddy’s kept her figure so trim and well maintained. Because of Trent’s ‘high standards’. But now she knows what a wanker he is, it only makes her more resolved to take up Claire’s kind offer to join them swimming tomorrow. Is she brave enough?
She walks to the end of the path with Luna, noticing there’s a tent at the end tucked between the far gravestones. It’s shocking that someone is camping in a corner of a graveyard in January. But Maddy has started to see helpless people everywhere. People with slumped shoulders and haunted eyes. Any of them could be Jamie. If he’s homeless, that is. Because is he? For all she knows, he might be living in a mansion, on his way to being a tech billionaire. Isn’t that what he once declared he was going to be?
But somehow, she knows, just knows that that’s wishful thinking. That his dreams never did come true and that it’s up to her to find him and try and put that right.
On a whim she walks over to the tent, wondering how one knocks on a fabric door.
‘Hello,’ she calls. ‘Is there anyone in there?’
She waits outside the tent. There’s no answer. Luna comes over and snuffles at the zip.
There’s some rustling inside the tent. A very sleepy man opens the zip and peers out. His gums are blackened, several teeth missing.
‘What do you want?’ There’s confusion on his gaunt face as he takes in Maddy and Luna.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she says. ‘It’s just … I’m looking for my son.’ As the stumbled words come out, she realises how pathetically posh she sounds. How needy and uninformed.
The man’s weariness comes at her along with an atrocious smell. He’s ill. Really ill. He slumps back down as if he’s been expecting a fight. Now she looks inside the tent, she can see an empty cider bottle and a jumble of clothes and bedding.
‘This is him.’ She takes out a picture of Jamie, but her stomach is curdling with the thought that Jamie might been reduced to this state. She shows it to the man, but he shakes his head. He sways slightly and Maddy realises he’s swooning with hunger.
‘Can I help you at all?’ she asks, but as the man meets her eye, it takes all she has not to look away in revulsion.
‘You got any spare money?’ he asks.
‘Some. A tenner, I think.’ She remembers the cash in her jeans at the same time that she remembers that it might be the last bit of actual money she might be able to get her hands on. She’s liquidated an ISA to pay Manpreet and her living expenses, but it’s not going to last her long. With her and Trent’s joint account still ominously empty, she’ll have no choice but to use her credit cards to get by. She’s always found comfort in having a little safety net of her own savings, but now they’ve gone, it’s scary that she’s going to have to start budgeting and thinking about money in a way she hasn’t had to for years.
He nods and she fumbles, taking the cash out of her jeans, thinking that he obviously needs it more. The man grabs the crisp note. Then he juts out his chin in thanks and she takes it as her cue to leave.
As she gets to the gate with Luna, two police officers in high-vis jackets are walking in, a man and woman. The woman bends down to pet Luna and Maddy thinks how Luna melts hearts wherever she goes. She’d never realised what a conversational ice-breaker a puppy is until now, as she starts chatting to the policewoman, but then her partner’s radio goes. He turns to Maddy.
‘You haven’t seen anything suspicious?’ he asks.
‘No, I was just talking to the guy in there.’ Maddy points to the tent. ‘He seemed a bit unwell. I gave him a tenner.’
‘That’s kind of you, but you don’t want to talk to them,’ the policeman says, with a frown. ‘Some of them really don’t like being disturbed in the day. There’s been some incidents.’
Maddy realises how stupid she’d been.
‘Why can’t they get to hostels?’ she asks the policewoman.
‘They can. But they can’t do drugs in the hostels, so they’d rather sleep rough. Don’t worry. We’ll move him on.’
‘No, no you don’t need to—’
But they’re already marching up the path.
Maddy watches the gate close and feels a spike of dread. As she walks away, she cringes at the thought that she might have unwittingly made things worse.