Breakfast was insubstantial – there was only enough dry bread in Oliver’s dusty bread bin for them to have one piece of toast each. Lily ate quickly, desperate to get away from this dirty, oppressive cottage. She had slept badly and was in a foul mood.
Moira, in contrast, was irritatingly chirpy. ‘Oliver,’ she said as she scraped margarine across her toast. ‘Do you remember when we all went to the theatre, that time? There was me and Ken, and we went with the Johnsons – do you remember them?’
‘Nope.’ Oliver shook his head.
‘You were with that Danish girl, the one with rather large bosoms. What was her name?’
Oliver squinted across the table at her. ‘Bosoms?’
‘Yes! She wore very low-cut blouses and had a gold pendant thing that hung down into her cleavage.’
Oliver was shaking his head. ‘Can’t say she rings any bells.’
‘Karina?’ Moira said. ‘Or maybe Katrina?’
‘How big were they?’
‘Bloody huge!’ said Moira. ‘If she turned sideways, she could hardly get through doorways. And that gold pendant was big too – the size of a hard-boiled egg.’
‘In that case, I would have thought I’d remember her,’ mused Oliver, sitting back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. His breath was rank this morning and his teeth were purple. Lily hoped he hadn’t already been on the wine, but it was a distinct possibility.
‘Keira?’ Moira asked. ‘Karolina?’
‘Kara!’ Oliver yelled. ‘Kara with the massive bosoms!’
‘Yes.’ Moira nodded, excitedly. ‘That’s the one.’
Lily pushed her chair away from the table; she couldn’t take much more of this. ‘Right, we must get back on the road, Mum. Is your case packed? I’ll go and put it in the van.’
As she carried the suitcases downstairs, a few minutes later, she heard chortling from the kitchen.
‘After that,’ Oliver was saying. ‘She only went and put that sodding gold pendant down his trousers!’
Moira screeched with laughter, as Lily went towards the front door. ‘I’ll take these out,’ she called. Ironic that the two of them were finally getting on like a house on fire. It didn’t sound as if they shared the same memories of the time they’d spent together, but it clearly didn’t matter in the slightest. It must be so strange to meet up with someone from your past who had once been important to you, but who had changed so dramatically. She wondered if this would be her and Gordy in thirty years’ time, then immediately dismissed the thought. For one thing, she was going to make sure they didn’t lose touch. Even if she stopped working at Beautiful Blooms or Gordy and Hilary ended up moving away, she was sure their friendship was strong enough to endure. Anyway, times had changed and modern technology made it so much easier to keep tabs on people. If you didn’t have the time for a proper phone conversation, it only took a few seconds to send a text to check up on a friend, whereas forty years ago, you had to make more of an effort if you wanted to stay in touch. When Moira and Ken left Chepstow and moved to Yorkshire, they would have written letters and sent postcards and used landlines to have proper conversations with the friends and neighbours they’d left behind. There were mobiles around in those days, but Lily knew her parents hadn’t owned one. Moira had reluctantly allowed Lily to sign her up for a phone contract after her father died, but she’d never really got the hang of how to use it and for several years kept the old-fashioned Nokia handset shut away in a drawer in her desk, only turning it on when she wanted to make a call.
There was another shriek of laughter from the kitchen.
‘We thought she was going to get arrested!’ Oliver was saying.
‘Oh, dear me!’ Moira yelped. ‘What a sight that must have been!’
Lily opened the front door and carried the cases down the path. Just because she was tired and grumpy this morning, it was unfair to drag Moira away too quickly; she ought to let the pair of them have some time together. So, once she’d loaded the cases into the campervan, she cleared out the empty food and drink wrappers from the day before. Then she wiped down the dashboard and swept bits of mud out of the footwells with her hand. At one point, her phone pinged and she groaned when she saw it was a text from Dave with the blubbery lips:
She deleted it, then immediately felt guilty. Her brief involvement with Dave had taught her he didn’t take gentle hints and clearly wasn’t aware he was being ghosted, so unless she said she didn’t want to see him again, he would carry on texting.
When she finally went back into the cottage, the two elderly people were still sitting at the kitchen table, silent now, but grinning at each other.
‘Thank you for having us, Oliver,’ said Lily. ‘It has been nice to meet you.’
‘Yes.’ Moira nodded. ‘Good to catch up after so long, you fat old toad.’
They went down the passageway and Lily helped Moira into her coat, while Oliver jingled coins in his trouser pocket, humming something unintelligible.
‘I’ll come back another time,’ said Moira, going up to him and rising onto her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Take care of that big belly of yours.’ She put both her hands on his enormous stomach and tapped out a rhythm on it, as if she was playing a set of snare drums.
‘Mum!’ Lily was shocked, but Oliver didn’t seem bothered.
‘Marvellous,’ he said, beaming down at her. ‘Take care of yourself, you old witch.’
He stood by the side of the road, waving, as Lily started the van and pulled away.
‘Well, that was fun,’ said Moira, waving back through the rear window until Oliver was just a speck at the end of the road. ‘What a jolly time we had. Right, onwards Lily, next stop the Lake District.’
They headed through the outskirts of Wolverhampton, following signs towards the M5. Back in the uncomfortable driving seat again, Lily realised she was still tired from the hours she’d spent sat in it yesterday. Her arms ached as they found themselves back in the familiar positions on the steering wheel.
Beside her, Moira had her notebook on her lap and was staring through the windscreen, tapping absently on the front cover with her pencil.
‘You’ll have a lot to write about now,’ said Lily. ‘I’m so pleased you enjoyed seeing him.’
‘Me too,’ Moira said. ‘He definitely needs to go into my book. Not just what we did at his house now, but the things he did all those years ago. The way he was.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘He was very important, Lily,’ she said. ‘That man played a big part in my life.’
‘I can tell that. It all felt a bit awkward yesterday, when we arrived, but once you both relaxed and started to feel comfortable with each other again, it was obvious you’d been close.’
‘Very close indeed,’ Moira said.
Lily glanced sideways; her mother was nodding and looking thoughtful. ‘I’m so happy the two of you have met, Lily. It means a great deal to me, to have introduced you to Oliver.’
‘Good,’ Lily said. ‘I’m glad too.’
Moira opened the notebook and flicked through the first few pages. ‘Right, I now need some peace and quiet while I get all of this written down. I can’t decide whether to include the bit about that Danish girl, but I suppose I can always cross it out again.’
‘Yes, better to have too much there than too little,’ said Lily.
‘True.’ Moira nodded. ‘That’s what the men always used to say about her bosoms.’