MARY

Joe was back in the pub, ordering pints of cider as if it were about to run out. He didn’t have a shift behind the bar, but he didn’t seem to have anywhere else to be. He was slurring his words and sloshing the liquid over the sides as he spoke. Mary didn’t like to see him like that, his eyes slipping and sliding about the place, his mouth in a thin line when he thought no one was looking. He told her more about his war, sometimes she forgot he was only twenty-six, his face seemed to carry extra years in the lines. It still hurt to think of her father like that, not even twenty years older but ancient when he’d returned from the prisoner-of-war camp. She didn’t remember him ever sitting down when she was a child; he’d be restless, bent over the kitchen table, greasy parts of a bicycle laid out on newspaper, tinkering, screwing, hopping up to reattach things. After the war he’d sat in a chair by the window, clouds skittering past, his eyes not focusing on them, lost somewhere, jumping if she laid a hand on his shoulder.

Joe called her Abigail that night, leaning on her as she put one of his arms over her shoulder, feeling the weight of him as she pulled him up from the stool. She’d laughed at him, pointing out the ankles that merged into her calves, the stubborn roll around her middle that didn’t seem to shift. Abigail had a nipped-in waist and legs men would stop and stare at. Still, she couldn’t resist the teeny glow as he muttered it. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Abi, a lovely girl.’

‘Thanks, Joe.’

She propped him up on the way out and he patted her on the arm before weaving over the cobbled street, one foot stumbling in the gutter so she thought he might knock his teeth out on the pavement. He’d perked up for a moment earlier, when she’d read to him from Abigail’s last letter. She told him about the peppermint chaise longue. He’d chuckled at that.

Abigail’s letters were filled with descriptions of the house, her sister’s very fine clothes, her hair that somehow didn’t seem to get mussed up the moment she went out the door. Abigail’s hair, on the other hand, was permanently salty, the wind on the moors tossing every strand about so that it looked like she’d been burrowing through hedges; and she hid her dreadful darning efforts under other layers.

Sometimes Abigail sounded wistful, as if she wanted to say something bigger but the page was too small. Mary knew what that felt like, struggling to translate the thoughts in her head through the pen in her hand, gazing at the blank space that she needed to fill, but missing their chats on a rug on the Downs, spilling every thought onto the grass, clutching their sides with their secrets and their laughter. She thought her looping, rounded handwriting looked childish, Abigail’s elegant scrawl highlighting the difference.

She walked back through Bedminster after her shift, her legs aching from doing a double, her hands and clothes smelling of cigarette smoke; she imagined her insides filled with the stuff, swirling around her body. The apartment was dark when she got back, the lights off in the flats downstairs. Mary cringed at the cranking sound as she switched the geyser on over the bath and stepped gingerly into the tub. She washed quickly, a threadbare towel round her as she shivered on the bare boards of her room. Rubbing at her skin, she looked over at the tips from that night, collected in a small pile of change on her chest of drawers. She was saving money now, wanting to get on with the life she had planned, get out of Bristol and see the world. She needed to get to Abigail first and then on to somewhere exciting.

She hugged the blankets over her that night, smiling to herself as she remembered Abigail’s ability to tell long stories plucked from her imagination. There had been an evening during the war when bombs were being dropped on Bristol and Mary had stayed on the floor of Abigail’s room, Abi’s mum in the bedroom next door. They’d eaten pork casserole for dinner and lit candles behind the black-out curtains and told ghost stories, blocking out the distant thuds and shakes. Abigail had always loved being dramatic and she’d recounted a particularly nasty story about a headless woman who haunted a hotel corridor, her mum on the sofa rolling her eyes at Mary at the more absurd moments. Mary had held a cushion to her chest and listened to every word, her flesh breaking into goosebumps as Abigail made the most of it, arching an eyebrow as she described the ghostly figure, the bloodcurdling reaction of the guests.

She wished Abigail were there now in the empty flat to tell stories or talk to her more about their future travels. They were going to head to Hollywood, drive up the coastal roads, see the desert. She wondered whether, somewhere, Abigail’s mum was still smiling at them in that quiet way. The days were getting longer and the moon was bright, turning the room a silvery blue. For a second Mary imagined Abigail looking out on the same moon, imagined the beams shimmering on the surface of the sea beneath her window.