The April evening was like a long-forgotten pleasure, not least because dreariness, cloudy gray skies and rain had been persistent well into the spring, the countryside finally waking up to the delicate pink and white of the apple blossom, the pale cones of lilac and dense yellow broom. Even Nancy, whose torpid spirits had been in hibernation since her mother’s death, felt a small waft of hope as she drove toward the pub on the South Downs to meet Lindy and Alison. The sun was low in the sky now, a deep-gold shaft of light layering the trees and hills with a dusty glory that made her hold her breath.
Lindy had insisted. It was her birthday again and she had badgered Nancy to join them for a drink and supper. Nancy had been on the verge of canceling until the very moment she started the car. Even getting dressed up had been hard, each top she pulled out to go with her black jeans reminding her of some outing she and Jim had taken together—the first coffee, the first drink, the first gig. In the end she had opted for the black T-shirt with the faded butterfly—she felt comfortable in it. Her skin, worn from a cold winter and despair, looked lined and dry when she attempted to apply foundation, her gray hair so long and shapeless that she pulled it back into a loose ponytail, remembering with a painful jolt how much Jim had liked her hair off her face.
Lindy and Alison were already seated at a table near the door of the pub, a bottle of white wine in a cooler in front of them, alongside three glasses. Nancy, despite her earlier reticence, found she was glad to see her friends, grateful to be welcomed and hugged with such enthusiasm. Although she felt delicate, as if she were emerging from a long convalescence, she knew the despair was slowly lifting and tiny pinches of light were filtering into her dull mind.
They spent a while catching up before Lindy turned to her, as they were eating their fishcakes and salad, waving her fork in the air, and saying, “You realize it’s a year to the day since we met Jim.”
When Nancy didn’t reply, her friend shook her head. “Gorgeous guy. Still can’t believe you let him slip away, Nancy. What were you thinking?”
Nancy still said nothing, her last mouthful stuck in her throat. All she could see was Jim’s blue eyes, catching her gaze for the first time in that noisy pub, smiling his amused smile as if he’d known her for a lifetime. Something had stirred inside her that night, something that had changed her forever.
“Don’t tease her, Lindy,” Alison was saying. “He obviously wasn’t right for her. You can’t make yourself love someone.” Her worried brown eyes were frowning reprovingly at Lindy.
“I’m not meaning to tease, Nance, but, God, I’ve been all over town looking for someone as cute and decent as Jim, and all I’ve found is paunchy bores with bad breath and limp willies—excluding the toy-boys, of course, who get equally tiresome after a few good bonks.”
The women laughed.
“A few good bonks wouldn’t go amiss,” Alison said, with unusual brio.
Lindy looked shocked. “Gracious, Ally, I’ve never heard you talk like that before. Are you on the lookout at last?”
Alison shook her head. “No, no . . . God, no . . .” She sighed wistfully. “But sometimes I remember . . . with Nick, you know . . .” Clearly embarrassed, she bent her head to her food.
A short silence was followed by Lindy pointing her fork at Nancy again, mouth full. “You did love him a bit, though, didn’t you, darling? Jim, I mean. Seemed like you were well into him for a while there.” She sighed. “But we all know love isn’t always enough, eh?”
“I did,” Nancy replied, then stopped, unable to offer the cogent explanation for which her friend was waiting.
After a minute, Lindy went on, “I did warn you, though. Should have kept him round the corner, not moved him in. Wouldn’t be over now if you had.”
“Is it really over?” Alison asked.
“God, yes.” Nancy breathed deeply, sat up straighter. The conversation was dragging her back to the dark place she’d inhabited since January. “He lives in France now.” She knew she sounded frighteningly nonchalant.
Lindy harrumphed at her apparent sangfroid. “So I hope your dear family is grateful for your sacrifice.”
“It wasn’t a sacrifice,” Nancy said.
To which her friend just raised a skeptical eyebrow. “How did Louise’s restaurant debacle pan out, by the way?”
“Good. I think it’s been the best thing for them both. Ross’s pride has been hurt, but he’ll get back on his feet—food is his life. Lou is very grateful to her father, which has helped their relationship no end. And Ross and Lou seemed to be slowly sorting their marriage out, now the bloody restaurant isn’t driving them apart. He’s got a job interview tomorrow, in fact—a new place in Rottingdean.” She shrugged. “So things have calmed down at last.”
“Told you,” Lindy said, always liking to be right.
“Told me what?”
“Told you they’d sort it out.”
“I didn’t say they wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not, but you thought you had to give up your own life to help them.”
“No,” Nancy said stiffly. “I just couldn’t seem to cope with things after Mum died, that’s all.” She felt way too delicate to deal with Lindy’s harangue.
The atmosphere suddenly became tense, and none of the women risked a glance at the others.
“Hey, girls, it’s my birthday, let’s not get maudlin,” Lindy said, raising her glass. “Here’s to love, freedom and a jolly good bonk.” She spoke so loudly that the people at the next table—four white-haired men who looked to be in their eighties—grinned over at them.
“If any of you ladies need help with that . . .” one piped up, in a high, thin voice, reducing the rest to wheezy guffaws.
“How very gallant of you, sir.” Lindy waved her glass airily in their direction. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind.”
*
It was after midnight when Nancy arrived home. She’d enjoyed the evening—talk of Jim notwithstanding. She’d laughed properly for the first time in a long while, not least at Lindy’s description of some gruesome “eight-point” face-lift she was seriously considering. She was pleased she’d made the effort.
But she felt restless. The past, brought back by Lindy’s persistent digging, had unsettled her. She went through to the piano room and played softly for a while, but her hands unconsciously found the notes to the songs Jim used to sing and she couldn’t risk that, not tonight.
Going through to the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water, then checked her phone one last time before bed. The little red circle hovered above the mail icon. One email. She clicked, and her heart almost stopped. Jim. There was no subject line and her gut clenched with trepidation as to what he might be about to tell her.
But in the body of the email there was no text at all, just an underlined link in blue. Mouth dry, hands shaking, she tapped it, watching the download spin gradually round to completion. She sat down as she waited, staring at the small screen. Then he was there, Jim, just the same as if she’d seen him yesterday, sitting with his guitar, gray hair back in the usual ponytail, wearing the white shirt with the black piping, gazing at the camera, his eyes just as blue as she was remembering earlier. Nancy clicked the arrow to begin and watched as he smiled nervously.
“This is for you, Nancy, on the anniversary of the day we met,” he said, and began to sing, in his deep, gravelly voice.
“Old and alone with the memory of love,
My whiskey and songs kept me warm,
But you showed me your soul when your gray eyes met mine
In that instant I knew I was lost.
Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance,
I’ll love you till the day I die.
Not free then to love, I lied in my fear,
Because losing you would lose me my mind,
But you let me come back, despite what they said,
And found me a place in your heart.
Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance,
I’ll love you till the day I die.
That first time we kissed is burned on my heart,
It felt like the still point of time.
But I lost you to others, more worthy than me,
And without you I did lose my mind.
Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance,
I’ll love you till the day I die.
Don’t think of the future, don’t make a plan,
Life’s random, we can’t know our fate,
But each precious moment I live in your love
Makes me braver to be who I am.
Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance,
I’ll love you till the day I die.
Time has gone by but with each day that dawns
I live the enchantment we shared.
It was more than just lust, much more than a fling,
For me you’re the link to my soul.
Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance,
I’ll love you . . . I’ll love you till the day that I die.”
At the end of the song he bowed his head slightly, his expression uncertain, then the image froze. Nancy closed down her phone and hurried to the laptop sitting at the other end of the table. In her eagerness to hear the song again, she fluffed her password twice and had to take a breath, get a grip of herself. But there he was again, the image bigger now, the sound clearer.
She watched, entranced, feeling that she could almost reach out and touch him as he played. Her heart was racing, her eyes misted with tears. Take one more chance, she sang softly. For God’s sake, Nancy, she told herself, do it, take the chance before it’s too late.
*
Nancy didn’t have to think: it was almost as if the decision were already made, just sitting in the ether waiting for her to access it, Jim’s song the trigger. She immediately booked a flight online to Marseille for the next day, arranged a taxi to pick her up at eight, packed a few things in a carry-on, crammed makeup and liquids into a clear plastic bag, had a shower. It was nearly two in the morning by the time she had finished, and she knew she should try to sleep. But her body was buzzing with anticipation, her mind running round in frenzied circles thinking about Jim. In the end she sat on the sofa and read, dozing for a while before the morning light woke her.
At a quarter to eight she put her case by the door and hurried across the gravel. The lights were on in the kitchen—the family was up, even though it was Saturday. She felt light-headed, her eyes scratchy from the hours of reading and lack of sleep as she let herself into Louise’s house.
“Mum!” Louise looked up. Wrapped in her tartan dressing gown, hair flopping around her face, she was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands round a mug of tea, a magazine open in front of her. The sound of the television filtered through from the sitting room, where Nancy knew her granddaughters would be ensconced under the purple fur throw, still half asleep.
Nancy pulled out a chair and sat down. “Lou, I know this is a bit sudden, but I’m going to France to see Jim.”
“Jim? Really?” Louise was eyeing her up and down, taking in her jacket, her boots. Her expression was puzzled.
“Yes. I’m on the one o’clock to Marseille. I—He emailed me last night . . .”
Louise shook her head. “Whoa. Out of the blue? I thought he was long gone.”
Nancy couldn’t help smiling as she said, “He sent me a song and I . . . It was a shock but, well, I want to see him again, Lou. I really want to see him. I’ve missed him so much . . .” She heard the broken, mumbled words and she thought she sounded a bit mad as she waited for her daughter’s response, dreading the usual diatribe that accompanied any reference to Jim Bowdry.
But Louise was smiling, her eyebrows lifted in amusement. “That’s great, Mum.”
“Really?”
“Yup. I’m glad he’s been in touch.”
“You are?”
Louise nodded. “You think I haven’t seen you pining?”
Nancy heard the beep of her phone. “That’ll be the taxi.” She got up and so did Louise.
“Have fun,” Louise said, giving her a loving hug that told Nancy more than any words could.
“Wish Ross good luck for the interview,” Nancy said, hovering, suddenly unable to leave. “Say goodbye to the girls for me.”
“I will. Go, Mum.”
*
The doors from Customs to the arrivals hall opened and Nancy, dragging her wheelie, dazed from a deadening sleep on the plane and a consequent stiff neck, felt suddenly exposed, intensely self-conscious as the sea of curious faces stared at her, checking to make sure she wasn’t the one for whom they were waiting. And as she stared back, glancing quickly from face to face, they all seemed to distort into a single, amorphous mass. She couldn’t see Jim.
Then he was there, standing a little apart from the rest. Tall, handsome, tanned by the spring sun and, oh, so delightfully familiar. Her heart clenched as they moved toward each other. She was no longer aware of the hum of airport announcements, the shiny buff floor, the smell of coffee, the Mediterranean faces as she dropped the handle of her case and felt Jim’s arms around her, inhaling deeply as she pressed her cheek to his, wanting to breathe him into the very center of herself—the scent of his skin, of his leather jacket, the faint traces of his woody shaving cream intoxicating her.
She glanced up to catch a look of pure relief in his eyes and wondered if it were mirrored in her own.
“Hi,” he said, smiling down at her, still holding her close.
“Hello,” she replied, feeling a surge of happiness that threatened to overwhelm her.
*
As they drove toward Maison Lavande in Stevie’s Citroën, they spoke little beyond the usual banalities: How was the flight? So glad to be here. It’s raining at home. Did you eat on the plane? As if they were acquaintances meeting for a jaunt. There was no tension between them, though. Nancy found herself sitting very still in the front seat, hands in her lap, just luxuriating in being there beside him. When they stopped at lights in Cavaillon, he turned to her, raised his eyebrows in a tender smile.
“I loved your song,” she said.
Jim reached for his phone and scrolled down until he found what he was looking for. Suddenly his deep baritone filled the car as they drove through the town and out into the French countryside, the sunshine startling on the white cherry blossoms. Jim began singing with the track. Nancy joined in. And at the top of their voices they sang the chorus: “Be with me, Nancy, take one more chance, I’ll love you till the day that I die . . .” pulling the last word out to its fullest extent.
As the music ended, breathless, they began to laugh, a joyous, uncontrollable burst of sheer delight that spilled around the interior of the Citroën, making Jim pull over, unable to drive, wiping the tears from his face as she did from hers. Then as silence fell, he leaned across and kissed her. It was a kiss like the first one, the still point in time, gentle, yet absolutely certain, burned forever on both their hearts.
*
That night they did not make love. They ate an early supper—omelet and salad, goat’s cheese, pears—drank a bottle of Bordeaux and went to bed. Naked together in the darkness, they held each other tenderly, as if they might break, like fragile glass, the painful months of separation still vivid between them. Sex seemed too raw, too soon, too exposing for them both, so they lay entwined, warm skin against warm skin, and slept.
Now, Nancy was propped on her side, facing Jim. It was early morning, the shutters pushed back, the glorious spring sun, already warm, pouring across the bed in dusty shafts. She placed her hand against his cheek. He held it there. They did not say a word as they began slowly to make love.