He wandered through the doorway and she stared at him as if re-introduced to her own heart. She thought of the times she had watched him from the bedroom window as he left the house. Observed but unaware, vulnerable in his innocence. Luke in his body, ambling down the street–the shape of love.
‘You,’ she whispered.
He was making his way through the room with no more than his usual saunter, but to Kate it was shockingly fast. In dreams, dead people move slowly, if at all. They wade through sepia. They shimmer like a hologram and say wise things at half-speed.
He moved round the pool table and she half wanted to scream, half wanted to vanish into thin air. She’d never known him to miss a date and here he was, right on time. Dressed as before: black jeans, black boots, black imitation leather jacket from the secondhand shop in Salisbury. A cheap steel earring in each lobe. All in black except under the jacket–his shirt. The blue and grey grandad shirt that she’d found in the back of the wardrobe along with other student treasures that Luke couldn’t let go. It was the shirt that she found clutched in her fists every morning. The one that suddenly belonged to him again. What she had understood in her head now finally began to wrap itself tightly around her guts: he didn’t know she slept with that shirt because he didn’t know he was dead; he wasn’t on time for a date because there was no date; he wasn’t looking for her because he didn’t know who she was. And yet…
Alive! Luke’s alive! She gripped the table with one hand and wiped her tears away with another. She risked a glance up–he approached the end of the bar, the other end from Toby and Kes. On his way he passed a couple of women, one of whom just openly gasped at him and nudged her friend as he walked by. Ah, yes, Kate recalled, trying to steady herself, that’s the other thing. That’s going to be a problem. She remembered a brief period when Luke was in his mid-thirties and he would angle himself topless in their bedroom mirror, dismayed by the beginnings of a beer gut. Instead of telling him to stop whining and go to the gym, she’d claimed to prefer him with a bit more beef. If she was really going to quibble, this Luke was too thin. But no one here was quibbling. Kate remembered what a pain in the arse this used to be–he was obviously fucking gorgeous. There were straight men in this room who were looking at Luke like they didn’t know whether to hit him or buy him a bunch of flowers.
Kate dithered. Why the hell was she just sitting here?
Don’t freak him out. Maybe just go over and buy him a drink. Too much? Yes, clearly way too much. Just stay here. He gets his lager, turns around and sees an empty table with a girl reading Orlando.
Fuck! Where’s Orlando? Left it in the fucking room!
He won’t see a girl reading a book. He’s about to turn around and see a girl staring at him like she’s seen a ghost. Or the man in her dreams. And both.
Okay, screw the table. The table will keep. Kate summoned all the courage she had ever needed, slowly rose and walked unsteadily towards her young dead husband. He had popped an elbow on the bar and was apparently whistling to himself. A near-silent rendition of ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’, unless Kate missed her guess. That was his ‘keep cheerful when the lights go out’ tune of choice, inherited from his mother. He was in profile as she approached, fiddling with his right earring–another nervous tell. She thought of the first time around–no wonder he’d headed straight for the girl reading the familiar book. Orlando was his only friend in the room.
Kate sensed him glancing at her as she reached the bar but she kept her eyes firmly on Malcolm. She fished in her back pocket for the tenner, trying to ignore Luke’s absurd glamour. She wondered at it. This is why it’s weird when you meet someone famous, because as far as you’re concerned you’ve already met them. They haven’t met you but they’re imagining how you feel–because every famous person started out as a fan. So there’s a strange intimacy that leaves both parties feeling tongue-tied and mutually protective. It’s almost like love.
She was standing right next to him now and dared to take a slow, deep inhalation. He never wore after shave but there was a trace of Lynx Oriental. She felt like saving him a couple of unnecessary years of underarm eczema and telling him he needed to switch to an alcohol-free substitute right now. Also, that he had a brain tumour. But again, that just might be a tad forward.
Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.
Kate glanced round at the corner table and saw that a bunch of third-year medics had already settled themselves and were opening bags of crisps on the table to share. Christ, it was all going wrong.
She caught Malcolm’s eye as he shuffled over and jerked his chin to her imperceptibly. At least she could get the same drink as last time.
‘Pint of Scrumpy Jack, please.’
‘Scrumpy’s off.’
Kate blinked at him as if he’d just told her the Earth was made of Lego. ‘No. That’s not right,’ she announced.
Malcolm looked slightly hurt. ‘Well… it is what it is.’
‘The Scrumpy can’t be off. Not tonight.’
Malcolm shrugged and looked along the bar. ‘We’ve got Strongbow.’
Kate panicked as yet another slice of the Luke and Kate Creation Cake appeared to eat itself before her very eyes. ‘Strongbow!? How can I possibly drink Strongbow?’ Ooh. That didn’t sound good. She realised she sounded like a middle-aged, middle-class woman making an entitled dick of herself. Malcolm reached behind for his lit cigarette and regrouped. He had clearly seen this kind of thing before with cider drinkers.
‘I know what you mean. Strongbow really is piss.’ He took a drag and exhaled thoughtfully. ‘We’ve got some bottled stuff in the chillers.’
Kate sensed Luke sipping his beer and listening to every word. She said, ‘Sorry, yes. Fine, no, I’m being a total bellend. Strongbow’s fine.’ Malcolm replaced his fag complacently and reached for a glass.
Kate stole a glance at Luke, who was looking right at her with a half-smile. He averted his eyes and watched Malcolm pour the pint. Kate did the same, biting her lower lip so hard she nearly drew blood. She turned back to Luke.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘You must think I’m crazy.’
‘No, no. You’ve just got some very strong views about Scrumpy Jack.’
This was hardly the impression Kate had been hoping to make but at least it was an impression. She went with it. She went with it a lot.
‘Ha ha! Yes, I take cider incredibly seriously. The thing you have to understand about the way they make Scrumpy Jack is…’ Kate realised that in the great cathedral of her memory there was absolutely nothing to be found under the subject heading, ‘the way they make Scrumpy Jack is’. She just liked drinking the stuff because it helped her forget that she could remember basically everything else. Fortunately Malcolm arrived with her pint so she styled-out the pause by handing over her warm ten-pound note. Malcolm received it with a frown. She looked back at Luke, hoping he’d forgotten what she was talking about.
‘You were saying…’ he prompted, annoyingly.
‘Yes,’ Kate said. She took a drink and watched Malcolm open the till and sigh at the meagre state of the float, before mournfully closing the till, taking a massive Bell’s whisky bottle full of change and starting to slowly and rhythmically shake silver and coppers onto a bar towel. ‘Yes,’ Kate continued, ‘it’s made from very special apples.’
‘Special apples. Right.’ Luke wasn’t even bothering to keep the satire out of his voice and had arranged his face into the kind of nodding sincerity he would use a few years later for charity workers on the doorstep.
Kate suddenly felt like slapping the little shit. Standing there, smugly innocent of the nine months of torment he’d put her through. She hadn’t been dragged back to the 1990s to be mocked by this child. And not even the fun bit of the 1990s but the shit bit where white boys thought nothing of spraying their armpits with deodorant calling itself ‘Oriental’ and the word ‘chairperson’ was a joke and ‘recycled loo roll’ was a joke and Malcolm was sparking up another Lambert in a public place and ‘global warming’ was something that may or may not happen in the ‘future’ where we would all be living on Mars anyway and…
But it was now a matter of pride that she persevere. She looked at him squarely. ‘Special apples. Yes, that’s what I said. They grow them in a climate controlled dome just outside Salisbury. I don’t know if you know the area? I’m a big fan of Wiltshire generally but Salisbury itself can be full of facetious twats. So they get the special apples and instead of just pressing them in a machine like an idiot would–like an idiot doing an English degree but hasn’t even read Middlemarch would–they separate them into special groups of special apples–thank you, Malcolm.’
‘Sorry about the change.’
‘That’s no problem whatsoever.’ Kate began stuffing the half-ton of massive coins into her pockets. ‘They get groups of apples, separated both by size and genetic compatibility according to European Union–by which obviously I mean European Community–regulations, and then basically fry them.’
She took a swift drink of cider and looked up at Luke, daring him to challenge her. Luke’s sarcasm had been quickly replaced by a rising anxiety. He took a drink and said, ‘I see.’
‘Do you, though?’
‘I think so.’
‘You heard me say that they fry the apples.’
‘I did, yeah.’
‘And you’ve nothing to say about that.’
‘Actually, I do have one thing to say.’ Luke looked around the room as if he didn’t want to be overheard.
‘And what’s that?’ Kate asked.
‘I’ve missed you.’