The moment they set foot in the Hope and Anchor, Frank knows. He knows he has been here and this time the neural connections don’t flicker and fizz, they stay clear and strong and yes, he was here and there was a singer with blonde hair and a girl on piano and there was . . . his throat fills with the acid of it . . . there was tequila and there was tension and that girl was here, the girl with the brown hair, and now, from nowhere, comes her name. It lands like a rock at his feet. Kirsty. The girl is called Kirsty and he loves her. He really loves her.
Frank manages to maintain consciousness, manages to keep his feet planted on the ground, to retain the contents of his stomach. He makes it to the table reserved in their name in a small room off the main pub lounge. He makes it to a chair and he sits down heavily. He closes his eyes, trying to chase the memory as it darts away into the dark corners of his mind. He keeps up with it for a second or two, long enough to see gentle green eyes, a cagoule, cheap trainers, a goofy smile. His heart aches so much that he has to grab hold of it with both hands and massage it.
Alice hasn’t noticed his change of mood. She’s too busy settling Sadie on a grubby sheepskin rug brought from the cottage, trying to work out what Romaine wants from the menu (‘They don’t have omelettes on a Sunday, fusspot’), trying to get Jasmine to take her earphones out and turn off her phone. By the time he has her attention, the moment has passed and he feels normal again.
‘Beef, pork or chicken?’ says Alice.
He brings his attention quickly back to the menu and turns to Romaine who has chosen to sit next to him, and says, ‘What are you having?’
‘Roast potatoes.’
‘Just roast potatoes?’
‘Yes.’ She’s sulking. Her arms are folded across her chest.
Alice raises her eyebrows at him and sighs. ‘Don’t judge me,’ she says. ‘She claims that meat tastes of blood. Unless it’s got breadcrumbs on it, or comes in a bread roll with cheese, or is minced up and cooked with tomatoes.’
Frank nods and says to Romaine, ‘Well, I was going to have what you’re having but now I’m thinking I might have the chicken.’
Romaine shrugs as though she couldn’t care less and Alice and Frank exchange smiles over the top of her head.
‘Tired,’ Alice mouths.
Frank nods and holds her gaze. ‘I remembered something,’ he says as the conversation between the three children picks up.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes.’ He smiles. ‘I’m fine. It was different this time. It was clear and clean. I saw a singer, standing out there.’ He points towards the main lounge. ‘With a pianist. And I remembered the girl. The one with brown hair. I remembered her properly. And Alice,’ he says, joyfully, ‘I remembered her name!’
Alice raises her brow. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes! Kirsty! She’s called Kirsty.’
Something passes over Alice’s face then, something cloudlike. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘wow! That’s amazing, Frank!’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I think this might be it. I think everything’s going to start coming back now. Just like you said it would.’
‘And who was she?’ she asks pensively. ‘Do you remember who she was?’
‘Not quite,’ he says. ‘But I remembered that I loved her. That I loved her very much. And that . . .’ He clutches at his heart again. The ache has come back at the thought of that sweet-faced girl from his past. ‘And that I miss her. I really miss her.’
Alice stretches her arm across the back of Romaine’s chair and squeezes his shoulder softly. ‘Was she your wife?’ she says, almost in a whisper.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘Funny to think, isn’t it, that you might have a wife?’
He shrugs. It’s not funny, not really. It’s awful. He remembers what Jasmine said last night over dinner, about how he was being cruel not finding out who he was, that there might be people worrying about him. And until now he hasn’t been able to imagine what that might really mean. He’s felt nothing for anyone beyond the people in the room with him. Now, suddenly, he loves someone from before. He loves Kirsty.
He sees Alice force a smile. She rubs his shoulder and then swiftly brings her hand back on to her lap.
The waitress arrives with a notepad and Frank turns to her to give his order, but not before noticing Alice staring blindly into the middle distance, a film of tears across her eyes.
Alice doesn’t seek out Frank’s hand on their way home. The kids would freak out for a start, but beyond that she doesn’t want to. It’s coming, she realises, the end of this thing; it’s sitting on the horizon and she doesn’t like the look of it at all. It looks cruel and mean. It looks like her, sitting alone in her room, cutting up maps to make art for people to give to people they love. It looks like her watching TV on a crumb-strewn sofa, surrounded by stinky dogs and moody teenagers, and then going to bed with a greyhound and waking up the next morning with greasy badger hair and not caring and starting the whole thing all over again. It looks like this beautiful man with his autumn hair and his gentle eyes and his warm breath and his strong hands walking out of her life and leaving her here, in a life she was quite happy with before he turned up on the beach five days ago. It looks like the best thing that could have happened to her at this exact moment in her life being snatched away before she’s even had a chance to enjoy it.
She’s quiet on the walk home. Sadie limps along at her side. Jasmine has plugged herself back into her music and is walking ahead, looking moody and vulnerable: a stance purposely affected, Alice assumes. Kai is holding hands with Romaine and they’re chatting about this and that. Gulls weave and swoop across the horizon where a giant cruise liner twinkles dully, so far removed from the smallness and ancientness of Ridinghouse Bay that it looks like something from another planet.
‘Are you OK, Alice?’ asks Frank, looking down at her with soft, concerned eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Just pensive. You know.’
He nods and looks into the distance; then he turns back and says, ‘She might be dead, you know? The girl. Kirsty. Maybe she was my girlfriend when I was young. I mean, she looks really young. A teenager. It’s unlikely I’d still be with her now, even if we were in love back in 1993. Or whenever it was I was here.’
She genuinely doesn’t know what to say. ‘Kirsty’ could be anyone: his wife, his daughter, his first love, his sister. That’s not the point. The point is that he loves her. Loves her present tense. Which means that she can no longer pretend that Frank exists in a bubble. She can no longer pretend that he is exclusively hers.
He sighs and says, ‘Well, whatever it is, we’ll find out tomorrow and after that I’m not sure you’ll have any desire to know me any more anyway. Whether I’m married or not.’
She stops then, and turns to face Frank. He doesn’t get it, she thinks, he really, really doesn’t get it. ‘I’ll always want to know you, Frank,’ she says. ‘One way or another. It’s whether or not you’ll want to know me, that’s the real question.’