‘Well, well, well,’ said a voice, and I saw Thea, followed closely by Kate, round the bottom of the spiral. ‘Guess who’s in Tower 2B. It looks like we might be having some fun this year, doesn’t it?’
‘SO YOU REALLY don’t drink anymore?’ Kate says to Fatima, as she refills my glass, and then her own. Her face in the lamplight as she looks up at Fatima is quizzical, her eyebrows quirked in something not quite a frown, and faintly interrogative. ‘Like … at all?’
Fatima nods and pushes her plate away.
‘Like, at all. It’s part of the deal, innit?’ She rolls her eyes at her own phrasing.
‘Do you miss it?’ I ask. ‘Drinking, I mean.’
Fatima takes a sip from the lemonade she brought with her from the car, and then shrugs.
‘Honestly? Not really. I mean, yes, I remember how fun it was sometimes, and the taste of a gin and tonic and all that. But it’s not like –’
She stops. I think I know what she was about to say. It wasn’t like alcohol had been an unmixed blessing. Maybe without it, we wouldn’t have made some of the mistakes we had.
‘I’m happy like this,’ she says at last. ‘I’m in a good place. And it makes things easier in some ways. You know … driving … being pregnant. It’s not such a big deal, stopping.’
I take a sip of the red wine, watching the way it glints in the low lights strung from the ceiling, thinking of Freya sleeping just above our heads, and the alcohol filtering through my blood into my milk.
‘I try to keep a lid on it,’ I say. ‘For Freya. I mean, I’ll have a glass or two, but that’s it, while I’m still feeding her. But I’m not going to lie, it was bloody tough not drinking at all for nine months. The only thing that got me through it was thinking of the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé in the fridge for afterwards.’
‘Nine months.’ Kate swirls the wine thoughtfully in her glass. ‘It’s years since I’ve gone even nine days without a drink. But you don’t smoke any more, do you, Isa? That’s quite an achievement.’
I smile.
‘Yeah, I gave up when I met Owen and I’ve been pretty good on that. But that’s it – I can’t cope with cutting out more than one vice at a time. You were lucky you never started,’ I add to Fatima.
She laughs.
‘It’s a good thing really, makes it easier to lecture my patients on the evils of tobacco. Last thing you want is your GP telling you to quit while stinking of fags. Ali still has the odd one though. He thinks I don’t know, but of course I do.’
‘Don’t you want to say something?’ I ask, thinking of Owen. Fatima shrugs.
‘It’s his conscience. I’d go mental if he did it in front of the kids, but aside from that, it’s between him and Allah what he does with his body.’
‘It’s so …’ Kate says, and then she laughs. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be weird about this. I just can’t get over it. You’re the same old Fatima, and yet …’ She waves a hand at the hijab. Fatima has taken it off her head, but it’s lying draped around her shoulders, like a reminder of how things have changed. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great. It’s just going to take me a while to … to match things up. Same with Isa and Freya, I guess.’ She smiles at me, and I see the fine lines at the corner of her mouth. ‘It was so weird when you turned up at the station, with this little person. And seeing you toting her around, wiping her face, changing a nappy like you’ve been doing it all your life … It’s hard to remember you’re a mum when you’re sitting there, in the same chair as always. You look exactly the same, it’s like nothing’s changed and yet …’
And yet everything has changed.
It is gone eleven when Fatima looks at her watch, and pushes her chair back from the table. We have talked and talked, about everything from Fatima’s patients to the village gossip and Owen’s work, but always skirting around the unspoken question – why has Kate summoned us back so urgently?
‘I’m going to have to head up,’ she says. ‘Can I use the bathroom?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Kate says, without looking up. She is rolling a cigarette, her slim brown fingers prodding and shaping the tobacco with practised deftness. She raises it to her lips, licks the paper and then puts the finished roll-up on the table.
‘And am I out the back or …?’
‘Oh, sorry, I should have told you.’ Kate shakes her head, admonishing herself. ‘No, Thea’s got the downstairs bedroom. I’ve put you in my old room. I’m on the top floor now.’
Fatima nods, and heads up to the bathroom, leaving me and Kate alone. I watch as Kate picks up the cigarette and taps one end on the table.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I say, knowing she is holding back on my account, but she shakes her head.
‘No, it’s not fair. I’ll go out on the jetty.’
‘I’ll come,’ I say, and she opens the gappy wooden door that leads out onto the jetty on the river side of the Mill, and we go out together into the warm night air.
It is quite dark, and a beautiful moon is rising above the Reach. Kate walks to the left-hand edge of the jetty, the end that faces upriver, towards Salten village, and for a minute I don’t understand, but then I see why. The other end of the jetty, the unfenced end where we used to sit, our feet dangling in the water at high tide, is completely submerged. Kate sees my gaze, and shrugs resignedly.
‘It’s what happens at high tide now.’ She looks at her watch. ‘That’s as high as it’ll get though – it’ll start to ebb soon.’
‘But – but, Kate, I had no idea. Is this what you meant when you said the place is sinking?’
She nods, lights up with a flare of her Bic lighter, and inhales deeply.
‘But, this is serious. I mean, this is really sinking.’
‘I know,’ Kate says. Her voice is flat as she blows a long plume of smoke into the night. I feel desire twist in my gut. I can almost taste the smoke. ‘But what can you do?’ she asks rhetorically, around the roll-up lodged in the corner of her mouth.
Suddenly I can’t bear it any longer. The waiting.
‘Give me a drag.’
‘What?’ Kate turns to look at me, her face shadowed in the moonlight. ‘Isa, no. Come on, you’ve given up!’
‘You know full well, you’re never an ex-addict, you’re just an addict who hasn’t had a fix in a while,’ I say without thinking, and then with a lurch I realise what I’ve said, and who I’m quoting, and it’s like a knife in my heart. I still think of him, even after all these years, how much worse must it be for Kate?
‘Oh God,’ I say, putting out my hand. ‘I’m sorry, I –’
‘It’s OK,’ she says, though she has stopped smiling, and the lines around her month are suddenly graven deeper than before. She takes another long drag, and then puts the roll-up between my outstretched fingers. ‘I think about him all the time. One more reminder doesn’t hurt me any more or less.’
I hold the roll-up, light as a match, between my fingers, and then with a feeling like slipping into a hot bath, I put the tip between my lips and I draw the smoke deep, deep into my lungs. Oh God, it’s so good …
And then two things happen. Far up the Reach, towards the bridge, twin beams of light swing across the waves. A car is stopping at the end of Kate’s rutted lane.
And from the baby monitor in my pocket there comes a thin, squawking cry that tugs at my heart, and my head goes up, jerked by the invisible line that connects me to Freya.
‘Here.’ Kate holds out her hand and I hastily give the cigarette back. I can’t believe what I just did. A glass of wine is one thing, but am I really going to go and hold my daughter stinking of cigarette smoke? What would Owen say? ‘You go to Freya,’ she says. ‘I’ll see who …’
But as I run inside and up the stairs to the bedroom where I’ve left Freya, I know who. I know exactly who.
It’s Thea, coming, just as she promised. We are all here at last.