I waited. I waited until coats had been hung up and kettles had been switched on, and tins of fruit had been emptied into bowls and drowned in Ideal Milk. I even waited whilst Elsie ate spoonfuls of oranges with a look of deep concentration. I waited until all of this was done with before I spoke.
‘I need to discuss someone with you,’ I said. ‘Someone from the past.’
Her chewing slowed a little.
There are times when sharing a problem only seems to make it grow. Hearing the words out loud gives them a strength they never seem to have inside your own head, and it’s easier sometimes to let them stay there, unnoticed. If you lock something away for long enough, if you can manage to keep it from escaping, eventually it feels as though it never really happened in the first place. But I knew as soon as I told Elsie, as soon as I allowed the problem to leave, I’d lose ownership of my worrying and I’d never be able to silence it again.
‘Someone I’ve seen,’ I said.
‘Who?’ Elsie placed the spoon at the edge of the bowl, and she became very still.
I had to force the words from my mouth. I had to push them away.
‘Ronnie,’ I said, eventually.
I watched her face. There wasn’t a jot of reaction.
‘Ronnie Butler,’ I said.
She looked at me for a moment, and she smiled. ‘You daft bugger. You can’t have. Dead as a doornail, Ronnie. They buried him, don’t you remember?’ She reached for the spoon again, but I held on to her wrist.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s out there right now. I’ve seen him.’
‘How can you possibly have seen someone who’s been dead sixty years? You’re just getting confused.’
‘It’s him.’ I slammed my hand on the table, and Elsie rattled along with the dessert bowl. ‘He’s come back for me.’
When Elsie spoke again, her words were wrapped up in a whisper. ‘He’s dead, Florence. No one has come back for anyone.’
‘Then who have I seen?’
‘It must be someone who looks like him. They say everyone has a double, don’t they? You’ve just made a mistake, that’s all.’
I went over to the window and listened to the leafy quietness of the courtyard. ‘I must be getting confused. It can’t be him, can it? Not after all this time?’
She always undoes the stitches of other people’s worrying and makes them disappear. That’s the second thing you should know about Elsie. She always knows what to say to make me feel better. ‘Of course it can’t, Florence. People just don’t do that, do they? They don’t come back from the dead.’
‘You’re right. Of course they don’t. Let’s forget I ever spoke.’
‘Good. Because if Miss Ambrose hears you talking like that, you’ll be lucky to get a fortnight, let alone a month.’
I reached over for the Radio Times, and that’s when I looked at the mantelpiece. That’s when I noticed.
The elephant.
It was facing the wrong way again.
‘Stop getting yourself in a twist,’ Elsie said. ‘You’ve made another mistake, that’s all.’
It’s Elsie all over. Forever telling me I’m worrying over nothing, forever telling me not to tie myself in a knot. I’ve known her since we were at school. We met on a bus. A bus! I wonder how many people meet on public transport these days. A stab in the dark, but I’d hazard a guess and say not many. People seem to put all their energy into ignoring each other instead.
She didn’t believe me about the elephant any more than she believed me about Ronnie. I could tell.
‘You’re off on one of your tangents again,’ she said. ‘Stop hurrying into the future, hunting down catastrophes.’
I pretended to agree with her, just for the sake of peace. I even stopped looking for Ronnie and moved away from the window, but I couldn’t help glancing over there from time to time. She caught me at it on a few occasions and gave me one of her looks.
‘You were exactly the same at school,’ she said. ‘“Do you think that girl looks unwell? What should we do?” or “I’ve heard Norman’s father beats him. Who do you think we should tell?”’
I didn’t answer. I just shuffled a bit closer to the window, to make a point.
‘You shouldn’t witter on about people so much,’ she said. ‘Norman could look after himself.’
‘But he couldn’t,’ I turned to her. ‘Norman was short and skinny, and he hadn’t got anyone else to stand up for him. He said he was going to run away to London. London would have swallowed him up.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘It feels like yesterday,’ I said. ‘Sometimes, I think there must be a shortcut between the past and the present, but no one bothers to tell you about it until you get old.’
‘You spent so long in and out of other people’s lives back then, you barely had time for your own.’
I carried on looking through the window, but I could hear her fingers, tapping out her thoughts on the tablecloth.
‘Do you remember? It’s how we first met. You were trying to do the right thing.’ She leaned forward and interrupted my viewing.
‘I’ve got too much on my mind to be concerned with that,’ I said.
‘The girl on the school bus with the twisted ankle?’ She leaned a little more. ‘You gave up your seat, didn’t you?’
I noticed her glance at my hands. They were folding backwards and forwards in my lap. Sometimes, I don’t even know I’m doing these things until someone points it out to me. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember any girl with a twisted ankle. You’re getting me mixed up with somebody else.’
‘It was you, Florence. She hobbled on to the school bus and no one stood up. No one except you. That’s how you found yourself sitting next to me a few stops later. That’s how we met.’
‘You’re making it up.’ My lips closed very tightly, and I could feel all the little lines stitch them together.
‘I’m not making it up. It was a long second, don’t you remember?’
I stopped turning my hands. ‘What’s a long second?’ I said.
She explained it to me. Even though she said she’d explained it very many times before. I always seem to forget. It’s when you catch the clock, holding on to a second so it lasts just a fraction longer than it should. When the world gives you just a little bit more time to make the right decision. There are long seconds all over the place. We just don’t always notice them. ‘But you noticed this one, Florence. You made your decision. You gave up your seat. And that’s how we met.’
‘I don’t remember my life without you in it,’ I said.
‘We were just at the age when you start to notice other children. When you pick out who you might be friends with. I chose you long before you chose me.’ She smiled. ‘There was a kindness about you, even then. As if someone took all the kindness other people discard and ignore, and leave lying about, and stuffed it into you for safekeeping.’
I tried to find the memory and pull it back in, but it felt very far away, and the elastic was too loose.
She found my eyes with hers. ‘Try to think. There are things in the past you need to find again, Florence. It’s important.’
‘Is it?’
‘We laughed, because the seat you gave up was the one next to that boy who was in the scouts, and he did nothing but talk the girl’s ear off about first aid. She hung on his every word. I can’t remember her name. Tall. Dark hair. Her parents owned the little shoe shop on the high street.’
I felt the elastic tighten. ‘They emigrated, that family, all of them.’ I let the words go very slowly, just in case they were the wrong ones. ‘To Australia.’
‘Yes, they did.’ Elsie was pleased with me. I can always tell when she’s pleased with me, because she gets a glitter about her eyes. ‘But the girl stayed here. She didn’t go with them.’
‘Men for the land, women for the home. Guaranteed employment. Ten pounds, it cost. Ten pounds for a brand new life.’
I turned back to the window.
‘Ronnie Butler was on that bus,’ I said.