“Isn’t that just absolving yourself of responsibility?”
“Or,” I begin, dramatically raising my hands to the heavens, “it’s leaving yourself open to all the universe can bring.”
“Okay, loopy,” she says, laughing at me.
“Do you ever worry that you’ll never be happy?” I ask, looking at the broom in the corner of the kitchen.
“Iamhappy,” she says, her eyes following mine to the broom, before she sighs and turns back to me. “Just, you know, trust yourself a bit, Mara.Youractual instincts.Yourintuition.”
“Never trust an Aquarius rising,” I say, and we both laugh.
I am not going to give up on Joe. She’s wrong. The clairvoyant confirmed it.Fix lots of things and he will reveal himself.I close my eyes and the picture of him coming into the pub is clearer than ever, his features so real I can almost touch them. I smile to myself.
“Where did you go?” Charlie says, a question she has asked me so many times over the last decade. A question I almost always answered.I’m imagining that man from Whole Foods is chasing me down Carnaby Street to return the notebook I dropped. I’m trying to visualize the Underground guy as a protective Virgo, instead of a Pisces. I’m imagining what it would be like to receive flowers from someone who loves me. Just once.
“Nowhere. Nothing. Anyway, tell me about you,” I say. “Are you ever going to come and see me in Broadgate?”
7
The sun isout over Broadgate today, and I decide to walk to work. I pull on my backpack, check for Ash as I emerge from my room—the coast is clear—and head out onto the street, my headphones playing Beethoven’s Fifth. Christ, it’s a fancy racket, all the aggressive strings jaunting away like a perpetual anxiety attack in D minor. I’ll do ten minutes, and then I can sink into my guilty pleasure—the soundtrack toGuardians of the Galaxy.
Our little street, Sandhill Way, leads down toward the main street on the beachfront and is paved with cobblestones. It’s a walking street, my street, once the small, bustling high street of medieval coastal Kent. Now some of the little stores are flats, but many shops still remain. A shoe-repair store, a fabric shop, an electrical goods store, a chemist, each of their storefronts painted a different pastel color. Someone has hung colorful bunting from one side to the other, and with the sun now firmly out, and us two weeks into June, I can finally start to see Broadgate in all its glory.
My day with Charlie has been on my mind. I have been brooding on it, like a lost lover, going through old photos and rewatchingMamma Mia!and crying to Meryl Streep singing “Slipping Through My Fingers” as she paints her daughter’s toenails. Charlie used to paint my toenails. Now she doesn’t have time to go to a nail bar. I really need to learn how to paint my own toenails.
If Charlie and I have been drifting this last year or so, it feels as though I can now barely see her on the horizon. In my less generous moments, I feel angry at her that I’m never invited around anymore, or that when I am, I feel like an interruption to her life, rather than a part of it.
“You must make new friends, Mara,” I say to myself out loud, startling the lady who is walking just in front of me.
“Sorry,” I say, blushing as she shakes her head and crosses the road.
At the end of my sweet, cobbled lane, I come out onto the wide, main street, a long promenade that winds around the bay in a half-moon. The promenade is dotted with small hotels, little seafood restaurants that bring oysters from Whitstable straight to the table, plus a few touristy shops and the local chipper. The stores selling beach paraphernalia have pushed their stands out on the sidewalk, so a bright plastic gauntlet of inflatables, Isle of Thanet and Broadgate fridge magnets, sunscreen, sandpit buckets and spades, and rolled-up beach towels greets me as I head to the zebra crossing and cross to the beach side.
The beachfront pedestrian promenade is broad, with traditional Victorian covered seating areas, grassy lawns for picnics, and several wide staircases that lead you down the ten steps or so onto the sand. To my left, the road meets a small fishing port with a longpier, where there are some huts selling whelks and cockles, and the Star and Anchor pub, with its dark Tudor beams and white cladding.
To the right, I see it: the Broadgate Lido, sitting on the headland, looking back at the town. Now the days are longer, I no longer get to see its white facade turn pinky-peach as the morning sun rises, but rather it flashes almost brilliant white in the bleaching summer sun.
Fired Up is a little café before the lido. Once the local fire station, it’s a tiny redbrick building, not really much larger than a garage, with a sloped roof, a large red door, and a horse trough out the front. You could picture a wagon parked in there a hundred years ago, with the horses waiting lazily for the fire bell to ring. Above the door a plaque readsBROWN & SONS FIRE HOUSE 1831. I pop in to bag a Halloumi breakfast burger and a cup of sweet tea.
“You’re Mara, right? You work at the lido?” says the woman behind the counter as she hands me my change.
“Yes,” I reply, and pocket my change and head toward the door. But before I do, I stop myself and turn around, Charlie’s advice to get out more ringing in my head. “Sorry. Um. And what’s your name?”
“I’m Chrissie, love,” she says, smiling a huge row of teeth in an enormous, generous mouth.
“Well, nice to meet you, Chrissie,” I say, smiling back.
I walk out the door feeling proud of myself.See, Mara, that wasn’t so hard.
I take a moment to gaze back down the bay, the Star and Anchor now far in the distance. From this vantage point, you can seeall the cheerful little beach huts, which run along a wooden walkway on the sand. I marvel at the lido’s position and potential, looking back down on this quintessential British seaside town, fretting for the hundredth time that it’s been left to erode slowly away. I feel a gust of warm wind against my back, and I turn to see huge dark clouds on the horizon. Rain, damn it. And I didn’t bring an umbrella.
By the time I arrive at work, the sun has completely disappeared, and the temperature has suddenly dropped. I push at the glass doors, but they don’t budge, so I fish for my keys and let myself in, wondering if I’m weirdly early or I’ve forgotten about a bank holiday again. But that can’t be it; it’s Tuesday, and it was business as usual yesterday.
I get to my desk and am about to read my daily horoscope when Ryan appears like a tornado of energy, dragging one of the huge corduroy armchairs from Gerry’s office up next to my desk, almost toppling a plant pot in the process.
“Easy, tiger,” he says to the rubber plant, pushing it gently aside.
“Where is everyone? And what on earth are you doing?” I ask.
