‘Nice one, Noah lad!’ said Jim Whitlaw approvingly. ‘Remember, chaps and chappesses, when you’re upset avoid getting behind the wheel if at all possible. There’s being over the limit alcohol wise, and there’s being over the limit emotionally.’
In an instant Thelma’s mind once again slid away from speed awareness, this time to a newspaper picture of a wrecked car on a snowy moorland road. Davey Fletcher, very definitely driving unsafely, very definitely over the emotional limit, thanks to Neville Hilton’s damning Ofsted Report.
She forced her mind back to the screen. She was finding Teddy’s John Lennon glasses a shade too weak and consequently was having to squint rather ferociously at the other ten faces of the course attendees. She peered at the clock in the bottom corner of the screen and with a slight jolt of surprise realised they were not too far from the end of the two-and-a-half-hour session. The realisation fuelled the sense of relief that had been growing inside her since the start of the session, which had been nowhere near as bad as she feared.
For a start, Jim Whitlaw had been at great pains to emphasise how the coursewasn’tabout judgement. The glossy website of the course providers gave much the same message.You are not being judged!it said, more than once. This in itself hadn’t quietenedThelma’s fears because of course she had been judged. She knew it in a very private and primal part of her soul – just as, she guessed, all the other attendees did – and just as the staff of Pity Me school must have known it, following Neville’s report. But five minutes of listening to Jim Whitlaw’s cheery common sense had quietened her upset and when he’d said it was all about moving forward safely, and maybe learning a thing or two on the way, she’d believed him.
And there’d been a number of things she’d learned – how lamp posts in a street automatically meant a thirty or even twenty-mile-an-hour zone. And how adding even an extra mile an hour to your speed had a massive impact on your ability to brake. Jim was, Thelma recognised, a good teacher. He had a lively way of speaking and she felt sure some of the more complex aspects of the course would have been decidedly dry without his cries of ‘nay, chaps’ and his habit of marking any significant point regarding motoring by hitting a fist in his palm with a solemn bark of ‘doof’.
Then there were the people on the course, with their fascinating square glimpses of their various lives – the bookshelf, the wallpaper, the curtains. ‘No virtual backdrops allowed,’ Jim had said cheerfully when they logged on. ‘We need to know you’re at home and not in a TV studio! So, hide them drying pants, chaps and chapesses!’
And then there was Noah. The first sight of him had been a mounded duvet, a bleary face and a glimpse of aJurassic ParkT-shirt.
‘Hey up there, Noah,’ Jim had said. ‘Good of thee to join us!’
The screen had briefly tipped crazily before the image resolved on Noah, obviously sitting cross-legged on his bed, duvet wrapped round him.
His background – the background to his be-duvet-ed form – was by far the most interesting aspect of the course. The space behind him looked to be some sort of attic, sloping ceiling painted a vibrant shade of blue, on the walls and ceiling were modern artposters – Tracey Emin, Davey Hockney, on the table beside him were a stack of what looked to be books on art and philosophy; his handwriting when the course held up their answer pads was clear and well formed. A young person’s room.
Golden lads and lasses …Why did that sonnet from Davey’s memorial service suddenly pop into her mind? She thought again about the extensive text Pat had sent just before the course began, about the conversation with Son Masters … How Bun had resembled an angel with the light around her …
She looked at the figure swathed in a duvet. Noah could hardly be described as an angel, and certainly no sort of golden lad – he looked way too bleary that … Who was he? An artist perhaps? A student? And why, given the culture of his surroundings, was he sportingJurassic Parkpyjamas? So much, Thelma thought, could be gleaned from the background of someone’s Zoom. She found herself thinking about Bun Widdup – those African drapes, gloriously red and orange against the visible sliver of buttermilk wall. Kenya, wasn’t that where she’d said she’d worked? And then that image of the staffroom at Pity Me, that time-stamped image freezing those people into that precise moment. Caro, Annie, Chloe – sporting those yellow flowers. And Son …Son was wrong …
WhathadAnnie meant when she said those words? Wrong about what?
‘Okay, chaps and chappesses, that’s about a wrap!’ Jim’s cheerful tones broke into her different trains of thought. ‘I hope tha’s learned a thing or two. And I have to say, because the company tell me to, but I do happen to think it’s a fact worth sharing, that some eighty per cent of people who take this course do not go on and reoffend. So, let’s hope tha’s not one of the twenty per cent that presumably do!’
It was with a huge feeling of lightening relief that Thelma shut down the laptop and replaced Teddy’s glasses with her own. She unwound the green and purple scarf from round her headand changed the garish lemon-yellow blouse for her own white one. Both scarf and blouse were ones she had ‘borrowed’ from the charity shop where she worked. Both were going straight back there at the first opportunity. With any luck even if she came face to face with Noah, Jim or any of the course members they would not equate her with the gaudily dressed woman she’d been five minutes before.
She picked up the hairbrush to restore some order to her greying bob, and frowned, brush poised in her hand. Quite unconsciously something had flitted across her mind, something she knew to be of importance. What? Brushing her hair she reviewed her recent thoughts: judgement, Davey’s crash, golden lads and lasses, Noah’s room …What was it?
With a sigh she opened the door and Snaffles shot in and took a bold leap onto the dressing table, sniffing the laptop before walking firmly and territorially across the keyboard, realising it had been turned off and turning away in disgust. Thelma turned her phone on; whatever the thought had been it had gone, for now.
Her phone buzzed. Three missed calls from Caro Miranda.
With a dropping feeling of sad anticipation, she dialled.
‘Hello?Thelma?’ Caro’s voice sounded different … broken.
‘Caro, you called me?’
‘Yes …’ It sounded as if Caro was having trouble putting her words together. ‘Yes, thank you for calling me back. I thought you’d want to know, Annie Golightly died early this morning.’
‘I see.’ Although the news wasn’t totally surprising Thelma found herself sinking down on the bed, hands trembling. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said. There was a pause. ‘Hello?’
‘Yes, I’m still here.’ Caro’s voice was cracked and congested. ‘You must forgive me.’
‘Not at all,’ said Thelma. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to apologise for.’
‘Of everyone I’ve ever known, Annie had so much life—’
‘I only knew her at the end,’ she said. ‘But I know exactly what you mean.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Caro, ‘as a person of God, I find there’s what I know in my heart and what I know in my head. And sometimes the two don’t connect.’
‘I completely understand,’ said Thelma.
‘I believe you do.’ There was a pause, a muffled sob. ‘It’s just … I’ve known so many people, so many people who have died in all sorts of ways – but with Annie, she had so much life … there’s a real sense of loss…of a light gone out before its time.’
