‘Did you keep in touch with her?’ Natalie asked.
‘Who, Julie?’ Cate smoothed her hair over one shoulder. ‘Not once I’d left school. I lost touch with everyone when I went to Durham Uni. But I did see Julie again once, though not to speak to. It was last Christmas. The big car park at Fernbank Shopping Centre was full so I parked up at Tesco. Julie was there, just outside the double doors, washing down the trollies. It gave me such a shock to see her there. Not that there’s anything wrong with working at Tesco but I expected her to end up doing something exciting: running a scuba-diving school in the Maldives, selling carpets in a souk in Marrakech. She seemed so daring…’
Natalie took a large gulp from her thankfully acquired glass of white wine. ‘We were in awe of her. When she got those tickets to see the Spice Girls, we were so envious. She got her hair dyed like Ginger Spice, do you remember?’
‘It didn’t suit her at all.’ Cate laughed.
‘You’re right, but that didn’t seem to matter back then.’
‘Julie seemed so important, the queen bee of the school. But she was just a stupid little girl, we were all silly… immature, I guess.’
Natalie drank her wine, not sure of how best to respond. Were Cate’s words a half-baked apology for how she’d behaved back then?
The arrival of the waiter bearing two steaming bowls saved her from the need to reply. She dug into her black spaghetti, trying to focus mindfully on each bite. They’d both moved on, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t let the past derailLuxe Life Swap’s crucial Venice leg.
‘When did you stop calling yourself Cathy?’ Natalie savoured another mouthful of pasta.
Cate rested her fork on the side of her bowl. ‘As soon as I got to Durham. It was such a change for me, living up north – I’d never been much beyond the M25. A different set of people, a new start…’
‘And your husband calls you Cate?’
‘The only person who ever calls me Cathy is my father.’
How formal she sounded.
‘Did your father,’ she deliberately used the word Cate had chosen, ‘ever remarry? I thought he was old back then, everyone’s parents seemed old, but he was really young, wasn’t he?’
‘He was eighteen when I was born; both of my parents were just teenagers. He never remarried and now he never will. He’s in a nursing home: early onset Alzheimer’s. I didn’t even know it was something people could get in their fifties.’ Cate’s voice was as emotionless as if she were reciting the bus timetable but her fingers worried at the button on her silk cuff.
‘I’m sorry,’ Natalie replied automatically.
‘Just one of those things. The Evergreens is very good. I see him twice a week, not that he always knows who I am. But we were never close. Not after that trip to Venice.’ Cate pushed the last grains of rice around her bowl, took a sip of wine. ‘Maybe you did me a favour that day, Natalie, by telling me what my father was really like. Because now I can deal with this. If Dad and I had been close, seeing him like this would rip me apart.’
‘I—’ Natalie began.
‘No! Don’t say anything. I needed to know what Dad had done. I was naïve before then, thinking he loved me and wanted the best for me.’ Cate gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I would have found out the truth eventually; you just helped me to find it out sooner.’
Cate signalled for the waiter, tapping lightly on her empty wine glass. ‘Another one of these, please… Natalie, anything for you?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Natalie lied. She prayed her fish would come soon, then she would be one quick coffee away from leaving the restaurant, getting away from Cate. This trip to Venice was going to be the longest fortnight of her life. Natalie had been wrong to say the things she’d said that night but if Cate hadn’t ganged up with Julie, Natalie would never have slipped away by herself. And everything would have been different.
12
Natalie’s fish appeared, surrounded by herbs on an oval platter. The flesh was cooked to perfection, but it was hard to savour the subtle hints of thyme and rosemary whilst the careless words she’d uttered so many years ago were going round and round in her head.
She speared another piece of fish, biding her time, wondering what she could possibly say to lighten the atmosphere. Suddenly, something caught in her throat: a piece of bone, perhaps. She coughed but nothing happened. She coughed again more violently but still it didn’t dislodge. Her eyes began to water.
Cate looked up from her veal. ‘Are you okay?’
Natalie shook her head, tried to cough into her hand so the whole restaurant wouldn’t hear.
‘You have a fish bone?’
It was an Italian voice, male and strangely familiar. She looked up into the concerned face of the white-haired mask maker.
‘Sì, a bone,’ she spluttered.
‘Allow me.’ The sharp thump of his hand on her back took her by surprise.
