Imagine, standing among the hot, damp bodies in the hall, making her laugh. Light trapped in the sweat on her forehead, her waist hot beneath my hand. I have to be there. Of course, I will be there.
‘We might get a nice fella for you.’
She teases, and I know she’s only trying to have a laugh, but it feels like a slap in the face. I laugh along like it’s all fine, but I’m mortified.
‘Ah, come on, Anna, you must be ready for a bit of romance now. You’re always saying that you’re sick of spending all your time up in the cottage.’
She’s right, I am always saying that. But I don’t remember telling her that I want a man. I shrug.
‘I’ve no luck with lads.’
‘I used to think the same thing, until I met Bill. I never burned like that over a man before.’
She speaks so softly that I could be mishearing, but so confidently that she is unmistakable. I’ve never heard a woman use language like that before. To admit so openly to burning; to express her most private, stirring feelings to me. Why would she bring me in this close and then try to offload me onto some man?
‘I wish I could admit to all the ways I’ve burned.’
I tell her, and I see her pausing at this. It comes naturally, I can catch her off guard.
‘Are you nervous of men, Anna?’
She asks me, and I feel ten years younger than I really am. I shake my head. It isn’t that I’m nervous of men, not at all. I’m just glad to let them move through the world entirely separate from me. Any man could take a notion to knock me to the ground, to draw blood from me or make a mother of me. Why would I invite one of them around me?
‘I was never so nervous of a man as I was of Bill, you know, when we first met. I was afraid of what he might do to me. What he might not do.’
How eloquent. Not like a giddy schoolgirl but like a mature, assured woman, unafraid of her own desire. I have always been building towards a woman like Betty.
‘Leave it with me, Anna. I won’t match you up with any old dope.’
She makes her way to Peggy and bends down to speak to her. She starts to tell her that she once wanted to be a detective.
‘I often think of it. That I’d like to work with the guards, solving things like.’
She says it with such confidence. I don’t think she’d make much of a detective, when she seems to think I want a boyfriend and not all of her attention.
‘And you’re going to be a vet, Peggy, isn’t that right?’
I see the flash of every syllable that leaves her mouth and floats into the air.
‘That’s right.’
I never knew that Peggy wanted to be a vet. I didn’t realise that Peggy had ambitions.
The afternoon rolls around us. What a sight she is as I leave her. Rain begins to fall into the lake, but she doesn’t hurry away. Instead, she goes back down to Peggy’s level and hugs her. And then, getting wetter, she turns to me, laughs at herself, and hugs me, too. The damp of her hat on my cheek. Let the dye run off and colour me blue, please.
The world slows to half its speed, and I hold on to her for my life.
My god, what it is to have her right here, in my arms. Holding on and keeping her dry.
When she turns to go, the rain gets heavier. As though the whole sky has turned to liquid. She is wet, then she is the water. She is glittering blue, and then there is nothing left to see. Only Betty, blue and soaked in the sky. Turning and leaving. Gone.
I wonder if she thinks of me when we are apart. I wonder if she knows she is so deep in my thoughts that she could taste them.
It isn’t often I find somebody who likes me this much, who lets me like them this much. Each friend that I’ve lost was a stepping stone to her. You will remember all the trouble I had keeping friends.
Catherine Jennings. A tall, quiet girl, who I became so close to that I began to voice her thoughts for her. I thought I’d never get over it the day that she left with her family for England. It could have happened yesterday, that’s how well I remember it. I was lost without her.
But then, there was Milly Hayes, indulging my daydreams about going to America. I felt like I was one of her senses, that’s how well she knew me. It was like she was explaining me to myself. There were countless reasons we didn’t remain friends, all of which could be boiled down to the milkman’s mere existence. These days, I can’t recall it as much more than a story told to me by somebody else.
