Homecoming

‘Just as well you’re not a teacher,’ said Connie, shocked. ‘Nothing should make you miss your mocks.’

But the flu had other plans for her. On the morning the exams were due to start, Connie couldn’t go in to the school to cheer on her girls as she was stuck in bed feeling violently ill. Her whole head ached, her eyes couldn’t bear any light at all and the very notion of food made her want to retch.

For three days, she had to lie in bed motionless.

‘Apparently, it’s only flu if it’s raining fifty euro notes down outside and you’re too sick to run out and pick them up,’ Nicky said to her sister, from the sanctity of the doorway, on Connie’s fourth day off work.

‘It’s flu,’ moaned Connie, who couldn’t have moved even if entire gold ingots were raining down outside. Was that in the Bible? A plague of gold ingots? Or was she delirious and bewildered after spending too much time in a Catholic girls’ school?

Sister Lavinia had lots of mad Bible stories, one for every occasion, and Connie often got them mixed up. There was one about foolish virgins and lamps, and she still couldn’t recall the moral of the story.

‘Do you want me to get you anything before I go to work?’ Nicky said.

Connie shook her head.

‘OK, see you later. And phone if you feel really bad or something. I could come home, you know…’

Connie shook her head again. She was incapable of speech.

She rolled over in the bed, pulled the duvet up to cover her head and went back to sleep.

Miraculously, she woke at noon feeling strangely recovered. Still weak, after three and a half days in bed and no food apart from flat lemonade and toast, but better.

Cautiously, she sat up. Still better.

And suddenly, she was ravenously hungry. She was shaky on her feet when she made it into the kitchen to ransack the fridge. Without her to fill it, the fridge was a wasteland of old yogurts, a few slices of ham, and some milk. There was only one slice of bread left, no cheese, and worse, no chocolate.

She quarter-filled a bowl with the remains of a box of cereal and ate in front of the telly. She was still hungry but there was literally nothing else to eat, except things like cans of beans or soup. Connie longed for a toasted cheese sandwich followed by something sweet.

Titania’s Palace, she decided; she’d go there.

She brushed her teeth and her hair, pulled on her red fleece and a coat, and stepped out into the bitter January air to cross the square. She looked like hell on earth, but who’d be looking at her?

Megan liked the fact that the staff in Titania’s Palace were all friendly but not nosy. Nobody tried to engage her in conversation. They were welcoming, but perfectly happy to let her sit at a window table with her Americano with its extra shot of espresso. She could pretend to look out the window and stare off into the middle distance, lost in her own world.

They played cool music too, generally female torch singers from the 1930s and 40s. If Titania’s Palace was a person, she’d be a throaty, comforting lady with sex appeal, a hugehearted person who was utterly comfortable in her own skin.

Megan wondered if there was an actual Titania? The motherly woman who ran the place was called Rae, so perhaps she’d just liked the name.

Megan had watched Rae a few times when she’d been there and it was obvious why the place was such a success with her running it. She appeared to know everyone, and had a smile and a word for them all. It wasn’t like a coffee shop: it was like being welcomed into someone’s house.

Megan had seen Patsy from the hair salon in there too. Patsy’s hair was a darker, more vibrant red this week. She had a way of nodding hello that said she’d totally understand if you wanted to be alone, but she was there, if you felt like talking.

Rae and Patsy weren’t there today, but the place was jammed with the lunchtime crowd. Megan kept her baseball hat low on her head, and snagged a two-seater window table when a couple of people got up to leave.

She put their dishes on one side of the small table, and settled herself on the other side.

Conversations flowed all around her.

‘…She’s useless around the office. Can’t type for peanuts because she has gel nails. The filing system’s shot to hell, and when the boss comes back from his holidays, who’s going to be to blame? Not her, oh no. She’ll say it’s all my fault…’

‘…three stone. Imagine losing that much weight! They deliver food to your door and you can only eat that. It’s expensive, she told me, but it’s worth it…’

‘…I don’t know what to buy him. Would cufflinks be special enough? I want it to be special…’

The gentle ebb and flow of conversation was interrupted by a woman’s voice: ‘Do you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’

A tall woman with a cloud of beautiful dark brown hair stood at the other seat. She was muffled up in a big coat and held a tray bearing a toasted sandwich, a frothy coffee and one of Titania’s enormous lemon-and-poppyseed muffins.

In London, Megan would have said no. Here, things were different.

‘Of course,’ she said, and began to move the previous occupants’ dishes into the middle of the table.

‘Normally, I wouldn’t interrupt, but I can’t stand at the counter. I need to sit. I’ve just had flu,’ the woman explained. ‘It’s OK,’ she added quickly, ‘I’m not toxic any more. I met the doctor at the counter and he said not to cough my guts up on to anyone, but I should be fine. I love GPs, don’t you? They’re so laid back. Unless your leg is hanging off, they tell you to take an aspirin and call in the morning. Wouldn’t you love to be that relaxed?’

‘Er…yeah,’ said Megan.

She’d thought she was giving a seat to another solitary diner. It appeared she’d said yes to a companion.

The woman wriggled out of her ginormous coat. She was late thirties, Megan reckoned, and from her clothes to her unpainted nails, was clearly the very opposite of high maintenance. Even though her round face was shiny and make-up free, there was a wonderful vitality to her. And she had such smiling brown eyes.

Megan used to be impressed by high-achieving thinness and Botox undetectable to all but the most knowing eye. Nowadays, she found she liked people who smiled at her without recognition.

‘You’re probably relaxed anyhow,’ the woman went on, unloading her tray. ‘Young people are. My sister’s always telling me that my generation are going to drop dead with clogged arteries by the time we’re fifty. It’s all the worry, all the stress.’

She sliced open her sandwich and gazed at it happily.

‘Buddhism’s very good for stress, they say. I’ve always liked the sound of Buddhism,’ Connie went on. ‘But there’s a lot of work to it. If only you could get it inserted or something. A painless operation and you’d wake up with inner peace and the ability to remember a mantra.’

Megan laughed.

Connie bit into her sandwich and moaned in pleasure. ‘Bliss, I love these.’

She was glad she’d chosen to sit here. She’d seen the pretty dark-haired girl walking those dogs and the poor thing always looked so lonely. Besides, Connie hadn’t felt up to talking for three days, and now she wanted human company.

There was silence as Connie ate and Megan decided it would seem rude if she now stared out the window again. The conversational tennis ball was in her court. She’d almost forgotten how to do idle chitchat.

‘Do you live around here?’ she asked finally.

‘Across the square,’ Connie said. ‘With my sister, in the first-floor flat of that pale green house.’

Megan peered through the trees. ‘Pretty,’ she said. ‘I live over there with my aunt. The redbrick one on the end. I’m staying with her for a while,’ she added.

‘The chiropodist,’ exclaimed Connie delightedly. ‘I’d love to see her professionally, but my feet are terrible. You’d need an industrial sander to get close to them and I’d be so embarrassed. It’s like pedicures. I’ve never had one.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Megan, who’d had pedicures in some of the world’s most glamorous spas and had never worried for so much as a second as to the state of her toes.

‘You’re not a chiropodist too, are you? I didn’t mean that you’d use industrial sanders, it’s just that, for hard skin…’