When I Fall In Love

‘I’

Elsie swallowed hard as a groundswell of emotion threatened to sweep her off her feet. Torin had unwittingly broken through the layers of carefully constructed defences and his observations stabbed deeply. Momentarily blindsided, she struggled for control and he saw it, the same glint of triumph in his eyes as before.

‘What? Nothing to say? Surely this can’t be the great Elsie Maynard, queen of the lightning comeback? I must say, I thought you’d have retaliated by now.’

He was goading her, she knew it, but the pulse of shock was fast turning to anger within her and she needed a moment to formulate her reply.

‘Just – just give me a minute …’

Torin took a celebratory glug of beer and slapped the table. ‘Aha! Admit it – I totally summed you up! I am too good at this.’

‘Fine. You want to know?’ With every last scrap of resolve within her, Elsie rose to her feet. ‘You were correct when you said I’d only had one serious relationship. It did lead to marriage and that marriage ended, eighteen months ago.’

He spread his hands wide. ‘Hey, it’s what I do. Please don’t be offended. Sit down, would you? We were just beginning to have fun.’

‘No, thanks. I think I’ve stayed long enough.’

‘Oh come on, Elsie. There’s no need to be embarrassed about it. Plenty of women your age are divorcees.’

Elsie fixed him with a stare that could freeze sunbeams. ‘That’s true. But not many women my age are widows.’

With that, she turned her back on a visibly shocked Torin and walked with purpose out of the pub and onto the street beyond. Her promise to Cher was completely forgotten: the only impulse driving her steps was to escape.

CHAPTER SIX

Just the way you are …

Lucas would have loved it. He would have thrown back his lovely black hair and guffawed so loudly that even half-deaf Mrs Rafferty next door would have heard it. And Elsie would have laughed with him – it was impossible not to when faced with a laugh as infectious as his. Even towards the end of his battle, when every movement required concerted effort, his laugh was the one part of him that never succumbed to the cancer claiming his body. Jim often said he heard Lucas laugh more during the last year of his life than in all the years he’d known him. But then the last year was something Lucas was determined to enjoy. He had a point to prove – a list to fulfil. And each of the items on The List he created for their final year together was designed to amuse them both, to squeeze every last drop of joy out of the time they had left.

Lucas Webb was a lover of the absurd, his sense of humour one of the things Elsie loved the most about him. He could find the ridiculous, hilarious side of any situation, no matter how grim it first appeared. The bleak diagnosis of his cancer was no exception to this: and his coping mechanism was the spark for The List.

When Dr Hayes had delivered the devastating news to Lucas and Elsie in the too-small, too-warm consulting room in the Royal Sussex County Hospital, their first reaction had been mind-numbing shock and disbelief, quickly leading to body-shaking sobs as they both broke down. Twelve months, at most – a meagre allocation for someone who loved life as much as Lucas did. All their plans – travelling, a business of their own, children – now lay screwed up and discarded like the balls of paper strewn in the dull grey metal bin beneath Dr Hayes’ regulation NHS desk. The sense of injustice was immense, a crushing weight of hopelessness robbing the room of oxygen, deeper than Elsie had ever experienced.

But an hour later, when they were walking hand-in-hand along Brighton Pier, a remarkable transformation began in Lucas. Elsie remembered him stopping, near the entrance to the amusements, hope blazing in his dark brown eyes.

‘Elsie, I’ve had quite possibly the most brilliant idea!’

So startling was the sea change in his mood that Elsie gave an involuntary laugh. ‘What is it?’

‘OK. Hear me out. When I heard the diagnosis this morning I was like, “Only twelve months?” But I’ve thought about it and I realised – we have twelve months. Twelve months to do whatever we like and nobody can argue with us! So, here it is: we make a list of things we have to do. And I’m not talking about naff stuff like swimming with dolphins because, frankly, I think they’re overrated. In fact, that should be our criteria: nothing overly sentimental, nothing expensive and nothing predictable. We pick, say, fifty things we have to complete before I … you know …’

He was shaking when he suggested it, but his smile was all the persuasion Elsie needed to agree. And so the idea for The List was born: fifty tasks unique to them, a personal mandate for fun in their final year together. Such as sneaking into Brighton Library to stick smiley-face sticky notes within the pages of classic novels that Lucas had deemed to be so depressing that readers would be in need of some guerrilla-placed light relief (to Elsie’s knowledge, some of those notes might still be lying in wait amid the leaves of Jude The Obscure, The Mill on the Floss and War and Peace …); decorating the rubbish bins along Brighton promenade with tinsel at midnight on a balmy July night; paddling in wellies in the ornate Victoria Fountain in Victoria Gardens in the centre of town; and spending the night in a neighbour’s son’s tree house with a large bottle of Jack Daniel’s, snuggled up, drunk and sniggering like school kids under layers of blankets.

Every item on The List conformed to the three criteria. All except one.

‘Oh, and Paris,’ Lucas had added, when fifty items had been listed.

She observed him with amusement. ‘Hang on a minute, you said nothing overly sentimental, nothing expensive and nothing predictable, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So what’s Paris, then? Surely it’s all three.’

His grin was pure Lucas Webb mischief. ‘Paris is geographical.’

‘Lucas …’

‘Humour me, Els? I’m a dying man, remember? You have to honour my wishes.’

And so The List that should only ever have contained fifty items became fifty-one, the last task destined to become the only one never to be fulfilled in time …

Standing on the dark beach as the inky ocean lapped the shore below her, Elsie found herself laughing now, despite her tears. Lucas would have applauded her parting shot in the pub: the ultimate way to win an argument.

‘If all else fails, play the death card, kid. It gets them every time.’

What Lucas would have loved the most, though, was that Elsie had been in the pub in the first place tonight. For the entire twelve months they had planned until the end, Elsie’s mandate to carry on afterwards had been Lucas’ recurring theme.

‘You have a whole life ahead of you, darling. And I will be expecting you to live it. No moping around like you’ve died, too. Promise me. Promise me you’ll live life for us both?’

Of course she missed him. He was in every thought, every action of the day, and he had loved Brighton so much that even the bricks and streets of the town seemed to be infused with his spirit. But a strange thing had happened when he finally passed away after their extraordinary last year: the overriding emotion Elsie experienced was thankfulness for the years she had been blessed with Lucas in her life. Some of her extended family put it down to an anomaly of grief: she was in denial, obviously, and the pain and anguish would surely follow. But it didn’t – or, at least, not the debilitating grief that she had expected to feel. Deep sadness and a longing to be close to him again, yes: often and sometimes entirely without warning. Tiny, insignificant things that induced unexpected tears, absolutely. But so much deep grieving had assaulted her during their final year together, catching her off-guard in the middle of the crazy tasks on The List, that it was almost as if the most profound part of her grieving was done during this time. Maybe it was because Lucas had talked with her so much about what life would be like once he was gone:

‘Wait six months after I leave and then take your wedding ring off. And no longer than that. I mean it, Els. Consider it a gift to me, OK? In return I’ll be giving some other lucky chap the chance to have you in his life.’ … ‘You’ll be fine, honey. I believe in you, remember? You’re beautiful and so strong – that’s what I love about you. So I’m expecting you to get out there again, whenever you’re ready.’ … ‘And none of this “black widow” shizzle, OK? Black isn’t your colour anyway. Dress like Queen Victoria and I’ll haunt you until you change it!’

In the months since his death, Elsie had followed his wishes to the letter and, as with so many of the things Lucas had suggested, it made her feel better. It was almost as if each act was a gift to him, her strength his reward for the faith he had placed in her to carry on.

Even so, she hadn’t meant to reveal her past to Torin this evening, and she was angry with herself for using it as such a trivial point-scoring act. Torin’s inference that she was merely a bitter, betrayed divorcee had incensed her. Especially when the truth was so markedly different. But Lucas was worth more than that. And no matter how much her parting shot would have amused him, he deserved his memory to be treated with more respect.

Leaving the sea behind, she crunched across the pebbled beach back to the steps leading to the promenade, her mind awash with thoughts.

‘Babe. The Led Zep mash-up will work, I’m telling you.’

‘I’m not having this conversation again, Woody. We’ve got a list of six songs and that’s plenty to be going on with. And we only have six members, remember? I don’t want to lose any of them before we’ve even begun.’

Woody tutted and pushed his sunglasses up his nose, despite the Saturday morning greyness surrounding the beach café. ‘I expected more of you, girl. I thought we were meant to be different.’

‘We are different! Your Lady Gaga medley is still in – it’s the first thing we’re doing.’

‘Gaga is merely an interesting aperitif, an amuse bouche to the real event, if you will,’ he sniffed, twisting his espresso cup in its saucer.

‘Fair enough. So let’s make sure it’s the best it can be before we ask the choir to tackle the greats …’

Woody signalled his assent and Elsie congratulated herself for finding the correct phrase to pacify the ex-rocker’s concerns. It was good to think of something other than her encounter with Torin yesterday, the memory of which had plagued her mind all night. She looked down at the list before her and tapped the notebook with her pen.

‘Now, Dad says that the offer to perform at Brighton Carnival in July is pretty much confirmed, so that gives us three months, give or take a week, to create something worth watching. Do you think we can do it?’

Woody held up a hand, the silver rings clinking together as he did so. ‘Wait. Let me consult the Oracle.’ He raised his forefingers to his temples and closed his eyes.

Elsie made a quick check around her to see if the other customers in the Driftwood Café were watching this spectacle: thankfully, newly purchased pages of the Guardian and The Times were occupying most of them, and those without newspapers were either deep in conversation or transfixed by mobile device screens. Thanking heaven for small mercies, she returned her attention to Woody, who now appeared to be muttering and chuckling under his breath. After a few minutes of this, he opened his eyes and folded his hands slowly on the table in front of him.