‘You look amazing,’ said Oriana, holding her handset so that she wasn’t entirely in shot.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You look amazing!’ she repeated.
‘I look amazing?’ Ashlyn peered close to her phone as if trying to hear better. ‘Is that what you said?’
‘Yes,’ said Oriana. And only then did she realize how quietly she was talking. She felt uneasy talking any louder. She wasn’t in the comfort of her own home, nor the neutrality of a hotel; she was in her mother and Bernard’s house. This was borrowed space compartmentalized by paper-thin walls. She was in their spare room. It suddenly struck her that nowhere on earth did she have her own bedroom any more. She watched Ashlyn, could see the bay in the background, thought of the room over there that had been hers, now the realm of someone else who might have painted over every last vestige of Oriana.
Ashlyn on a sunny Friday morning. Oriana knew exactly what she’d just had from the bakery for breakfast and how it tasted. The aroma of the coffee. The feel of the paper bag. The scrunch and dunk as she tossed it into the trash can. The sensation of the cool spring air ascending from the bay being dissipated by the sun’s warmth. Long sleeves – but sunglasses, too.
She thought back to her own lunch – breakfast now an irrelevant memory. Egg sandwiches made by Bernard, eaten with Bernard and her mum in the kitchen. Celery sticks in a pint glass filled with a little salted water. A bowl of cherry tomatoes. A bottle of salad cream. Soft white bread that stuck to the roof of the mouth. A cup of steaming builder’s tea. And non-stop talk about what’s for tea. Friday night – fish supper. Bernard had been talking about it since elevenses. I like haddock m’self, he’d said. And your mother – she’s for the fishcakes. We both like a buttered bun and these days we share just the one portion of chips. (He’d patted at his heart, to qualify.) But you have what you like, love, whatever you like. Oriana had tried to say that just then with celery fibre caught between her teeth, she couldn’t possibly decide what she might feel like that evening. But that had only encouraged Bernard to list all the fish on offer which, to Oriana, might well have been all the fish in the sea.
‘Cod!’ she’d shouted to shut him up. ‘I’ll have cod and chips, OK?’ She’d ignored her mother staring sharply at her, she’d turned away from Bernard whose expression revealed the brunt of her retort.
‘Don’t feel you need to decide now,’ Bernard had said gently, as if it would be kinder just to pretend Oriana’s snappishness hadn’t happened. ‘Gerry might have a nice piece of hake. Or even plaice. Now that’s a nice fish – and he’ll do that in breadcrumbs, not batter.’
‘Cod.’ Oh my God. ‘Cod’s good.’
‘Well, cod it is then. And will that be a medium or a large? Or you could have the large with a medium chips. Or we could have a large chips between the three of us. And another buttered bun.’
Fuck the chips. Sod the cod. Stuff your stupid buttered bun. I don’t bloody know. I’m halfway through my lunch! Why would anyone want to know what they’re going to be ordering for their tea?
However, Oriana had said nothing. She’d smiled through gritted teeth but the short, sharp exhale had cut through to Bernard like a blast of a cold, ill wind and she’d seen how he’d been taken aback, hurt even, though he’d kept his polite smile up and had rounded off the conversation with a little anecdote about cod being so last year and coley being the new black. And she’d felt appalled that, even at thirty-four, in this house with her mother and Bernard, she was helpless not to revert to a bolshie teen. Life was going backwards. That wasn’t the idea at all.
‘Oriana?’
Ashlyn. Right here, now, in this room. Perhaps she thought the call had frozen; Oriana’s thoughts had rendered her motionless.
‘Hey,’ said Oriana, suddenly remembering to look up or all that Ashlyn would see was her bowed head with roots in need of colour or a good shampoo and condition at the very least.
‘You OK, babe?’
Oriana attempted to peer at her.
‘You sound kind of remote and you look kind of –’
‘Shit?’
‘No,’ Ashlyn laughed and, inopportunely, her face suddenly froze into a grimace. Her voice, though disembodied, came through and hit Oriana squarely. ‘You look kind of – wide-eyed and lonesome.’
Even in the tiny thumbnail of herself in the top of her screen, Oriana couldn’t dispute it. Wide-eyed and lonesome. Like the lyric to a country-and-western standard.
‘I’m still jet-lagged,’ Oriana said feebly, wondering if she’d been freeze-framed like Ashlyn. She hoped so – her friend wouldn’t see through the lie.
Ashlyn was back in motion, slightly jerky, but still herself. She didn’t seem to have heard Oriana. Instead, she’d flipped the viewfinder and was treating Oriana to a panorama of the bay. Oriana flinched.
‘Homesick?’ said Ashlyn.
‘A little.’
‘So, tell me – what you been up to? You working? You been going down memory lane? Caught up with your old buddies? You been back to that old house of yours?’
Oriana thought of Windward; how the place had so quickly become the stuff of legend to her circle in California. She’d used it as a way to win friends and impress. She’d never lied. The tiniest of details were drawn from life, every daub of colour, every line from a song, every name, every event – they were all true. The only dishonesty had been the tone of voice she’d used to narrate these vignettes of her childhood and youth. She had transposed the veracity and complexity of her original emotions into a panoply of perpetual, carefree happiness. Details which might smudge or darken the picture were left out. As far as any of her friends were concerned, Oriana had been blessed by a halcyon upbringing during which she’d been nurtured by a group of artists who were as loving as they were eccentric. She was admired, envied, for having grown up in the quirkiest place in the world: a commune which made the heyday of Haight-Ashbury seem positively suburban. And Woodstock downright dull. Yes, Jimi Hendrix played Woodstock – but he had stayed a month at Windward. Tell us more about Windward, Oriana! Tell us the stories you’ve already told. Again – tell us again. Rod Stewart wrote ‘You’re in My Heart’ there? Seriously? From the top room – the one with the turret? Ronnie Wood forgot to leave? Gillian Ayres painted the walls? Tom Stoppard stayed for a summer, Faye Dunaway for the winter? How cool is that?
‘You been back to Windward?’ Ashlyn was saying with an expansive grin. ‘Has it changed? Who’s still there? Can I FaceTime you when you’re next there? Do it from the iPad – you can give me a virtual tour.’
‘I haven’t been back,’ Oriana told her.
‘You what? Why not?’
‘Not yet,’ said Oriana. ‘But funnily enough I’m going there tomorrow.’
* * *
Tomorrow is now today. Yesterday, after medium cod and chips, and a buttered bun she had only a bite from, Oriana went to bed early and didn’t mention her plans – if she didn’t say them out loud, she could still change them. Even at the last minute she could entitle herself to a turn of heart and no one would be any the wiser. She might feel like seeing Cat instead. Or going to Meadowhall and browsing the shops. Perhaps a day trip to Manchester, to see how it’s changed.
‘May I borrow your car, Mum?’ The tang of malt vinegar on yesterday’s newsprint paper still lingered