“You seem somewhat strained,” said Inês once they were settled, her frail voice battling the wind.
Sarah shifted uncomfortably. She could hide her feelings from most people; from Hugo, her mother, her friends. But not Inês.
“Just tired with getting everything sorted, making sure all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place.” She shrugged and hoped her excuse was enough. She had never talked about Scott because it had always been too raw, too agonising. The past few days had shown her that it still was.
“Will you see any of your old companions in Lisbon?” asked Inês, as if she had read Sarah’s mind.
“Oh no,” replied Sarah, hastily. “I mean, I shouldn’t think so. I’ve lost touch with everyone but Carrie and she lives here.” She shrugged and pulled her hands further inside her coat sleeves.
“What about your special friend?” Inês continued, unperturbed by Sarah’s taciturnity. “Your boyfriend – Scott was his name, I seem to remember.”
Sarah watched as a chocolate brown Labrador raced towards one of the rooks in a vain attempt to catch it. The bird waited until the last moment to soar into the air and mock the dog from above.
“Scott, yes. Scott Calvin. Clever of you to remember.”
Just the simple act of saying his name sent shockwaves running through her. It was a name that evoked a lost existence, the utterance of which tore down the walls and barriers she had so carefully built and rebuilt, time and time again. It was a name that told of heat-soaked days on deserted beaches and tumultuous nights in the liquorice allsort pink-and-blue house in Alcantâra where she had lived all those years ago. Of sunlight that danced on cobbles and bleached the washing on the lines. Of the scent of sun-warmed skin and sweat and sex. Of the shallow dip between his neck and collarbone which, seen by the light of a full moon, made her heart overflow with an adoration that temporarily stilled her breathing.
It struck her how few times, in all the years, she had ever said his name aloud. There had been no reason to.
“You really loved him, didn’t you?” The question, uttered so gently, was like a thunder bolt.
Sarah felt the breeze snatch at her breath as she looked away and saw him before her; his crinkly-kind eyes, suggestive smile and messy, honey-brown hair. His skin, warm and brown, the colour of a smooth hazelnut shell. His warmth and strength, that encompassed her so entirely.
“Yes.”
It was impossible to answer with anything but the truth.
“So what went wrong, my dear? You never told me.” Inês’s question hung suspended in the air between them like the rook that still circled above.
“I guess I wasn’t ready to talk about it, then.”
“Are you now?”
Sarah lifted her blue-grey eyes to Inês and attempted a carefree laugh. “Now! Now there’s nothing to talk about.”
Another silence, filled only by the wind. Inês had been a surrogate mother to Sarah all the years that her mother Natalie had worked so hard building up her business. Inês had always been there for her, tending for her, caring for her, picking her up when she fell, physically and metaphorically. They had always shared everything. Except this.
Inês’s lips trembled slightly, and she struggled to steady them before responding. “Is it really that simple?”
She held Sarah’s gaze as she spoke. Her black eyes, though age-paled and watery, were still piercing. “In my experience, that’s rarely the case.”
No. No, it’s not that bloody simple.
Sarah looked down at the bench and dug off a piece of flaking varnish with her fingernail. For a fleeting second she felt as if she were drowning, had to gulp for the air that the vicious gusts of wind seemed determined to deny her.
“Simple or not, it’s the way things worked out.”
It was a long time before either spoke again. Sarah found her thoughts drifting from her own dilemma, to which she had not yet worked out the solution, and towards the journal and to Inês’s youth. John, who she had loved so much, had joined up when war was declared and Inês hadn’t seen him for years.
“Did you miss him when he went away?” she asked, as the thought occurred to her.
Inês’s eyes were focused on the faraway dome of St Paul’s.
“It was too far to go to him,” she replied, her voice strangely devoid of emotion. She seemed to understand what Sarah meant despite the lack of explanation. “Travel was difficult, then.”
“Of course, during the war, I suppose it must have been,” Sarah concurred. “And anyway, he was fighting, wasn’t he?”
The rooks in the belt of trees further down the hill began to caw cacophonously.
“Fighting?” questioned Inês, suddenly seeming confused, even alarmed. “No, no, there was a gun but it was an accident…” She tailed off, gazing into space.
Sarah frowned. John had definitely been a soldier, in a senior rank; Inês had his medals to prove it.
“The Second World War, John went back to England, didn’t he?” she elucidated, trying to quell the panic in her voice. Inês seemed to have aged so quickly lately; was this misunderstanding an indication that she was losing her marbles as well?
Realisation dawned on Inês’s face as she turned slowly to Sarah.
“Oh, John. Yes, of course, John.” She sounded relieved, as Sarah felt. Just a momentary memory lapse, after all. “You’re right, I had to stay put until it was all over. I missed him, but he survived. So many didn’t.”
There was a bluntness to her statement that Sarah put down to an unwillingness, common in that generation, to indulge personal memories of sadness when so many had sacrificed everything. The wind gathered strength and Inês shivered violently. Studying her closely, Sarah realised with a lurch of her heart how tiny, frail and very, very old she looked, all bundled up in her coat with strands of her hair, once ebony, now pure white, poking out from underneath her red beret.
“We need to get home. Come on, take my arm.”
Sarah escorted Inês back down the crumbling path, trying not to notice how painfully she walked.
London, 2010
That evening, Sarah’s friend Lorna had organised a farewell dinner for her; overkill, Sarah felt, as she was only going for six days and hadn’t wanted a big fuss made but still, any meal she didn’t have to cook herself was always welcome. Sarah and Hugo had met Lorna and her husband Rich by dint of having children at the same school and in the same class; Lorna was as outspoken as Sarah was reticent.
“But wasn’t Lisbon the place of your first love, Sarah?” demanded Lorna, true to form, as soon as they had settled into their seats at the pitted wooden table in their local pub. “Your grand amour?”
She looked at Sarah questioningly, smiling broadly, proud of recalling and advertising something of such significance. Sarah gulped hard, blushed and glanced involuntarily towards Hugo. She couldn’t believe that Lorna had even remembered this fact, blurted forth one drunken evening years before when she had been wheedling out confessions, immediately regretted. Fortunately, Hugo was busy contemplating