I stopped turning my hands. ‘What’s a long second?’ I said.
She explained it to me. Even though she said she’d explained it very many times before. I always seem to forget. It’s when you catch the clock, holding on to a second so it lasts just a fraction longer than it should. When the world gives you just a little bit more time to make the right decision. There are long seconds all over the place. We just don’t always notice them. ‘But you noticed this one, Florence. You made your decision. You gave up your seat. And that’s how we met.’
‘I don’t remember my life without you in it,’ I said.
‘We were just at the age when you start to notice other children. When you pick out who you might be friends with. I chose you long before you chose me.’ She smiled. ‘There was a kindness about you, even then. As if someone took all the kindness other people discard and ignore, and leave lying about, and stuffed it into you for safekeeping.’
I tried to find the memory and pull it back in, but it felt very far away, and the elastic was too loose.
She found my eyes with hers. ‘Try to think. There are things in the past you need to find again, Florence. It’s important.’
‘Is it?’
‘We laughed, because the seat you gave up was the one next to that boy who was in the scouts, and he did nothing but talk the girl’s ear off about first aid. She hung on his every word. I can’t remember her name. Tall. Dark hair. Her parents owned the little shoe shop on the high street.’
I felt the elastic tighten. ‘They emigrated, that family, all of them.’ I let the words go very slowly, just in case they were the wrong ones. ‘To Australia.’
‘Yes, they did.’ Elsie was pleased with me. I can always tell when she’s pleased with me, because she gets a glitter about her eyes. ‘But the girl stayed here. She didn’t go with them.’
‘Men for the land, women for the home. Guaranteed employment. Ten pounds, it cost. Ten pounds for a brand new life.’
I turned back to the window.
‘Ronnie Butler was on that bus,’ I said.
Handy Simon wore a St Christopher around his neck, although he’d never travelled further than Sutton Coldfield. His father gave it to him when Simon turned eighteen, and the only time he’d removed it was when they took his appendix out in 1995. ‘Keep you safe,’ his father said. ‘Out of harm’s way.’ Generally, it had. Although whether the last twenty-five years was the work of St Christopher, or because Simon was naturally cautious, remained to be seen. He touched the medallion and stared at the guttering. He might only be travelling up a ladder, but surely the principle remained the same.
Handy Simon was not a fan of heights. All of life’s bad experiences had occurred when his feet were off the ground. Even his mother died on an aeroplane. A heart attack at thirty thousand feet on the way back from Spain (‘At least it was on the way home,’ his father had said, over the ham tea). It was their first foreign holiday. Simon often wondered whether, if they’d chosen Margate over Malaga, she might still be alive now. Although she was very fond of sweet sherry and never held back at a buffet table, so quite possibly not. That was the problem when your parents were so much older than everyone else’s. You ran the risk of losing them before you’d really got to know each other.
‘Was I planned?’ he once asked his mother.
‘You were a surprise,’ she told him. ‘A miracle.’
‘Like Jesus?’
‘Not quite like Jesus,’ she said.
He tested out the first rung with the heel of his boot. Life at Cherry Tree involved a more than reasonable amount of ladder work. He’d once mentioned the words ‘health and safety’ to Miss Bissell in the staff room, but she had arched an eyebrow in silence and returned to her Sudoku. Simon found this was the main problem with people. They never listened. They were too busy enjoying the sound of their own voices to take any notice of him, and because of that, they missed out on a wealth of information. Not anecdotes or stories, but statistics and proof. Facts. Facts were the important things. Facts stood the test of time. Without facts, the world would become a giant mess of rumour and hearsay, and everything would fall apart.
He turned his collar against the wind. North-easterly. Bitter. Becoming cloudier as the day progressed. Once the wind found its way into Cherry Tree, it never seemed to be able to find its way out. It was the architecture. The wind took the path of least resistance, it rushed down from the buildings and hid around corners. People thought corners were the best places to escape the wind, but often, they were the most dangerous. Simple physics. He’d tried to explain this to Miss Ambrose one day, but her eyes had glazed over in a most unattractive fashion. He hadn’t given up, mind. It wasn’t in his nature. Instead, he’d printed out a page on the subject from the internet for her. Some people are visual learners, after all. Actually, forty-three per cent of people are visual learners.
Simon knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he got to the seventh rung. He felt the push of air against the ladder, and heard the creak of metal on the tiles. He wondered if his life might flash before him, or at least the parts with a degree of significance, but all he saw was a cracked roof tile and a pigeon, looking down on him with clockwork curiosity. Perhaps he didn’t have any significant parts. Perhaps his significant parts were yet to come, and would now never arrive, due to a north-easterly wind and his decision to have one more egg sandwich. He’d just begun to feel the inevitability of the slide, an unexpected journey back to earth, when a voice said, ‘Steady on there, young man,’ and the ladder righted itself and the world became vertical again.
When Simon looked down (which took a surprisingly large amount of courage), he saw the top of a trilby and an overcoated forearm holding up the ladder. The new chap. From the day room. Whatshisname again.
‘Price,’ said the man, and shook hands when Simon reached the protection of solid ground. He nodded at the ladder. ‘Health and safety issue, if you ask me.’
‘Exactly.’ Simon tried to swallow, but he couldn’t find anything to do it with. ‘I’ve told them as much.’
‘That’s the problem with people today. They never listen.’
‘Exactly,’ said Simon. He said it a few more times, just for good measure. ‘I need some ties for the ladder. Secure it to the wall.’
‘I’ll help, if you like.’ Mr Price straightened his trilby. ‘Give you a hand.’
Simon wasn’t entirely sure of the average age of a Cherry Tree resident, but he felt it was one more suited to holding up supermarket queues than ladders. The man in the trilby looked more than capable, mind you. As though age had tightened his springs, rather than unwound them.
‘Don’t look so worried, Simon,’ he said. ‘I’m not quite ready for the knacker’s yard just yet.’
A string of ‘no’s came out of Simon’s mouth in a little dance. ‘Oscar Swahn won an Olympic medal in his seventies,’ he said. ‘Fauja Singh ran the London Marathon at ninety-two. History is littered with people who achieved great things in old age.’
The man lifted the ladder away from the guttering. ‘Those are very interesting facts, Simon. Why don’t you tell me some more?’
And so he did.
I could tell Elsie thought it was a completely ridiculous suggestion, but she still went along with it. It’s one of the best things