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‘Tea’s just fine,’ he said.
‘Say – a cuppa.’
‘A cuppa.’
‘Sorry – I shouldn’t laugh.’
‘I like it that you do.’
A pot of tea, milk in a jug, cups and saucers and a plate of cakes in front of them. The two of them took it all in.
‘How’s your day been?’ Scott asked, nodding for Frankie to pour.
She tilted her hand this way, that way. ‘Arduous,’ she said. In each of her meetings, she’d sensed Alice beside her, protesting. You’re fibbing, Frankie – you’re a fibber – you haven’t written me a story at all.
‘How so?’
Scott watched her redden a little as she fumbled in her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I brought you this.’
‘Alice and the Ditch Monster,’ he read before flipping through the pages, lingering over the illustrations, charmed. He looked at Frankie’s author portrait in the back when her hair had been longer and it had been winter, by the looks of her turtleneck sweater. He read the dedication in the front. For Sam who’s braver than brave. Scott felt overwhelmingly proud of her. He turned to her. ‘Wow.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just what I do,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good at much else.’ Adrenalin suddenly soured the tea.
‘You OK?’
‘I can’t write.’ She couldn’t look up either.
‘But by the looks of this – you can.’ Scott dipped into the book again. ‘Look at all these reviews. Prizes too.’
‘I can’t write just now,’ she whispered. She looked ashamed and it upset him.
‘How long?’
‘Months.’
He thought about it. ‘Anyone know?’
‘The children. My sister.’ She glanced up. ‘You.’
He speared a glazed raspberry from the tart, scooped crème pâtissièrre over it and handed her the fork.
‘I’ve been there, Frankie. I spent six months sitting under my piano, freaking out while everyone thought I was composing. A few years back – but the fear, the shame, is still vivid.’
She’d slumped a little. Gently, he nudged her. ‘It passes. Talent like yours? It evades you from time to time, for sure – but you’ll always have it.’
‘How did you get through it?’ Her eyes had gone glassy. He liked it that he knew exactly what she was feeling.
‘I drank a lot of caffeine,’ Scott laughed. ‘Then I gave it up completely. I tried Valium at night and beta blockers during the day. I got angry. I got sad. I broke a guitar. Two, actually.’
‘I just chew pencils and stare at nothing in particular.’
‘Probably cheaper – but not healthier.’
‘I am genuinely scared, not least because of the state of the industry. With all the discounting and cheap or free downloads, publishers are paying their authors less and less. A wonderful writer I know has had her advance cut by half. She feels decimated.’
‘I can understand that. It’s been the same in the music industry.’
‘But what if I can’t write at all, ever again? I’m the sole provider for my little family. What if that was it – my quota of books?’
It felt to Scott as if Frankie’s eyes were clinging to his for reassurance. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Not that I can pinpoint.’
‘But you’ve had all this upheaval – moving home. Don’t be hard on yourself.’
‘It feels utterly self-indulgent to give myself slack.’
‘I know. I felt that too.’
And it struck Frankie that Scott wasn’t saying any of this simply to cajole her into getting on with it, the way she anticipated her publishers might. It seemed he truly understood and more than that, he cared.
‘Tell me about Alice,’ he said, pouring more tea, reaching for the milk at the same time as Frankie, their fingers touching, their eyes connecting, time stopping.
‘Alice?’
‘Don’t say it like that – like you blame her. Tell me about the Alice you know.’
Frankie thought about her and suddenly felt a little contrite, as if she’d been impatient with a child who was irritating simply by being a child, just a little kid.
‘She’s a monkey,’ she smiled. ‘She lives in the countryside outside a village called Cloddington and, at the bottom of her garden where the hedge grows thatchety and the ditch is dank, He lives.’
Scott smiled. The colour was starting to come back to her cheeks and her eyes glinted. ‘The ditch dude?’
Frankie nodded.
‘Is he a euphemism? Did you consign your ex to a life in a quagmire?’
Frankie laughed, she really laughed. ‘Miles? Oh God – I wouldn’t dignify him with life in a ditch! I wouldn’t enlarge his sizeable ego with a character based on him. Actually, Miles is just Miles, a law unto himself. For one so smooth he has a lot of rough edges but he’s just Miles. Frustratingly, maddeningly Miles.’
‘You been apart long?’
That direct bluntness again. ‘Far longer than we were ever together.’
‘So if the ditch guy isn’t Miles, who is he?’
Frankie grinned. ‘He’s not anyone I know. He’s lovely – in a slightly unnerving way – a contradiction between being inept and clumsy but sensitive and gentle. He’s hideously ugly but really rather beautiful. He helps Alice and she helps him right back.’
‘Is he an imaginary friend?’
Frankie shook her head earnestly. ‘No. He isn’t. He’s real. But only Alice knows about him.’ She thought about it. ‘You could say they have a co-dependent relationship.’
‘One of those, hey?’ Scott said darkly but with a wry smile. ‘And Alice herself?’
‘Alice is Alice,’ Frankie said.
‘She’s not Annabel?’
Frankie shook her head.
‘Your artwork is gorgeous,’ Scott said. Confident, quirky line drawings bloomed over with washes of watercolour. ‘Is she always this age?’
Frankie nodded. ‘Ten-ish.’ She glanced at her drawing. She didn’t see it as being from her hand. It was just Alice, clear to her as a photo.
‘If Alice had a favourite song – what would it be?’
Frankie had never thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’
White chocolate striating the strawberries on crème pâtissière, atop a biscuit base. She loaded a fork and passed it to Scott. ‘Her favourite song would be – oh God, if I’m honest, most likely something by One Bloody Dimension.’
‘You know it’s Direction, right?’
‘I know – I like winding Annabel up. I reckon Alice is the same.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Scott said quietly, opening the book and reading. ‘I reckon the guy in the ditch – he’s been around. I reckon he’s seen the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds. In fact, there were plenty of folk at Woodstock who looked pretty much like him. But I’d say he keeps Alice balanced – culturally. Those times when they’re not solving mysteries or saving the day – when they’re just at the end of the garden shooting the shit – I’ll say they talk about music and he steers her straight, eh.’
‘Are you saying there’s stuff about Alice I don’t know?’
Scott shrugged. ‘Maybe. You’re the secretary remember, not the puppeteer. Imagine what goes on behind your back. Imagine that.’
Frankie looked so shocked it made him smile. He split the gateau in two. ‘Why don’t you try to find out? You talk about her like she’s real – which I don’t doubt. But seems to me perhaps when you’re writing you lose sight of that.’ He ate cake and read on, quietly. ‘Seems like she’s a really nice kid,’ he said.
‘She is,’ Frankie said.
‘And Annabel?’ Scott said. ‘And Sam?’
Out came Frankie’s phone and a guided tour pictorially through her children’s lives.
‘How have they handled the move – to Norfolk?’
Frankie looked through the pictures of her children. ‘Oh well, Annabel could run the country tomorrow,’ she told Scott. ‘But Sam – he’s getting there. It’s been harder for him – less of an adventure, more of a disruption. He left his pals, a school he liked, an area he knew. He’s settling now – but there were a few hiccups to start with, a couple of occasions when he skipped school.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He came home.’
‘But he knew you’d be there, right?’ Frankie nodded and Scott weighed it up. ‘So he’s happy at home?’
She looked at Scott. ‘He’s happiest at home. He likes to think of himself as the man of the house.’
A fresh pot of tea was ordered. The other tables emptied and refilled, not that Frankie or Scott noticed. They talked easily, eagerly and relaxed into the affable pauses in between. For all the sharing and conversation, it was privately and shyly that they revelled in each other’s physical proximity. It confronted her how the man she’d given relatively short shrift to at the station yesterday, the same man in whose company she’d felt herself unfurl during an evening she wished was longer, who’d caused her heart to race in the lift and who’d whorled his way through her sleep, was today someone known to her and trusted. Since yesterday, he’d undoubtedly become the most handsome man she’d ever met but it was the fact that she knew him, that she was herself with him, which thrilled her most.
‘Do you have to go back to the studio?’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his eyes.
‘Not a good session so far?’
He pushed the crumbs on his plate into an S. ‘I have the music – but today, in the studio, with everyone there, it’s not right.’
‘Your music?’ Frankie asked. ‘Or the way it’s being played?’
‘If I say the latter, do I sound like a jerk?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s personal – I get that.’
And Scott sensed that she did.
‘Do you have to go back there soon?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘More cake?’
‘No – thank you.’
‘More tea?’
‘Sure.’
‘Say cuppa.’
‘Cuppa.’
The tea was now lukewarm but it didn’t matter. They put their cups down at the same time, Scott’s shirtsleeve just touching Frankie’s arm, their hands so close. If he didn’t do it now, he might never. So he did. He moved his little finger the short but loaded distance until it touched Frankie’s. She linked hers around his, like those symbolic promises she used to make in the playground with her best friends. Scott and Frankie regarded their entwined fingers and looked at each other and gently placed their heads together and, while Frankie closed her eyes, Scott brushed his lips against her forehead. A kiss without being a kiss.
‘Will I see you?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Not just later today – but will I see you? After? Again?’
‘Without a doubt.’
‘It’s all a bit – mad – really.’ She rested her head lightly against his shoulder.
‘It’s crazy, Frankie. It’s insane.’ He paused. ‘But I like it.’
‘I do too.’
