Wren
Thirty-three days. Saturday.
Leeds rang me in the Co-op, in the aisle with the tinned peaches, at ten past two on a Saturday afternoon. At ten past two on a Saturday afternoon I'm officially dead.
I'd only gone in for custard creams. Hector had left a bourbon on my desk on Friday with a note that said TIN. That's how Hector asks for things.
The phone said a Leeds number. I thought it was the people about my accident, which I haven't had. They've rung me so often about it I've started to feel left out.
"Wren Archer," I said, in the Surgery voice, because you never know.
"Wren! Hello. Priya Nair, programme director at Coastline One-Oh-Two, in Leeds. Is this a bad time?"
"It's a Co-op."
"I'll be quick," said Priya, who was obviously in a room with a window. "I've been listening to your show. Somebody sent me the one with the pink wafer, and I thought, who is this, she can make a grown man audit a biscuit, and then I listened to the one where you sang, and I missed my junction."
"I'm offering you drive," said Priya. "Monday to Friday, four till seven. Daylight, Wren. A producer who's awake. A hundred and forty thousand people in cars who've never heard of you yet. And the money's more than double what Scarholme pays."
I had a tin of peaches in my hand. I put it back. I took another one out.
"I'd need to know by Tuesday the twenty-fourth of February," Priya said. "That's when it goes to our board. And between us, because I know what Northshore's up to with your figures, I'd rather not wait for their fifth of March. I'd rather you didn't tell anyone till it's signed. Would that be all right?"
"I can keep a secret," I said, which is the biggest lie I've told since I said I'd read Middlemarch.
"Think about it," said Priya, "and ring me," and she was gone, and I stood in the Co-op with a tin of peaches in each hand like a woman weighing a decision.
"Is that for the show?" said a voice.
He'd come round the end of the aisle with a basket. Sam turns up. I'd seen him four times in three days in places I hadn't invited him, and every reason had been a sandwich. I think the room above the launderette has a hum.
I put the phone behind my back, which is the least subtle thing it's possible to do with a phone.
"Dentist," I said.
"On a Saturday?"
"He's very keen."
"What's he found?"
"The wisdom tooth."
"I'd always assumed," Sam said, "you didn't have one."
I looked in his basket. Two lemons. A jar of honey, a packet of throat sweets, a small brown bottle that said for medicinal use only in the font of a man who means it, and one banana, standing in the middle of it all like a lad waiting to be picked for football.
"You're buying a pharmacy."
"The city sent a hundred and nine honeys and a hundred and four lemons. I thought somebody should test them. One at a time. On air." He looked at the basket. "On me."
"And the banana?"
"I get hungry," Sam said, with great dignity.
I walked out into the car park holding two tins of peaches, which I'd forgotten to put down and had by then technically stolen. I don't like peaches. Nobody ever tells you that the first thing a way out does is make you steal.
I got to Studio B at half eleven with a packet of custard creams and a face, apparently.
"You've a face like a dropped pie," Hector said.
"I haven't."
"Dropped pie. Face down, on the lino." He looked at the biscuits and then at me. Hector doesn't ask how you are. He asks whether you've eaten, and he asks it by looking at your hands. "Custard creams."
"The bourbons were low."
"And the pink wafer?"
"The pink wafer's staying. It's a local landmark. Hector, sunshine, I'm fine."
He took the biscuits and tipped them into the tin, one at a time, counting, in the voice of a man doing the only job in the building he's allowed to do properly. I had it right there: Hector, Leeds rang. I'd have been in tears by the second custard cream, and he'd have been very kind about it.
"Mind the third one," Hector said. "It's cracked."
That was all either of us said.
Sunday's show started at midnight. By one o'clock Sam had drunk honey, lemon and hot water ("Fine") and manuka honey and hot water ("Fine, with a sense of occasion") and the small brown bottle neat, which went out live as a noise like somebody sitting on a cat.
"It's like being hugged by a fire," he said, when he could, "and the fire asking you to leave."
The phones lit.
Then, because it was Surgery hour and the universe has a sense of humour, line three was a woman called Dawn, from Morton, who'd been offered a job in Leeds.
"Daytime," Dawn said. "Better money. And my fella says I should go. He said it straight away. He didn't even look up from his tea."
"Dawn," I said, and the voice dropped a gear on its own. "Has he said why?"
"No."
"Then ask him. Not on the phone. Not by text. Sit across a table from him, in daylight, and say, 'If I go, what do you want?' And watch his face before he's got it arranged. That's the answer. Whatever he says out loud is the second answer."
"Right," said Dawn. "Right. Thanks, Wren."
Sam, in the guest chair, was looking at his hands. I looked at the ceiling. Do as I say, Scarholme, not as I do.
At a quarter past two, line one, indicator going.
"Wren! Gaz, rank two. Quiet as a church mouse down the Quay."
"Evening, Gaz."
"I've a rank report." Tick, tick. "You know Bev? Bev, at the Lamp? Bev's turned that wireless off every Thursday at twenty to two for three years. Regular as a bin lorry. Switches it off, wipes her hands on her tabard and goes out the back. And I said, Bev, what's all that about? And she said," he did a voice, a husky one, quite a good one, "I'm not paying to cry."
I put my head in my hands.
"Not that I'd say a word," said Gaz. "I'm the soul of indiscretion. Gaz, rank two, over and out."
Tick, tick, gone.
Through the glass, Hector wrote BEV on his sheet. Then, very slowly, he rubbed the word out with his thumb.
By half past two I'd had four hundred texts, and the best of them said BEV IS THE WOMAN, with a red heart, from a man in Seaton who also thought the Lighthouse Man was a ghost. I took off my cans.
"Scarholme," I said, "Bev Lumsden has been feeding this city chips at three in the morning for thirty years. She isn't a plot twist. She's the plot. You leave her alone. Anyone who turns up at that café for anything but a bacon barm, I will find you, I'm in the phone book."
"You're not in the phone book," said Hector, on talkback, on air.
"I'll be in the next one."
The Lamp Café is the only thing on Fish Quay with its lights on at half past three: steamed windows, a counter like a ship's bridge, and a laminated menu with eleven kinds of egg. It smells of vinegar and a hundred years of men coming off boats. I went to say sorry. Sam said he'd walk me, because we'd had a long night, and then said it was nearer than the car, which is two lies, and I let him have them.
Bev was behind the counter with her arms folded. She's sixty-three, with hair an unlikely auburn and a voice like the bottom of an ashtray, and she's never once looked at me without making me feel nine.
"Gaz is barred," she said.
"Bev, I'm so sorry—"
"Don't you dare, petal. I've been called worse by better." She unfolded her arms and laughed, before either of us could, a big wet cackle that turned into a cough. "Three people have rung this café to ask what time I switch my wireless off. The whole city has me down as a romantic heroine. I'd be flattered if I weren't so tired. Sit."
We sat. Chips arrived. They arrive at the Lamp whether you ordered them or not.
"He sounds like somebody," Bev said, setting down the vinegar. "Your lighthouse fella. I've never worked it out. That's what's annoying." She leant on the counter. "And I'm not paying to cry. I've cried free of charge since nineteen ninety-three."
"What happened in ninety-three?" Sam said, very carefully, a man with his hand out to a horse.
"Nights," Bev said. "Behind that counter. Me and Kyle, who was two, in a carrycot between the Tizer crates and the fryer, and Tony on the rigs by the March, and a postcard that said, I swear to God, the wind was getting up. Tony talked like that. All weather, and never the thing itself." She wiped the counter, which didn't need it. "He's thirty-five now. Manages a Greggs in Billingham. Rings when his car breaks, and I say, I'm fine, petal, and he says, I know, I'm just ringing. Eat your chips."
"So you do think—" I said.
"I think I talk to that fryer more than any man," said Bev, "and it's never rung me once." She looked at me properly, up and down. "You're Peggy Rowe's granddaughter. I know the face. Peggy Rowe. Walked the prom every night God sent. Widowed at thirty, you know, a trawler. Used to sit in that window with a tea at four in the morning and not say a word. That's a woman who knew how to be on her own." She laughed. "I never did learn. I do it loudly."
She went to pour tea for a lorry driver at the far end who'd been asleep on his hand since I came in. I took a chip. It was perfect.
Sam hadn't touched his. He was looking at them like a man reading the small print.
It was cold in there. The door doesn't shut right; it's got a gap you could post a cod through. I was sitting with my coat round me and my teeth nearly going, and Sam, without saying a word, took his own coat off and put it round my shoulders on top.
It smelt of the launderette and something expensive, like a library, and it had a tide line round the hem. It had finally been rained on.
I held it shut with both hands.
"The dentist," I said.
"Was not a dentist."
"Was Leeds."
He didn't say anything. He ate a chip, slowly. I could see him going back over every word I'd said in the Co-op.
"Coastline One-Oh-Two," I said. "Daytime drive. Four till seven. I'd get to sleep at night, like a person. I've to say by the twenty-fourth of February, and I haven't told Hector, and if I tell Hector it'll be like telling a dog you've been looking at other dogs."
I'll tell you what I wanted. I wanted him to say, "Don't." I'd have taken a wince, the one he does at my levels. I wanted him to look at the chips and go a bit pale and say something stupid, and I'd have said, You great soft lump, and we'd have been all right.
"Take it," Sam said.
It came out fast. Like a man putting out a pan.
"Right," I said.
"Wren—"
"No. Good. Lovely. Brilliant." I looked at the sauce bottle. "That's very helpful. That's the best advice I've had all week, and I've had a hundred and four lemons. You could put that on a mug. Take it. Sam Ketley, Career Counsellor."
"I didn't mean—"
"More chips, lovey?" Bev said, appearing between us with a basket in each hand like a woman delivering twins.
"We're fine," said Sam.
"You're not," said Bev, kindly, and put the chips down anyway.
I got in at ten to four and put the peaches on the kitchen side next to the other peaches. The curtains were taped. My mam doesn't know I tape them.
At twelve minutes past four, in bed, my phone lit the ceiling.
I meant take it if you want it.
I read it four times. It didn't change. Nothing came after it, no dots, no second text, no sorry, just the one line, sitting there in the dark like a man who's said it and gone to stand in another room.