target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
RED COAT
The coat isn’t the orangey-red of postboxes, but the crimson of a film star’s lipstick. It has boxy shoulders and it nips in at the waist then flares out again, ending just above a pair of shapely calves. Even after all these years, every time I go to the seaside I look for a red coat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one like it.
THEN
The lady in the red coat is laughing. She smiles down at the little girl standing beside her. It’s windy today and hardly anyone is at the beach but neither of them cares. They race each other along the pier, and their shrieks of mirth blow over the railings and get lost in the vastness of the sea beyond. When they can’t run any further, when the sturdy railings stop them leaping onto the flinty waves and sprinting into the horizon, they stand there, panting. Then the woman goes and gets them both an ice cream.
The girl thinks this might be the best ice cream she’s ever had, but she doesn’t say that out loud, just in case she’s wrong. Her mummy has a really bad memory, and sometimes she wonders if hers is the same. There are so many things to keep in her head, you see. So many secrets. It’s hard to store all the memories and things for school in there, too. Maybe mint choc chip isn’t her favourite after all. Maybe she likes something else better. She really can’t remember.
They eat the cones, leaning against the railings and looking out to sea, hair flapping behind them like ribbons.
‘I think this is my favourite place in the whole wide world,’ the little girl says.
The woman nods. ‘Mine too. Whenever I come to the seaside, the first thing I do is walk to the end of the pier. It’s a place where land and sea blur into one, a place where you feel anything might be possible.’
‘Even flying?’ the little girl says, her voice full of awe.
‘Even flying,’ the woman says, smiling softly at her. ‘But maybe not today, eh? I think it’s a bit too blustery for that.’
‘Can we come back tomorrow, then?’
‘Of course,’ the woman says, turning to stare out to sea again. ‘We’ve come here every day so far and we can come back every day after if you’d like.’
The little girl thinks about this for a while as she eats her ice cream. Where could they fly to? France or Spain, maybe even Africa? She’s not sure she’s got the right clothes for hot weather, though, so she turns to ask the woman what she should wear and discovers her companion is no longer smiling.
She’s so still, her eyes so empty, that for a moment the little girl is reminded of the dummies in the window of C&A.
‘What’s the matter, Aunty?’ the little girl asks. ‘Are you sad?’
For a long time the lady doesn’t move, but then she turns to look at the girl. Her mouth bends upwards but her eyes still have the same faraway look they did when she was staring out across the grey, choppy waves.
‘A little,’ she says and her eyeballs get all shiny.
The girl takes an extra-big slurp of her ice cream and then she reaches out for the woman’s free hand. They’re very pretty hands. They’re clean and she always
