Rain

Rain

I T IS ABSOLUTELY

tipping it down. People scuttle past the shop holding their hoods down over their faces, umbrellas turning inside out. Every so often a very wet person comes in and pretends to browse while glancing out of the window to see if the rain has abated. And when it hasn’t, back out they go into the downpour. We sell three umbrellas in the morning, and then the gloom of the rain must get around because by lunch time it is quiet.

A ping on my phone is from Bella: ‘ Tomorrow?

’

‘ Tomorrow

,’ I reply. We are not ducks.

Our lunches are not scheduled or agreed upon in advance. To talk about it might be to break the very magic of my happening to have lunch in the park when she happens to turn up.

Marjie is at the doctor’s for her arthritic wrist, poor thing, so I rattle through the bead curtain in search of lunch. Marjie stocks the kitchen cupboard, and the mini fridge, so I select a packet of Monster Munch and hope the unfortunate monsters’ severed claws will hold me over until the rain stops.

Wiping my Flamin’ Hot fingers on my trousers, I turn to the box that came in yesterday. It used to contain bananas, but now it contains the last earthly possessions of a lady named Gloria. Her grandson was checking his watch when he dropped off the box. ‘I’ve got a meeting, sorry,’ he said when I asked him if he would fill in the Gift Aid form. He did give me her name. Granny Gee, he knew her as, but Gloria Sweeney was her real name. ‘She was a widow for almost as long as she was married,’ he told me. ‘Grandad Jim was lost to the sea in 1989.’

And with that, Gloria’s grandson scuttled off in his squeaky-smart shoes.

Granny Gee’s perfume was sweet and soft. As soon as I open the box, I can smell it. And inside, a cashmere jumper in a colour that is neither pink nor cream but somewhere in between. Then scarf after scarf, all silk and printed with different patterns. Driving gloves in black leather. A set of books on gardening. A jewellery box that’s empty (based on her donations, I would imagine that Granny Gee’s jewellery was too nice for her grandson to give away for free). Lucky Granny Gee, to have such nice things, I think as I pull out a buttery soft purple jumper. I hope her parting from this earth was soft, too.

I’m placing the RHS Complete Guide to Growing Roses

in the ‘non-fiction’ section of the bookshelves when four black-and-white photographs slip out. And there she is. Granny Gee. Or, back then, simply Gloria

, as someone has written on the back of one of the photographs. She’s astride a moped, hair in a silk scarf, and with a smile that seems to betray that she is having a riotously good time.

Next, I find her in a blur at the Trevi Fountain, a patterned dress wasping in at her waist, sunglasses hiding her eyes, though she seems to be looking up at the photographer rather than the camera lens. Then she’s on a beach, turning the camera in on herself and a man with beautiful eyes who is kissing her bare shoulder. Then there they are again. Gloria and this young man, whose eyes, though the print is black and white, appear to be a clear green or blue against dark lashes, seated at a café table on a square, the photograph taken from up high, I imagine by a waiter. And on the back of these photographs, Gloria has written his name, Vincenzo

, and drawn a small heart. This gentleman is certainly not Grandad Jim, then.

And that is it. The entirety of Gloria and Vincenzo’s love story. Perhaps she kept the photographs hidden from her husband so she could take them out and look at him, at those eyes, from time to time. The book about roses wasn’t chosen by accident.

I carousel through the photographs again, as though they might give up some more information this second time around. And they do. I notice that on the fourth finger of her left hand, Gloria is wearing her wedding ring. But Vincenzo’s hand is unwed.

And I smile because I know that pain, just a little.

And, of course, I place the photographs in the lapel pocket of my jacket. I will keep these lovers safe. And when I take them out, I shall think of them and their Italian summer romance and wonder if she ever tried to find Vincenzo when Grandad Jim was lost to the sea.

And perhaps it is the misery of English rain that is still battering against the window. Perhaps it is the photographs of Gloria’s unforgotten love. Perhaps it is my regret at the abandoned almost-kiss with Grace. Or the feeling that time is running out. But I pull out a pad of paper from behind the till. And I write:

Dear Emmeline,

I’m in!