Timing

Timing

I FEEL AS

though I am broiling.

Bella is snoozing in the sun, Emmeline’s giant hat tipped over her face. The pool water is wiggling in the sunlight and inviting me for a dip.

My phone pings and I swipe on the burning-hot screen to see that Marjie has sent a photograph of Pushkin nibbling on some carrot sticks. ‘ Happy as Larry!

’ she has captioned it. But that is not Marjie’s striped wallpaper or yellow kitchen table. I do suspect that she and Pushkin might be sleeping over at Sam’s house. Good for her.

Through the fog of heat, I am vaguely aware that the tap-a-tap-a-tap of Emmeline’s speedy typing clacking from her office window has abated. Her flip-flops announce her as she emerges poolside in a glittering kaftan, huge sunglasses over her eyes. She notes Bella sleeping and smiles to herself. Then sweeps up to me in a wave of sweet perfume and asks, ‘Shall we take a walk, Mr Winston?’

It’s now or never, Eddie

, the water whispers.

We walk along the path that leads away from the pool towards the landscaped gardens that are stepped along the side of the hill. We walk beneath a long trellis of plants that makes me feel as though I am back at the Winterbourne Gardens, enveloped in green. And finally, we reach an alcove of shady trees. From here, we can see everything: the sea sparkling below, the roofs of other houses, the crest of another island in the distance.

From here we can also see through the trellis tunnel and back to the pool, where Bella lies sleeping.

‘It’s a good thing you’re doing, Eddie,’ Emmeline says.

‘Oh, I’m not doing anything really.’

‘Aren’t you?’ Emmeline says. ‘That poor girl is so lost.’ She pauses. ‘I’m glad she has a friend like you.’

‘To tell you the truth, I can’t understand why she wants to be friends with me.’

Emmeline frowns at me. ‘Can’t you? I think you two are very alike.’

‘I take that as a great compliment.’

She thinks for a moment. ‘I imagine you and Bella are friends because you couldn’t not

be friends.’

She’s right, of course. And I realize that Bella’s definition of love will have to be expanded to include friendship. Because friendship is just two people who can’t keep away from each other.

‘Really, she’s the one helping me,’ I tell Emmeline. ‘She has so much hope for me.’

‘Hope?’

‘That I’ll find my first kiss.’

‘I must say, Eddie,’ Emmeline says, ‘I’m truly fascinated about that. Have you had any luck recently?’

‘I don’t think you’d call it luck.’

Emmeline steps a little closer.

‘I had an almost-kiss in the Winterbourne Gardens. And that is as close as I have come.’

‘Perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place,’ Emmeline says, and I wonder if perhaps this might be a moment. Would Bella be screaming at me to look at her? And I do. And Emmeline is a handsome woman, there is no doubt about that. There’s a feeling of electricity in my stomach.

‘You know, Bella had me convinced you are the one,’ I tell her, feeling brave.

‘Me?’ Emmeline asks.

‘Because a love letter brought us together.’

Emmeline smiles softly.

‘And because you’re a hoot,’ I add.

‘She thinks I’m a hoot?’

‘Actually, I do. But Bella is equally besotted with you.’

Emmeline laughs. ‘Oh, Eddie Winston, I would kiss you right now if I wasn’t spoken for.’

I take a breath in. For a moment, the closeness, the seclusion of this leafy corner of the garden, it felt like something. And I am a fool again.

Emmeline pulls out her phone. ‘Her name is Nancy,’ she says, showing me a photograph of Emmeline smiling beside a woman with a jet-black straight-cut bob whose beringed fingers are laced between Emmeline’s.

‘She’s a very expensive headshot photographer. That’s how we met – she was taking my photograph and I was driving her mad, being unable to look seriously at her lens without laughing. Her studio is in London, though, so we

don’t get to be together as often as we’d like.’

‘But she makes you happy.’

‘Oh, deliriously.’ She pauses. ‘My son asked me if I had a preferred label

. They’re like that, aren’t they, the young ones? He wanted to know if I am bisexual or pansexual or demisexual, or what have you.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I told him that I am Nancy’s. And that is all I care to be.’

‘I know that feeling well,’ I tell her.

‘It’s a bit hilarious, isn’t it?’ Emmeline says. ‘All these years writing romance novels about strapping, handsome men, all those years unhappily married to Mikey’s dad. And I find my Nancy now, at my age!’

‘Life is all about timing, in the end,’ I say.

‘And your time is coming, Eddie Winston.’ She puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘You must keep looking.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else,’ I promise. ‘Someone very wise once told me that it is not too late.’