Half the World Away

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Retracing our steps, we pick our way among the crowds along the side street, my eyes roaming over all the faces, the dark heads of hair. I ignore the stares I get in return, the expressions of interest and open-mouthed curiosity.

That’s her! My stomach falls. ‘Lori!’ I grasp Tom’s arm, clutching tight. Yell her name – ‘Lori! Lori!’ Ahead of us, walking away.

I let go of him and chase after her, knocking into people, running out into the road when the throng is too busy to get through, my bag bumping against my hip, the dusty air dry in my mouth.

‘Lori! Lori!’

I reach the corner where a woman sits, selling orange fruits laid out on a blanket. Panting, I search frantically, right then left, eyes running over heads and faces. Tom is at my side.

‘It was her!’ I say. My heart is hammering in my chest. ‘I can’t see her now.’ I bend forward, brace my hands on my knees, a stitch stabbing my side.

‘Was it?’ he says. ‘Are you sure?’

I only saw her for a moment, her hair, the back of her head, the right height…

‘Jo, are you sure?’

How to answer him? That second, that first glimpse, I was convinced. Every cell in my body sang with recognition. I knew. But now? A few yards down the street a woman throws a bowl of dishwater out onto the pavement. I watch the water flow across the stone into the gutter and feel my certainty drain away.

‘I don’t know.’ I straighten up, push my hands into the small of my back, then look up past the trees and the tangle of overhead wires where the cloud still blankets the sky.

The world keeps turning.

A couple, young and beautiful, arms wrapped about each other, walk past. An elderly woman with a baby in a buggy stops to buy fruit.

My throat aches, so dry it feels as if there are blades in it. I open my bag and get out the water.

‘Hello, hello.’ Two little girls with, I think, their grandmothers. Tears burn my eyes.

‘Hello,’ Tom says.

They giggle and one of the women says, ‘English?’

I turn away, teeth gritted, trying to breathe through my nose.

‘Bye-bye,’ Tom says. ‘Bye-bye.’ He touches my elbow, edges us away and back onto our route to the hotel.

Was it Lori? Already the image I have is fading, like a dream, the details evaporating, melting away. Wouldn’t she have heard me when I shouted? There is a film, Don’t Look Now, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in it. The couple have lost their child. She is dead and they are in Venice and keep glimpsing her, always in the distance, elusive. A bright shock of colour in her red coat.

We eat in the hotel restaurant, on the top floor with views over the city. The menu includes Asian and European dishes. Tom has steak and chips; I choose pork with noodles. It’s all I can do to stay awake.

Back in my room, I call Nick. The boys are still at school. I tell him the flight was OK, the hotel fine. I don’t mention my chasing after an apparition. ‘I’m going to bed soon. Give my love to the boys. I’ll try you tomorrow after we’ve had the meetings.’

It’s dark now. The building opposite is illuminated; changing neon colours cascade in lines down the edges, reminding me of the fairy lights we had on sequence. Lori loved the flashing but I always changed it to a steady glow.

I pour some water but it’s tepid and barely touches my thirst. In bed, the mattress is hard, unyielding, and my hips ache. I still feel the thrum of motion, and the drone of the plane engine echoes in my head, and when I sleep, I dream of flying, beating my arms to rise with the egrets up and above the cloud, into the sun.