Where We Left Off

ROMANTIC SHORT STORY BY VAL BONSALL

As I caught up with Brian after all these years, I couldn’t help reminiscing…

When the firm changed hands, I decided to retire.

It was early, but so what? I’d worked hard all my life.

But then, with the cost of living and all that, I got the idea of perhaps finding something part-time.

My field is accounts – not exciting work, but essential.

All businesses need their staff’s wages calculated, their bills paid and money chased, and I got an offer quite quickly with the local branch of a holiday company.

“Hi, Katherine. I’m Jessica,” a lovely woman greets me when I arrive on the Monday.

“Paula, who you met at the interview, is away today, but I’ll look after you.”

She does, too. At her suggestion, we have coffee in the little kitchen area.

She then takes me to my desk.

“This is your computer. You’ll need to set a password.

“Go for something with happy associations. It puts you in a better mood when you log on.”

On a nearby wall is a poster advertising one of the firm’s popular coach trips holidays to Cornwall.

For my password, I type in the name of a Cornish coastal town where I spent a while.

“Best if you can include some numbers, too, Kath. Makes it more secure,” Jess says.

We’re on the shortened forms of our names now, having bonded, you might say, over the coffee and chocolate digestives.

I add 83, which is when I was last there – 1983.

Forty years ago, when I was a young lass of eighteen.

The computer’s OK with this and I’m away.

I believe I have a good day.

I tell that to my mum and Livia when I get home.

We’re presently a three-generation household.

My mum came to me after my dad died, and Livia recently returned to the fold, complaining about the extortionate rent for flats.

We all rub along together well, especially my mum and Livia, who’ve always been close.

They look like each other and have the same cautious personality.

So when I’m enthusing about the job, they’re very much of the opinion that it’s early days yet and I should see how it develops.

Despite their doubts, by the following Monday I’m feeling totally settled in.

Being a branch office – the head office is in a larger town about 40 miles away – there aren’t many of us and it’s very friendly.

I smile at a man who’s in the kitchen when I go in to make my coffee.

I don’t recognise him and am wondering if he’s new, in which case I should make him welcome – as everyone made me welcome – when, suddenly, I do recognise him.

I’m about to speak when he breezes past me out of the kitchen.

I get my drink and return to my desk.

Or at least I do in body, but in my mind I’m back in the Cornish resort where I spent a month in 1983.

As I’ve said, I was eighteen. Waiting for final school exam results.

My best pal Judith had a relative who owned a hotel in Cornwall. They needed extra staff for the busy summer months.

“Should we offer?” Judith suggested. “We don’t need experience, my aunt said. Just willingness to muck in.”

The hotel was like a postcard: the colour of clotted cream with summer-sea paintwork and tubs of tumbling geraniums.

We had our afternoons free and on the first we went, on recommendation, to the surfers’ beach.

There was a popular café there, which was where I met Brian, the man I’ve just seen in the kitchen.

He, too, was a seasonal worker and we became constant companions from our first meeting.

But now he doesn’t even recognise me, I think, remembering his silence in the kitchen.

I’m at the photocopier a little later when Brian approaches me.

“Katherine,” he says tentatively. “Is it you?”

It’s nearly lunchtime and he suggests we go to a little café round the corner to catch up.

When we met as young people in Cornwall, my family were living in Norfolk and his in Cumbria.

As we eat cheese on toast, we discuss how we both came to be in the Midlands.

“I moved when I got married,” I tell him. “The marriage didn’t last and I considered returning to Norfolk.

“But I’d made friends here, our daughter Livia was happy in her school, and my ex and I wanted her to continue seeing both of us frequently, so I stayed.”

“Mine was a work move,” he says. “That holiday job I had in Cornwall – I really loved it and stayed in the tourist industry.”

He tells me about the different places he’s lived, paradise islands included, and I make envious noises.

“It was fun,” he says, “and possible for me because I didn’t have anyone else to consider.

“But I finally got fed up, heard about the job here and went for it.”

He explains that there’s still some travel involved.

“I’m based at the head office, but I need to visit the branches. They’re all fairly close by, though, and I can return home at night.”

We reminisce about Cornwall.

“The night of the storm – remember the noise the seagulls made?”

“The pasties from the shop on the hill – did you ever taste anything like them?”

I’m enjoying it, but too soon, it’s time for us to go.

He’s quite high up in the firm, in the marketing department, so I’ve learned, so it won’t matter if he is late. But I think I’d better get back.

“I’m back here tomorrow,” he says. “Lunch again?”

At home that evening, I go over it all in my head while my mum and Livia watch something on telly about making pottery.

They’re very keen and have enrolled together at an evening class.

Over lunch next day I learn that Brian’s kept in occasional contact with some of the other workers who were in Cornwall.

He updates me about them, but I’m not really listening.

I’m thinking of the last weekend before Judith and I returned home.

I’d kept hoping that Brian would suggest swapping addresses and phone numbers.

In the event, all he’d said was what a great summer it had been and how he hoped the business studies course I was due to start in September worked out.

When I arrived back home, despite the excitement of the forthcoming course, I had been miserable.

I missed him.

I got the idea of phoning the hotel where he was working.

I’d keep it casual and just ask about the weather and such like.

My mum had heard me getting the number from Directory Enquiries and twigged what I was up to.

She didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes. I’d been talking about him non-stop.

She touched my arm gently.

“Kath, you were there for a few weeks. It was a holiday romance, and they never come to anything, love.”

I hadn’t liked what she said and insisted Brian and I had something special.

But it remained the case that he hadn’t suggested any future contact between us when we said goodbye, so I didn’t phone.

I comforted myself a little by deciding he just wasn’t the type to keep in touch.

But Brian is now saying he has kept in contact with others from our group.

So why not me, I wonder as we return to the office.

I know he’ll still be at our branch tomorrow, but he doesn’t suggest another lunch.

Back at my desk, I reflect that my mother was right. It was just a holiday romance.

A little later, he comes over to me and says he’s managed to reschedule a meeting he had for tomorrow lunchtime.

“Are you up for cheese on toast again?” he asks.

Over this, our third lunch, the drift of the conversation enables me to voice – without embarrassment, or so I think – the question that’s been haunting me.

“So why didn’t you suggest we kept in touch? We spent a lot of time together, and…”

I halt before I say anything daft.

He’s quiet for a moment before he speaks.

“It was different with the others, Kath,” he says. “They were just part of the gang.

“But you were coming to mean a lot to me. It was new for me and it scared me.” He shrugs. “We were very young.”

He points out that I didn’t say anything about any future contact, either.

“I guess I was scared, too,” I say.

I tell him I was going to phone him after I got back home, but was put off by my mum and her dire warnings about holiday romances.

He says he pondered speaking to Judith’s aunt and getting my phone number, but someone said something similar to him.

We stretch this lunch out a bit.

It’s his last day at our branch for a couple of weeks, but he invites me out to the village where he lives at the weekend.

I know it and it’s very scenic; there’s a river and ducks.

It’s about 25 miles away, between our branch and the head office.

That night, I tell my mum and Livia about it as we enjoy a cuppa.

Or at least, I half-enjoy it.

We’re using mugs they have made at their evening class and I don’t trust the handle on mine not to fall off.

“There are some lovely walks round where he lives,” I tell them, “and then we’re going to have afternoon tea at a farm shop.”

“So this is the man you had the holiday romance with,” my mum says solemnly, exchanging a look with Livia.

“I’d be careful, Kath, love,” she adds. “I mean, look what happened last time.”

“But it’s not a holiday romance now, is it?” I protest. “We’re not on holiday!”

“Ah,” Livia begins, “but office romances, Mum, can be just as dangerous.”

Her tone is exactly the same as my mum’s and I have to laugh at the expressions on their faces as they sit side by side on the sofa.

They really are two peas in a pod.

Of course, they may be right.

But this time, I’m going to give it a try!

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