Never Too Late

I’d arrived early, although I knew you would be late. Some things never change. It was never intentional; you had a strained relationship with time, always losing track of it, never allowing enough of it to get from one place to another, then arriving apologetically a few minutes after you were supposed to.

Still, ‘Cuppa and Chatter’ was a pleasant enough place to wait. It was a small, independent coffee shop, perched on the corner of our childhood high street in sleepy Somerset. My suggestion, after hours spent researching the near-identical menus of the many cafes we had to choose from. Cafes and charity shops had always been our home town’s speciality. ‘Cuppa and Chatter’ was new – or at least, it hadn’t existed in my old life, growing up here as a teenager – but it had the advantage of being both somewhere fresh from memories and also of selling homemade banana bread, which used to be your favourite teatime treat. I hoped it still was. Not because I had a particular affinity to banana bread but just to know that, despite the years that had drifted by since I’d cried goodbye, watching the train take you away from me and towards your new life, I hadn’t lost you completely.

The waiter brought over my second pot of tea, a decaf Earl Grey, with a fresh cup and a jug of milk. I smiled. He couldn’t be much more than eighteen: the age you were when I last saw you. Perhaps he was a student, saving for college or university during the long summer holidays, saving for a future that could still be anything he wanted it to be. He gave me a reassuring smile, the sort of smile that you give to someone who has been sat alone for nearly an hour and spent most of the time looking desperately out of the window, before collecting my first pot and disappearing back into the kitchen. Perhaps he thought I was supposed to be on a first date. That I’d been let down.

In some ways, it felt like a first date. My heart was pounding fiercely, my hands were so jittery that I’d managed to spill half of my first cup of tea onto the table and my mind was playing out all the possible conversations, rehearsing smooth-sounding lines. And, like a first date, it felt like I was about to meet a stranger. It had been twenty years, after all, since that goodbye on Platform 3. You were only moving a few hours away, to live with your older sister Rebecca. But it had felt like the end of the world. We’ll keep in touch, you’d said.

I had sent you a letter the next day, of course, to the address that you’d scribbled on a post-it note a few days before leaving. I filled my letter with news that you already knew and, more importantly, with questions, trying to make sure that you had reasons to write back. What did your sister’s farm look like? What did you think of Rebecca and her husband? Did you miss me like I missed you?

But you never wrote back. And I didn’t hear from you again. Not until two weeks ago, twenty years later, when my mother – still happily settled in the same countryside cottage that she’d lived in ever since I was three, when she’d moved there with my older brother and I after her less than amicable divorce to my father, a man I saw once a year for an awkward hour in a restaurant I’d never have chosen to exchange Christmas presents that showed how little we knew one another –forwarded on a letter. I knew instantly that it was from you. That same looping, half joined-up handwriting that couldn’t belong to anyone else. That hadn’t changed, even after all this lost time.

You were moving back to Somerset, your letter said. I remember when you’d first joined our school, having moved in with your grandmother after losing both your parents suddenly and tragically in a car accident. You were so quiet, at first. But we had got chatting during a rainy breaktime in our final year of primary school and not stopped chatting since.

Then, when your grandmother passed away the year before we finished school, you were relocated to live with a temporary foster family. A rather strict couple, who I only met several times but could see it was a relationship of tolerance rather than one of true love. It would only ever be temporary, anyway, with your coming-of-age birthday lurking around the corner. Indeed, we had both turned eighteen the following May, celebrating together with a sleepover at mine, homemade burgers and a bottle of wine – and a large loaf of banana bread, of course, which I’d spent the afternoon baking with my mother before you arrived. We had sat our exams in the June, finished school in the July – and you left in the August.

Without hesitation, I had texted the mobile number that you’d included in your letter and we’d arranged to catch up. I couldn’t ring, unable to trust myself to hear your voice and stay in one piece. I moved to London soon after you’d left – you always said I would – but I was due a visit back to my mother and you gave me another reason to arrange a trip back. I’d arrived last night, catching the Friday evening train that all city dwellers with enough money for a weekend countryside retreat caught, spent the first part of the weekend with my mother, before dropping her off at her afternoon book group then making my way here.

Maybe you wouldn’t come. Why had you written after all these years? You had so abruptly shut me out. There was no fall out; it was as though you had disappeared. I distracted myself with a sip of my Earl Grey before glancing at my watch: 4.15pm. I aimlessly picked up the menu from the table, perusing its list of sandwiches that I had no intention of ordering. What would you choose? Eggs. You were always a fan of eggs. Perhaps you’d go for the egg and tomato baguette. Or perhaps your tastes had changed. Or perhaps you’d skip out on the savoury altogether, going straight for the banana bread.

“Can I get you anything else?”

The waiter was back again, wondering, I’m sure, how many pots of tea I could manage before eventually going home.

“I – ”

I stopped. The café door opened behind him and a woman, tall, flustered, with a head of frizzing auburn curls – not a grey strand in sight, unlike my own – stepped inside. I recognised you instantly. Those twenty years that we’d been apart fell away, as I watched you scan the tables and have the same instant recognition when your eyes found me.

“My – she’s arrived,” I said to the waiter, ducking my head in your direction.

“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” he said, moving onto some other waiting customers. I half-stood, as you wound your way through the maze of tables and made it to me. You popped your bag on the spare chair next to mine then looked straight at me. After twenty years of silence, neither of us could speak. Not at first. But, after a few more seconds, you cut through the unspoken space, opening your arms tentatively and inviting me towards you. That embrace, that moment, was all we needed to open the gates, letting out all those emotions that had for so long been locked-up. I cried. You cried. We held one another for a few minutes, before finally releasing each other to sit down.

“Ava, it’s so lovely to see you,” you said. “I am so sorry I am late – I couldn’t find my keys when I went to leave the house. Just like old times.”

“It’s lovely to see you too, Dina,” I replied. “And it wouldn’t be you if you had turned up on time.”

I paused.

“It was a shock to receive your letter, of course. But a pleasant one.”

You paused.

“I’m so sorry,” you said, again. “I didn’t even know if your mother would still live here. I have never stopped thinking about you, you know. I have almost reached out so many times.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I – I owe you an explanation.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Dina,” I said softly. “But I’ve always wondered, of course, what happened. Did you receive my letters?”

“Yes. And I read every one,” you replied. You reached over to your handbag and pulled out a bulging envelope. The letters, tied together with a ribbon, which I had poured my eighteen-year-old heart into.

“Why –”. The words snagged in my throat. “Why didn’t you reply?”

It was a question I had wanted to ask for twenty years. I was only realising now how much I’d placed my life on hold, waiting. Waiting for you.

“I wrote replies, Ava,” you said, slowly. “I shared what my life looked like. Living on a farm with a half-sister that I’d met only once before, but who turned out to be so very, very kind. Feeding the chickens each morning and going for long, rambling walks across the hills – watching the sunset and wishing you were there to see the days out with me.

“And then, Ava, once I’d written all those updates, I tried to write the truth. The reason that I’d had to leave so suddenly. But I couldn’t put it into words. Still, I stamped each one that I’d managed to write, walked down to the post box, held each envelope out, ready to send my heart back to you. But I couldn’t.”

You reached forward, then, taking my hands in mine. Our fingers still fitted together, intertwining as tightly as the plaits we used to tie into each other’s hair, during those long, lazy afternoons in my room, lounging on the bed and planning our futures together. Where we’d live, what we’d do, who we’d become.

“Dina, what happened? What is the truth?”

You took a deep breath and look straight into my eyes, keeping hold of my hands.

“Do you remember the night we finished school?” you asked.

I nodded. I did, though it was a hazy memory now. We’d been to a field party, hosted by someone in our year that neither of us were cool enough to know well. Still, it was a last celebration and it had been vaguely enjoyable. Dancing, avoiding the boys desperate to lose their virginity, drinking. People had started to leave just before midnight and, worn out from too much cider and too many terrible chat-up lines, I’d decided to go.

“I I tried to find you,” I said. “To see – see if you wanted to go home with me. But I didn’t know where you were. I just assumed that you’d left without me, I think – after all, your foster family were always strict any time you stayed out or behaved like an actual teenager. We didn’t talk about it much after, did we? I just assumed that we’d both had a reasonable time and there was nothing more to it.”

“I hadn’t left,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “I’d gone back for a second hot dog and this – stranger – came up to me. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was squirting on excessive tomato ketchup, occasionally grunting in reply, assuming he’d go away. But he didn’t go away. He kept throwing compliments at me, trying to lure me into flirting back.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. Ava, he – he wouldn’t leave me alone. I told him I needed the loo and left my hot dog on the side before walking away. I kept walking, not looking back, right to the edge of the field and crouched in the bushes, not really needing to pee, but wanting to see through my lie. And hide from him long enough for him to lose interest. But he had followed me, Ava. He had waited for me to stand up and, when I saw that he had come after me, then – then –”

As the tears cascaded down your cheeks, you told me. The pain, as he’d held you down, hand across your mouth, not letting you go until he was done. The devastation, as he’d spat all sorts of names into your face and blamed you for wearing a thigh-tight skirt and leaving the top buttons on your shirt tantalisingly undone. The shame, as you’d finally escaped and run home, clothes ripped and tights torn, looking behind you the whole two miles in case he’d once again followed you. But he didn’t. You never saw him again. The stranger who had stolen your life.

“I thought, if I didn’t tell anyone, it would stop it being real,” you said. “I could pretend that it had never happened.”

“But it wasn’t your fault!” I called out, slightly too loudly. “I would have been there for you, Dina. I loved you. And I love you still.”

“I know,” you whispered. “But I felt – wrongly, I know now – that I no longer deserved your love. That it was my fault. Why did I walk to the end of that field and allow myself to be alone? I didn’t even tell my sister Rebecca why I wanted to move in, just mumbling some excuse about needing a gap year in the countryside before diving into further study. I was lucky. The small farm that she and her husband lived on was most idyllic and I could lose myself in helping out each day, trying to think only of feeding the chickens or milking the cows or making dinner for us all. I got my grades – all thanks to you, Dina, and the hours you spent practising Spanish with me and editing my English essays – but I couldn’t face going to Bristol that year, as I know we had planned. It was only half an hour from home. It was only half an hour from that stranger, who’d stolen forever the life I’d dreamed of with you. I took a year out, getting to know Rebecca – who I remain close to now – and working part time in a local bookstore, before heading to Edinburgh University the following September. It was a huge city, one where I could lose myself and start again. I’ve been living there ever since, teaching English and doing some writing on the side. It’s no excuse, Ava, but I chad to cut off contact with my Somerset life. I have always regretted losing you. But – I feared that I would always see him when I saw you – that I would never shake off that night. I’ve always missed this place, though. And, when a teaching post came up in a school nearby, I saw it as a chance to come back. To get my life back.”

It was only when you paused that I realised how much we were both crying. The waiter came back over, hesitating at a distance once he saw the state of us.

“Can I – can I get you anything else?”

Still holding my two hands in one of hers, Dina wiped her eyes with the back of her hand then scanned down the menu that I’d left face up in the centre of the table.

“Just a coffee for me please – and a slice of banana bread for us.”

I smiled.

“Make that two banana breads,” I said.

As he headed off with our order, I looked into your eyes once again.

“Dina,” I said quietly. “You haven’t lost me.”

We drank and ate and talked until the café closed an hour later. I had to pick my mother up from her book group but we arranged to meet the next morning, before I headed back to London, to work out what might happen next. We knew, as we kissed goodbye, that this was not another ending. We didn’t know what it was, but our lives were destined to be tangled together. Having temporarily grown apart, we would grow closer once again.