Love Tastes Like Strawberries. Rosamund Haden

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СКАЧАТЬ noticed. Before Winter could say anything Stella had told her that she was emailing someone from the internet dating site – someone who had given her his name and email address. They had just got past the chatting stage. This was the set-up. “Man about Town” had become Jack, who was interested in coffee, found long hair a turn-on and knew how to “treat a lady”. Winter had nodded and said she was glad it was progressing. That’s when Stella had decided to take it a step further, and the “married man” research had presented itself. Winter had given her a week. Stella needed time to find them, the other members of the life drawing class. It was “perfect”.

      The reception in Ashville isn’t great. She struggles to connect. When she does her inbox is empty. She makes herself another cup of tea and waits, staring at the screen. And then it lights up. A message.

      Hello Stella. It’s Jude. You know, from long ago. Remember me? I need your number. We need to talk.

      As if Stella hadn’t sent her an email. As if Jude had tracked her down. She sends Jude her cellphone number and spookily quickly the phone rings, like Jude has been sitting over her computer, waiting. There are voices in the background but Stella can’t hear them clearly. She knows she is listening for Luke.

      “Where have you been?” says Jude with the same intense urgency in her voice that Stella remembers. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you. I have your jersey. You remember, the one I borrowed that evening, at Ivor’s party, the one I gatecrashed. I’m holding it ransom.”

      “Ivor is dead.”

      “I know.”

      “So you read the obituary.”

      There is silence.

      “Did you read the obituary?” Stella repeats trying to hear the voices in the background.

      “Yes.” Stella can’t tell if Jude is lying.

      “I need to see Timothy,” Jude says.

      Something catches in Stella’s throat. “Timothy’s not at home. He’s away,” she says defensively.

      “Do you know where he is?”

      “No.”

      Stella knows Jude is smoking from the breaks between her words. She’s exhaling smoke in small puffs. But where? In a digs somewhere with Luke? Camped out on someone’s floor?

      “Hey, I’ll meet you outside Ivor’s house on Monday at four,” Jude says. “We need to talk.”

      After Stella puts the phone down she regrets agreeing to go to Ivor’s house again. It is not a good place to meet. What if Tony is there, or that girl? She tries to phone Jude back to arrange another place. But the line is dead.

      Stella makes herself toast with apricot jam then goes out on to the stoep. On the hill on the outskirts of the village, across the apricot orchards and dusty olive trees, Stella can see Margaret Booth’s house presiding. She is the self-appointed mayoress of Ashville and she knows everything that goes on in the village. The lights are on. Margaret Booth is in residence. She has many houses scattered around the globe. She must have returned from summer in the north. She is a swallow. “More like a fat partridge,” Mr Harding always joked.

      The air is cooler now that it’s dark. The bats flit between the trees in the apricot orchards next door.

      As Stella stands out on the stoep she looks across the hedge to the house next door. A light is switched on again. A shadow passes across the closed curtain like a shadow puppet. And then is gone. Stella stares. The house has been on the market for over a year, since the couple who had tried self-sufficiency in the country had returned to jobs in the city.

      She runs across the dry grass to the olive tree near the fence and crouches down and watches. There the shadow is again, silhouetted against the curtain. It’s a man. He walks across the room and sits down at a table. She can see the outline of a jacket and trousers as he hunches over something at the table. A computer? Is he typing? She waits to see if anyone else will join him but no one does.

      Stella stays in the same position for five minutes, afraid that if she turns or walks away the noise will alert the man next door. Her legs are beginning to ache and she feels idiotic. No sensible person would do this. What she is doing is weird, but a lot of what she does is labelled “weird” by those who stick more rigorously to the rules. She watches as he stands up and walks towards the windows. The curtains are pulled open and she ducks further down. He looks out into the dark and for a moment she is terrified he has seen her. Then he pulls the curtains shut again.

      Back on the stoep her heart is pounding. She checks her cellphone – nothing from Timothy, a plz call me from Marge.

      In her mother’s room she takes off her clothes. It’s hot. She lies naked.

      Favourite holiday destination – India.

      A page her mother tore out of an old National Geographic magazine is stuck on the door of her old wooden wardrobe above the mirror. The moon is hanging over the Ganges, reflected in the stirring water.

      Stella closes her eyes, stares across the water and sees her mother on the opposite bank, waving and laughing. She is wearing a bright pink sari.

      Françoise

      It is Sunday morning. Françoise has worked a week’s shifts at the Spar. She enjoys walking to work. It is a break from Dudu’s incessant talking. Sometimes she meets up with another cashier who takes the same route to work. The routine gives her structure, the structure contains her. School contains Dudu – sometimes.

      At work Françoise chats and laughs with the other cashiers. They comment on some of the stranger customers who come in: the mad man who comes into the Spar in his dressing gown at the same time every morning and buys only black plastic bags.

      “He’s got bodies in his house.” The girls laugh. “It’ll be in the papers one day. They’ll find them in the freezer.”

      “But then he’d buy freezer bags, not garbage bags. And they don’t come big enough.”

      “Depends how small he chops the pieces.”

      “He doesn’t look strong enough to chop them up.”

      “Sies. That’s disgusting.”

      This Sunday Françoise has taken off work.

      Dudu is wearing a demure old fashioned floral dress – something she would have worn as a child to church, and this is where she announces she is going. Françoise looks at her suspiciously. They have only been back a week and already Dudu has got herself new clothes and a new plan.

      “Where did you get the dress?”

      “Do you like it? From the charity shop.”

      “You don’t wear clothes like that. You never go to church.”

      “But now I want to repent.” Dudu smiles. “There is a room open in the Catholic house,” she says. “It is a house, Françoise. It has a kitchen where all the families can cook. A kitchen and a bathroom.”

      “I thought we were at the bottom of the list.”

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