“If you can’t write,you can work.” That had been the advice of an author she’d heard on an otherwise-forgotten podcast. A week after the lake incident, she spent all weekend organizing the notes she’d taken for her project, in emails to herself, on receipts and scrap paper, and in notebooks. What actuallywasshe writing? (Her childhood friend Elspeth asked delicately in her email.) It wasn’t that clear, even to herself. Something about the distance between Coralie and home, her past so far away, decisively “the past”—her future here so blank and unknown—no one around to see her try, and probably fail, to get words on the page and keep them there. There weren’t actual events from her life in her notes, or real people—it wasn’t memoir. It was more like: feelings she’d had that she couldn’t explain. Or: things she’d done that she couldn’t understand. In the absence of fresh intel, she found herself starting to invent. That was something new—that felt like proper writing. By early afternoon on Sunday, it was so cold and so dark she couldn’t face going far for coffee. She pulled the door of her flat shut and crossed the street to Climpsons, a small café with rough wooden bench seating and good coffee.
“Is that her?” she heard as she ordered. “That’s her!”
It was the man from the park. He stood up from his seat at the window. “It’s you!”
Coralie waved at the girl next to him. “It’s you!”
The girl waved back, her legs swinging.
The man came toward her. She wondered for a moment if he’d embrace her, shake her hand, or even, for a crazy second, kiss her—he seemed to be contemplating all three. He stood with his arms open wide. He was her height (not tall). They gazed at each other. “I can’t believe you ran away,” he finally said.
“I didn’trun!” Coralie said. “I sort of squelched.”
“Zora said it was you.” He called over to her. “Didn’t you?”
Zora, busy eating raw sugar from the bowl, didn’t reply.
“Mmm,” the man said. “Healthy!”
They both laughed and then smiled, and were silent for a second.
“She’s okay, then?”
“She’s perfectly okay! I thought she’d be traumatized for life, have a fear of ducks and water, but she’s living totally normally, taking baths willy-nilly, quacking—she’s fine! Thanks to you.” He was suddenly serious.
She waved her hand. “God, no, not really. It was fine.”
“It must have been fucking freezing.”
Ithadbeen freezing, she’d had to buy a new phone, and her good overcoat was ruined, the wool all rough and misshapen. “No, I really elegantly…plungedin, loving it, like Mr. Darcy taking a dip in his lake.”
“People often sayIlook like a young Colin Firth.” He angled his face to help her see it—which she could, immediately, but what was she supposed to do? Agree?
“Colin Firth is a hundred and eighty-seven centimeters tall.” (Unlike you, she didn’t add.)
He laughed, unoffended. “Did you write his Wikipedia?”
“I might have.”
She waited for him to say she looked like Lizzy Bennet, a known fact at school, and something she’d—for a short time—loved about herself.
Instead, he was serious again. “No, really. You were so brave and acted so quickly. The knock on her head was really nasty—she could have drowned! About forty women with dogs lined up to tell me off.”
“I don’t understand how it happened. She was on one side of the fence. Suddenly she was on the other.”
“She must have done a flip against the fence, like—” He started to mime bending in half at the waist.
“Dada!” Zora shouted from her place by the window. “Stop telling the story!”
The man winced an apology. He looked at Coralie and seemed to gather himself, taking a breath to ask her—what? She had a sudden horror it would be to babysit. Hackney was full of Australian nannies pushing Bugaboo strollers and ordering babyccinos.
“Latte!” the barista called.
“Oh, that’s me.” Would she have sat with them? She thought she probably would have. But the takeaway cup was in her hand. She was walking toward the door. It was too late. Anyway, her whole mind was spread out and waiting for her in the flat. It was time to get back up.
“Come and sit with us,” the man said.
“Oh, I can’t. I have to…” She nodded toward the exit. “Sorry, thank you, so nice to see you!”
