Thalia traced one of the hearts printed on the fabric of her skirt and cursed. There was now a red smudge on one grey heart. She licked the paper cut which had re-opened and found a plaster for it. Perhaps hearts would send the wrong message anyway. She picked up her phone to triple-check the time Luke was due. He’d suggested this café.
Would today show him as stalled in a slovenly middle-age or had he retained some of his teenage looks?
Thalia scrolled back through his messages. Essentially, he’d left the forces, settled into management and looked her up. An unusual name made her easy to find, for him anyway. Her mother hadn’t bothered, for which she was grateful. Thalia had replied. She’d drifted, settling in the town she’d gone to university in. There’d been no movie moment where she’d been transformed from ugly misfit to prom queen and swanned off on the arm of the guy everyone wanted to date.
She hadn’t brought an emergency spare skirt, a habit she was trying to get out of.
Luke’s first message had been a photo, a white sign with stark, upright black letters, Management reserve the right to refuse admission. A squiggly spiral like a length of string wrapped around a thick needle sat in the corner. He’d captioned it “Remember?”
She’d sent back an image: Charlotte’s written in white on a lilac background. The original sign was long gone, but her mock-up was close enough. The sign Luke had sent was the first thing she’d seen going into the club. She remembered the thread too.
Thalia looked up as the café door opened. His cheekbones gave him away. He wore a standard charcoal business suit under a black trench coat. Middle age hadn’t thickened him. His dark eyes carried a familiar glint of mischievousness. His hair was short and neat with flecks of grey at his temples. She returned his smile and gave him a brief hug.
A waft of patchouli took her back to that basement where the scent was used to disguise the damp and disinfectant in the club where walls were painted as black as the unwritten and unspoken dress code. The night Luke had been on his own for once, she’d been wearing a corset belt to pull in the dress that had been two sizes too big, one of her mother’s cast-offs. Her friend suggested for the umpteenth time she ought to stand up to her mother.
But her friend didn’t know what punishment her mother was capable of. One night, a five-year-old Thalia had woken up during the night. She had listened. The house had been quiet enough for her to hear the fridge humming, the clock ticking, but nothing else. She’d got up and gone to her mother’s room. It had been empty. She hadn’t been brave enough to actually put a light on, but had been able to see the flat bed. Thalia had gone downstairs, after she’d picked up her torch. There was no one in the lounge or kitchen either. She had tried the back door. It had been locked. The key, normally on a hook to the side of the door had been missing.
She had gone to the front door. It too had been locked. She had got the small stool from the kitchen to stand on to check the shelf where the spare keys had been kept. The shelf had been empty. She’d shone her torch along the whole length of the shelf and checked underneath. No keys.
She’d turned off her torch and had slumped back into bed. Being alone had been better than being told off but she hadn’t known what to do. “Don’t cry,” had been a mantra she’d used to send her back to sleep.
Thalia had learnt if her mother had not intended to be back by morning, the back door keys would be left on the hook. She would be expected to get dressed, snatch breakfast and post the keys back through the letterbox before going to school. She hadn’t dared tell anyone.
Her mother was like a mannequin: looked great but was hollow. Surely if you thought you’d grown up in your older sister’s shadow and hated wearing her hand-me-downs, you wouldn’t inflict that on your daughter? At least Thalia’s grandmother altered the dresses to fit. Her grandparents really had been struggling. Thalia’s mother didn’t have to, but she wanted a lifestyle she couldn’t afford.
She blinked. Luke checked. Her cup was still two-thirds full. He went to get a coffee. She dropped back into her chair.
Thalia knew if she’d worn the dress her friend had worn that night, her mother would have laughed. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head on a continuous loop, “Why did you pick that?” What the question actually meant was “You’re wearing something I didn’t choose. It doesn’t create the right impression for me. Replace it with something I’ve given you.” All the while her mother would’ve laughed because Thalia crumbling with humiliation was funny. “It’s in your name, stupid. You’re the muse for comedy.” The only way out, as Thalia knew from experience, was to concede she’d made a lousy choice, that she was too incompetent to pick what to wear.
Now she did get to choose clothes. Today, a plain black long-sleeved top and grey skater skirt with heart-prints.
Luke was smiling at the barista.
That night at Charlotte’s the first thing he’d said as he’d sat next to her was, “You know, that sign, I’m always nervous I won’t get in.” She’d known which sign he’d meant, but doors usually opened for him. She’d assumed he was being kind.
“You kept your hair long,” he commented as he sat down opposite her.
Thalia nodded. Like a horse’s tail, her mother had described it. A short thick fringe, then a veil of long, chestnut-brown hair down over her hips. So far, no greys.
“Tell me you talk a bit more these days.” He took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair and put his arms on the table, hands embraced his coffee cup.
“A little.” She smiled. “Although talking less would be the greater achievement.”
“True. You were practically mute.” His easy smile again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“It’s OK.”
“You never let me buy you a drink back then either.”
“I couldn’t return the favour.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“That’s not the point.” OK, she knew she’d never bought him a drink, but he remembered. Was he going to chastise her now for something she didn’t do then?
“You were like everyone’s Alexa.”
Thalia looked at him. His expression was kind. She wasn’t being criticised.
“Everyone had some story of how you solved their problem. But no one tried to solve yours, did they? I know, you didn’t expect anyone to understand. But I wanted to. I was on my own deliberately, hoping I could talk to you.”
Thalia took a gulp of cold coffee. How many years had it been? Yet her mother’s voice was still like a dose of tinnitus, “He’s only talking to you because no one else is here. He doesn’t really like you. Who could like you? You’re nothing. You’re unlovable.”
“None of us got it back then.” His voice was still gentle. “But, after my first tour, I came back OK, but some didn’t. I thought only soldiers got PTSD. I watched what they went through. I learnt how to help, how to support. But it seemed like I was seeing something I’d seen before and I couldn’t remember where. I got talking to some of the medics. Anything traumatic puts someone at risk. They told me what to look for, how people were affected.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’m sorry, I’m not explaining very well. It all seemed familiar but I couldn’t figure why.”
Thalia remembered his clumsy attempts to start a conversation with her as she sat teasing out a loose thread from her over-sized skirt in Charlotte’s. How much she’d wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, it was all hers. She couldn’t speak: she’d stutter, it would sound wrong. Anything not pre-rehearsed would derail her. She looked down and traced the reddened heart. She should have washed the blood out. She’d worn the wrong skirt again.
“Thalia.”
She looked up. “Sorry.” She bit her lip.
He pushed the coffee cups to one side. “One day I saw your name. It was silly. It was a crossword clue, name one of the Muses. I had to look them up. I can’t remember which one was the right answer. But I remembered you.”
She looked at the door.
Luke leaned back.
His movement got her attention.
“Please don’t leave yet. It took me far too long to figure out why your name mattered.” His arms were open. He’d lost his accustomed charm and looked concerned.
“You put two and two together.” She leaned forward, moving her hands onto the table. He wasn’t making fun of her.
He mirrored her and touched the plaster. “Hope that’s not serious.”
“It was bleeding earlier. It’s only a paper cut.”
He scanned her face. “I hope I’ve not made five. Your name makes you easy to find. And, yeah, it might seem weird after so long, and, for all I knew, you were married with kids of your own and might never want to know me again.”
“Is that how you saw me?”
Luke nodded. “Yes. I wanted you to be happy, to be loved and secure.”
“Isn’t that want everyone wants?”
“I wanted you to be too successful to bother with me.” He touched her hand again. “I guess I wanted to compensate. I searched. Money-wise, you’re secure. But you’re on your own. I’ve not been celibate, but every time it felt as if something was missing.”
Thalia shrugged. “Never met the right person. But neither did you.”
“Or perhaps you met him but he was too young and stupid to realise.”
“You’d have never dated me then.”
“I should have.” Luke smiled. “You don’t get it. You were more talented than any of us. There wasn’t a problem you couldn’t solve. But you thought you weren’t. It was like your mother sucked all the blood out of you every night and you spent your days trying to replace it. Like Charlotte’s used to cling on in that little basement while developers snapped up the buildings around it to convert them to modern luxury apartments we could only dream about affording. I wanted to know you better.”
“Neither of us can go back there.”
“I don’t want to. I sent that sign to see if you’d remember me.”
“I do. But you sent something with the sign.”
He touched her ring finger. “The thread.”
He’d taken the loose thread she’d unpicked from her mother’s dress and had tied the thread around her finger. She’d assumed she’d be tomorrow’s joke. But she’d never heard any of their school friends mention it. “I thought it was a joke. You could have had anyone.”
Luke shrugged. “I didn’t want anyone. I wanted to get to know you. But you shut down every conversation I started. I’m not getting at you. I get it now. I couldn’t explain what I was doing back then.” He was still touching her finger. “Thalia, I wish I’d made more of an effort. It wasn’t a joke. I’d never tricked you.”
“The door mat in me couldn’t stop you.”
“Was it really just that?”
She heard his voice stutter. “No, I don’t think it was. Back then, I couldn’t be me. If we’d starting dating…”
“But now you’re you and I still want to get to know you. Coffee?”
Thalia smiled and nodded. He went to get refills.
The red blemish on her skirt caught her eye. She traced the heart it filled.
© 2022 Emma Lee
Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020), and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea, (Five Leaves, 2015),and was reviews editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.
