Ellie's Return by Bronagh Pierce Page A

integrated into her
living and dining room in an attempt to make the tiny cottage less tiny. It
worked in principle but she was trying to find her way around without making
any noise, and as she didn’t want to open the curtains for fear of waking
Ellie, she was waking her with noise instead, trying to make space amongst the
things she would normally have cleared away the night before as part of her
evening routine.   She asked Ellie if
she had slept well, which she had, and opened the curtains a chink, saying
coffee would be ready soon. Neither said much, since Ellie had just woken and
neither was used to having conversations so early in the day. Claudia said that
she had slept well too, omitting that she had been awake and wanting to come
down for two hours, though she hoped that now it was light outside it would not
seem too early.
    They had not talked at any great length
the night before. Ellie could not understand why she was so tired until she
realised that she had hardly slept after the restaurant two nights ago.   She had to be at the airport early yesterday,
so with her last minute plans and her travelling it was natural that she should
be tired, especially with chasing around to find Lola. That reminded her.
    “Do you have Lola’s current phone number,
or her email address? The ones I have must be old ones, the phone is just ringing
out and the emails and texts are getting no response, you’d think there would
some kind of message-fail-alert- thingy.”
    Claudia did not respond at first, she
seemed to be concentrating on something, then she said she would see, but in a
manner that suggested she would not. She bought the coffee over and cleared a
space on the coffee table.
    “So, when did you last speak to Lola?”
    “Actually speak? I don’t know, I guess
when I left here three years ago. We emailed for a while quite a lot and she
was supposed to come and see me when I’d settled in Venice but she had to
cancel. I supposed we just got busy with other things. You still see her
though, right? You can tell me the headlines, what’s new with her? No, tell me
what’s new with you first!”
    Ellie suddenly realised how inconsiderate
she was, putting Lola before Claudia again when Claudia was right here and was
putting her up. Claudia was always the one in the back seat, and Ellie felt bad
that she let that happen because she knew how her friend used to feel about her
and she should not take advantage of her now. Claudia, who never talked about
herself if she could help it, tried desperately now to think of something to
say that would keep them off the subject until something could make Ellie
forget what she had asked. The only trouble was where to begin. She was writing
stories, doing articles, trying to be the kind of freelance journalist who
could pass for a writer instead of a journalist with all the implications that
she hated of that. She had been getting busier, sufficiently so and not too
much. She had a circle of friends at arms length but not the same friend’s that
she and Ellie and Lola used to have in common, and now that she was called upon
to say something about herself she had to admit that she deliberately spent a
lot of time on her own, that her life was very full but full mostly of insular
and isolated pleasures, and that she had never been happier with her little
life. Scratch that, she had been happier, much happier, but it was a great
happiness surrounded by a sea of despair, and this little island she had
managed to get to after that, this was what she was going to cling to. She did
not say that of course, or anything like it. She could not be angry at Ellie
for what she did not feel, however much she wanted her to feel it, and that
tiny part of her vulnerable heart that hoped one day things could be otherwise
was already alert and popping its head up like a fairground frog looking for a
mallet. The alternative was to feel nothing, and that was worse. A cold and icy
heart would help