Sunnybrook, August 10th

Lyla enters from the back, walking past nurses in scrubs and administrators in suits, their identification tags clipped to the bottom of their jackets. They sit on picnic tables scattered about the criss-cross of roadways used by off-duty ambulances and delivery trucks. There is the low buzz of a place that is always open, which quickly becomes background noise as Lyla enters the hospital.

She’s never liked hospitals, with their shiny floors and light-coloured walls. Sometimes you can be lulled into a sense of normalcy with doctors striding by, people in suits on official business; only to be pulled back by someone in a wheelchair, covered only by a gown, leaning against the armrest, with a dangling IV bag in tow.

Lyla finds the elevator and takes it to the sixth floor, just above the tree tops of the valley that surrounds the hospital. She walks quietly down the hallway, feeling somewhat like an intruder, ready to be stopped at any point and asked what her business here is. The most she gets is a raised head from the nurses’s station, eyes that don’t linger long enough to assess her motives.

Entering the room, Lyla smiles briefly at the couple at the first bed: the woman lies completely back, looking up toward the ceiling, unmoving. The man sits on a chair beside her, a magazine in his hands. The man smiles briefly back, but it is a smile full of warmth that spreads to his eyes and chin. Turning, she moves towards her grandmother’s bed, which is propped up, although her grandma’s eyes are closed.

Lyla stands for a moment, unsure of where to place herself, and her grandmother’s eyes open. They take a second to focus on Lyla, but when they do, a smile breaks across the old woman’s face.

“Hello, dear!” she says in her soft Dublin accent. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Granny,” says Lyla, leaning in to kiss her grandmother on the cheek. “How are they treating you here?”

“Very well, very well,” says her grandmother, still beaming.

Lyla pulls up a chair next to the hospital bed and answers all the questions her grandmother can think of. As they talk, there are stirrings from across the room.

“Hello, Alice,” calls out Lyla’s grandmother from behind the half-drawn curtain that obscures her view of Alice.

“Hello, Eileen,” comes the response from the bed.

“My granddaughter’s come to visit me.” The man with the magazine is beaming at Lyla, perhaps providing the visual part to the conversation.

“Oh, lovely,” says Alice.

“This is Lyla,” says Lyla’s grandmother.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Gerald,” The man rises and comes quickly over, hand extended in greeting. “That’s my wife, Alice over there.” He turns and nods toward the bed, still grasping Lyla’s hand.

“Nice to meet you,” calls Alice, head still unmoving on the pillow.

“It’s nice to meet you both,” says Lyla, releasing Gerald’s hand and craning her neck slightly to see Alice.

Gerald stands for a moment, just smiling, his eyes flitting from Lyla to the curtain, then back to Lyla. He turns to look at his wife, who still lies still, eyes looking up to the ceiling.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your visit,” he says after a brief moment, “lovely to meet you.”

“And you,” smiles Lyla, watching him move back to his wife’s bed and sit back down in his chair. He picks up his magazine and begins to read it.

Lyla turns back to her grandmother who is reaching for a brush on her table tray.

“Lyla, would you be a love and just brush the back of my hair?” she asks.

“Sure!”

As Lyla brushes the thin grey hair, pressed against her head from hours against a pillow, she listens to the quiet murmurings from across the room.

“Do you want to hear an elephant joke?” asks Gerald, his voice slightly muted.

Lyla can barely hear Alice’s reply and can’t make out the components of the joke as her grandmother thanks her for the minor grooming. What she does make out is the eruption of laughter that comes from Alice when Gerald finishes: whole-hearted and from the belly. Lyla’s eyes dart across the room: she can see Alice’s body heaving, Gerald’s hand resting on her arm beneath the covers, his face lit up while watching hers.

Lyla and her grandmother lock eyes, their mouths breaking into smiles simultaneously.

Ward’s Island, November 3rd

Lyla snuggles her face into her scarf as she puts her mittens back on after taking a picture of Max. His body is still, sturdy legs planted among the browning leaves, watching birds through his binoculars. His coat is undone and Lyla hasn’t seen his mittens on his hands yet. Amazing, thinks Lyla. Children never seem to feel the cold like adults. Her hands took only a few seconds to become cold and stiff on this unseasonably cold day in November.

“Aren’t you cold, love?” she asks Max.

Max twists his body, led by the over-sized black apparatus he holds at his eyes, following something aloft that she can’t see. He then brings the binoculars down and looks at her.

“Nope,” he says, then steps out of his stance and heads for the trail.

“Ironman,” says Justin, smiling. “Must be a Palmer.”

Lyla smiles and falls in line behind her brother, following the well-worn path through the trees.

When they get to the clearing, Max stops and turns around.

“Here, Dad?” he says, eyebrows raised.

Justin reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a plastic bag of birdseed. He empties a small amount into Max’s outstretched palm, then offers Lyla some. Justin takes some for himself, then replaces the plastic bag.

“Now remember, stand by a tree and be very still,” he instructs Max.

The three of them stand in a haphazard line just off the clearing, arms outstretched with the proffered gift. Within a few seconds, the first chickadee, small and grey with its little black head, lands on a branch close to Justin. It hesitates momentarily, then swoops into his palm, nabs a seed, and flies away.

“Awww!” says Max. “How come it won’t come to me?”

“You have to be very still and very quiet,” says Justin.

We stand in silence for several seconds until another chickadee lands on a branch near Justin.

“Here we go,” he murmurs, moving his palm slowly toward Max’s.

The bird hops from branch to branch, trying to determine the best approach. As he gets closer and closer to the outstretched hands, Justin curls up his fingers, making a fist around the birdseed. The chickadee darts closer to Max, swoops down, and lands on Max’s hand.

Max’s eyelids flutter in surprise, but he remains still. Lyla watches a smile break across his face as he feels the light tickle of the chickadee’s feet on his fingers.

After it pecks at a few seeds, the chickadee zooms away, becoming camouflaged in the grey branches of the surrounding trees.

“Did you see that, Auntie Lyla?” asks Max. “The chickadee came to me!”

The Annex, September 28th

Lyla leans back in her chair and crosses her arms across her chest, taking in the boy who has just walked past her table. He walks with a familiar smoothness, his eyes focused beyond the heads of the people sat around the tables that fill the room: a man on a mission. His slim, muscled shoulders are visible through his tight-fitting T-shirt and Lyla lets her gaze drop to his waist, the band of his underwear visible above his jeans.

His hair is slightly disheveled, a style that probably took him 15 minutes and a whole lot of that molding mud he used to use. His eyes do not pass over Lyla, although she’s sure he’s seen her, scoped her location the minute he passed through the door.

He greets another guy at the bar, shakes his hand and smiles his coy, closed-lip smirk he employs to keep any overt emotions in check. He casts a glance over his shoulder, mid-sentence, his eyes not quite meeting Lyla’s.

He is still the irresistible, unattainable bad boy that Lyla met 5 years ago. It was his aloofness that first attracted her. Well, that’s not true. It was his brown eyes that first attracted her. It was his detached demeanour that intrigued her. There’s nothing like a boy who doesn’t want you...

Throughout their brief courtship, which consisted of long spaces of time between phonecalls and run-ins at the bar where it seemed that he was only then reminded of her existence, Lyla fantasized him into a good boy. He became a boyfriend who would watch movies with her on a Friday night, someone who would cook her dinner and drive her to yoga class. Someone who would fall in love with her.

Funny, how we do that, she thinks, arms still crossed warily across her chest; how we rise to unachievable challenges in love.

Her pint arrives, delivered by a short blond waitress, someone who, she has found out through the grapevine, has been his latest conquest. Lyla thanks the unknowing blonde girl and uncrosses her arms to reach for the glass.

Lyla has her eyes on him as she brings the beer to her lips. Just then, he turns his head and locks eyes with Lyla. A rush of adrenaline surges through her, starting in her chest. She can actually see him consider whether or not to acknowledge her. And just as his face warms into a smile, the bartender taps him on the arm and his attention is pulled away.

Lyla swallows the bitter-tasting beer, places the pint glass on the table, and leans back in the chair.

Clapham, July 3rd

”Simon!” calls Lyla as she sees him stoop to fit his tall frame through the truncated door.

He sees her and smiles, nodding slightly and comes over, his eyes flitting self-consciously to the table of girls who have noted his entry with stares and whispers.

“Hello!” he says warmly, receiving the embrace that Lyla has offered, half-standing out of her chair.

She holds him a moment too long, protecting him, perhaps. He is still her sweet Simon: innocent and unknowing, struggling to figure out his place in this world. Although the sunglasses he places on the table are ten times the price she has ever paid for a pair. She can’t quite see him in the light that most people do, especially the table of girls who are surreptitiously trying to get Simon in the viewfinder of their camera phones.

“It’s like a bloody fishbowl,” says Lyla, not moving her lips in a lazy attempt at her own surreptitiousness as Simon sits down and leans in to hear her.

“Yeah, well, I know,” says Simon, unsure if he wants to get into another discussion about his newly-found fame.

“So, how are you?” asks Lyla, sensing his hesitation, eager also to return to the distilled form of normalcy the two friends now inhabit.

“Good, good,” says Simon. “I’m off for a week in France with Charlotte.”

“Ooo! Whereabouts?”

“Down near Toulouse – we’ve found – “

“Excuse me…”

It’s one of the girls from the table. She is grinning and can’t be more than 16 or 17 years old. Lyla and Simon look up toward her.

“Are you Simon from Seafish?” she asks, her made-up eyes eager and focused on Simon.

“Er, yes, I am,” he says, casting a quick glance at Lyla, who smiles slightly and then looks at the table.

“Can I have your autograph?” She offers Simon a pen and a journal, white with pink flowers on the covers, the first half of the blank pages covered with snippets of writing in different hands.

“Sure,” says Simon, taking the journal and finding the next blank page. “What’s your name?” He looks up at her, eyebrows raised.

“Charlotte.”

“Ah. Same as my girlfriend’s,” he says, and Charlotte giggles, receiving the closed journal and pen when he is finished.

“Thanks,” she says, raising her shoulders to her ears, still grinning.

“No worries,” says Simon, grinning back.

“Bye!” she says, backing away slowly.

“Bye,” says Simon.

“Bye,” says Lyla, after the girl has turned away and is walking swiftly back to her fold.

Simon and Lyla watch her until she sits, the heads of the other girls forming a tent around the journal. Simon and Lyla turn back to each other. They exchange a look that is half-quizzical, half-surprise, which then dissolves into a shared snicker.

“Right,” says Simon, “Where were we?”

Hampstead, March 25th

Gwen has chosen a tapas bar this time, an easy tube ride down the Northern Line from her house in Hendon. Lyla’s journey has taken a little longer – she checks her watch as she walks up the massive escalator, her body feeling slightly spectral at the speed she glides past adverts for west end shows and travel insurance. She’s five minutes late and Gwen will silently notice this fact.

It takes a moment for Lyla to get her bearings as she emerges from the station. The evening light is dwindling, slowly encompassing figures in black and grey coats, making their way home. She eyes the Starbucks, Gwen’s marker, and walks towards it.

Gwen is seated at a table near the front, back rigid, book in hand. It is a ritual she picked up at university with Lyla, who was constantly 15 minutes late for everything. Gwen was always 10 minutes early and therefore needed some form of entertainment while she waited. She looks up as Lyla throws her coat over the back of the chair, her eyes hard and calculating for a split second before melting into warm recognition.

“Lyla! How are you?” She half-stands to receive Lyla’s kiss, “Trouble on the tube?”

“Can never rely on London transport,” responds Lyla, sucking in her breath as she sits down.

“How’s Sam?” she asks, eyebrows raised, eyes wide.

“He’s well. Working hard, as always.”

“Do you remember that horrible Charles I went out with just before I met Lucas?” Gwen’s eyes drop to her wedding and engagement rings on her left hand and she swirls them around her finger. “He was always working. At least that was his excuse. It was such a relief to find Lucas who actually made time for me!”

She leans forward in her seat and looks back up at Lyla, a half smile on her face. Lyla holds her gaze for a moment too long, so that the silence is uncomfortable.

“Oh, not that I’m saying that about Sam, darling!” Gwen breaks the hush, her face becoming animated.

“Oh, I – I didn’t take it that way,” replies Lyla, just as the waiter arrives at their table.

“Ladies, something to drink?”

Their necks elongate as they turn their collective attention to the waiter. Gwen is the first one to turn her gaze back across the table.

“They have a fabulous Spanish tempranillo here,” she says, bright-eyed and chirpy.

“Sounds great,” says Lyla as she meets Gwen gaze. Lyla smiles and reaches for the menu.

Earlsfield, March 14th

Lyla looks up at the clock which hangs over the large stone fireplace, thick wooden beams creating a mantelpiece across the front, and catches herself. The clock says quarter to nine, as it has for the past 3 years she has been coming to this pub. She pulls back her sleeve to check her watch: twenty minutes past five, he is late.

She turns her eyes to the television screen which broadcasts the highlights of a cricket match. Lyla has always like cricket, but never been able to watch it for the extended periods of time that Sam does. She takes a sip of her pint and sits back on the bench.

The door opens and Sam enters, coat over his head – it must have started to rain again. He lets it fall back around his shoulders as he scans the room. Lyla watches his face until his eyes stop on hers and his mouth settles into a smile. She loves that smile – it means he’s left the day behind.

“Sorry I’m late,” says Sam as he stoops to kiss Lyla. It has become his standard greeting.

“Don’t worry,” she replies, closing her eyes briefly, smelling his skin.

Sam takes off his coat and hangs it over the back of the wooden chair. “You alright for a drink?” he asks.

“Fine,” smiles Lyla.

She watches him find his way to the bar, loose fleece covering his broad shoulders, his hair never properly combed. When she sees the barmaid fix her eyes on Sam, Lyla takes another sip of her beer and turns back to the cricket.