Yesterday`s flower by Michelle Tarynne (uplifting book club books .txt) 📕

Erika watched Sanchia leave, the li le Uno puffing its way back up the hill.

Pull yourself together, she thought.

But when was the last time she’d been truly, undeniably and absolutely alone?

Though she and Albert had been married for five years and together for two years before that, she’d had a series of boyfriends from the age of fourteen. A serial dater, her faithful (and brutally honest) friend Ashton had said, afraid of your own company.

Well, this was her chance to prove Ashton wrong.

Standing on the wooden deck, Erika looked out towards the ocean. Albert had never been a man for the beach. He didn’t like the sand; he hated sun cream sticking to him. And the sooner he could wash off the salt water in a decent warm shower, the be er. Albert’s idea of a holiday was a cityscape. Prague, Venice, New York. Erika had never complained. She liked to shop, spend hours in museums studying the daubs and strokes of the masters in the great galleries of the world. She liked si ing in cafés watching people pass. She loved eating in chic restaurants and riding on unfamiliar public transport. But the more she considered it, the more she wondered if she’d liked it for Albert, or for herself.

Erika studied the waves, wondering how she would capture the grey in paint. It wasn’t charcoal, or cinereal, or oyster. There was something smoky about the water, the spray coming up like pearls. Or harlequin opals. To the left, a finger of land tipped into the water. Rocky and black. Wavelets combed the edges, cascading foam and onyx-coloured – was it seaweed?

Albert wouldn’t have been caught dead in this isolated, windswept place.

And that’s what decided her. Kicking off her shoes and shrugging off her clothes, she dug into her suitcase for a swimsuit. Winter? This wasn’t winter!

By the time she got to the beach, Erika could feel a cold breeze beginning to rise and so what? She strode into the water, feeling her toes blueing. Her calves. Her thighs. Then she was up to her chest, the Atlantic waves closer, advancing on her. Erika took a deep, hungry breath and dived.

Welling within her when she emerged – teeth chattering, legs goose-pimpled – was a sense of triumph she hadn’t experienced in years. Wrapping herself in one of her Uncle Donald’s fluffy towels, she walked back up Scarborough Beach towards the path that led to the house.

She could do with warming up, though, and decided that she rather fancied a cup of coffee: frothy and foamy with chocolate sprinkles on top. She hadn’t thought to ask Sanchia where to go, but how difficult could it be? She’d have a hot shower, get dressed, then test out the Opel Uncle Donald had lent her, following the coastline so she didn’t get lost.

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She’d been so nervous on her arrival at the airport. Sanchia had tapped her on the shoulder, picking her out immediately.

‘Erika? I’m Sanchia. Welcome to Cape Town. I’m parked illegally, so let’s zip back to the car.’?

About five foot three, and gently rounded, Sanchia had a soft caramel-coloured skin, and a crop of short black hair that collected in points over her ears. She’d been wearing an unfashionable woolly jersey, but her smile was warm. Erika wasn’t used to her accent though – it didn’t sound much like the South Africans she’d met at home in London.

As Erika had se led into the passenger seat, Sanchia had leant over to help her with her seat belt.

‘There’s a trick to this,’ she’d said. ‘A li le jiggle to the left ... See?’

Erika had smiled weakly to herself. She wasn’t good with strangers. Or was she? It was a long time since she’d managed a stranger without Albert.

As it turned out, Sanchia didn’t need her to chat.

‘So this is Gugulethu. It goes on for kilometres.’ Sanchia had waved her left hand, gripping the steering wheel with the right.

Erika studied the endless array of corrugated-iron-and-plastic shacks. Electricity wires hooped down, and every now and then she could see an enormous street lamp, which must have lit up the area like a football field. People passed between the shanties on ramshackle bicycles or on foot. As Sanchia’s car slowed down in the morning traffic, Erika could see that a man had set up a barber shop in a large shipping container and was shaving hair in the morning sun. Men were smiling, cha ing.

It hit her hard in her midriff. When was the last time she’d smiled like that?

Sanchia’s li le car whined as she changed gears.

‘Everybody’s coming into work,’ she said. ‘In half an hour this won’t even be moving. I’ve learnt a few tricks. My brother’s a taxi driver.’

‘Right,’ Erika managed.

‘So Donald tells me you’re an artist,’ Sanchia said.

‘Yes. Acrylics and oils mostly. I’m fascinated by light. It’s liquid quality, you know, how to capture its ephemeral nature when everything else seems to be so dense. To me, light resembles the states of water, sometimes solid, sometimes diffuse and transparent …’

Sanchia smiled.

‘Sorry, I’m waffling on. I also do smaller-scale sketches and paintings for books – that’s my bread and bu er. Not my passion; I can’t express myself as well in such a small space.’

‘Well, you won’t find a more beautiful city to paint than Cape Town. We do things big here: big skies, big clouds, big mountains. And Scarborough changes every day. Especially from your bedroom window. You can sit in that one room and see all the seasons.’

‘So Donald said. Have you lived there long?’

‘Five years. Not really sure how it happened. I was a nurse at one of the private hospitals – oncology. One of my patients left me the house in his will. No family, you know? I was the closest thing to that. Old toppie was in and out that hospital for almost a year. I nursed him on the weekends sometimes. Finally gave in.’

‘Poor man.’

Sanchia nodded. ‘And good,’ she said. ‘I would have nursed him anyway. He was kind. And so lonely.’

‘Must be an accident. Don’t worry. It’ll clear. Good time to study our most famous landmark.’

Erika had been so focused on the traffic that she hadn’t even noticed it. Rising above the entire city, the landmark was actually impossible to miss. It was like the body of an

enormous whale, gliding through an ocean of sky. Above it, an apex of cloud built like a blowhole. The scenery seemed almost staged; an intimate departure point, she hoped, for a new phase in her artistic and physical existence. A se ing that could conspire with the weather and her moods to create something life-affirming; something real.

‘You can’t get lost in Cape Town,’ Sanchia said, grinning. ‘Just follow the mountain.’

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All ready to go in pursuit of her coffee, with no apparent grasp of simple mechanics. The difficulty, she soon discovered, was getting the car out the garage. For some reason, she couldn’t work out how to get the gears into reverse. What a fool. She wondered if she should phone Sanchia, but the thought of needing help so soon made her cringe. Erika pictured Ashton’s knowing smile and slid out the car.

She’d walk. She was not to be foiled on her next attempt at freedom … well, not that easily anyway. She picked up her handbag, closed the garage door, and turned the alarm on with the remote control, as per Sanchia’s instructions.

Fifteen minutes later she came across a small cluster of shops, recognising a li le corner store with a sign saying ‘Fresh pies’. Considering the puppy fat she’d gained since the fiasco with Albert, Erika decided against the pies. But next door was a li le café-restaurant with wide green-and-white-striped awnings and the smell of brewing coffee, which was enough to draw her in.

‘Good morning, dear. Where’ve you blown in from?’ She had a portrait face, just the right number of lines to make her interesting.

‘I walked,’ Erika indicated. ‘I’m staying in one of the houses near the beach. The one with the glass frontage, and wooden deck. Shaped a bit like a ship.’

‘Donald’s place,’ the woman said. ‘You’re holidaying at a strange time of year. We’re expecting another storm by this afternoon. Good thing you came now – you can’t walk two metres in a Cape downpour.’

‘Really?’ Erika said as she studied the white trail out over the ocean.

‘Oh, don’t rely on that,’ the woman laughed. ‘This is the Cape of Storms. Now what can I get you?’

‘A la e, please. And maybe a muffin or something like that?’

The woman scuttled inside, and returned a minute later with the coffee, a muffin and a newspaper.

‘Sit awhile,’ she said. ‘If you’re on hols you’ve time to watch the world pass. I’m Madeleine by the way.’

‘And I’m Erika,’ said Erika.

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The storm came, just as Madeleine had predicted, when Erika was safely back at the house. But it wasn’t as windy and whipped up as Erika had expected; the grey skies simply sluiced out seemingly endless quantities of water that marred her view of the sea as silver droplets congregated on the windows.

Erika liked the rain. So she pulled a chair to under the shelter of the porch so that she

could watch the waves, which seemed fiercer in the half-light. White water crashed on the rocks, then crocheted into foam doilies on the abandoned beach. With only the sound of ratcheting, churning water, Erika felt as though she was the only person in the whole world.

She wondered if this is what Donald had pictured for her. Endless thinking time. Mulling over her shattered hopes.

Being alone, alone, alone.

Her womb scraped out, her doctor’s words echoing through her mind: I’m sorry, Erika, but your egg quality is really poor. And it gets worse in your thirties. We’ve done what we can about your uterine lining; we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next time. Now don’t give up, alright? I can’t tell you that a baby is impossible. Miracles do happen.

The empty chair beside her in the consulting room.

Dr Maas hadn’t said anything about Albert’s absence, and Erika had simply assumed that his absence was normal; that all men avoided the idea of a baby-in-a-bo le. But si ing outside now, watching the rain, she began to remember the anxious would-be fathers in the waiting room, holding their wives’ hands, fetching them cups of tea from the table in the passage. On the two occasions Albert had come with her, he’d checked his email obsessively on his phone, and paced furiously: Why, for Christ’s sake, can these doctors not run to schedule? Instead of calming her, he’d made her stomach churn and her heart thunder in her ears, so by the time she’d seen the doctor she’d been shaking with nerves. What a way to make a new life.

Or not, as it turned out.

Erika sipped the wine Sanchia had left her. It wasn’t really white-wine weather, but it made her feel wanton, drinking on her own. And during the day! Her mother would have tut-tu ed the wine back into the fridge: Now you look after that liver be er than Grandad did, dear. The drink’s genetic, Erika – you know that. It always boiled down to her genes, it seemed. Her hair (We’re carbon copies, darling). Her breasts (Granny Morris. So you can blame your dad’s side of the family). Her artistic bent (I wish I could take the credit, Erika. But you