‘Oh right, you said. Sorry.’ I lean forward between the seats until the belt clicks, stopping me from going any further. ‘So, it was more of a slow build than a kablammo moment?’
‘What’s “kablammo”?’
‘You know, KABLAMMO! When you’re just floored by how much you like someone. It’s like a sucker punch to the heart – KABLAMMO!’ I throw a punch into the space between the seats.
He lets out another deep, throaty laugh, and I feel surprisingly pleased. He doesn’t look like someone who laughs a great deal.
‘I guess it was like that for me, maybe not for her, not at first.’ He looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘She has this magnetic quality that draws people’s attention wherever she goes.’ He thrums his fingers on the wheel. ‘You really think you can get that feeling from a suitcase?’
The poetic way he talks about his wife makes me pause, then I shrug. ‘I don’t make the rules. I guess you either believe in fate and serendipity or you don’t. Listen, how big is Jersey? Maybe you know this guy?’
He frowns.
‘I know you think I’m the only driver on the island, but a hundred thousand people live on this nine-by-five mile rock. It’s unlikely I’d know him.’ He pauses. ‘Though, come to think of it, there is this man – I’ve seen him at the library, very handsome, always has To Kill a Mockingbird under one arm. He plays the piano at Age Concern most weekends.’
‘Seriously?!’ I say, before realising he’s winding me up, then slowly, ‘Oh, ha ha.’
The driver gives a satisfied grin.
‘Well, my mobile number is on my luggage. As soon as he realises he’s got the wrong bag he’ll call, and then, well—’
‘Kablammo?’
‘Exactly,’ I say, spreading my arms as though to take a bow.
When we pull up at my hotel, I have a thought.
‘You’re local here, right?’
‘I grew up here,’ he says.
‘Can I show you some photos? You might be able to tell me where they were taken. You can keep the meter running if you like.’
He gives me a single nod, turns the light above his head on and the meter off.
I take the brown photo album from my handbag and pass it to him.
‘My mum met my dad here, in the summer of 1991. I’d like to try and find some of the places they went to together.’ He slowly opens the album to the first page. ‘They’ve both passed away, so this is all I have to go on.’
He turns around, looking me straight in the eye for the first time.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
His tone is so earnest that the words momentarily fluster me. I give the smallest nod of acknowledgement then quickly lean forward to point at a picture in the album.
‘Do you know where that is?’
‘Hmm,’ he says, rubbing his beard. ‘I’d say from the look of the harbour wall in the background, it’s Rozel Bay. This is your mother?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She looks like you.’
‘Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment, but she was far prettier than I am, certainly more flexible.’
In the picture Mum is balancing on a rock in a green swimsuit, her long brown hair covering her chest. She’s holding a dance pose, one long, toned leg jutting out at a ninety-degree angle. I’m tall like her, my hair equally straight, but blonde. We both have full lips and lightly freckled skin, but her nose is smaller, perter. In the picture she’s younger than I am now. It’s strange to think that by my age she was a widow – a single mum with a four-year-old child.
He turns the page of the album.