Therapy

edge of an ugly main road in one of the least attractive bits of Castile, deafened by the noise of tyres and engines, choked by exhaust fumes, and buffeted by gusts of gritty air displaced by passing juggernauts. As she approached I began to walk towards her, and she took notice of me for the first time. She slowed, hesitated, and stopped, as if she feared my intentions. I laughed, smiled, and held out my arms in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture. She looked at me with alarm, clearly thinking I was some kind of homicidal maniac or rapist, and drew back, lifting her staff as if prepared to use it for self-defence.
    I stopped, and spoke:
    “Maureen! It’s all right! It’s me, Laurence.”
    She started. “What?” she said. “Laurence who?”
    “Laurence Passmore. Don’t you recognize me?”
    I was disappointed that she obviously didn’t — didn’t seem even to remember my name. But as she reasonably explained later, she hadn’t given me a thought for donkey’s years, whereas I had been thinking of almost nothing else except her for weeks. While I had been scouring north-west Spain, hoping to run into her at every turn of the road, my sudden apparition on the N120 was to her as bizarre and surprising as if I had parachuted out of the sky, or popped up through a hole in the ground.
    I shouted above the howl and whine of traffic, “We used to go around together, years ago. In Hatchford.”
    Maureen’s expression changed and the fear went from her eyes. She squinted at me, as if she were short-sighted, or dazzled by the sun, and took a step forward. “Is it really you? Laurence Passmore? What on earth are you doing here?”
    “I’ve been looking for you.”
    “Why?” she said, and a look of anxiety returned to her face. “There’s nothing wrong at home, is there?”
    “No, nothing wrong,” I reassured her. “Bede’s worried about you, but he’s OK.”
    “Bede? When did you see Bede?”
    “Just the other day. I was trying to trace you.”
    “What for?” she said. We were now face to face.
    “It’s a long story,” I said. “Get in the car, and I’ll tell you.” I gestured to my sleek silver pet, crouched on the opposite verge. She gave it a momentary glance, and shook her head.
    “I’m doing a pilgrimage,” she said.
    “I know.”
    “I don’t go in cars.”
    “Make an exception today,” I said. “You look as if you could do with a lift.”
    In truth she looked a wreck. As we parleyed, I was mentally coming to terms with the sad fact that Maureen was no longer the Maureen of my memories and fantasies. She had reached that point in a woman’s life when her looks begin irretrievably to desert her. Sally hasn’t quite reached it, and Amy is still several years on the right side of it. Both of them, anyway, are resisting the ageing process with everything short of plastic surgery, but Maureen seemed to have surrendered without putting up much of a fight. There were crowsfeet at the corners of her eyes, and bags under them. Her cheeks, once so plump and smooth, were slack jowls; her neck was creased like an old garment; and her figure had gone soft and shapeless, with no perceptible waistline between the cushiony mounds of her bosom and the broad beam of her hips. The general effect had not been improved by the weeks and months she had spent on the road: her nose was sunburnt and peeling, her hair lank and unkempt, her knuckles grubby and her nails broken. Her clothes were dusty and sweat-stained. I must admit that her appearance was a shock for which the posed and retouched photographs in Bede’s living-room had not prepared me. I daresay the years have been even harder on me, but Maureen hadn’t been nurturing any illusions to the contrary.
    As she hesitated, leaning forward in her scuffed trainers to balance the weight of her backpack, I noticed that she had placed some lumps of sponge rubber under the shoulder straps to protect her collarbone from chafing. For some reason this seemed the most pathetic detail of all in her general appearance. I felt an overwhelming rush of tenderness towards her, a desire to look after her and rescue her from this daft, self-lacerating ordeal. “Just to the next village,” I said, “Somewhere we can get a cold drink.” The sun was basting my bald pate and I could feel sweat trickling down my torso inside my shirt. I added coaxingly, “The car’s air-conditioned.”
    Maureen laughed, wrinkling her sunburned nose in the way I