Please God, like me, may he have finally given up.
My fingers shook as I lifted the last envelope from the box and ripped it open. It was dated just a couple of years ago, and I unfolded it slowly. Would this be his goodbye? Had he stopped hoping, all these years later?
I scanned the page, my heart dropping.
There were only ten words.
I am always with you. I will always be here.
He hadn’t given up. As recently as a few years ago, he was still writing, still longing. I sucked in my breath as a thought hit. Could Bertie have placed the advert in the paper on my mother’s birthday? He knew those ten words, he didn’t know she was dead, and he’d definitely known her birth date. Hell, he’d considered it his, too. God, the poor man. To want to see her so much he’d placed an advert in a national newspaper . . .
I put the envelopes back in the box. I’d read them all, yet I still couldn’t understand why Carolyn had tried to hide them from me. Perhaps she’d figured, if my mum hadn’t wanted to read the letters, then I shouldn’t, either? I was glad I had, though. I could see in those letters what I would have become if I hadn’t accepted my mother’s death; if I hadn’t taken these final steps to douse the flames. My hope would have lingered, taunting me for years – for decades, even, because it had taunted me for years.
Thank God there’d been an end. Thank God I’d been able to stop the fire from burning out of control. But Bertie . . . I swallowed. Bertie was still hanging, swinging in the wind with the noose of hope around his neck. He was stuck in the torturous state I’d existed in, with no end in sight.
Unless someone told him my mother had died.
I’ll tell him. The thought popped into my mind and I held it there for a second, unable to shove it away for some reason. It was a ridiculous notion, I told myself. I shouldn’t care – this person was a stranger. But somehow, Bertie wasn’t a stranger. It was odd, but I felt like I knew him. I could see how he’d loved my mother and how she’d been his world. I could understand his devastation and confusion when she’d disappeared, and how he longed for her to return.
We were connected by more than those ten words. We were connected by more than our love for my mother. We were connected by losing her, and he deserved to know that she wouldn’t come back. He deserved a chance to accept her death and move on, to be able to make a life without my mother in the margins.
Just like me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ELLA
I rifled through the box and drew out the most recent letter, staring down at the return address: 10 Belford Mews, Edinburgh. There was no phone number and – I flipped over the envelope – no surname. Should I write to him and tell him the news? What if the letter didn’t reach him? What if he wrote back, wanting more information? I didn’t want to start a dialogue. I just wanted to set him free.
I walked to the window, watching the waves churn as my mind spun. I’d go to him. I’d go up to Edinburgh, tell him what I needed to, then come back to my life. I didn’t want to prolong this. The sooner I saw Bertie, the sooner normal service could resume.
The instant I made the decision, I propelled myself into action. I called work to say I wouldn’t be in, then booked the train, groaning at the long journey ahead. Even if I managed to make it to the station in the next hour, it looked like I wouldn’t get to Edinburgh until eight-thirty tonight . . . if everything ran on time. I didn’t fancy trundling around an unknown city in the dark, so I booked a hotel near the station. I’d head to Bertie’s tomorrow morning, praying he still lived there.
I let out a low laugh. This was crazy, wasn’t it? Asking for unscheduled time off work, taking a train across the country to a city I’d never been in, tracking down my mum’s former lover to an address that might not even exist any more . . . all to tell someone my mother had died years ago, and that he didn’t need to – he shouldn’t – hang on to hope any longer?
I shook my head. Maybe it was crazy, but I couldn’t let this man continue to suffer. I’d read his words; I knew his pain. Now that I was finally free, I had to help him, too. I had to end the awful legacy of my mother’s actions.
I stood in my flat for a second, wondering what to bring – wondering what to pack my things in. It sounded stunningly boring, I knew, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d left England . . . Maybe back in Year 6, when Carolyn and Rob had arranged a trip around Europe for us all? I cringed, remembering how I hadn’t spent time drinking in the sights around me. Instead, I’d examined every woman who bore even the slightest resemblance to my mother, asking Carolyn over and over if that could be her.
We never went to Europe again, and the next summer Carolyn said we’d take it easy at home instead.
I dug out the rucksack I used for work and threw in some knickers, a clean pair of jeans, and a few jumpers. I was as low maintenance as you could get, even wearing mascara only for special occasions and my trusty Chapstick to protect my lips from the salty wind when I made my way to work. My keys, my wallet, my mobile phone . . . Oh God, Dolby! I’d only be away one night, but I didn’t want to leave her alone even that long. She wasn’t used to being on her own. Who could I get to look in on her?
Carolyn would ask endless questions about where I was going, and no way was I about to tell her the truth. For whatever reason – perhaps Bertie could tell me, for there was nothing shocking – she hadn’t wanted me to see those letters, and I wasn’t about to tell her I’d read them all now. As much as I loved Rob, he had the memory of a parakeet and I didn’t trust him to keep a plant alive, let alone remember to visit my cat.
I tapped my foot, for the first time realising how limited my circle was. I hadn’t had a best friend since Lizzie, back in primary school. I’d started school a few months after my mum had left, and all the kids were the best of friends from nursery. But it wasn’t only the kids that were foreign: it was everything. From the structure of the day, sitting on a hard floor in an uncomfortable cross-legged position while sharing during circle time, the hustle and bustle of playtime, and the smells that made me sick at lunchtime, school might as well have been Mars. And although Carolyn was deputy head when I’d started there, she’d expected me to slot in and had not given me any special considerations, thinking it was best I made my own way. I don’t know now if she could have made it any easier for me even if she had tried. I was locked in my own cycle of hope and despair – although I wouldn’t have labelled it like that, of course – and school was just one more thing in this new life to drag me down.
I might have sunk if it hadn’t had been for Lizzie.
Even now, I can remember the damp, earthy smell of the furthest corner of asphalt in the playground where I used to stand every morning and afternoon playtime. The area was fenced off but I’d latch my fingers on to the chain-links, as if they could anchor me down. If I craned my neck and stood on my toes, I could see the sea. I’d stare and stare, telling myself over and over that my mother couldn’t be in there. She wasn’t in there. She was coming back for me.
The other kids didn’t see me – or if they did, they didn’t care. Only Lizzie would venture out to where I stood, chattering in her bright little voice about whatever was happening in her world: her hamster, her annoying brother, how her mum wouldn’t get her whatever toy was popular at the moment. I ignored her at first, but she kept coming back, and eventually I couldn’t help joining in with her chatter. We’d stayed firm friends through Year 1 and Year 2, but then her mum had remarried and she’d moved to Liverpool, only bothering to return my letters once. I’d missed her chatter – it had distracted me when I’d needed it most. The silence swirled around me, closing me in. I’d soon learned it was easier to bury myself in it.