Standing at the window, she brushed the curtains aside, looked down to the coast and up the hill to where the old Mayon Lookout was positioned. A walk up there would have been her first stop in her plan for the day, and afterward she would have driven out to Penzance to go to the theater. That was Tom’s wish in 1982: I wish that I could take you to see a musical in the West End. Cats was good. I think you would have loved it. Today she was due to see an acoustic guitar player, a woman singing. The closest she could get to fulfilling that wish. But she already knew she wasn’t going to go. It wasn’t 1982 anymore, and this wasn’t the West End. Whosever life she had been trying to live all these years, it wasn’t really hers. It was a life that belonged to another girl, one who stopped existing in many ways on the day that Tom left.
Heading upstairs, Elizabeth returned to her bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she opened the bedside drawer and removed a box of tissues. Underneath, she found a black-and-white photograph of Tom, standing without a shirt, his hands on his hips. The hardest thing wasn’t knowing that he didn’t look like that anymore, but knowing instead that she had no idea of what he did look like now. Knowing that he had changed, and she didn’t know in what way. Fingers so old she barely recognized them as her own brushed across the image, before she placed it back into the drawer and covered it with the tissues. Sometimes it was best not to look.
“Pull yourself together, Elizabeth,” she told herself. Using a trick of old, she gave her cheeks a pinch for some color, then finger-combed her graying blond hair into place. Grabbing a pair of walking trousers and a thick fleece from the wardrobe, she dressed, then picked up the robe from the bed. After a moment’s hesitation she bundled it into a heap and tossed it to the bottom of the wardrobe. “You’re acting like a silly girl,” she said, dusting off her hands as if she had just completed a job well done.
Outside the house she found it was a perfect coastal day, bright and sunny with a light breeze. Clouds moved at speed overhead, and out near the horizon they lingered gray and heavy, offering the promise of rain. It was hard to ignore the old lookout behind her, the place she used to go to with Tom. The last time she’d climbed those steps to the lookout, it had made her knees ache. Was it so stupid to go there now? Pausing on the road, she stopped to look back over her shoulder, her gaze traveling up the green hill toward the small building on the top. What stopped her? A sense of regret, perhaps, or even foolishness. Whatever it was, she continued along the road instead, reminding herself again that it was pointless to revisit the past.
With her plans for the day in ruins, she stopped at the café and ordered a cup of tea, then sat to drink it at a small table overlooking the water.
“What are you doing sitting out here?”
Elizabeth looked up to see her oldest friend, Francine, just coming down the road with a newspaper tucked under her arm. Francine took her time thanks to a recent hip replacement. Balancing her weight on the table, she set her stick aside and lowered herself into a chair.
“Just an early-morning cuppa,” Elizabeth said. The thought of admitting the real reason she was sitting there made her cheeks blush. Heat spread across her face, so she loosened the zipper on her fleece.
“Don’t often see you wasting time like this,” Francine said as she helped herself to a sip of Elizabeth’s tea. “Why aren’t you painting?”
“Oh, you know.”
Francine shook her head, waited for an answer.
“I just didn’t fancy it.”
Her friend’s eyes widened with surprise. “What have you done with my Elizabeth?” Francine chuckled before looking out to the clouds on the horizon. “I would have thought a storm like that would have soon sparked your interest. What’s up with you? Is it something to do with Kate again?”
Elizabeth loved Francine, and in all the time she had known her she hadn’t changed at all. There might have been a few more wrinkles, but her hair was still dark chocolate brown and her lips as red as strawberries. Even her manicure was perfect. They had nothing in common really, if you thought about it, but had shared a lifetime of highs and lows. Like a couple of sisters who bickered something rotten, they would have defended each other to the end. Elizabeth had learned early on that Francine was to be depended upon, and she had never forgotten it. But although Elizabeth had told her some of her deepest secrets, Francine knew nothing of her ongoing connection to Tom and the gifts he left each year.
“Well, Kate’s still not talking to me, but it’s not that.”
“So, what is it then?”
“It’s Tom,” Elizabeth said.
Francine thought for a moment, but the name needed no introduction. “Thomas Hale?” she said with a smile. Elizabeth didn’t like that smile one little bit. “Now there’s a name from the past. What about him?”
Was she really going to admit to this? Francine would think it silly, wouldn’t she? Any lasting connection they had could be reduced to a concentrated version of life, forty-nine wishes that never really came true. It all seemed a bit daft, now that she was preparing to say it aloud.
“It’s the anniversary of the day we first kissed. That day he took me on a boat to the Brisons.”
Francine smiled at the memory. “Never took you as the nostalgic type. What made you think of that now, after all these years?”
Elizabeth shook her head. Suddenly it felt hard to breathe, and she knew she just had to say it. “I think about it every year.”
Francine glanced down at her hand, brushed her thumb against her wedding ring, loose on a thinning finger. “A love that never disappeared, eh, even if he did.”
“Something like that.” Francine reached out, took Elizabeth’s hand in her own. “You think I’m silly, don’t you?”
Memories of the past made Francine chuckle. “I’ve always thought you were silly, Elizabeth, but it’s got nothing to do with you loving Tom.” Her smile showed that she was joking. “I wonder if he still thinks about you too. I bet he does.”
“I know he does,” Elizabeth said, before she had time to censor herself. “At least I always thought he did.”
“What do you mean?”
Here goes, she thought. “Because he never actually disappeared. He comes back every year.”
Francine shook her head with disbelief. “What? Have you finally lost the plot?”
“I’m serious.”
“Elizabeth, darling, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for what now?” she said, pausing to think. “It must be fifty years.”
“I know we haven’t, but he still comes. I know it’s him. He leaves me gifts on the doorstep.”
Francine was quiet, trying to comprehend what she had just heard. “What does he bring?” Her tone suggested she was humoring her friend.
“Don’t say it like that, as if I’ve gone mad. Every year he brings me a blue crocus, just like he promised me he would. He always writes me a wish too, something we would have done together. And if you don’t believe me, I’ve got every one of those forty-nine wishes at home. It’s him, I’m telling you. I even saw him once or twice.”
Something changed in Francine’s tone, realizing the seriousness with which Elizabeth spoke. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I believe you.”