“Good.”
Francine sat back in her chair, her mouth hanging limp and wide with disbelief. “Didn’t he get married?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes, felt the same spark of guilt and jealousy that always stirred when she thought of his wife. “He did.”
“And he still holds a candle for you?” she asked of nobody, shaking her head. “Cheeky old bugger.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Well,” said Francine, looking less than pleased with what she had learned. “I don’t know what it’s like, but it’s obviously done you no good. Look how upset you are.”
Elizabeth pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes. “I’m not upset because he brings me presents every year.”
“Then why are you upset?”
“Because this year, he forgot.”
Francine drummed her nails against the brushed metal table. After a moment she shook her head. “Unlikely, if he never forgot before. Elizabeth, I hate to remind you, but none of us are getting any younger. I’ve just had a hip replaced, and your fingers are full of arthritis.”
“What are you saying?”
“Only that you don’t hand deliver a gift to a girl you were in love with when you were eighteen, for forty-nine years, even when you’re married to somebody else, and then not bother for the fiftieth.”
Elizabeth had been so preoccupied with how hurt she was, she’d never stopped to wonder why he had failed to deliver the present. “You don’t think . . .” The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as the thought came to her, her mouth too dry to finish the sentence. Until today, Tom looked to her mind like the boy in the only photograph she had of him, but he’d be sixty-eight now. People she knew had died younger than that.
“Only one way to find out,” Francine said. “Why don’t you try to get in touch?”
“Well, I have his phone number, but what if his wife answers? Or his daughter?” Elizabeth had always kept his address and phone number written down, but she had never used either out of respect for the fact she knew he had a family. “How would I explain who I am?”
“I’d say that doesn’t really matter if it comes to the worst. Just tell them you’re an old friend from Porthsennen.”
With some regret, Elizabeth realized that the truth was not all that different.
* * *
Her heart raced as she hurried along the road back to her cottage, the keys jangling in her pocket. Her fingers fumbled to find them, and after some effort she opened the front door. Cookie arrived at her feet, his cue the sound of the lock, his fur warm and his purring loud as he rubbed at her ankles.
“I haven’t got time for your nonsense now,” she said, nudging him away. Her fingers wouldn’t seem to grip the handle of the cupboard alongside the fireplace as she crouched down, too stiff from the cold, too arthritic from age. Taking a breath to calm herself, she focused, managed to get it open and pull out the basket containing every one of Tom’s wishes. They scattered like autumn leaves on the floor. “I’m so stupid,” she told Cookie. “How could I not have even considered it?”
All her life she had been plagued by the thoughts of “what if?” What if they could have been together? What if they had never argued that night? What if Tom had never gone to the lighthouse? Now the only “what if” that mattered was whether something might have happened to him. They had had so many chances to put things right and never taken a single one of them. They had been so stupid. Panic rose as she rifled through the little blue notes, unable to find what she was looking for. And then, like a gem shining in the dirt, she saw the white piece of paper with his address and telephone number. Snatching it up into her sweaty palm, she moved across the room and grabbed the phone.
Her fingers shook as she dialed the number, looking at her face in the mirror as she waited for the call to connect. Her features had changed so much, grown so old. Why hadn’t she trusted her feelings, that sense that he would never have let her down? After a while she realized that she was still waiting, that the call hadn’t connected. As she looked down at the little scrap of paper, she noticed that it was an old number from the 1970s, so she pulled out her phone book to find the new area code for London, before dialing again. Still she got nothing, so dialed instead for the operator. After a moment the call connected.
“Operator, how can I help?”
“Hello,” Elizabeth began. “I’m trying to reach a number, but the call won’t go through. Can you check it for me?” Elizabeth gave the number, then waited as the operator made whatever necessary checks. Gazing about the room she saw her past, felt the cold of the first night she had returned to this cottage with Tom, recalled the things they had done in his room. The pain of the memory forced her eyes shut tight, the earliest tears welling in the corners. Then a noise on the line.
“I’m afraid that number is no longer in use.”
“If I give you an address?”
“I can try. What is it?” Elizabeth gave the last known address that she had for Tom, no clue if he was even still living there. What other choice did she have? If Kate were talking to her she might have been able to look him up on that Internet thing, but without her daughter’s help she had no idea how to do it herself. “I’m really sorry,” the operator said. “The number for that address is ex-directory. I can’t help you, I’m afraid.”
Her body crumpled into the nearest seat, the receiver still clutched in her hand. Too much time had passed, too much life lived apart. Cookie gazed at her, indifferent to her pain. It had always seemed easy to live here on the farthest reaches of the UK coast, miles away from Tom, when she knew that he would be coming back, even if it was only once a year. But what now? To miss this day meant he was never coming again. His absence implied that he might already have . . . “No,” she said to herself, shaking her head. “Don’t think that way.” Surely she would have felt it, would have somehow subconsciously known if he had died. And as she had had no such feeling, it meant there was still a chance that she could find him. She’d done it once before, so why not again?
Her steps thundered up the wooden staircase, her feet moving faster than they had in years. The suitcase smelled old and musty as she pulled it out from under the bed, dust making her sneeze. She hadn’t used it in almost a year, not since she had last visited Kate. The trip when she’d told her daughter the truth. After the initial buzz of activity, she found herself out of breath, sitting on the edge of the bed, surrounded by clothes, toiletries thrown in the case at all manner of angles amenable to leakage. The thought that she was being stupid crossed her mind, but she pushed the idea away.
“Get it together, Elizabeth,” she told herself. “You’re not going to make it to London like this.”
The sun was warmer as she left her cottage behind, traveling in a taxi to the train station. And although she was relieved to finally be on her way, the fear of what she was heading toward almost made her turn back. All those times she’d told herself to go to the door when he delivered her gifts, and all those times she hadn’t. The same fears gripped her now; what if it wasn’t the same? What if she felt differently? What if too much time had passed and really there was nothing left? Those fears were still there, but now a different idea overpowered them, driving her forward. What if they had shared a whole life together? What if he did still love her, despite the fact they hadn’t? And perhaps most important of all, what if they still had time for just one more wish?