‘Why did you go?’ he whispered, feeling, once again, total disbelief that he wasn’t ever going to see that sweet freckled face of hers again.
It had been several weeks since the accident, but it still all felt so raw. May had arrived along with the first swifts, the apple tree had burst into blossom and the woods had turned hazy with bluebells. Luke cursed it all because Helen wasn’t there to see it. He felt bitter with anger. How could something as simple as a signal failure take a life? He wanted to lash out and punish somebody, but there was nobody to blame. At least, nobody they’d actually named. But somebody must have been in control of that damned signal, and their lapse in judgement or concentration or whatever on earth it was had cost eleven people their lives. It was the worst accident that line had seen in decades and there’d been an outpouring of grief not just locally, but nationally too, with people arriving from all over the country to lay flowers at the scene where the two trains had collided.
Luke hadn’t laid flowers. Helen wasn’t there. It was a strange feeling, but he honestly thought that she was somehow still at home. Every now and then, he’d just feel her, and he’d spin around, sure he’d find her standing behind him. It was the craziest thing, and he genuinely thought he was losing his mind. He felt like that a lot since that dreadful night when the police had knocked on his door.
A few of Helen’s things had been recovered from the accident. Her handbag with the faulty zip, which had contained all the usual things a working woman carried with her throughout the day, together with a few unusual ones, like her journal. Luke hadn’t yet had the courage to read it. He knew Helen liked to keep a brief record of all her thoughts and feelings about her day – and he felt it would be intrusive to look at it, although there’d been many an evening when he’d sat holding it in his hands, feeling that it was the last true piece of Helen he had left.
Looking through her handbag had been a cruel agony. There were so many little bits of Helen in there – a wrapped lemon drop; a pencil covered in a marbled paper, an old paperback collection of poems, her favourite cherry-red lipstick, her mobile phone, and a little mirror backed with a William Morris print. But the thing that got to Luke was the keyring in the shape of a Labrador. Helen had always longed for a dog. It was one of those things they’d kept putting off and now it was too late. He had cursed himself a thousand times over that, holding the keyring tightly in his hand as he’d cried, believing that he’d been a bad husband and that he should have listened more to her. Had she been happy – truly happy – with her life? She’d always seemed to be and yet he knew there was more he could have done to make absolutely sure of it.
He was staring at the handbag again now. He hadn’t looked inside it for a while, but something drew him to it now and he opened it up. There were all the familiar bits and pieces that he’d handled so many times, thinking of how these inanimate objects had been with her when she died, and how she’d carried them with her on her last day. He picked up the Labrador keyring again. It was like his own personal torture device and he felt a lump lodge in his throat as his anger arose again. Why hadn’t they got a dog? Why hadn’t he taken more notice of that dream of hers and made it come true?
Because you thought you had more time, a little voice inside himself said – the kinder Luke that he wished he could thump. He didn’t deserve any kindness. He’d been a bad husband who hadn’t given his wife nearly enough of what she deserved.
As he put the keyring back into the bag, he spotted a piece of loose paper folded in half in a section of the bag he hadn’t noticed before. He took it out now and unfolded it, seeing the name Oak Tree Antiques. It was a handwritten receipt for something which Helen had paid thirty pounds for. But what was it? He couldn’t quite make the writing out. A Victorian something.
‘Vase!’ he cried out as the letters made sense at last. A Victorian vase. Luke frowned, looking around the room as if the mystery vase might materialise, but there was no sign of it.
And he began to remember something.
‘Luke?’ Helen’s voice was bright and excited as she entered the house. ‘Wait till you see what I’ve got!’
Luke had been sitting in the living room. It was the weekend and he’d declined going antique shopping with Helen. She hadn’t minded, laughing at how bored he got when she dared to drag him to one of her favourite shops and knowing she’d enjoy the experience far more if he wasn’t there. How he wished with his whole heart that he’d gone now just so he could have spent a few more precious hours with her.
‘What have you got there?’ he’d asked as she came into the room carrying a paper bag.
She smiled one of her big wide smiles as she popped the bag on the sofa beside him and took out the bubble-wrapped object.
Luke watched, unable to guess what it might be and feeling slightly underwhelmed when she revealed a blue and white vase.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘I suppose,’ he said, trying to show some enthusiasm, but failing. ‘It’s got a chip in it – there.’ He didn’t want to point out the imperfections, but the craftsman in him just couldn’t help it.
‘I know! That’s why it was so cheap,’ she told him, her hazel eyes bright with excitement. ‘Anyway, chips are good.’
‘Really?’
‘They show that it’s been loved and used.’
‘Or knocked.’
‘But that’s all part of its life. I learned that from BB.’
‘Ah, BB!’ Luke said, recognising the moniker of Helen’s online friend. ‘The chipped-china woman!’
Helen pulled a face at him.
‘Look,’ she said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. ‘BB’s posts are so beautiful.’
Luke smiled. Helen’s greatest obsession was her photography and sharing her pictures to a site called Galleria. Whole hours could be gently lost in the pursuit of beauty, of sharing content and swapping comments. His wife now had thousands of followers on her page and was following hundreds of others. It was a world that Luke hadn’t so much as dipped a toe in, but he was aware of some of the online friends his wife had made, including the one referred to as ‘BB’. Beautifully Broken was her account name. He didn’t actually know her real-life name and neither did Helen. She was one of the people who hid behind a handle, who created a whole world without giving away very much at all about their private lives. Even her avatar was carefully obscure, merely showing a china vase filled with flowers, not dissimilar to the one Helen had just bought, and it gave absolutely nothing away about the person behind the pictures taken.
Luke peered at the screen.
‘What is it about women and old bits of china?’ he asked, genuinely baffled as he looked at a few of BB’s photos.
‘Just look at those darling little rose buds and the hairline crack below the rim,’ Helen said, tucking her chestnut hair behind her ears as she pointed to one of the pictures.
That was Beautifully Broken’s signature, Luke had learned – collecting the flotsam and jetsam of life, the pieces often overlooked by others, the damaged, the dirt-encrusted, the chipped and the chucked away. BB had an eye for the unlucky and the unloved.