He flipped through the pages. There were more lists, simple things like the equipment she would buy for her photography if she could afford it. There were other lists too – more mundane things like work targets and everyday shopping. But there were longer passages of writing as well, perhaps written on her train journeys in and out of London, describing the view from her window or funny little character studies of her fellow passengers. Luke smiled as he read them, hearing her voice so clearly in his mind – her brutal honesty and her naughty humour.
His fingers were almost trembling as he turned the pages, knowing that he would soon come to her final entry. It had been written just two days before the crash. There wasn’t much, but the words touched Luke deeply.
BB has been so kind helping me to discover what it is I really want. I wish there was something I could do to help her. She sounds so isolated. So alone. And scared too, although she won’t tell me why. That’s no way to live, is it? I wish she’d confide in me. I’d love to help.
Luke turned the next page and the next in the vain hope that there might be something more, but there were only empty pages. He swallowed hard, feeling again that anger at a life cut short. A life filled with so much potential and passion and care for others.
He gently placed the journal on the table and looked at where he’d plugged Helen’s mobile in to recharge. Her two phones had been recovered from the scene of the accident. Her work phone, which had been in her handbag, was in perfect condition, but her personal one had two large cracks across the screen. Luke hadn’t dared to switch it on. Until today. It had been recharging for a few hours now and he unplugged it and turned it on. It was still working.
He watched anxiously as it lit up, his finger hovering over the keypad, entering her code, which he knew was his birthday. He’d warned her that it wasn’t safe or original to have such a predictable code, but she’d merely laughed at him, and he was glad she hadn’t changed it now for he was able to scroll through the last photographs she’d ever taken, seeing the world through her beautiful gaze once again. He smiled sadly at the final image of the oak tree he knew she loved so much. It had been her last post to Galleria too – her last public communication with the world. How could someone who saw so much beauty in the world be taken so brutally he thought for the thousandth time.
He scrolled through the other photographs. They were mostly little corners of their garden and details in the landscape like an old wooden gate covered in moss, a happy clump of wild garlic, or raindrops sparkling on a tulip. Each image was bewitching in its simple beauty. Helen really had an eye for the beautiful in the everyday. She appreciated the tiny things in life, like the serrated edge of a leaf, the patterns frost made on grass and the swirling shapes in a frozen puddle. And now that view of the world was lost for ever.
He looked at the photos one last time before visiting her Galleria page and tapping on her final post of the oak tree. There were dozens of comments, some made after the accident. Then something occurred to him. They didn’t know Helen had died. They were still leaving likes and comments. Maybe they were even messaging her and waiting for a reply, he thought. Oh, God! What a mess. Nobody had told him about the ramifications of social media when a person died. What was the etiquette? Should he make some kind of public announcement on the site? The thought horrified him, and yet it seemed so heartless not to let them know what had happened and for them to go on imagining that Helen was still there.
He switched off her phone and sat in silence for a moment, not knowing what to do. He didn’t have to do anything, really. He could surely choose to ignore it all. After all, it wasn’t the real world, was it? Helen had spoken about a lot of the people she followed on Galleria – the gardeners, the weavers, the potters, all those creative people who added to the world’s sum total of beauty – but these online friends weren’t real friends, were they?
And yet that wasn’t completely true. There had been that one special friend. BB: Beautifully Broken. Should he let her know about Helen’s death? He felt that he should, and yet wouldn’t it be awful just to message her via the Galleria website? What on earth would he say?
Hi there. You were online friends with my wife. But I thought you should know that she’s dead.
It seemed so cold and heartless and he knew right away that he couldn’t do that to someone. He checked Galleria on his own phone, quickly finding Beautifully Broken’s page. He took a look around, hoping there’d be a link to a website or an email address or something, but there was nothing. He didn’t even have a name to go on. Luke wasn’t used to social media. He had a Facebook account, but he only really used it for his business page, which had a modest following. He wasn’t sure how these things worked. Should he message her for contact details? He felt decidedly uncomfortable about doing that. This was the sort of thing one did in person or – at the very least – on the phone.
Then there was the issue with the unsent gift. Luke put his phone down and returned to the spare room, searching the box and the bubble wrap for BB’s address, but there was nothing there. Had Helen even had it? He returned to the living room and flipped through her journal again, but there was no address written down there. Maybe she’d been about to ask BB for it and, if Luke could find it, he could send Helen’s gift. The idea really appealed to him. He felt it would be something he could do to make up for not always seeing what Helen was thinking or feeling. This, he thought, might go some way towards helping him feel just a little bit better about that.
Luke picked up his phone again, looking at BB’s page, but there were definitely no contact details there. He could message her, asking for her address, but it wouldn’t be easy or honest without him first telling her that Helen had died, and that felt wrong somehow. If only there was a way of finding her and giving her the gift and telling her about Helen. That, he felt, would be the human thing to do – the thing that Helen would want him to do.
Luke scrolled through BB’s gallery. He couldn’t help feeling a little stalkerish as he looked for clues about her, but there wasn’t really much on her page that gave anything away.
Ah, wait a minute.
He scrolled back.
The sea. That was definitely the sea. But was that where she lived or a day trip or holiday shot?
Slowly, an idea began to form. If he could find out where she lived, he could visit her, couldn’t he? She was definitely in the UK, judging by the photos of the countryside. It didn’t look hilly so it probably wasn’t the north or anywhere like Devon or the South Downs. He glimpsed a few blurred images of red-bricked cottages and, crucially, flint. And there was a round-towered church. Very idiosyncratic. Drawing on his builder’s knowledge and passion for vernacular architecture, Luke would hazard a guess that those clues led to East Anglia. Not terribly helpful seeing as East Anglia was comprised of several large counties, most of them with a coast, but at least he’d made a promising start.
He glanced up from the phone and rubbed his eyes. It wasn’t healthy to look at these screens for so long. He never knew how his wife did it – moving from PC to laptop to phone with such ease. It would drive him crazy. But it was the modern world, he realised, and it was one his wife had embraced.
Sighing, he continued to scroll, ignoring the plethora of teacups and floral displays in chipped vases and focusing on the few interspersed images of landscape. Now that he’d got his eye attuned, he definitely thought it was East Anglia, possibly Norfolk, or Suffolk, which was famous for its brick and flint cottages. If he could find one particularly striking image that he could use to do a reverse image search, that might just help him pinpoint where she was.