by Kate Field
‘When we were fifteen?’ Ethan laughed, his whole face lighting up with the memory. ‘That was a fantastic holiday. You were hilarious. Oui, ça va, merci.’
It had been my stock response to every French person I’d met, and had become the running joke of the holiday. Ethan was right: it had been a fantastic two weeks. Audrey and Bill had rented a gîte in the Dordogne to celebrate Leo’s A level results and his place at Oxford. They had invited me too, and I had squeezed in the middle of the back seat of their car, one thigh pressed against Leo, one thigh pressed against Ethan, for the long drive down there. Leo had spent most of the fortnight pre-reading for his English degree in the shade of a walnut tree in the garden. Ethan and I had borrowed a couple of bone-shaking bicycles and ridden through the country lanes in the sunshine, stopping only to picnic on baguettes, Brie, and beer stolen from Bill, and to wash off our exertions in the river. The whole holiday had been a delight from start to finish, and by the end of it I was more in love with the Blacks than ever, and determined that I would be part of their family one day.
After breakfast, Ethan dragged me down to the beach, and we wandered along the water’s edge, shoes dangling from our hands. A rogue wave splashed over my feet and I shrieked. Ethan grabbed my hand.
‘Run!’ he shouted, and he towed me along, splashing through the shallows until we reached the end of the beach, where we collapsed onto the sand, laughing. I lay back, basking like a seal, trying to get my breath back without obviously panting.
‘There are places in the world,’ Ethan said – of course, there was no sign of him labouring for breath – ‘where the sea is as warm as a bath, and you can dive below the surface and see creatures of shapes and colours that you wouldn’t believe are real. There are mountains only a couple of hours away, where you can sunbathe at the bottom and ski at the top, even in the middle of summer. There are igloos made of glass where you can spend the night watching the Northern Lights cascade overhead. There are …’
‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Those places might exist in your life. They don’t in mine.’
Ethan turned his head towards me.
‘They should. They could.’
How? I wanted to ask. What was I supposed to do with real life and real responsibilities while I gallivanted across the world enjoying myself? But I couldn’t say it, not to Ethan. What did he know about responsibility, about putting your own wishes aside for the sake of others? He would dismiss me as beige for even thinking about the obstacles.
Ethan’s phone buzzed and spared me answering. He checked the screen and stood up.
‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Time to go back.’
He hauled me up, making a great show of straining as if I were heavy, and teasing a smile out of me despite my best efforts to resist. We strolled back to the cottage, and I headed straight to the kitchen, anticipating that I would need to clear up. But instead of a pile of dirty pots, the first thing I saw when I walked in was a banner reading, ‘Happy Birthday!’ hanging over the sink, and the four guilty faces of Audrey, Mum, Ava, and Chloe; five faces if I counted Dotty, who had a habitually guilty expression.
‘Surprise!’ Audrey cried, with a feeble echo from the others. She stood up and came over to give me a kiss and a hug. ‘Happy birthday, my darling. Have you had a wonderful breakfast?’
‘Yes, I …’ I turned to Ethan. ‘You knew? You were in on this?’
‘He was the chief instigator.’ Audrey gave me another squeeze. ‘We wanted this year to be different.’
This first year without Leo, she meant, and my heart ached with gratitude. I had blocked out all thought of today, dreading how odd it would be, and that without Leo no one might even remember, as Mum wasn’t known for making a fuss. And yet already it had been one of the best birthdays I’d had for years. I smiled at Ethan.
‘Of course I know when your birthday is.’ He kissed my cheek, and I thought he was going to leave it at that, but he pulled me in for a long hug too. ‘Happy birthday, Mary.’
I pulled away – the faint scent of his floral aftershave against his sun-warmed skin was worryingly addictive – and Mum and Ava both wished me a happy birthday. Ava handed over an envelope.
‘Here’s your present.’ Before I could open it, she continued. ‘It’s a voucher for a day at a spa, with treatments and lunch. We’re all going. Gran’s driving,’ she added, pulling her face.
‘All of us?’ I glanced at Ethan. ‘What are you having done?’
‘All the girls,’ he clarified. ‘I’m looking after Dotty. I don’t mind,’ he said, as I opened my mouth to voice a protest – a half-hearted one, because the thought of a few hours being pampered was irresistible. ‘Now off you go, and don’t come back until you’re so relaxed you can barely hold yourself vertical.’
On that basis, I’d never see the cottage again. But several hours later, after I’d been pummelled and plucked, scrubbed and scented, I was so relaxed that I oozed rather than walked back in to the house. As I wafted past the dining room, Dotty woofed a greeting, and I peered round the door. Ethan was sitting at the table, frowning at the screen of his laptop. He was wearing dark brown glasses that I’d never seen before. He looked up and saw me, and removed the glasses.
‘I didn’t know you needed those,’ I said. He pulled a face.
‘The punishment for a lifetime spent staring at a screen. Old age is breathing down my neck.’
‘They don’t make you look old. You look …’
He tipped his head, waiting for me to finish, but I smiled and let the sentence drop. He looked a different Ethan: a serious, thoughtful, reliable Ethan – someone I wasn’t familiar with.
‘Are you okay, Mary? You look spaced out.’ Ethan shut his laptop and stood up. ‘Have all those fancy oils made you crazy?’ He leant forward and sniffed me. ‘You do smell delicious.’
Crazy? The oils must be hallucinogenic, because for a bonkers moment, with Ethan’s face and lips skimming my neck, lust whooshed up inside me like the flames in a gas fire. I stepped back, rubbing my forehead with the heel of my hand to erase these horribly inappropriate thoughts.
‘I hope you’re not too sleepy,’ Ethan said, picking something up from the table. ‘Because I haven’t given you my present yet.’ My hand stopped rubbing and I goggled at him, inappropriate thoughts very much still alive. He held out some paper. ‘Tickets for the Minack Theatre tonight. It’s Much Ado About Nothing. That’s okay, isn’t it? Not Victorian, I know, but …’
‘It’s brilliant.’ Here was a different Ethan again – hesitant, uncertain, and looking inexplicably worried. ‘I love Shakespeare. Is it just the two of us again?’
‘Well, no … I got tickets for everyone. I didn’t think you’d want …’
‘No, that’s perfect!’ My manic smile punctuated the sentence with at least five exclamation marks. ‘Of course we shouldn’t go on our own. Audrey’s going to love this, isn’t she? I’ll go and tell her now.’
‘She already …’
I was out of the room before he’d finished his sentence.
It was a fantastic night. After a pub meal, full of delicious food and laughter, we drove on to the Minack and took our places on the grassy stone seats. The stage hovered on the cliff edge, above Porthcurno Bay, such a glorious setting that I would have been happy to sit and watch the light fade over the sea, and not bother with the play. I changed my mind when the performance started: it was a skilful production, funny, touching, and irresistibly romantic in turn, and I cheered so loudly at the end that Ethan pretended to cover his ears, and Ava rolled her eyes at my embarrassing behaviour.
It had been a long day. Everyone vanished to their rooms when we arrived home. I stayed downstairs to let Dotty out and make a cup of tea. I thought Ethan had already gone up, but ran into him in the hall as I was on my way to bed.
‘Have you had a good day?’ he asked.
‘It was great. Thank you, for breakfast, and for the theatre, and …’ I shrugged. Just for
being there, I could have added. The day would have been something entirely different without him. I had hardly thought about Leo, except when I had opened his card – their card – this morning. ‘Thanks.’
‘It was my pleasure.’ And though it could have been just a glib response, I could see that it wasn’t – in the half-light of the lamps casting shadows around the hall, his face shone bright with genuine happiness. ‘Have you made your wish?’
‘You remembered that?’
‘I remember everything.’
Everything? I clutched my mug to my chest. He couldn’t really mean everything, could he? There was one memory I had reassured myself he must have forgotten long ago.
‘Was it the usual wish?’
I nodded, flicking back to the present day. Since the first birthday after my dad’s disappearance, I had made the same wish – that he would come home. It was the first thing I did each birthday morning, before I got out of bed, and even thirty years on, I had spent a few moments making my wish and wondering if he was thinking of me today.
That had been my birthday wish this morning. But now I longed to be greedy, and have some more. I wished that this day would keep repeating on a perpetual loop, until I remembered no other past and feared no other future. I wished that Jonas was with us, and that time would pause so that we could stay here and live a life full of fun as we had done today. And I wished with all my heart that it had been any man but Ethan who had made me so happy.
‘Keep faith, Mary. It might come true.’
‘It can’t,’ I said, hardly knowing which wish I meant. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘But that doesn’t matter, does it? Sometimes the things we want are so fundamental a part of us that you can’t let go, however long it’s been, and however impossible it seems. You have to stay loyal to hope, because what else is there?’
He could have sliced open my heart and read those same words running through the centre. How did he know me so well, how did he understand? The grandfather clock in the hall struck midnight, and I fled up the stairs to bed.
Chapter 19
By the third week of the holiday, we had become so used to Mum’s mystery man sending her letters, gifts, and flowers – all of which were whisked away to her room in a hilariously furtive manner – that when she wandered in to the kitchen one morning, a Jiffy bag in her hands, Ethan nodded his head and winked at me, but no one made any remark – until Mum dropped the bag on the table in front of me.
‘There’s a parcel for you, Mary,’ she said, managing to sound curious, disappointed, and disapproving all at once.
‘Oh Mary, have you found yourself a secret lover, too?’ Audrey asked, hooting with laughter. ‘I hope he’s as rich as a Sheikh and hung like a horse. Or do I mean donkey? Is there a difference? Irene?’
Mum flicked on the kettle, her stiff neck indicating that she wanted no part in this lewd conversation. Chloe and Ava sniggered in the corner. Ethan gazed at me from across the table, his customary smile absent.
‘Of course I haven’t,’ I protested. ‘I’ve no idea what it is or who it’s from.’
I yanked at the flap of the envelope, but it was stuck down with at least half a roll of Sellotape, and I had to resort to hacking it open with scissors. I pulled out a sheaf of cheap, shiny copier paper, attached to which there was a compliments slip from Archer’s Booksellers bearing the words, ‘To Mary Black – strictly Private and Confidential. For your eyes only.’
I unfastened the paperclip, looked at the first sheet beneath it, and my lungs jammed halfway through a breath. It was a poor photocopy, but the paper was headed, ‘Chapter One’, and below it the page was filled with line after line of Alice Hornby’s handwriting. I rifled through the pile, noting the increasing chapter headings, and reading the odd paragraph here and there. None of it was familiar. I knew Alice’s books inside out, and these words didn’t belong to any of them.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, finding my breath, and not caring that I sounded horribly like Ava. ‘I think this might be Alice Hornby’s missing novel.’ I flicked to the last page, where the word ‘End’ had been written with a flourish. ‘And it’s finished!’
‘Where’s it come from?’ Ethan’s smile dazzled me across the table, probably a mirror image of my own.
‘From old Mrs Archer. Remember the lady in the wheelchair?’ He nodded. ‘This must be what she was hiding in the blue box – perhaps even the original manuscript. I hoped it might be more letters, or a diary. I never expected this.’ I scooped up the papers and clutched them to my chest. ‘This is the most fantastic thing ever. If this is real, it could change the face of Victorian literature. This is huge! I have to read it.’
‘What, now?’ Ava glared at me from the window seat where she was sitting with Chloe. ‘You said you’d take us shopping in Truro today. You promised.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry, but this is work …’
‘Work?’ Ava stomped over to the table and stood in front of me, one foot forward, arms folded, attitude to the fore. ‘You don’t work. You read a few books, make some phone calls, and send some emails for Dad. You’re just selfish. You only ever do what you want to do.’
Even Audrey remained silent, apparently unable to think of anything to laugh about this time. I tried to tell myself that Ava didn’t mean it – that these were sulky, careless words, flung recklessly, not with deadly intent – but the pain was the same when they landed, whether she had intended it or not. To have my whole life belittled and reduced to nothing, by the child I had cherished and adored since I had first stroked her tiny hand, was a unique kind of agony.
‘That’s not fair, Ava,’ Ethan said. ‘Your mum has given everything for this family. She works incredibly hard. She wrote most of the book your dad’s just published.’
‘How do you know that?’ I couldn’t believe Leo had told him, and I certainly hadn’t.
‘I’ve read it,’ Ethan said. ‘Your voice is on every page. It’s a brilliant book.’ He turned to Ava before I could follow that up. ‘You can’t waste this weather on shopping. An old friend from university runs a surf school up the coast towards Rock. What do you say to you, me, and Chloe giving it a go? I’m sure we can find a teashop for the grans.’
‘Cool,’ Ava said, giving a one-shouldered shrug, but unable to stop an excited grin spreading across her face. She hurried away with Chloe, no doubt to make sure their hair and make-up were perfect before it was ruined by a drenching in the sea.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked Ethan. ‘You don’t have to take them out. I could save this for later.’
‘Could you?’ He looked at my chest. I was still hugging the pages to me. He smiled, and came around the table to squeeze my shoulder. ‘Take the day to yourself, and read your book. I’m happy to help.’
He left the kitchen, and the sound of his footsteps drifted into the room as he ran upstairs. I turned back from the door and found both Mum and Audrey watching me.
‘Isn’t he lovely, Mary?’ Audrey said. ‘And so good with the girls.’
‘He’s Ava’s uncle,’ Mum said, giving a pointed nod in my direction as she emphasised that last word. ‘Family. It’s only right that he mucks in.’
‘He’s very kind,’ I said, thinking that it was a suitably neutral response. But as both mothers sighed, I had an odd feeling that in some way I had managed to disappoint them both.
As soon as the house was empty, I took the photocopied manuscript to the living room, settled down with my feet up on the sofa, and a cup of tea at my side, started to read – and the whole day vanished. I loved all Alice’s books, but this one was in another league. It was essentially a love triangle, involving two sisters and one man: the eldest sister and the man were pressured into an arranged marriage, although he was in love with the younger one, a feeling secretly returned. The eldest sister died giving birth to her third child, and the man moved away with his children. Though it was illegal in those days to marry your deceased sibling’s husband o
r wife, the younger sister travelled around the country until she found him; and they finally lived as man and wife, though they couldn’t legally wed.
It was a simple story – but the passion that throbbed in every word, the yearning of the younger sister who defied the law and convention to be with the man she loved, lifted it into something extraordinary. Every sentence was so full of heart, so drenched in raw passion, that it was more like reading the most intimate diary than a novel. But though it had an echo of Alice’s life, it couldn’t be autobiographical. We knew that Alice had returned to live with her parents when her sister died, and that the sister’s husband had gone on to marry a woman ten years his senior. So how could Alice, a spinster and virgin as far as anyone knew, have described desire and longing with an intensity that made my own heart pound?
‘Hey, have you been here all day? Mary?’ I jumped as Ethan pulled my toes, dragging me back to Cornwall and the present. He picked up my full mug of tea from the floor and moved it to the table. ‘This is completely cold. Have you moved since we left?’
‘Yes …’ I had, hadn’t I? As if to answer the question, my stomach gave a muttering rumble. Perhaps I had been too caught up in the book to move. Ethan laughed, and pushing my legs aside, sat on the sofa.
‘How was the surfing?’ I peered past Ethan, but the room was empty. ‘You have brought everyone back safely, haven’t you?’
‘It was fantastic. Ava and Chloe gave it a good go.’ He smiled. ‘They had to rush upstairs to sort their hair out. How was the book? As good as you hoped?’
‘Better. It’s amazing. So beautifully written. I can’t wait to read it again and take my time over it.’ I told him a brief outline of the story. ‘This could be massive. The younger sister is such a modern heroine in many ways – defying convention and public opinion to fight for what she wants, and what will make her happy.’
‘But it’s only half a happy ending if they couldn’t marry. It wasn’t allowed in those days, was it? Thank God that stupid law has changed.’
‘Since when did you know so much about family law?’ Ethan shrugged and rubbed at a patch of dried sand on his leg. ‘Anyway, I think we’re both proof that marriage doesn’t guarantee happiness.’
