by Eva Glyn
Dear Izzie,
* * *
How are you?
It sounded like a polite enquiry but I was desperate to know. But if I was that desperate, why had I left it so long to ask? Tell the truth.
I have tried to text or write so many times but have never found the right words. I’m glad Claire turned up here this afternoon and made me sit down and do it.
Was that the right thing to say? Would Izzie think I was only getting in touch because of Claire? Perhaps I should pick another card and start again? I thumbed through them: Old Harry Rocks looked appealing. No, I would finish this one first, and when I was absolutely happy with what I’d written I could copy it onto Old Harry and be done. I reread my few lines and realised I had said absolutely nothing. I looked at my watch. Thirty-five minutes had passed.
The ceiling offered no inspiration, but I allowed my eyes to wander along the crack that extended from the light fitting to just above the door. What did I want to happen when Izzie read the card? That was easy: I wanted to see her. Like I’d said to Maria, just to have the chance to talk to her, to see if there was any way…
I would really like to see you. Just so we can talk properly about us.
Yes, that was all right. But what I hadn’t done was apologise for running away again, for disappearing from her life when I’d promised I wouldn’t. But I hadn’t really disappeared, not this time. It wouldn’t have taken much thought on her part to work out where I was. Maybe all this was futile anyway. Maybe she wanted me out of her life and she’d just laugh at my attempts at reconciliation.
I heard Jack’s voice across the lawn. There was nothing for it: do or die. I scrawled:
Love, Robin
And sealed the card into its envelope. I was just writing Izzie’s name on the front when they burst through the door.
“You cut that fine,” Claire chided me.
“It’s still not right,” I grumbled. “Wouldn’t it just be easier if you told her I’d love to see her?”
She rolled her eyes. “No it wouldn’t. Honestly, Robin, how old are you? Forty-five or something? Have you learned nothing about women?”
I stood up and handed her the envelope. “Obviously not. Now run along. It’ll be your bedtime soon.”
Claire laughed. “You know nothing about teenagers, either.”
Jack reached out to shake my hand. “That’s not true though, is it Mr Vail? In the end I… I told Claire about when we met that morning, but you never let on, did you? That was pretty awesome.”
I nodded. “I had a bet with myself that you cared enough about Claire to do the right thing. Now bugger off the two of you. I need to get back to my vegetable patch.”
Claire gave me a rib-crushing hug. “Whatever… whatever happens between you and Mum, can I come to see you again?”
“Claire, I would absolutely love that. But you must be honest with Izzie about where you’re going, that’s all I ask.”
“I will. I promise.”
She tucked the card into her pocket and they set off down the drive, clasped hands swinging between them. A thought struck me.
“Jack,” I called. “It’s Robin, not Mr Vail.”
He turned and grinned at me, raising his thumb.
Chapter Sixty
Twenty minutes for Claire to get home, then perhaps another five while she said goodbye to Jack. Then maybe five or ten to give the card to Izzie. My index finger marked each segment of time on my watch. I went back into the house to fetch my phone.
I finished thinning the beetroot and started to rake a patch of earth for some radish seeds. An hour had gone by. Perhaps Jack had stayed for a while. Maybe Izzie had gone out. Maybe she’d ripped the envelope to shreds and thrown it in the bin. More than likely I would never know.
I worked in the garden until the light faded, my phone obstinately silent. I wasn’t hungry but I made myself a ham sandwich and a mug of tea, sweeping the abandoned cards back into the drawer before I sat down. I flicked through the TV pages of the local freebie paper but nothing grabbed my interest.
I picked up my phone, searching for a flashing red light. I turned it off and on again. Silence. There was nothing for it but to go to bed.
I was too hot with my duvet and too cold without it. Lying in the tangled sheets a part of me travelled with my card, back into Izzie’s room. I could see her wriggling out of her jeans and pulling her T-shirt over her head. The curve of her breast as she turned towards the bathroom was so real I could touch her, the warmth of her flesh beneath my fingers. The pain of loss had never been so intense.
I must have slept a little because I dreamt about the fairy tree – and it was calling me. I stumbled along the landing and knocked a picture off the wall in my attempt to steady myself. My head was full of oak leaves catching the wind, coloured ribbons whispering the faintest suggestion of my name.
I stepped into the shower and drenched myself with icy water but the tree held me back from wakefulness. When I opened the window the dawn air was still, but all the same the branches stirred in my mind, more insistent with every moment that passed. There was nothing for it – I had to go to the woods.
Even from the top of the slope the damage was obvious; every offering within reach had been stripped away and was lying on the floor, a muddle of broken toys and beads and seashells. The box for the children’s letters was smashed against a nearby stone and the plastic pocket for the fairies’ replies nowhere to be seen. I was filled with rage as I flung myself into the centre of the carnage.
I was not alone in my anger. Kneeling on the other side of the tree was a woman, digging between the roots with her bare hands, her invectives mingled with sobs.
“You bastard, bastard tree. It’s your fault. You started it.”
Izzie.
I must have said it out loud. She glanced up, her hair a mass of rats’ tails, her eyes sunken holes.
“Bastard tree, oh, you bastard tree.” Her fingers returned to gouging the earth.
“Izzie, stop.” But my words were useless. I dropped to my knees beside her and pulled her hands away, pinioning them at her sides.
“Let. Me. Go.” The bitterness of alcohol was hot on my face.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Bastard tree… started all this… Split our lives in two… It was here… the storm… Bastard, bastard, bastard…”
She was fighting to escape my grasp but I was stronger.
“Izzie, slow down. I don’t understand.”
“But it’s your tree. Your bastard, bastard tree… It took you from me, made you forget… made you lie… Made you come back here and not to me… Oh, Robin…”
“Izzie, it’s just a tree. It can’t make anyone do anything.” Yet I had felt it calling me this morning, and she was right. All those years ago it had made me come back.
She must have sensed the shiver run through my body because she twisted away and a hand came free. Her fist headed for my jaw but I caught her wrist again. She cried out.
“Izzie, please, just stop. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s the last thing I want. Please, just calm down and come to the house so we can talk.”
“You don’t want to talk. You just want to save your precious tree.” Her voice was more slurred than angry now.
“No, I want to save us.” I let go of her wrists and wrapped my arm around her shoulder, pulling her to me.
“Robin, it’s not fair. I know you’re lying but I feel so… so… safe like this.” She was barely coherent through her sobs.
So we knelt under the tree and I held her until I heard an early dog walker moving through the woods. I stood up and hauled her to her feet. “Come on, time we weren’t here.”
I resisted the temptation to lock the kitchen door behind us. Instead, I pulled out a chair and Izzie sank into it.
“First things first,” I told her. “Where’s Claire?”
Her brow furrowed. “At home. Asleep.”
I looked at the clock. “She won’t
be for much longer. Give her a call and let her know you’re safe with me.”
Izzie’s eyes were blank. “Where’s my handbag?”
“It wasn’t by the tree.”
She fished in her jacket pockets but pulled out nothing but her keys and a crumpled tissue. “No phone.”
“Use mine, then.”
I put it into her hand and she looked at it for a moment. “No, you do it. I’m… well, I’ve had a bit to drink and she doesn’t like that.” It was the first thing she’d said that made any sense.
Claire sounded as though she’d been asleep and I apologised for waking her. “I needed to tell you that your mum’s with me.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Er… I don’t know. Perhaps once you gave her my card…”
“I didn’t. I told her we’d seen you, but when I said it was you writing the letters for the fairies she went off on one so I didn’t think it was the right moment. But whatever I said worked if she’s there now.”
“Well… yes. We’re going to spend some time together, see what we can work out. You’ll be OK getting into college on your own today?”
“No problem. I can catch the bus from the village.”
“Good girl. If you need us call on my phone. You’ll probably trip over your mum’s handbag in the hall.”
“She must have left in a hurry. Is she OK?”
I looked at Izzie trying to disentangle the tissue from her keys. “Yes. Bit emotional, but then, we both are.”
“Sounds promising. Give her my love – and you, too, Robin.”
“Thanks, Claire.”
I turned to Izzie. “Now, black coffee, hot bath, or both? Or would you just like to go to sleep?”
“Are you emotional, Robin? You’re hiding it well if you are.”
“Of course I am.” I spread my hands on the table. “Churned up, scared… full of love for you, really. It’s hard to put it all into words.”
“You’ll… you’ll make me cry again.”
“No, I don’t want to do that.”
“I’ll have that bath then.”
“Come on, I’ll find you a towel.”
I took Izzie upstairs to the bathroom I thought of as Jennifer’s. It was clean but not very warm so I turned on the heater and went to hunt in the airing cupboard for a towel. Yellow and white stripes to match the curtains. Yellow and white tiles too. Jennifer had loved it – said it was a slice of spring even in the winter.
Izzie was sitting on the edge of the bath. “So this must be where Jennifer put the boys after their dip in the river.”
“Yes.”
“That was really when I started to love you, the way you were that day. And I did peep when you were in the shower – and I wasn’t disappointed.”
I sank down next to her. “Whatever happened, huh?”
I meant it in a self-deprecating way but she carried on, her face serious. “We’re going to find out, Robin. As soon as I’ve had this bath we’re going to retrace our steps. First your version of events and then mine. It’s got to jog some memory, stir something in one of us at the very least. I can’t go on like this.” She looked up at me, her pupils huge. “Or do you think I’ve lost the plot completely?”
“But I thought… I thought we’d established that mine was wrong?”
“Not really, Robin, and it’s been playing on my mind. We need to find out, otherwise not knowing will always haunt us.”
“Well, if you put it like that.“ I stood up. “Right. I’ll get us some breakfast.”
But in reality I stood on the landing for a long while, listening to the pipes creak and groan as the water gushed into the bath and the gentle sloosh as Izzie slid into it. Comforting as the sounds were I felt sick inside.
If the moment of reckoning had finally come, how would Izzie cope with the truth?
Chapter Sixty-One
We retraced our steps across the garden, along the bottom of the field and into the woods.
At the top of the slope Izzie paused. “This was it, wasn’t it? We were OK until we reached the tree. Everything was the same.”
“As far as we can tell.”
“Yes, it must have been. And then… then we walked down the slope and held hands and made our wishes. And it thundered. But there’s no thunder today.”
“We’ll have to pretend.”
The fairy tree looked strange, stripped of its finery. A necklace of brightly coloured wooden beads and some ribbons remained in the higher branches but I had never seen the trunk so bare. We held hands around it.
“Will you wish for the same thing?” she asked and I nodded.
“I thought we had to.”
“I don’t want to. It… it might all happen again.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “Come on, let’s get on with it.”
The tingle of her fingers stretching out to mine felt the same, but this morning there was no drumbeat of thunder, just a backdrop of birdsong as we made our wishes.
Afterwards, we held hands as we took the path towards the pub.
“Is this then, or now?” I said.
“Both. Don’t you remember?” Izzie replied.
“In my memory we walked down to the river.”
At the car park Izzie asked, “What happened next?”
“You gave me a lift home.”
She looked puzzled. “But that’s right – I remember that.”
“Well that’s good, isn’t it?” I held out my hand for her keys. “Only this time, I’d better drive, I think.”
She nodded. “I do feel a bit… lightheaded.”
Through Botley and over the motorway. So far so good. But my hands slipped on the steering wheel as we turned towards Swaythling. It’s only a place, I told myself, a place like any other. Even so, my stomach was churning as I parked outside the Tesco Express where the corner shop used to be.
“Why are you stopping here?”
“Because it’s where you dropped me. I… I had to get some milk or something.” I undid my seatbelt. “No, Izzie, that’s a lie. I didn’t need any milk. I was ashamed I lived on a council estate and I didn’t want you to know.”
She put her hand on my knee. “Shh, Robin. Don’t get angry at yourself. It was a long time ago.”
“It was a web of lies.” I thumped the steering wheel. “No one knew. No one… about my mum, where I lived… I was so ashamed. I thought… I thought for a long time… that my selfishness had killed her, and I loved her so much.”
“I know. Jean told me how close you were.”
All I could taste was bile. “How did you meet Auntie Jean?”
She shook her head. “In my version of events I met her that day.”
The car shuddered as a van sped past. “Izzie, I’m not sure we should do this.”
“We have to, Robin. I need to know who’s right and who’s wrong.”
Her hands were trembling as they rested on her lap; I recognised the hell she was going through. I thought about my Post Office book. I could end it by showing her that. I didn’t have to go back at all. But what then? How would her broken soul deal with proof in black and white? Perhaps, if we went through with this, I could find a way to save her from that.
So I went into the shop, bought nothing, then walked up the hill with Izzie following a few steps behind. There were traffic lights now at my turn off the main road, and low walls in front of houses where there had once been hedges. I crossed to the other side and followed the pavement into a street which now boasted speed humps. Everything had changed; everything was the same.
The cul-de-sac dipped down a slope: four houses each side with another six around the bowl at the end. Ours had been the last on the right before the road began its curve. I stopped a few yards away on the opposite side. It was so changed I hardly knew it. If it wasn’t my reality anymore then perhaps I could make it Izzie’s.
Clearly number four wasn’t a council house these days. It had been extend
ed with a glass-enclosed porch and an enormous bay which must have almost doubled the size of the living room. The attic now had a dormer window facing south and the garage had been completely rebuilt. A child’s bicycle lay on the front lawn.
I sat down on the wall of the nearest garden, feeling less guilty than I should have because it was overgrown and boasted a for-sale sign. Izzie joined me.
“It’s so different,” I told her. “It didn’t have that porch or the bay at the front.”
“They’ve converted the attic too.”
It could have been a guess, or…
“Mm.”
I must have sounded too non-committal.
“If I tell you I know the house with the privet hedge and the red front door was Jean’s, then will you believe me?”
“I don’t… I don’t disbelieve you. Not at all. It’s just…”
Her hand covered mine on the wall. “I know.”
But she didn’t. My brain was struggling to cope with the fact that Izzie knew where Auntie Jean lived. It changed everything, and nothing. I thought again about the Post Office book but bringing the two together made no sense. There was proof for both of our realities and that could not be.
I stretched my legs across the pavement. Weeds sprouted through the cracks in the concrete, florets of yellow groundsel breaking up the grey. I closed my eyes and let the distant hum of traffic wash over me while Izzie sat silently beside me.
“What do we do now?” I asked her eventually. “We can’t go into the house.”
“I know. Just tell me, tell me what you remember.”
“I was whistling. I remember that. Because I was so happy. Because for the first time I really believed you’d choose me over Paul.” I looked up. “What happened to Paul?”
