The Missing Pieces of Us
Page 29
“Oh, Mum, don’t say that or you’ll make me cry. He loved you just the way you are.”
“I know. I was exceptionally lucky. Some people never experience love like that in all their lives…”
“And now you have someone else who loves you just as much. I wish some of whatever it is you’ve got would rub off on me.” She rolls her eyes and we laugh until the tears roll down our cheeks.
It doesn’t feel right to talk about Robin until we’ve finished our lunch and dropped our paper boats into the river Test, toasting them with sparkling elderflower as they speed away around the bend and out of sight. Claire senses it too, although perhaps she notices me fiddling with my rings.
“So, are you all set for tomorrow?” she asks.
“Almost. Claire, how would you feel if I moved my wedding ring to my right hand?”
She nods. “It’s time. If you and Robin are going to get together again, it feels like the thing to do.”
The river glitters below us as I take off my rings and place the plain band on the other hand. It feels alien, as though it has no right to be there, and there is a line of pale skin where it’s been for so many years. Once that’s done, I fold my engagement ring into Claire’s palm and close her fingers around it.
“For you. Wear it for him… for us, really. It’s what he would want.”
I’ve thought long and hard about how to makes this special. I looked for a cottage near Kimmeridge but couldn’t find one. I even considered another trip to Cornwall but I kept coming back to the same thing: the most precious place in the world to Robin is the fairy tree. It’s where we started last time – and in a way, where we ended too. So it’s right it’s where we should begin again.
I remember the wish I made when we were holding hands all too well: that all the obstacles would just magically melt away so Robin and I could be together. But life isn’t like that, is it? Who knew the mountains we’d have to climb before we could properly find each other again?
Although I have every intention of staying overnight, I don’t take my holdall. Instead, I tuck my toothbrush, deodorant and some moisturiser into the bottom of my handbag. I want this to be a surprise for Robin, right up until the last moment.
I’ve promised him a picnic, that’s all. Claire was a whirlwind in Marks & Spencer, helping me to pick all sorts of treats we knew he’d love. And tealights to put around the edge of the rug, to flicker and fade as evening draws in. It’s a rug I found online, depicting the pagan wheel of the year. He needs to know I’m at peace with his beliefs as well.
I veer between fizzing excitement and the nerves of a schoolgirl on a first date, but he is visibly moved when I give him the blanket so I know it will be all right.
His voice is husky when he says, “It’s beautiful, Izzie.”
“I thought so too. And it’s a long-overdue apology for what I said at Easter. It was wrong of me to show such little respect.”
“Maybe it needed to happen. That was what Jennifer used to say. One action affecting another action, all of them interconnected… Anyway, I won’t go on.” He grins.
“One day you can explain.”
“But not now.”
I punch him gently on the arm. “Are you hungry?”
“Ravenous.”
“Come on then, let’s eat.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought a meal incomplete without a drink, but now that I can properly taste every delicious morsel I’m not sure I could ever go back. So we talk about that for a while, and then about his week, and all manner of other inconsequential things in the way close friends do. As dusk falls it’s time to make the change.
I stand up, brushing crumbs from my skirt. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
Robin rolls onto his back. “I’m too stuffed.”
I reach my hand down to him. “Come on, just into the woods. We might see that tawny owl you’ve told me about.”
He pushes himself off the rug but keeps hold of my fingers and I interlace mine more firmly with his. “That feels good,” he murmurs.
“Uh-huh.” The desire to kiss him is almost too strong but not here, it can’t be here, so I tug his arm and lead him across the lawn and down the slope.
When I stop at the fairy tree he knows. Maybe he did before but decided to wait. He traces the side of my cheek. “It’s almost twenty-one years, Izzie. Is the waiting finally over?”
“It is.” And before I can say any more his lips are on mine as the branches sigh and the leaves rustle above us.
It’s a long time before we stop kissing and I am glad of his arm around my shoulder as we gaze at the tree.
“We ought to make a wish,” he says.
I look up at him, his breath warm on my face. “Why would we do that? It seems to me we have everything we need.”
THE END
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Acknowledgments
The Missing Pieces of Us has always been my special child; the book of my heart, if you like. From the moment I saw the fairy tree on the banks of the River Hamble I knew it had stories to tell. And then, one Sunday morning in Winchester, I watched from Caffé Nero as the homeless men gathered at the Buttercross, and I began to understand what one of those stories was.
The book was originally self-published in March 2015 as The Faerie Tree. It was edited by the marvellous saga writer Margaret Graham and I am indebted to her for everything I have learnt from her over the years, and for her friendship.
Cut to 2020 and I’d decided to have a fifth anniversary blog tour for the book. The reviews were still fabulous and one blogger, Julie Morris of A Little Book Problem, wrote that the book really resonated in present times and she hoped it would find its way to a large audience. As I tramped my local footpaths and lanes during lockdown her words stayed with me.
Should I submit the book to a publisher? I asked the opinion of a close and trusted writer friend, Polly Heron, and her answer was an unequivocal ‘yes, yes, yes!’ So I did – just to the one, someone I had wanted to work with for a long time, Charlotte Ledger at One More Chapter. And thankfully she loved the book.
So the last thank you is to Charlotte. The first is to my friend Jason, who took me to the fairy tree all those years ago and without whom the story would never have been written. And my enduring and eternal thanks go to Jim, my husband, without whose patience and understanding I would never have had the opportunity to write.
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Eva Glyn, Cornwall, 2021
Thank you for reading…
We hope you enjoyed The Missing Pieces of Us!
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Do leave a review if so on all your preferred platforms to help spread the word!
Don’t miss The Olive Grove, another spell-binding saga of mystery and magic by Eva Glyn…
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An English woman searching for a different future…
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A man desperate to escape his war-ravaged past…
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Can these two find what they are looking for on the beautiful Croatian island of Korčula?
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Be sure to follow Eva on Twitter @janecable, on Facebook @EvaGlynAuthor and check out her website at www.janecable.com for all the updates on her latest work.
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Happy reading!
Eva Glyn writes emotional women’s fiction inspired by beautiful places and the stories they hide. She loves to travel, but finds inspiration can strike just as well at home or abroad.
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She cut her teeth on just about every kind of writing (radio journalism, advertising copy, PR, and even freelance cricket reporting) before finally completing a full-length novel in her forties. Four lengthy and completely unpublishable tomes later she found herself sitting on an enormous polystyrene book under the TV lights of the Alan Titchmarsh Show as a finalist in the People’s Novelist competition sponsored by HarperCollins. Although losing out to a far better writer, the positive feedback from the judges gave her the confidence to pursue her dreams.
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Eva lives in Cornwall, although she considers herself Welsh, and has been lucky enough to have been married to the love of her life for twenty-five years. She also writes as Jane Cable.
www.janecable.com
Also by Eva Glyn
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