The Last Piece of My Heart

by Paige Toon

  She drags me away as Valerie appears – I go gladly.

  I like Charlie’s dad immensely. His laughter lines have been cut so deep into his face that even the tragedy of the last year hasn’t erased them. I doubt even Botox would manage it. Pat goes off to answer the door, but Adam replaces her and the three of us indulge in friendly, light-hearted banter. Kate walks past without so much as a hello, but I try not to feel snubbed – there are so many people here, I just want to blend in with the background.

  Eventually I make a point of mingling because I’d like to meet some of Charlie’s friends. Jocelyn is here with her husband, Edward, so I go over and introduce myself. Edward works at a museum in Bodmin, and he seems decent, even if he’s a bit distracted by his son. I wonder if he’d warm up after a couple of beers.

  ‘How long have you guys lived across the street?’ I ask them both when Thomas is preoccupied with one of April’s toys, a ball with flashing lights and buttons.

  ‘We moved in only a few weeks before Thomas came along,’ Jocelyn replies. ‘So that was. . .’

  ‘Around this same time last year,’ Edward chips in.

  ‘That’s right! It was just before April was born. Nicki was overdue by a week. She was very fed up,’ Jocelyn reminisces fondly.

  ‘Did you know Charlie and Nicki before that?’ I ask.

  ‘No, we met Nicki on moving day,’ Jocelyn reveals. ‘She brought over some cookies. I was heavily pregnant myself, so she and I had a fair few cups of tea in those early days, especially after April was born.’

  Her smile is tinged with sadness. It sounds like they got friendly pretty quickly.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when it happened,’ she confides quietly, out of the blue. ‘Thomas was just a tiny baby at the time.’

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine,’ I murmur as her brown eyes fill with tears. It must’ve felt very close to home for her, being a new mother herself.

  Edward squeezes his wife’s arm in empathy, even if he does look awkward.

  ‘Gosh, sorry, this is not the time or the place,’ Jocelyn says, pulling herself together. ‘Today is a celebration. Charlie. . .’ She shakes her head in awe and we both look over at him on the other side of the room. ‘He’s been incredible,’ she says.

  At that moment, Kate’s sons tear past us, sending Thomas flying. Edward swoops down and picks up his crying son, as Kate’s husband Ian, a short, stocky man with a peculiarly gaunt face, suggests to his boys that they might want to calm down. His tone lacks authority and Jocelyn raises her eyebrows at me.

  ‘I think we might go out into the garden, where it’s a bit quieter,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll probably see you out there,’ I reply with a wink.

  It’s no wonder April looked so out of it when I arrived: the noise in here is deafening.

  Where is April? I glance at Charlie again. He’s chatting to Justin and another man of about the same age, but April is nowhere to be seen. I continue scanning the room, but I can’t see her anywhere. Charlie catches my eye and smiles.

  ‘Where’s April?’ I mouth.

  ‘Kate,’ he mouths back. He jerks his head at me, so I make my way over to him. He’s wearing a shirt today and has smartened up a bit. He looks good. But, then, he always does.

  ‘Bridget, this is Gavin.’

  ‘Hey, really nice to meet you,’ Gavin says, shaking my hand heartily.

  ‘We went to school together,’ Charlie explains.

  ‘We go way back,’ Gavin chips in. ‘Charlie was just telling us you were on the telly last week.’

  ‘Did you watch it?’ I ask Charlie with surprise. We haven’t actually talked about it since I got back. I got the feeling he disapproved.

  ‘Of course,’ he replies, and his tone isn’t disparaging.

  ‘We were wondering why you guys missed pizza night,’ Justin explains.

  Aah, so that’s how the subject came up.

  Pat hurries over before I can determine what Charlie thought. ‘Darling, where’s April? I think it’s time for the cake, don’t you?’

  ‘Kate’s got her,’ Charlie replies.

  ‘Maybe she’s in the kitchen,’ Pat continues worriedly.

  ‘Leave her, Mum, she’s probably just having some time with her niece,’ Charlie says calmly.

  ‘Okay.’ Pat smiles at us apologetically. I think she’s a bit frazzled with so many people here.

  Valerie is standing nearby, looking lost. ‘Another one, Valerie?’ Barry calls out amiably, bottle in hand.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she replies curtly, but she comes over to join our ever-growing circle.

  ‘Do you remember Gavin, Valerie?’ Pat asks kindly. ‘He went to school with Nicki and Charlie.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’ She eyes him for a long moment as she tries to place him. Gavin looks mildly uncomfortable.

  ‘It’s been years, I imagine,’ Pat says awkwardly. ‘Do you boys catch up much?’ She turns to Gavin and Charlie.

  ‘We haven’t in a while,’ Charlie replies from beside me.

  Gavin’s discomfort seems to be increasing by the second. At a guess, I’d say he’s one of the friends who didn’t know how to handle Charlie’s bereavement.

  ‘You could really do with a decent sitter so you could go out more, right, son?’ Barry says jovially. ‘Someone who can work on Saturdays and who won’t forget the monitor,’ he adds, nudging me conspiratorially and giving Pat a significant look.

  I almost clap my hand on my forehead. He’s landed his wife right in it.

  ‘What do you mean, someone who won’t forget the monitor?’ Charlie asks, not missing a beat and giving his parents a quizzical look.

  Pat blushes. ‘Me, forgetting to bring the monitor down when you were doing that job for the school. Oh, I did feel terrible, didn’t I, Bridget? Poor April, she was beside herself, little mite.’ She winces theatrically and adds, ‘Neither of us heard her.’

  Now I’m the one who’s cringing. I still feel so bad about it.

  Charlie touches my lower back and leans closer. ‘Is that why you were turning your music down?’ he asks me quietly. He’s guessed that I’ve been covering for his mother.

  I shrug.

  ‘Aw,’ he says sweetly, squeezing my waist.

  I suddenly notice Kate standing in the doorway with April in her arms. Her eyes dart between Charlie and me, her expression grim. I look at Valerie to see she’s also staring at us, mutinously.

  ‘Birthday-cake time!’ Pat exclaims, clapping her hands together.

  I decide it might be best if I go and stand with Jocelyn.

  Chapter 34

  I drag my heels on the way to Charlie’s on Monday morning, walking rather than taking Nicki’s bike. I’m pretty sure Valerie will still be there and I’m tempted to go in late or not at all, but I think she already dislikes me enough. I don’t want to give her another excuse.

  ‘She’s so late! Lazy girl! And after she took all that time off to go and do her own thing, too. . .’

  I decide to open the door with my key – they know I’ve got one now, anyway – but, as I’m putting it in the lock, I hear a noise from deep inside the house that makes me pause with alarm. Is that crying? It’s not April.

  The door swings open and Charlie comes out, looking pale and stressed.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’ He hastily ushers me off the front step. In the seconds before he manages to extract my key from the lock and pull the door closed, I hear Kate’s hysterical raised voice.

  ‘She’s a hussy and a media whore! I won’t have it!’

  I stagger backwards, stunned.

  Charlie is stricken. ‘I tried to warn you not to come today.’

  ‘Is April all right?’ I ask, feeling nauseous.

  He clutches his hands to his head, looking a little like he might cry.

  ‘Go and see to her,’ I urge, stepping backwards. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Bridget!’ he calls after me.

  ‘I’ll be fi
ne!’ I call back, putting my head down and hurrying away in the direction I’ve just come from.

  I’ve passed the shock stage by the time he comes to the campsite to find me. Now I’m an emotional wreck, and I really hate being an emotional wreck.

  ‘I don’t want her to see me like this,’ I call determinedly through Hermie’s closed door. No way am I letting him in. April is in her pram, but she’s awake. I can see her chubby little legs kicking from here.

  ‘I’ll come back when she’s asleep,’ Charlie promises, leaving me be.

  I watch him walk up and down the internal campsite road, from the lower paddock to the top paddock, over and over again, until eventually he returns.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ he calls, knocking gently. ‘Bridget, please, open up.’

  I peer out of the darkened window, and, sure enough, April’s legs have stilled.

  I open Hermie’s side door and sit back down on the bench seat, tucking my hair behind my ears. I’m too mortified to meet his eyes.

  ‘Bridget,’ he says quietly, crouching at my feet and resting his bare forearms on my lap.

  I shake my head.

  He reaches up and brushes my cheek with his thumb. As soon as I meet his eyes and see his devastation, mine fill with fresh tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, sliding his hands around my waist and pulling me towards him. He rests his cheek against my ribcage and my hands automatically cradle his head. It’s such an intimate, unfamiliar position to find ourselves in, yet it feels oddly natural.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers again.

  I brush my tears away with one hand and stroke his hair with the other.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I mumble. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  He shudders.

  ‘Charlie,’ I say gently, continuing to run my hand through his hair. It’s so much softer than I thought it would be. It always looks so dishevelled. As my thoughts drift off on this tangent, I realise my tears have dried up. ‘Hey,’ I say.

  He lifts his head and stares up at me, disoriented, confused, bewildered, as if he’s adrift – lost at sea. I force myself to edge over on the bench seat and pat the space beside me.

  He slowly, weightily, pulls himself to his feet and sits down, dragging his hands over his face and slumping backwards until his head hits the seat back.

  ‘Rough morning, huh?’

  ‘Just a bit,’ he replies wearily.

  ‘What happened?’

  He stares at the ceiling in a daze.

  ‘It can’t be much worse than what I heard,’ I say. ‘Can it?’ I ask with alarm.

  He jolts. ‘No. That was bad enough.’

  ‘So Kate thinks I’m a hussy and a media whore. She has a point,’ I say with a light laugh.

  ‘Don’t.’ He shoots me a warning look.

  ‘How bad is it?’ I ask gently. ‘Do they want another writer to take over?’

  ‘There is no way that’s happening,’ he erupts, shaking his head fervently. ‘I’m just sorry you had to hear that.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse,’ I comment philosophically.

  This doesn’t cheer him up.

  ‘So what’s their problem?’ I want to get to the bottom of it. I need to understand. ‘I thought it was Kate who talked you into doing this book.’

  ‘She did. She’s very confused.’

  ‘Is it just because she doesn’t like me?’

  ‘There’s more to it than that.’

  ‘They clearly don’t approve of my blog.’

  ‘No,’ he concedes. ‘They only really started paying attention to it recently. Last night, Kate looked up your TV appearance. Someone had mentioned it to her at the party.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it was that offensive.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t think it would matter who you were or what you’d done. Valerie didn’t want anyone to take over from Nicki. She thought that Confessions should be left in peace, as should she. Now Kate’s feeling guilty about encouraging me to go ahead with it.’

  ‘Did you remind them about Nicki’s readers? About all of those people who were desperate for a sequel? Don’t they think Nicki would have wanted someone to see it through?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says with a sigh.

  ‘Maybe if the ghostwriter had been less of a media whor—’

  ‘Stop it.’ He cuts me off. ‘This is not just about you. They’ve got it in for me, too. They think I’m over her, that I’m not grieving her enough. They think I’ve. . . They think there’s. . .’

  ‘What?’ I prompt.

  He shakes his head again, seemingly lost for words, but I can guess what he’s struggling to say out loud.

  ‘They think there’s something going on between us,’ I say.

  He shakes his head, but it’s not a denial. ‘It’s crazy. I told them that you have a boyfriend, that we’re just friends, that there’s no way I could fall for my late wife’s ghostwriter, but Kate is so damn suspicious!’ He shoves his hand through his hair and I wince.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they think,’ he continues. ‘They don’t know anything.’

  ‘They’re just missing her,’ I point out, trying to be reasonable. ‘They’re taking it out on you and they shouldn’t. You’re the last person they should take it out on.’

  ‘No, you’re the last person they should take it out on,’ he says firmly. ‘You’re just here to do a job. You need to be able to focus. You sure as hell don’t need this shit. And after you gave up your whole summer to come down here!’ he exclaims with disbelief. ‘I’m sorry. I really am sorry.’

  ‘Okay, stop apologising,’ I say. ‘That’s enough.’

  He sighs. ‘Yeah, okay.’ After a long moment of silence, he says, ‘You can’t work today. Neither can I. Let’s go to the beach.’

  ‘Padstow Beach?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Okay.’

  We spend the afternoon making sandcastles and tearing them down again, but, despite the sunny weather, there’s no escaping the metaphorical dark cloud that’s hanging over us.

  Chapter 35

  I wonder what Nicki would make of her sister and mother’s behaviour, I think to myself the next morning when I return to work. I have a feeling she’d be mortified, but that’s not something I’d ever say to Kate and Valerie – they’d probably shoot me for conjecturing.

  Nicki used to lock horns with them often, according to her teenage diaries. What was it Charlie said when I commented that Essex was so far away? Something like, ‘When Nicki moved back here, she didn’t think it was far enough. . .’

  Nicki might’ve hated the fact that her dad lived abroad and that he was so busy when she went to visit him, but she loved him and always wanted to go back again.

  ‘At least once a year,’ Charlie said, although never with him. Why didn’t Charlie ever go with Nicki to Thailand? He said he wanted to, but they couldn’t afford to both go. They had talked about using the money from Nicki’s novel to visit Alain and introduce him to April, but Nicki died before that idea came to fruition. Did Nicki suggest the trip, or was it Charlie?

  Was there another, non-financial reason that she didn’t want to bring Charlie to Thailand with her? Did it have anything to do with Isak?

  Charlie said that Nicki used to bump into him occasionally in her twenties and it was awkward, but, as she stopped confessing in her diaries, I have no way of knowing if this is true.

  I pick up the piece of paper on my desk and read through Nicki’s poem once more.

  I am not one thing

  But many little pieces

  Divided but allied

  One of these I gave to you

  Now part of it has died

  Every time you hurt me

  Every time you make me cry

  That little piece of me you own

  Withers up inside

  For now it’s still alive

  You haven’t lost me yet

  But others have

&n
bsp; Others have

  And that’s something

  You should not

  Forget.

  If Nicki did give a piece of herself to Isak, as her poem claims, did it wither up long ago, as she warned him it might? Or was that piece of her still alive when she died?

  Nicki’s writing is so good that she made cynical me believe that it’s possible to fall in love with two people. But what if her story is not all fiction? What if it’s based in fact? I already know that real things inspired her, like Charlie’s mobile cream-tea business idea, and the similarities between Morris and Charlie don’t end there.

  What about Isak and Timo?

  Was Nicki still in love with Isak when she died? No, more than that: were Nicki and Isak still together?

  Ice trickles down my spine.

  Is that why Nicki’s book feels so authentic? Was she writing from experience?

  I have to know.

  I wonder if Isak still works at the same resort as Nicki’s dad. What was the name of it again? I’m sure it was somewhere near Krabi. . .

  I bring up Google and do a search for Alain Dupré, French chef, Krabi. The answer is in Nicki’s diaries, but this should be quicker. . . aaaannnd. . . it is.

  I recognise the name of the resort as soon as I see it. Going to the website, I scan the top menu for a relevant link. ‘Activities & Excursions’, that sounds right. As soon as I click on it, a picture appears that shows a muscled man clutching onto a cliff face with his bare hands. I excitedly click to the next picture, but it’s of a girl kayaking, so I go back to the rock climber. Is that Isak? You can’t see his face. I don’t know what he looks like, anyway – it could be anyone. I haven’t come across any pictures of Isak since I’ve been here.

  I keep searching the website, but there are no names mentioned, least of all Isak’s. I make a note of the contact details so I can email the resort if I need to. It looks incredible. I must see if I can wing some cheap – or free – accommodation. The hotel looks like it’s undergoing some renovations, which means they might want some press to promote their new look. . . I go to the media centre and jot down the press enquiries email.

  Striking while the iron is hot, I then call a friend who works at a wedding magazine to ask if she’d like a honeymoon feature about the resort. She says she’ll check with the editor and call me back.