Love at Second Sight

by Cathy Hopkins

  ‘So you want to know more about your great-aunt?’ she said after she’d poured us tea and offered us slices of yummy cherry cake. ‘I have a vague recollection of my father talking about her. I’ll get the album. It’s just in here, in the cabinet.’

  She got up and rooted around in the large piece of fUmiture in the corner. ‘Here we are,’ she said as she pulled an album from a lower cupboard. She put it on the table in front of us and flicked through until she found the page she was looking for. It was a lovely old-fashioned book and each of the photos had been placed in a delicate paper frame of painted leaves and flowers. She pointed to a sepia photograph on the right-hand page.

  ‘There she is, I think,’ she said.

  I looked down and Effy and Tash moved closer so that they could see as well.

  There she was. Henrietta Gleeson. A young woman with dark curly hair smiling out at us from the faded sepia photograph. It had been taken in the garden and she was standing under an apple tree holding a toddler, a chubby boy in a sailor suit.

  ‘She’s beautiful!’ Effy exclaimed.

  ‘Must run in the family,’ said Mrs Rayner as she looked at me. ‘I can see a resemblance around the eyes.’

  I felt myself blush deep red and continued to stare at the photograph. I searched the face looking for what Mrs Rayner saw around the eyes but I could see no resemblance myself. It felt eerie to consider that I was once this person. A woman older than I am now. In a different body. I shivered. I wondered what she was really like. From my regression, I knew that she hadn’t had an easy life. I hoped that she’d found some happiness with the Watts family. With Howard.

  Mrs Rayner pointed at the toddler. ‘That’s my father,’ she said. ‘He must have been about two in that photograph.’ She flicked over to the next page. ‘Here are some more from that time.’

  I looked at the top photograph. ‘Howard!’ I blurted and I pointed to a boy in the shot. There was no mistaking him. He was the boy I’d seen in my regression, and seeing his picture, all the feelings I’d felt when under hypnosis came rushing back. He was pictured with his family – a formal portrait with his father standing next to him and his mother seated with Daniel on her knee. In the background was Henrietta, her expression this time serious. Poor Henrietta, I thought, to have been so in love with him but not able to truly be with him.

  ‘Hey, he was handsome,’ said Tash.

  ‘How did you know that is my uncle?’ asked Mrs Rayner as Effy shot me another warning glance.

  ‘Oh! A good guess,’ I said. ‘We saw the names on the grave ... you know, at the cemetery.’

  Mrs Rayner paused for a few moments. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ asked Tash.

  Mrs Rayner shook her head. ‘He died long before I was born. I’d like to have known him though. My father talked about him very fondly. He looks like he was a nice fellow, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Er . . . Mrs Rayner, you said you remembered some talk of Henrietta. Can you remember what was said?’ I asked.

  ‘Some scandal to do with a governess, I believe.’ She came back over and pointed to Henrietta in the photo. ‘I didn’t know her name, but I’ve always thought it must have been her because later ones looked much older. Yes, that was it, the young governess was dismissed and Howard was sent away to Europe. My father said he missed him dreadfully and made such a fuss that Howard was allowed to come back after a few years. I seem to remember my father saying that the young governess had been dismissed by then and replaced by a series of older women. I don’t think he was very keen on any of them. Apparently my grandmother believed that Howard could make a better marriage. It wasn’t done in those days to have relations with servants, even if she was a governess. But Howard never did marry.’

  So that’s what Betty had meant when she’d said something had happened to keep them apart, I thought. I felt so sad for them both but Howard had been there when Henrietta was dying so he had clearly found her again at some point.

  Mrs Rayner flicked through to later photographs showing a slightly older Daniel with his parents and a stern-faced woman in the background. She laughed. ‘I think this was the next governess,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine Howard ever having fallen for her, can you? She looks a bit of a battleaxe, doesn’t she?’

  I looked at one of the images in front of me. A thin-lipped, middle-aged lady held Daniel on her knee. He didn’t look happy.

  ‘What happened to Henrietta?’ I asked.

  ‘After she was dismissed? That I don’t know,’ said Mrs Rayner.

  ‘She died young,’ said Tash. ‘We saw it on her grave. Aged twenty-three.’

  ‘How sad,’ said Mrs Rayner. ‘She looked a nice young lady too. They would have made a handsome couple but then things were different in those days.’ She flicked through some more pages to show more family photos but no others showing Henrietta. ‘My grandfather Edward died before I was born so I never met him. Howard died in the First World War, he was very young.’ She got up to look in the cabinet. ‘I believe I have his death certificate somewhere. There’s a whole pile of papers, letters and documents from that time. I haven’t looked at them in years. Let me see what I can find.’

  ‘Do you have children, Mrs Rayner?’ asked Tash.

  ‘I do. Two girls. A daughter who lives in New Zealand now and the other lives in south London. She has three children, a boy and two girls. So yes, the Watts family has gone on.’ She continued her search in the cabinet. ‘Sadly not the family house though. It has been through many changes.’ She pulled out a box. ‘Ah, here we are.’

  ‘Do you know when the name of the road changed from Trafalgar to Northern?’ asked Tash. ‘When we looked on the census, it said Halville House, Trafalgar Road.’

  Ah, that was around the nineteen-sixties. This end of the road was always Trafalgar Road but when the area became more built up, they extended the road down to meet the main street so it made sense to have one name rather than two for the two different ends and so it became Northern Road.’

  ‘And when was the house made into flats?’ I asked.

  ‘Around the same time. So sadly I can’t show you where Henrietta would have had her room but I can show you where she would have worked on this floor. Would you like to have a look?’

  ‘We’d love to,’ Effy answered for me.

  As we went around, the memories of how the house used to look kept flashing in my mind, sharp and clear. What was now Mrs Rayner’s bedroom, decorated in pale blue and white, had been a dark and formal parlour with heavy curtains at the bay window. The kitchen had been extended and modernised, but I could see it as it was with an old-fashioned stove, open shelves of pots and pans, and memories of a cook, always busy preparing something. There also used to be a balcony that looked out over the garden but it was gone and a sunny conservatory built in its place. It was extraordinary to have so many clear memories of a place which I was visiting for the first time.

  Mrs Rayner offered more tea after our tour but we felt it was time to leave so declined her offer and said our goodbyes.

  ‘Leave me your number, Jo,’ she said to me. And I’ll give you a call if I find anything else. I fancy I might have a root through all the papers for a few hours now that I’ve got them out. You never know what’s in there.’

  I wrote my landline number down for her and then we left.

  ‘So now we know more about Henrietta,’ said Effy as we stood outside for a moment and looked back at the house. ‘But still no closer to finding Howard if he’s back in this time too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. My head was spinning with the enormity of it all. ‘Henrietta’s room was there, up in the attic,’ I said as I pointed at the top floor. You used to be able to see St George’s in the distance there were fields and hedgerows for miles where now there are rows and rows of houses.’ I pointed down the road. ‘There was a big manor house in parkland to the left where that row of terraced houses is. And another big house at the end of the road. Lynton Gra
nge, that was it.’

  As we walked back to the high street, the memories continued to flood in as if it had only been yesterday. ‘There was a small cottage in the grounds of the Grange. It was where the vet lived. I remembered taking an assortment of kittens down there to see him. The wood to the back of the house was called Dirt House Wood and at night, soil men used to put excrement there that they had collected from cesspits from a row of nearby cottages.’

  ‘Are you making this up?’ asked Effy.

  I laughed. ‘No. I promise.’

  ‘It seems amazing that you remember so much,’ said Effy. ‘I mean, I get that you remembered the house but now you’re teasing us.’

  ‘I’m not. Honest. I can just see it.’

  Effy and Tash exchanged a glance that said, yeah right.

  ‘See that Barclays Bank at the corner of the road? It used to be Park Hall, the grandest house in the area. The pub over the road, the Bald Faced Stag? That was there when I was Henrietta but it was a coaching inn.’

  Tash burst out laughing. ‘Stop it, Jo. Now we definitely know you’re making it up.’

  I laughed. It appeared that we’d swapped roles since that day back on the Heath when I first met Betty. Then I’d thought the whole Henrietta story was baloney but Effy and Tash had felt there was something in it. Now they were the ones who didn’t know what to believe and I had no doubts whatsoever.

  ‘Thing is, Howard could be anywhere,’ said Tash with a long sigh.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘We found so much the census records, the grave, the house and even photos of Howard and Henrietta but we’re no closer to finding Howard than we were that day on the Heath.’

  ‘Well one thing has changed. You believe it’s all true now,’ said Effy, ‘whereas back then you didn’t.’

  ‘I know, and sadly, that makes it all feel worse,’ I said. ‘In accepting the story, I also accept that I have lost the great love of my life or should I say lives.’

  The skies darkened and moments later, rain began to splash down on the streets. Exactly how I feel, I thought as we made a dash for a bus shelter.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When I got home, I threw my jacket off and glanced in the hall mirror. I had the sensation of Henrietta staring back at me again. Haunted by myself, I thought. I looked again. She’d gone. It was Jo Harris staring back at me.

  ‘That you, Jo?’ Mum called from the kitchen.

  ‘Yep,’ I called back. I was about to dash upstairs when she appeared in the hall. She didn’t look happy.

  ‘So when were you going to tell me what’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I’ve just had Mrs Rayner on the phone.’

  ‘Oh. What did she want?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.

  Mum beckoned me to follow her into the kitchen. I went in and sat at the table. Mum didn’t sit. ‘She wanted to tell you something she’d found out about a great-aunt you’ve been researching,’ she said and gave me a quizzical look. ‘What aunt would that be exactly?’

  I felt myself blush and stared at the floor. Mum was quiet for a few moments, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know where to begin.

  Finally Mum sighed and sat down opposite. ‘What were you doing hanging around the cemetery? And who’s Howard? And Henrietta?’ I glanced up at Mum and saw that her face looked concerned. Are you in trouble, Jo?’

  ‘No!’ As I looked at her worried face, I could see the kindness in her eyes and felt sudden tears at the back of mine. Why had I shut her out for so long! I asked myself. Had I unconsciously blamed her for Dad’s death? Or been angry with her that she couldn’t fix it and keep him well and alive? Before Dad died, I used to chat away to her about everything, tell her all my secrets.

  She reached out and took my hand. ‘You can tell me anything, Jo. I am always here for you.’

  ‘I’m not in trouble, Mum. Nothing like that.’ I took a deep breath and told her the whole story, right from the start and the day on the Heath to earlier that day at Mrs Rayner’s. It felt good to talk it all out from beginning to end so that I could make sense of it too.

  Mum listened quietly, not commenting. At one point, she got up and got us a glass of orange juice each from the fridge. When I’d finished, she got up, came over to me and gave me a big hug. It felt good to breathe in her familiar Mum smell and be wrapped in her arms. ‘Oh, Jo, what a lot to have been carrying around with you.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ I said when she let me go.

  ‘All the same, I wish you’d told me earlier,’ she said as she sat back down.

  ‘But there was nothing to tell or at least not until recently. It didn’t make sense and I didn’t believe it anyway, then as more things came to light, it all got so mixed up in my head, I didn’t know what to think or say. You have to admit, it’s kind of a mad story.’

  ‘Yes but then what do we know about anything? After your dad died, I thought a lot about what happens next, like, where did he go? Does it end when the body dies? Who knows? I certainly don’t. Here we all are and yet no-one really knows where we’ve come from, what we’re doing here and where we go when the body wears out.’

  ‘I know ... I mean, I don’t know. I find it overwhelming how much I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s vast how much I don’t know!’

  Mum looked at me tenderly. ‘My little Jo. I hate to think you’ve been so unhappy these last weeks, trying to soldier on all by yourself under the weight of all this, but then, I suppose that’s who you are or who you’ve become. You were so brave when your dad died. So determined to be strong.’

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you any more than you already were.’

  Mum reached out and took my hand again. ‘You’d just lost your father, Jo. You didn’t need to hold it together for me. Maybe that recurring dream you’ve been having is because you didn’t let it out.’

  I felt my eyes fill with tears again. ‘I don’t think my dream was just about Dad. Henrietta lost her father at a young age too and then lost Howard. So much loss. My dad, her dad and now Howard.’ I started to sob and soon the tears wouldn’t stop. It felt like a floodgate inside me had opened and wave upon wave of pain and sadness burst forward. I wasn’t even sure who I was crying for. For me or Mum or Howard or Henrietta or Dad. Mum was at my side in an instant and held me to her, her eyes also full of tears.

  When I’d finally stopped, Mum let me go again and got me some tissues.

  ‘So what did Mrs Rayner want?’ I asked after I’d blown my nose.

  ‘She called to say she’d found Henrietta’s death certificate. It was amongst Howard’s papers. The cause of death was tuberculosis. She said you might like to know.’

  ‘Cause of Henrietta’s death. My death. Major weird, don’t you think?’

  Mum nodded. ‘Major. Though sometimes you have to accept there are some things we just don’t understand. All I do know is that while we have this life, we must appreciate what’s around us. Don’t miss any of it. The cycles and recycles of nature. The way leaves change colour and fall in the auturnn leaving the trees stripped and bare, like skeletons, the end of a cycle. Then out of nowhere come buds and the branches are full of blossom and new green leaves it’s like magic. Perhaps nature is telling us that is how it is on many levels. A constant renewal. Death leads to rebirth.’

  ‘Do you think?’ I asked as Mum stared out of the window as if deep in thought.

  ‘When I was younger,’ Mum continued, ‘I was so sure about many things, so opinionated. As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that I know nothing for sure.’

  I nodded. ‘Do you think I might have been Henrietta?’

  ‘Why not? It could be that you have some psychic power and have tuned into something that took place. There are people who have that gift, you know. On the other hand, maybe you were her. Why not? Either way though, she’s gone. Died of tuberculosis. But you’re still here as Jo, right here, right now, breathing and alive.’

  ‘So you’re saying live for the present a
nd forget the past?’

  ‘Not exactly. We all carry our past within us but don’t dwell on it. It’s gone. And I’m not saying don’t have your plans for the future either. It’s good to have goals. I’m just saying in the meantime, don’t miss your life. Don’t be so busy trying to work it all out that you miss the small stuff that’s going on around you. Try to live in the present and enjoy all that there is to experience.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have any idea which of the boys your Howard might be this time around?’ asked Mum.

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. Maybe. I was hoping that seeing his photograph might shed some light but it didn’t. And I was hoping that Mrs Rayner might be able to tell us if he and Henrietta met up again between her dismissal and her death but she didn’t know.’

  ‘Maybe you have to let that go,’ said Mum. ‘If what you saw was right, then Howard was there at the end with her. You can’t relive that life. It’s gone and even though you have some of her memories, Henrietta wasn’t the real you, Jo. The real you is in this century. You’re a different person now in a different time with different options and choices to make. Yes, your Howard might be out there somewhere but meeting him might be down to the right timing. I am sure if your dad and I had met years earlier than we did, we wouldn’t have hit it off at all. So maybe you’ll meet your Howard when the time’s right.’

  ‘Maybe, though I hope I don’t have to wait too long. When I saw him in the regression and then his photograph today at Mrs Rayner’s, I felt like I really missed him, like an ache inside of me.’

  Mum nodded and she looked sad for a moment. I knew she was thinking about Dad.

  ‘But you know what, Mum? You’re right about living for the present and enjoying your life and do you know what I feel like doing more than anything?’

  ‘What’s that, love?’

  ‘I think in order to move on, I have to let go of the past and live right now, in the present, and I want to make some changes.’