She told him about her friend Pippa, and the way she felt about her work, and how she’d always thought it might make her a little odd, but that now she didn’t mind.
And finally, because they seemed to have talked about everything else and the omission was notable, he’d asked her about the ring on her finger and she’d told him that she was engaged to be married.
Jack had felt a disappointment far out of proportion with what he considered reasonable, given that he’d known her for the sum total of forty hours. He’d tried to keep it casual. He’d expressed congratulations and then asked her what the lucky man was like.
Alastair – Jack had never met an Alastair he liked – was in banking. He was nice. He was successful. He could be funny at times.
‘The only thing,’ she’d said with a frown, ‘is that I don’t think he loves me.’
‘Why? What’s the matter with him?’
‘I think he might be in love with someone else. I think he might be in love with my mother.’
‘Well, that’s … unusual, in the circumstances.’
She had smiled, despite herself, and Jack had said, ‘But you love him?’
She didn’t answer at first, but then: ‘No,’ she said, and it sounded as if she might have surprised herself. ‘No, I really don’t think I do.’
‘So. You’re not in love with him and you think he’s in love with your mother. Why are you getting married?’
‘The whole thing is arranged. The flowers, the stationery …’
‘Ah, well, then, that’s different. Stationery in particular. Not easy to return.’
Now, he handed her a mug of tea and said, ‘Come for a walk in the garden before breakfast?’
‘You’re going to make me breakfast?’
‘It’s one of my specialities. Or so I’ve been told.’
They went out through the back door near the malt house, under the chestnut tree and across the lawn. Jack wished he’d brought his sunglasses. The world had been washed clean, everything as bright as an over-exposed photo. As they rounded the corner into the front garden, Elodie gasped.
He followed her gaze and saw that the ancient Japanese maple had come down in the storm and was lying now across the flagged path, its gnarled roots pointing towards the sky. ‘My museum colleagues are not going to be happy,’ he said.
They went over to perform a closer inspection and Elodie said, ‘Look. I think there’s something down there.’
Jack got down on his knees and reached into the hollow, dusting the distant smooth speck with his fingertips.
‘Maybe it’s your treasure,’ she said with a smile. ‘Right in front of you all along.’
‘I thought you said that was a children’s story?’
‘I’ve been wrong before.’
‘I guess we should dig it up?’
‘I guess so.’
‘But not until we’ve had some breakfast.’
‘Certainly not until we’ve had breakfast,’ she agreed. ‘Because I heard a rumour that it’s your speciality and I’m expecting big things from you, Jack Rolands.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Summer, 1992
Tip was in his studio when the news came. A phone call from the woman who lived next door to them: Lauren was dead, killed in a car accident somewhere near Reading; Winston was distraught; the daughter was coping.
He had reflected on that later. Coping. It seemed an odd thing to say about a six-year-old girl who had lost her mother. And yet he knew what the woman, Mrs Smith, had meant. Tip had only met the child a handful of times and knew her as the diminutive person who sat across from him at the odd Sunday lunch, trying to be surreptitious as she watched, wide-eyed and curious, over the tabletop; but he had seen enough to know that she was different from Lauren at the same age. Far more internal. Lauren had exuded a wound-up energy since the day she was born. As if her voltage were set a little higher than everybody else’s. It made for a fascinating kid – she was certainly a success – but there was nothing easy about her company. The light was always on.
After he was given the news, Tip put the telephone receiver back in its cradle and sat down at his workbench. His vision glazed as he took in the stool on the other side. Lauren had sat there just last week. She’d wanted to talk about Birchwood Manor, asking him where it was exactly.
‘The address, you mean?’
He’d given it to her, and then he’d asked her why – whether she was thinking of visiting – and she’d nodded and said that she had something very important to do and that she wanted to do it in the right place. ‘I know it was only a children’s story,’ she’d said, ‘but in some way that I can’t explain, I’m the person I am today because of it.’ She’d refused to be drawn further, and they’d changed the subject, but when she was leaving she said, ‘You were right, you know. Time makes the impossible possible.’
He’d read about the concert she was playing in Bath in the newspaper a few days later, and when he saw who the other soloists were, he’d realised what she’d meant. She’d been planning to say goodbye to someone who had once meant a great deal to her.
She had sat on that very same stool six years earlier, when she returned from New York. He could picture her the day she’d come to visit him; he’d been able to see at once that something had happened.
Sure enough: she had fallen in love, she said, and she was getting married.
‘Congratulations,’ he’d said, but her expression made it clear this wasn’t an ordinary announcement.
It turned out that the two parts of the sentence fitted together in a rather more complicated way than he’d assumed.
She had fallen in love with one of the other young musicians invited to be part of the quintet, a violinist. ‘It was instant,’ she said. ‘It was fierce and complete and worth every risk and sacrifice, and I knew at once that I would never feel the same way about another man.’
‘And did he—?’
‘It was mutual.’
‘But?’
‘He’s married.’
‘Ah.’
‘To a woman called Susan, a lovely, sweet woman who he’s known since he was a boy and whom he couldn’t bear to hurt. She knows everything about him, she’s a primary school teacher, and she bakes the most delicious chocolate and peanut butter slice, which she brought to the rehearsal room and shared with all of us before sitting on a plastic chair and listening to us play. And when we finished, she cried, Tip – cried because the music had moved her – so I can’t even hate her, because I could never hate a woman who is moved to tears by music.’
Which might have been the end of it, but there was a third part to the story.
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘I see.’
‘Not planned.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to get married.’
And that’s when she’d told him what Winston had proposed. Tip had met the lad a couple of times: a musician, too, though not like Lauren. A good sort, hopelessly in love with her. ‘He doesn’t mind—’
‘About the baby? No.’
‘I was going to say, that you’re in love with someone else.’
‘I’ve been very honest with him. He said it didn’t matter, that there were different types of love and that the human heart did not admit limitations. He said I might even change my mind in time.’
‘He could be right.’
‘No. It’s impossible.’
‘Time is a strange and powerful beast. It has a habit of making the impossible possible.’
But, no, she’d been adamant. She could never love another man in the same way that she’d loved the violinist.
‘But I love Winston, too, Tip. He’s a good man, a kind man; he’s one of my best friends. I know it’s not usual.’
‘No such thing in my experience.’
She’d reached across to squeeze his hand.
‘What will you tell the child?’ Tip had asked.
‘The truth, if and when she asks. Winston and I agreed on that.’
‘She?’
Lauren had smiled then. ‘Just a feeling.’