The Last List of Mabel Beaumont(79)

Was that what I was doing?

‘I understand, I think. You don’t want to fully let go of him. I don’t, either. And you want all the conventional things. Marriage, children. Arthur is offering all of that to you.’

She was wrong, and I wanted to scream it. I didn’t want those things. I wanted her, but since that day we’d kissed she’d given me no indication that she felt the same way. I felt like I’d given her every chance. We’d been alone countless times. Like right then. She’d had every opportunity to lean across and close the distance between us and kiss me again. And so had I, and neither of us had taken it. Was it fear on her part, as it was on mine, or was it a lack of inclination? I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

If I could go back there, do that day again, differently, would I be brave enough to risk it all? I don’t know, but I do know that my life could have taken a wildly different course if I had.

‘Mabel?’

I look up and Julie is standing behind the sofa, telling me she’s about to go.

‘You were miles away,’ she says. ‘Is there anything else you need before I head off?’

I shake my head. Because the things I need aren’t material, and no one can give them to me. A second chance. A rewinding of time. The girl I was, and the girl she was, and the hidden love that may have existed between us.





38





There’s a knocking at the door that sounds like someone trying to raise the dead.

‘All right,’ I call out. ‘I’m coming.’

When I get the door open, after faffing about a bit with the chain, I see Julie on the doorstep, breathless and excited.

‘I thought you were coming at two today,’ I say.

‘I was, I am, I just… had to talk to you about something. Can I come in?’

I step back and she comes inside. She’s beaming, happier than I’ve ever seen her. What could possibly have happened between yesterday afternoon and now to provoke this kind of elation? Because that’s the word for how she looks. Elated.

‘You’d better sit down, Mabel,’ she says. ‘And I’d better, too. I’m all antsy. Can’t stay still.’

She perches on the edge of the sofa and I go to my armchair, keen to find out what this is all about.

‘I had a message this morning, on Facebook,’ she says.

I nod, encouraging her to go on.

‘It was from Charles.’

Dot’s brother. In all the excitement of looking for Joan, and then the heartbreak of her telling us Dot had passed away, I forgot all about that lead. That message. And now, Julie has been in touch with Dot’s closest living relative, and I imagine she’s here to fill in some gaps for me, let me know about corners of Dot’s life that I wasn’t privy to.

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘I just need some water,’ she says, leaping up and disappearing into the kitchen. ‘Do you want anything, Mabel?’

‘I’d love a tea,’ I say.

While she’s making it, I try to guess at what she might be here to tell me. Something about Dot’s sexuality, perhaps? I’ve wondered about that, since finding out that her marriage didn’t last long and she didn’t marry again. But if Julie is about to say that, how will I feel? Will it be better to know that she could have felt the same way as I did, or worse? I let my mind wander a bit further. What about if she left me something, like a letter? And Charles, or whoever was in charge of sorting out the will wasn’t able to get it to me, but now they’ve found this connection, via Julie? It’s a slim chance, but the idea of words written by Dot lifts me a little. I can picture her handwriting, its loops and curves. I start to think about what she might have had to say.

‘Here,’ Julie says, placing my mug of tea on the windowsill for me. ‘Mmm, lovely daffs, don’t they smell wonderful?’

They do, but now that I’ve gone so far down the track of imagining Dot left me something – some kind of explanation, perhaps, or a declaration of love, even the friendly kind – I need to know Julie’s news immediately.

‘Please tell me,’ I say.

‘I’m trying to! It’s Dot, Mabel. Joan was wrong.’

Joan was wrong. About what? And then it hits me. Could she really mean that?

‘Dot’s alive, Mabel!’

‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’

My hands are trembling, and Julie’s face falls. And it’s not that I don’t want what she’s saying to be true, it’s that I’ve accepted the opposite, and I don’t think I can do it again, if this turns out to be a mistake.

‘Mabel,’ Julie says, coming over to me and taking both my hands in hers. ‘You’re so cold. It’s the shock, I expect. I promise you it’s true. Charles confirmed it. She’s living in Portsmouth. He remembered you the second I mentioned you, said he was sure Dot would be delighted to hear from you. He gave me her phone number, Mabel.’

She goes back to where she was sitting and roots in her handbag, then pulls out a slip of paper and passes it to me. On it, she’s written Dot’s name and a phone number. And I can’t believe it. That Dot’s alive, that she’s living less than two hours away, that this series of eleven numbers on this piece of tatty paper is a connection from me to her, if only I dare to use it. I don’t realise I’m crying until Julie hands me a tissue, and then I can’t stop. All the emotion of the past few months is coming out, now, and there’s nothing I can do about it.