‘Archie contracted malaria when he was working in Africa, poor fellow.’
I wondered what had happened to the Russian mathematician – death by numbers?
‘What’s with all of these questions? I hope you’re not planning on bumping me off and getting your hands on my house?’
‘Honestly, Madame Bowden, if anyone should be worried about getting bumped off, I think it should be me.’
She stared at me for a moment and I was full sure she was going to fire me for insolence, when she let out an enormous laugh. I really needed to hang out with people my own age.
I spent that entire day giving the house a deep clean. It was something I always enjoyed doing, not because I was a fan of housework, but because the methodical action of cleaning was the only way I’d ever found to make my thoughts stop. Thoughts like: I had married a bully, I had wasted my life, and now I could add a new one to the list – I had humiliated myself in front of Henry. Why did I care about his opinion so much anyway? Besides, it wasn’t my fault he’d neglected to tell me about his fiancée. But the truth was, I already knew. I could read in his eyes that his heart was tied elsewhere, so why did I act like it was such a big surprise? And why did it even matter? What kind of an idiot would start having feelings for someone when they’d just got out of an abusive marriage? That should have been the end of it. I simply couldn’t permit myself to feel anything.
I was exhausted by the time I got downstairs to the basement that night. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom and changed for bed with unseeing eyes. It was only as I pulled the covers down and flopped into bed that I saw it. Where the lines in the wall had been, there now emerged a shelf. With one single book on it. Standing upright. I looked around the room, for what, I don’t know. I almost felt like saying out loud, ‘Can anyone else see this?’ I was afraid to get out of bed and so I just stayed there, frozen for a minute. Nothing else happened, not a sound came. I had no idea how it got there, other than that Madame Bowden must have placed it there while I was busy steam-cleaning the curtains or bleaching the bathroom. My curiosity won out and I got up to inspect the book. The spine read A Place Called Lost but the author was anonymous. I got back into bed and opened the beautiful old cloth-bound cover. It bore a picture of an antique shopfront with a stained-glass pattern in the window. I had to admit that, so far, it was very inviting.
I read the first line aloud: ‘Once upon a time in an old town, in an old street, there stood a very old house.’
I hadn’t told my employer of my issues with books or why I practically broke out in hives at the thought of reading them, so she wouldn’t have known. But perhaps it was a gesture of some sort and it would’ve been rude not to accept it. I decided I should try to read it, in case she asked me about it. Besides, I had to break through this mental block if I had any hope of going back to university. I had to face my fears.
Chapter Eighteen
HENRY
I rehearsed what I would say all the way there, but when I tapped on her window, all of my lines fell away, like a novice actor on opening night.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, opening the window and somehow managing to heave herself out of it by climbing on a stool.
‘Careful,’ I said, setting down the coffees I’d brought. I took her arms but there was really no need – for a slight woman she was incredibly strong. Dressed in old jeans and a sweatshirt, with her hair roughly pulled into a bun, she looked even more attractive than I remembered and I struggled to keep my focus on the task at hand.
‘I … I couldn’t leave things the way they were.’
‘It’s fine—’
‘No, look,’ I interrupted, determined to be upfront and honest with her. It was the least she deserved after what she’d been through. ‘I didn’t get the chance to say it before and I want to say it now. What you told me … about your husband, I can’t imagine the courage it took and I wanted to say thank you for trusting me with it.’
She looked at me, as though slightly relieved.
‘And I should have told you about Isabelle. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t.’ I said this although, at that moment, it was crystal clear to me why I hadn’t wanted her to know. My feelings grew stronger every time I saw her, but there was nothing either of us could do about it. She was vulnerable and I had made commitments. The end.
‘I hope we can carry on our friendship,’ I said, sounding like something out of a Jane Austen novel. Yet it was the best I could do and I really meant it. Her friendship meant more to me than I realised and if I couldn’t have anything else, it would have to be enough.
‘Are they doughnuts?’
‘What?’ Of all the things I had imagined she might say, that was not one of them.
She hunkered down on the rough ground with its patchy grass and weeds, crossed her legs and opened the box of doughnuts I’d bought, whilst taking a large gulp of coffee.
‘Of course we can be friends, you big eejit!’ she said between bites, sugar all over her lips.
I sat down beside her and leaned my back against the gable wall. I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.
‘I mean, besides Madame Bowden, you’re the only friend I’ve made since coming here.’
‘Oh, I see, so it’s more a lack of options thing?’ I said, taking the lid off my coffee and blowing on the liquid, which was already stone cold.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ She shrugged and all but concealed a malevolent grin.
Banter. A safe harbour. I got stuck into a custard doughnut, grateful that we were back on a firm footing. I didn’t know why she had confided in me and I wasn’t sure why I had told her about the darkest times in my life, but perhaps the trick was not to question it. Not to put a label on it, as clichéd as it sounded.
‘Any luck with the manuscript?’
I made a mental note that whenever I showed up at Martha’s window, I should bring sugar. Her mood was positively upbeat.
‘Um, no, not really. A colleague found something about her brother, Lyndon. He was a soldier – a general or something – in the war. It’s strange,’ I said, tearing a chocolate doughnut into two halves and offering her one. ‘You’d think a woman like her who’d been rubbing shoulders with Hemingway and contacting one of the top book dealers in America would leave some sort of trace, wouldn’t you?’
She took her time to think about it and once she had satisfactorily munched the last of the doughnut and wiped her hands on her jeans, she looked me square in the eye.
‘You think it’s strange that a woman has been silenced? Forgotten about? Written out of history? Henry, what have they been teaching you?’
‘Okay, all right, that sounded completely stupid, but you know what I mean.’
‘Well, maybe your problem is that you keep looking at Opaline from a man’s point of view. Hemingway, her brother, the other guy—’
‘Rosenbach.’
‘Yeah, Rosenbach. Why don’t you find out more about Sylvia and the bookshop in Paris?’
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
‘You know, you really are quite good at this.’