Your friend,
Opaline
A year had passed and any hope of escape seemed like a distant dream I couldn’t quite recall.
Mary spoke less and less. She had developed a worrying cough and could not sleep at night, so I sat up with her, wrapping her in my blanket.
‘Tell me about your life,’ she asked one night, as we lay in the darkness. ‘Before you came here.’
My life before. How could I even begin to describe a life that no longer felt like my own? I was worried that speaking about it would push me further away from it.
‘I used to sell books.’
There was a silence while we both adjusted to the reality of those words.
‘I’ve never read a book,’ came the reply.
I was glad the darkness of the night hid my features, which were a mixture of shock and pity. Mary wouldn’t want either of those. Then she became seized by a fit of coughing that lasted more than five minutes. The wheezing sound of her lungs affirmed to me that she was suffering from influenza. With no heat, threadbare rags for clothes and a diet of porridge and watery soup, I feared for her health.
‘Can you tell me a story? From one of your books?’
At that moment I would have done anything to offer her comfort and so I began to recite Emily Bront?’s manuscript, picturing the tiny handwriting in my mind’s eye. The words came easily, as I had read them in a way that was distinct from all other books. I was the only one to have seen them since they had been secreted in Charlotte’s sewing box and so they entered my soul in a way that no other writing had previously.
Mary was calmed by them and, just like a child, asked for the same story every night, as her condition deteriorated.
Chapter Forty-Four
MARTHA
I closed the book and felt the room settle around me. I turned it over and looked at the front cover again with its image of Mr Fitzpatrick’s shop. I let my fingertips run over the title, tooled in gold leaf.
‘A Place Called Lost,’ I whispered to myself. There was no doubt in my mind now that Opaline Carlisle had written it. I was almost at the end and I was trying to ration it out, like saving squares of a chocolate bar as a kid to make it last longer. The feeling was bittersweet, as the one person I wanted to tell about it probably hated me. Henry.
I was in the library at Trinity, where I was supposed to be writing an essay on Persuasion with Logan. He was sneakily looking up new dishes on Instagram, so at least we were both procrastinating.
‘What is it? You’ve been moping about since your birthday,’ Logan observed. He was a very loud whisperer and I could see that the people around us did not appreciate his vibe.
‘Nothing,’ I said, carelessly minimising my own feelings. ‘It’s just, I need some help with something and the only person I can ask is …’
‘Shhh!’
I pulled my chair a little closer to his. ‘You see, there’s this guy—’
‘Isn’t there always?’ he said, smiling.
‘It’s not like that. I just – I can’t get into anything serious right now, so we stopped things before they started and now …’
He scooched a little closer. ‘What you have here, Martha, is your classic “situationship”。 Take it from me, you want to avoid them like the plague. You never know where you stand.’
He wasn’t wrong. Dancing with Henry at my birthday party had been overwhelming. I felt like a princess; for the first time in my life I was in a beautiful house wearing a magical dress and floating in the arms of a prince. He was charming, funny and attractive, with that whole dark academia thing he has going on. Of all the bruises and broken bones I’d sustained over the years, the numbing disappointment and emotional scars, I had never felt my heart crack the way it did when he gave me the Petit Prince pen.
‘It’s just, we were both involved in some … research and I kind of need his expertise.’
‘My advice? Set your boundaries, make it clear from the outset that you’re just friends and—’
‘SHHHHHHHH!’
Just friends. Exactly. I could do that. I mean, he wasn’t to know I had checked his socials, which was utterly useless because he rarely posted. The last photo was of his newborn niece. It had made me smile when I saw it but then it also made me upset because I knew that I’d never be a part of his life.
Logan was right. After all, Henry wouldn’t have come to my party if he didn’t want to remain friends. Nothing had really changed; he would still go home after he’d found his manuscript and until then, for whatever reason, we were both being pulled in the same direction by the bookshop and by Opaline. Some outside forces had decided that our destiny was entwined, but we didn’t necessarily need to be a couple in order to fulfil it.
‘You’re right,’ I said, closing my laptop and stuffing it into my bag. ‘It is the twenty-first century,’ I repeated, as though that made everything clear.
‘Wait a second,’ he said, reaching up to the top of my head and extricating a bright green leaf from my hair.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, giving my whole scalp a good ruffle through in case there were any more.
‘Spring is in the air,’ he said.
It was also in my flat. The trunk had begun to separate from the wall at the top and the branches overhead now hung over my bed, creating a kind of canopy. Buds had begun to grow and unfurl. I no longer thought about telling Madame Bowden. I liked it and didn’t want anyone to suggest cutting it. On a trestle table outside a second-hand bookshop I found a book on the hidden life of trees, which was interesting because it did feel like this tree was hiding in my basement. And because that was the kind of person I was now: the kind who picked up books on a whim.
Logan’s words buoyed me along, all the way to the front door of Henry’s bed and breakfast, but that was where I began to falter. Who was I kidding, really? Of course I still liked him and he’d know it straightaway. It was a stupid idea. Maybe I could find out more about Opaline myself – who needed someone with vast experience in this area anyway?
As I was thinking this all through and talking myself out of ringing the doorbell, I saw two little dogs hop up inside the net curtains of the front window and, on sight, begin barking furiously.
‘Shhh!’ I insisted, holding my hands up for some reason, as if they were armed. It didn’t work. Next thing the front door opened.
‘Hello, love, I’ve no vacancies tonight, I’m afraid,’ said the slightly harried-looking woman. She took a deep drag of her cigarette and sharply told the dogs to shut up or they wouldn’t get their treat, which weirdly worked.
‘No, I’m not looking for a room. I was just seeing if Henry was in but he’s probably out so I’ll just—’ I had stepped back off the kerb and was already making my exit.
‘HENRY! COMPANY!’ Her voice pierced the air like a foghorn and she invited me to step inside.
What could I do?
I was sat on a little velvet buttoned seat attached to a small desk with a landline phone on it in the hall when I saw his brown boots coming down the stairs. He looked puzzled to see me, as well he should have been.
‘Hi,’ I said. I also waved, even though he was right in front of me.