Chapter 67
NOW
I talk. I talk and I talk and I talk. As Adeem and Libby listen, their faces move in the most pure and unusual ways, morphing before my very eyes from childlike youth in one breath, to wise and empathetic the next.
It’s almost as though the angles of their faces become more defined with every vulnerability I reveal.
There’s a magic to it—a beauty. Sometimes I wish young people knew how beautiful they were, and I’m not just talking about pretty ones.
Even Adeem has a beauty to him. Even I did once, I suppose.
It’s fascinating, watching people. Miraculous, really.
Adeem gets three calls from Meera over the morning and only answers one. Libby gives him a high five as he lets the second one roll over to voicemail. By the time he answers the third, the underarms of his pale blue shirt are drenched almost down to the waist.
“Time for a break,” Libby says finally. “Answer your bloody phone, Ads, you’re giving me anxiety. Elsie—cup of tea?”
Libby likes a cuppa almost as much as I do. I nod and she heads to the kitchen. She’s become very comfortable here, moving about my house, making tea, rearranging furniture as the light fades. At one point she says: “Your tea towel needs a wash. Where’s the laundry, I’ll throw it in the machine.”
I can’t decide whether I’m embarrassed that the tea towel hadn’t been washed or touched that she offered to do it. I think mostly I’m warmed through at the idea of someone being so familiar with me and my home that they are comfortable enough to suggest it.
While she makes the tea, I go outside to check the mailbox. The street is quiet, no one lurking about. I almost miss Persephone, sitting on the pavement outside my house, part hidden by the rosebushes. “What are you doing in the gutter, child?”
She doesn’t turn around. Her arms are crossed and resting over her knobbly knees. Her shins are covered in the scrapes and bruises of childhood. “You’re not selling your house,” she says. “I’m not letting you.”
At first I’m confused, but then she points to a sign—FORTHCOMING AUCTION—lying on the ground beside her. It is apparent that it’s been pulled out of the grass.
“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t realize they’d put that up.”
“You can’t move,” she says sulkily. “Who will look after me when Mum’s at work?”
In another life, I’d have sat in the gutter beside her, but that life doesn’t contain my arthritic knees. Instead, I walk out onto the lane and stand in front of her. “Persephone—”
“Who will make me apple pie?”
I sigh. “I’m sure that your mum can—”
“Where will Delly and me go to play?!”
I stop trying to reply. Instead, I begin the slow and foolish descent into the gutter beside her. I may never again get to my feet.
“Who will be my grandma?” she says quietly when I land beside her. She slowly looks at me, and her eyes shimmer with tears. It’s too much for me. I feel it in my heart first, a tiny pinprick that quickly becomes a stabbing pain.
“Come here, pet,” I say.
She wraps her arms around my waist. As she sobs, a few tears of my own escape, but I wipe them away before anyone can see. So this is the pain of loving, I think to myself. This is the pain of being loved.
When I return to the house, it’s clear Libby and Adeem have been conferring and are ready to bring things to a close.
Fair enough. We all know what we’re here for.
Every word I’ve spoken, every dusty memory I’ve hauled out of the vault—it’s all been leading to this. Time to get the show on the road.
“This is the big one, Elsie,” Libby says as I sit down. She lays a hand on mine. “You ready?”
But I’m not sure I am. I haven’t revisited this day in sixty-six years. Not properly. Not out loud.
Libby gives a small, encouraging smile. “Right then. Tell me about the day of the murder. What happened?”
I’m just retelling it, I know that. It’s over now. And yet, as I open my mouth to talk, and images of that day flash before my eyes—I feel the air shift, as though the past has slipped into the room beside me.