Chapter Twenty-Four
Ida made the heretofore unheard-of decision to close her store early.
“What if people want flowers?” Bo asked, almost stupidly, but Ida had already pulled down the shades and locked the door.
“Well, they can pick daisies off the heath like everyone else,” she retorted, reaching up to a high shelf, from which she pulled out a bottle of vodka.
Bo gaped at her. “Vodka?”
“I need it. Want one?”
Bo shook her head. “No.”
“That’s fine. I’ll drink alone.”
Bo watched as Ida dumped out her half-finished tea from earlier, and without even rinsing the mug, instantly topped it up with alcohol. “I’m driving you home later,” she decided, and Ida gave a disinterested shrug.
“Fine. Now, tell me about Sir Geoffrey. Are you absolutely sure he’s the one who was with Madelief?”
Bo nodded. “He told me the story himself. Told me all about the worst thing he ever did. He was very clear that the woman’s name was Madelief, and that . . . and that he’d broken her heart.”
“Well, well, well.” Ida took a long sip of her drink. “So, he said it was the worst thing he ever did, hey?”
“You have no idea how much he regretted letting Madelief go.”
“She was his bit on the side, Bo, not an employee he had to fire.”
“You know what I mean.” Bo paused. “Actually, I will have that vodka, if you don’t mind?”
“What about driving me home?”
“Get the train like everyone else.”
Ida nodded, pouring out a measure of vodka into another empty teacup. She handed it to Bo, who brought it to her lips. It smelled of both alcohol and Earl Grey but that didn’t stop Bo from taking a large sip, wincing as the burn hit her throat.
“How long has that bottle been up there?” Bo spluttered, and Ida shrugged.
“About as long as I’ve owned this place. Now tell me about Sir Geoffrey.” Ida’s face darkened. “Tell me all about the worst thing he ever did.”
Momentarily, Bo felt a dart of guilt. Geoffrey, eaten up by guilt, had shared this story with her, but never given her leave to tell anyone else.
It wasn’t her story to share, Bo reminded herself.
Geoffrey, full of shame, had confessed everything to her one night, and Bo could still picture him in her mind, ashen-faced as he quietly spoke.
“You should have seen her face when I said I wouldn’t marry her,” he’d told Bo, and Bo had been shocked to see the normally staid Geoffrey’s eyes fill with tears.
“She was devastated. I could tell I’d crushed her, and for what?
Because my family wouldn’t approve of her?
Because she was just some London shop girl?
Because she wouldn’t help my career?” Geoffrey had shaken his head in disgust at himself.
“I loved her. That should have been enough. If I’d been stronger, we’d still be together now.
If I’d been stronger, we’d have each other.
If I’d been stronger. If only I’d been stronger. ”
No. It wasn’t Bo’s story to tell.
But then, Ida already knew it all, didn’t she?
“He told me all about how he met this girl, Madelief. He told me how much he loved her; how much he wanted to be with her—”
“Nonsense,” Ida cut in, her voice sharp. “If he’d really wanted to be with her, he would’ve been. Oh, I’m sure when he told you this story he was a regretful old man, but when he was younger . . . well, he was a selfish bastard, and there’s no better name for him.”
Bo pressed her lips together. Maybe Ida spoke the truth. All Bo knew though was the look that had been in Geoffrey’s eye when he spoke about the woman he’d loved the most and hurt the worst.
“He regretted losing her almost instantly, you know,” she told Ida.
“Madelief wasn’t gone a month when he tried to find her.
He broke things off with his fiancée, told his parents there was another woman.
He even bought a ring. But when he went back to Madelief’s flat, she was gone. She’d moved out.”
“She went back to Holland,” Ida confirmed. “Back to her family.”
“Geoffrey spent years searching for her.”
“He wouldn’t have found her.”
“No. He never did.”
“Of course not,” Ida’s face changed. “And good thing too. He’d have only broken her heart a second time.”
“I don’t know. He searched for her for such a long time,” Bo reflected. “That’s why he came in here so often. I think he was hoping he’d come in one day and find her here.”
“She never came back,” Ida confirmed, before giving Bo an odd look. “It was no wonder he struck up a friendship with you though. You’re so similar to Madelief.”
Bo made no reply to that. Similar to Madelief.
The comparison sat uncomfortably with her.
She’d always thought Geoffrey’s friendship was genuine, a rare and uncomplicated kindness in a world that often felt too sharp and cruel.
But now, she couldn’t shake the uneasy thought that maybe what he’d seen in her wasn’t her at all.
Maybe it had been nostalgia. Maybe it had been her face, that beautiful face of which her mother was so proud, all over again.
The idea stung. She wanted to believe Geoffrey had cared for her mind, conversation and company.
But if Ida was right, Geoffrey had only ever been looking at her and seeing someone else.
Maybe their friendship hadn’t been friendship at all, but simply the echo of a man looking for the ghost of a woman from his past. And if that was true, what did that mean for her and Max?
Were they any different from Geoffrey and Madelief?
The thought made her chest tighten, a mix of fear and fascination.
Maybe they were doomed to repeat the past, just a second version of a story that ended before it ever truly began.
She sighed. “You know he bought the house on Orchard Drive because she loved it?”
Ida said nothing.
“He told me that he and Madelief used to walk on the heath sometimes, and they would pass 12 Orchard Drive, and she would say it was the prettiest house she’d ever seen.
He bought it in the hope that one day she would live in it with him as a family.
He bought it for her, and then he could never leave it, in case she ever came back.
He was lonely for a long time. He got married to ease that boredom, but the marriage didn’t work out.
How could it? He was still in love with Madelief. ”
“If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for him, it isn’t working,” Ida said, but her words were kind. “Like I said earlier, you knew the regret of an old man. I saw what he did to regret.”
“Max is his son, you know?”
At that, Ida leaned forward. “I thought he was the nephew?”
“No. His son.” Bo chewed on her lip. “His secret son.”
Ida frowned. “Is he now? How did that come about?”
Bo blushed. “Geoffrey had an affair while he was married. Max was the result.”
Ida rolled her eyes. “Leopards and their spots.”
Bo ignored that remark. She knew Geoffrey hadn’t been perfect. She knew he’d made mistakes. Still, she’d loved the man she’d known. She still missed and grieved him, despite his flaws.
“So, he didn’t marry Max’s mother either?”
“I don’t know the story, I don’t think anyone really could aside from Geoffrey and Max’s mother, who are both dead, but—”
“But?”
Bo shrugged. “I think the only woman he would ever have left his wife for was Madelief.”
Ida said nothing for a moment, before she took another long drink of vodka. “Well, he sounds like an old fool to me. You always told me how desperate Geoffrey was for children. For a family. He gets a woman pregnant and doesn’t acknowledge the child? Leopards and spots, Bo. Leopards and spots.”
Bo sighed. It was something she’d thought about recently.
About why Geoffrey, who’d been so desperate for a family, hadn’t married Max’s mother.
Hadn’t acknowledged Max as his son and said hang the consequences to all who criticized him.
All she could think was that Geoffrey hadn’t been a happy man.
She knew he hadn’t loved his wife and figured that he probably hadn’t loved Max’s mother either.
Why exchange one unhappy marriage for another? Even for the sake of a child?
Underneath all these thoughts though, lurking a little like unease, was a new awareness that Max was probably right: Geoffrey might’ve been a good man to her, and a kind man to her, but to others, he hadn’t been so pleasant.
It was another grown-up emotion born of newly felt adulthood: that someone could be unpleasant, selfish and inconsiderate, and you could love them anyway.
That someone could show one side of their face to some, and a crueller side to others.
That someone could make bad choices and bad decisions and recognize them but continue to make them anyway.
Bo recalled the first day she and Max had met. He’d assumed she was sleeping with Geoffrey, and she’d been outraged by the suggestion, because it wasn’t true. But why had Max thought it in the first place?
Max wouldn’t have thought what he did unless experience taught him to expect it, Bo realized.
There must have been other women before me, and Geoffrey probably did sleep with some of them.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t love Madelief, because he did.
At least, he told me he did, and I believed him.
He really did love her, and he really did lose her, even if he only had himself to blame.
But he let that loss twist him. He let that loss consume him.
I won’t. Not ever. I’m not going to be like that.
Even if Max didn’t love her, Bo decided, she wasn’t going to end up like Geoffrey. She wasn’t going to let loss twist her into something awful. When her relationship with Max did end, she was going to walk away gracefully and do her damnedest to move on.