Chapter 24
PRESENT DAY
Mia reached for Joe’s hand as he spoke quietly to translate the conversation that was unfolding, and it wasn’t the first time she was frustrated by her lack of French.
‘Does she believe me, that this is mine? That I didn’t steal it from anyone?’ Mia asked.
‘I think she’s starting to understand, but she wants to ask someone else to join her. She’s calling her son to come and meet us, and she wants us to wait until then.’
Mia nodded and thanked the woman, and they went to sit in Joe’s car while they waited. It wasn’t the warmest reception, but at least she was willing to talk, and there was still a chance they might find out more.
‘Is there anything else you’ve pieced together about your aunt that might help, if she has questions?’ Joe asked.
She leaned her head back into the seat, drawing her knees up and hugging them to her chest. ‘I have a picture of her life after she opened Hope’s House, and the other women who were left boxes have found out bits and pieces that they shared with me,’ she said.
‘But it’s the why that I’ve found difficult, that I have so many questions about.
Why would a woman leave France alone to move to another country?
What would make her dedicate her life to others, and not have a family of her own?
I just feel like I’m so close, but at the same time so far away.
’ Mia groaned. ‘It’s like trying to figure out the answer to an annoying riddle, and never quite being able to get it. ’
They sat a little while longer, both staring out of the window, when Mia turned to Joe. She didn’t know how much longer she had with him, whether she’d be back in London within a day or two, and she found herself wanting to know more about him before they had to say goodbye.
‘Joe, when we were at your mother’s house the other day, your sister mentioned a past relationship.’
‘Of course she did.’ He turned to her. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Has it scared you? From being with someone else?’
She could see the bob of his throat as he swallowed. ‘You want the honest answer?’
Mia nodded.
‘The honest answer is that I haven’t trusted anyone who isn’t already part of my life for a very long time,’ he said. ‘My family thinks I need to forget about the past and move on, but I don’t find it easy to trust.’
‘When Ethan died, everyone was so supportive and understanding, but after two years had passed, it was as if they just thought I’d move on. It was like they expected me to erase the past.’
Joe threaded his fingers through hers. ‘What I went through was nothing like you experienced, Mia. Your pain, I don’t know how you dealt with it, truly I don’t.’
‘Maybe it is different, but it’s still a part of our past. It makes us who we are, and nothing anyone can say can change that. Our trauma is still our trauma.’
‘Do you still think about that day? Is it impossible to stop thinking about, sometimes?’ He searched her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine it’s something you can ever forget.’
She nodded and slowly let out a breath. ‘We were working side by side one minute, and the next he was gone, and afterwards I kept thinking what a beautiful day it had been. It was like I couldn’t stop thinking about the sun shining and the wildlife I was photographing.
About how we were just having such a great time until the exact moment it happened, and that’s where my mind always went when I thought back on it.
It still does. It’s not to the moment he slipped or the second the water took him from me, it’s the before, and that’s what’s been so hard to let go of. ’
Joe squeezed her hand and looked as if he was about to say something else when there was a tap on the window, just about making Mia jump out of her skin, quickly wiping at her damp eyes.
But the moment was over, and Mia hoped that the man tapping was more receptive to her questions than his mother had been.
There’s only one way to find out, she thought as she pushed open her door and stuck out her hand, saying bonjour in her friendliest voice, relieved when he gestured to the house and invited them inside.
Once Joe had introduced them and she’d sat quietly while he’d told them who his family was and their connection to the industry, the man turned to Mia.
‘You see, this bottle is very familiar to my mother, because her great-grandmother had one just like it.’
The woman nodded. ‘Before she passed, it was one of the things she was most determined to have with her. I still remember being a girl and hearing her muttering about a lost brother and that she hadn’t deserved to inherit the family business.’
‘I’m sorry to ask, but you’re certain it was the same bottle?’ Mia asked.
‘It was the very same. I remember the fairy on the design, because she used to point at it sometimes, but she was so hard to understand by the end, and all we really grasped was that she’d lost someone, and that somehow it was connected to the bottle.’
Mia thought through what she’d just been told, trying to piece it together with what she already knew.
‘This brother that she spoke of, do you know anything about him?’ she asked. ‘Could he be the link to the bottle?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Perhaps. If my mother were alive, she might have been able to answer your questions, but it was such a long time ago.’
Hope nodded, disheartened but still appreciating the information they had gleaned.
‘Why don’t you come and we can show you around the distillery,’ her son said. ‘Even if we can’t help you with your search, we can show you a little of the past. Hardly anything’s changed about the way we produce our spirits here in a hundred years.’
Mia and Joe both stood and followed the man outside, walking until they reached a large barn that had been immaculately preserved. She glanced over at his mother, who’d said something in French.
‘She reminded me of the old photographs we have in the office,’ he said. ‘You have a look around while I find them, just in case they’re relevant. I won’t be long.’
Once they were alone, they made their way past stainless steel vats and machines that Joe explained to her, all part of the distilling process, and she found herself wondering if Hope had ever been in this very distillery or whether she’d been somewhere else nearby.
‘These are the photographs,’ the man said when he returned, passing over a few frames. ‘Sorry, they’re very dusty.’
Mia reached for them and held them close to her face, carefully studying the black and white pictures.
‘The woman in that one is my great-grandmother, and the other one here, this is her when she was young, with her brother. The stern-faced couple are her parents.’
Mia scanned each of their faces, wishing someone looked familiar to her.
‘Does anyone know what became of her brother?’
He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not. I imagine he might have been lost during the war, or he could have left France entirely and never returned.’
Mia passed back the photographs, sad they hadn’t been able to discover more.
‘Did you have his name, by any chance?’ she asked.
‘His name was Gus,’ came a softer voice from behind them. ‘I’ve always remembered it because when I sat beside her bed to give my own mother a break, that was the name she’d whisper.’
‘You never heard her say the name Hope?’ Mia asked, knowing it was a shot in the dark.
‘I’m sorry, it was only ever Gus.’
They looked around a little longer, hearing about how gin was made and how absinthe would have been distilled and hidden in order to transport it to Paris and other villages, and then it was time to leave.
‘Thank you for welcoming us into your home,’ Mia said as Joe shook their hands.
‘I hope you find the answers to what you’re searching for,’ the woman said.
‘May I leave my email address with you, just in case?’
‘Of course, and I’ll ask around some other relatives, see if anyone knows anything that may be of use to you.’
‘Thank you. Anything at all, I’d love to hear from you.’
And as she walked to the car, Mia looked back over her shoulder and wondered if there was something she was missing, wondered if Hope had ever walked this exact same path that she was walking now.
It was silly, she knew, but somehow she could imagine her aunt as a young woman, glancing over her shoulder, looking back at the distillery.
‘Well, what do you want to do now, Mia? Do you want me to drive you back to your hotel?’ Joe asked.
No. That was the very last thing she wanted. She’d come so far, yet she still didn’t have all the answers she needed. It might sound irrational to anyone else, but she just wasn’t ready to give up. She didn’t want to go home yet, even if that did mean delaying her flight again.
‘Or we could spend the next few days road-tripping through the countryside, if you’re not ready to say goodbye to France just yet? We could keep asking around, see if anyone we come across in other villages knows anything?’
‘The second option,’ she said, laughing as Joe’s eyes met hers. ‘But there’s one thing.’
One of his eyebrows arched in question.
‘I want to take photographs along the way, so you’ll have to be patient with me every time I ask you to stop the car.’
Joe’s fingertips brushed her cheek then followed the line of her jaw, eventually pausing gently at her throat as he leaned in to kiss her.
‘I think we have a deal.’
She kissed him back, not wanting to imagine what it would be like to say goodbye, how she was going to go home and forget about him, when he was the one who’d reminded her of who she used to be.
But she wasn’t going to worry about that now. The next few days were for letting herself believe in love again, and celebrating that she finally knew even just a little of Hope’s history.
‘You’re not too disappointed that you didn’t find out more today?’ he asked.
‘I am, but it was still worth coming. I feel connected to this place in a strange way, and I have to trust that eventually I’ll find the answers I’m looking for.’
She hadn’t learnt everything she’d wanted to discover, but for today, it was enough, and as she pressed her forehead to the window and watched the countryside, her eyes catching on a dilapidated stone shed with a thatched roof, set back off the road, she knew that she’d remember this trip for as long as she lived.