Epilogue
Pixie sat on the train as it made its way from London to Manchester.
Ulysses’ words about giving her mother the chance to explain her side of the story had made a deep impression.
He was right, she certainly would kick herself if she left the world having missed the opportunity to make peace with her.
Wasn’t the purpose of life to learn and grow from the challenges and obstacles thrown into one’s path?
This was just one of those challenges that needed to be overcome.
During her journey back to London, Pixie had realised that her experience with Cavill had also taught her much about life and love.
Both were complicated. Life was never without trials and love, as we knew it, was never straightforward.
But there was a greater love which wasn’t complicated at all.
A love so powerful that everything orbiting it dissolved into its light: absolute love has no shadow side, it just is.
Pure and complete. Pixie knew that that was the goal we were all aiming for.
To love, unconditionally. If one loved unconditionally, forgiveness would no longer be necessary because grievances would simply fall away in the light of that love.
Pixie was beginning to understand that it wasn’t her place to judge her mother, but to love her.
Maybe that was one of the most important lessons Cavill had taught her. That with love, anything was possible.
It had taken a couple of shots of vodka, but Pixie had telephoned her mother as soon as she’d got home from Seacombe.
It had been an awkward, stilted conversation, but it was a start.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. But this meeting was the first brick.
The first of perhaps many bricks. They both had a long way to travel to bridge the gap of so many years, of so many lost years.
But Pixie felt positive about taking this first step.
She was listening to her favourite music, those emotive movie soundtracks that transported her, and gazing idly out of the window, when her thoughts drifted to Felix Fairhaven.
She delved into her carpet bag and took out his card.
The name seemed so familiar to her, even though she had never heard of it before he’d introduced himself.
She remembered being struck by the sight of him in Central Park, how he had reminded her so much of Cavill, how their eyes had met, and how she had been strangely drawn to him, as if she knew him.
As those memories sharpened, she felt the unmistakeable pull of fate and smiled to herself.
This was meant to happen. This was part of her story.
She might have severed the connection to Cavill, which had drawn him into her slides, but she would never sever the love, which was uniquely theirs.
However, having said goodbye, she knew she was now ready to start living fully in the present, and to embrace the new opportunities which she believed were now coming her way.
She slipped the card back into her bag, resolving to arrange a meeting before Felix left London for New York. She would tell him the truth.
She saw Cavill’s letter at the bottom of her bag and took it out. She hadn’t read it again since she’d left the theatre. She would read it now, in the quiet of the train, with the stirring music to accompany the beautiful words.
She opened the envelope and drew it out.
But there was something else in the envelope that she hadn’t noticed before.
It was pressed up against the side. Intrigued, she pulled it out.
It was a square piece of thick white card.
She turned it over. There, in watercolour, was the painting of two birds flying into a sunset.
Beneath the picture were the words: ‘Love connects us in a never-ending bond, Cavill. It is so much bigger than we humans can imagine. So much bigger.’
Pixie read the words in astonishment and delight, for she knew that she hadn’t missed the piece of paper in the envelope, after all – it hadn’t been there.
She had said those words to Cavill when she had slid back to say good-bye.
He must have painted that picture and written that sentence after she had left.
She pressed it to her heart and smiled. Love is, indeed, so much bigger than we humans can imagine. So much bigger.