Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
MARTHA
H ave you read the end of the book?
I blinked at Henry' message on my phone. The sun wasn’t even up yet. Had he spent all night reading it?
I texted back:
No
I mean, I’d peeked ahead. Everyone does that, don’t they? But it’s hard to make sense of an ending when you don’t have all the facts. A Place Called Lost was the story of a building that may never have existed in real life and a potential custodian who was most likely a fictional character. The one thing it hadn’t mentioned was the one thing Henry was desperate to find – the manuscript.
‘The manuscript,’ I whispered to myself. The leaves on the tree shimmered and shook as I said it. I stretched my arm up over my head and touched the wood, so familiar to me now. How could I even begin to explain it to him when I couldn’t even explain it to myself?
We arranged to meet up later and speak in person. Another bittersweet conversation where I would pretend that I hadn’t fallen in love with him. I groaned loudly and got up to prepare Madame Bowden’s breakfast. I took my frustration out in the kitchen, banging saucepans and plates, and brought a plate full of sausages and scrambled eggs to the dining-room table. I finally decided that I would tell her about Opaline’s book and the documents we’d stolen from the asylum. I was glad Henry had given them to me, but he was right – it did not make for happy reading. To have lost her daughter in that awful place, she must have wanted revenge on her brother. I know I would have. I thought of Shane and his accident. Madame Bowden had hardly flinched.
Something was tugging at my mind and I wondered why she hadn’t come down for breakfast yet. Every morning she was the one to wake me with her shrill voice and endless demands. What if there was something wrong with her? With every step I climbed I told myself I was being stupid and that she was just having a nice long lie in, but I didn’t really believe it. I knocked on the door to her bedroom and, after a moment, let myself in. My eyes adjusted to the scene. Her bed had not been slept in and she herself was nowhere to be seen.
‘Madame Bowden?’ I called out. ‘Are you there?’
The door to the ensuite was slightly ajar, but on further inspection, it was empty.
‘Hello?’ I called out on to the landing, but the house had such an air of stillness that I knew I was alone.
I checked downstairs for a note but there was nothing. Of course she did not have a mobile phone, so I couldn’t call her. She refused to have her daily movements monitored by technology companies. I wasn’t sure what to do and spent the morning wandering from room to room, looking out of the windows at the street outside every few minutes.
‘Do you have any of her friends’ numbers that you could call?’ my mother asked, when the worry became too much and I had to call someone.
‘I can’t remember any of their names and there’s no address book or anything.’ It was only now I realised that I knew so little about the woman. ‘Should I call the police? What if she’s wandered off somewhere and forgotten where she is?’
‘Has she ever seemed forgetful?’ my mother asked.
‘Well, no, but you saw her when you were here, she is pretty old.’
‘I didn’t see her.’
Her answer seemed out of place – like trying to force a cube into a round hole.
‘What are you saying? Of course you saw her. I introduced you both when you were here the other day.’
After a pause my mother spoke again. ‘She wasn’t there when I stopped by, remember?’
My flesh broke out in goosebumps. What the hell was going on? I almost jumped when I heard the doorbell ring.
‘Maybe that’s her now,’ I said, rushing to open the door, but it was Henry.
‘You may as well come in,’ I said, then told my mother I would call her back.
He looked a bit fidgety, like something was bothering him. We both spoke at the same time.
‘I found something out—’
‘Madame Bowden is missing!’
His eyes flashed wide. ‘Missing?’
‘I went to wake her for breakfast and her bed hadn’t been slept in.’
‘Oh.’
His tone was annoyingly dismissive.
‘What was it you wanted anyway?’ I hadn’t meant it to come out as sharp as it did.
‘Doesn’t matter now. Another time, perhaps.’
He reached into the breast pocket of his coat.
‘I brought your book back,’ he said, leaving it on the console table. He hovered in the hallway.
‘You’re really worried, aren’t you?’
I shrugged. She’d become like family to me.
‘I have to keep busy,’ I said, pulling a pair of rubber gloves out of my back pocket like some kind of cleaning superhero. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.’
I expected him to leave, but he began shaking himself out of his jacket.
‘Okay, what are we doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m not going to leave you on your own, am I? Got any more of those?’ he asked, looking at my gloves.
* * *
I took out all of the silver and laid it on the kitchen table, Henry at one end, me at the other. At quarter-hour intervals I would look up at the clock and feel my worry growing. We hardly spoke, until he offered to make some tea. I didn’t notice him leaving the cup beside me and I knocked it off the table with my elbow. The sound of the china smashing on the tiled floor made me want to scream. I wanted him to get the hell out and leave me alone to cope. Having him around only reminded me of all the things I couldn’t have. I got up to get a mop and a dustpan.
‘It’s okay, I’ll do it,’ he offered.
‘I’ll be quicker doing it myself,’ I snapped.
He stepped backwards, holding his hands up in surrender. I attacked the spilt tea and broken crockery with all of my pent-up anger and managed to cut myself. Next thing I knew, he was bending down beside me.
‘Here, let me help,’ he said, attempting to wrap my hand.
‘It’s fine.’
He sat back on the floor.
‘You can let people in sometimes, you know. You don’t have to do everything on your own.’
I wasn’t about to take advice on how to heal my trust issues from him, of all people. The man who’d run away from every relationship in his life. I got up and found a box of plasters in one of the cupboards before sitting back down at the table.
‘You can talk to me, you know. We are friends, aren’t we?’ He was leaning against the fridge.
‘I hate this job.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do. I hate this stupid job. I don’t know why I ever came here. And I hate my night course and every reminder of what I missed out on—’ I struggled to open the wrapper on the plaster but my thoughts kept running on. ‘Just when I think I’ve got a handle on things, my life is turned upside down again. And I don’t even understand what any of it means. Why that book appeared in my room and seems to be talking to me. How Shane died in this house, as if by accident, but it didn’t make any sense. Then my mother beginning to speak again, only to tell me that she was adopted and so nothing is what I thought it was. And now Madame Bowden – I know you think I’m overreacting, but something doesn’t feel right! None of this is normal,’ I said, my hands shaking. I threw the plaster on the floor and gave up. ‘But you know what I hate most?’ I turned to look at Henry, who was just standing there, letting me throw out the jumbled contents of my head. ‘I hate how hard I’ve had to fight against what I really want because I’m so scared of getting hurt again.’
There was a moment of silence, where I almost regretted saying everything out loud.
‘What do you really want?’
I looked up at him, tears in my eyes.
‘You.’
We collided as if our lives depended on it. He swept me up in his arms and kissed me in a way that held nothing back. My entire life focused down to this point – like adjusting the lens of a microscope to find the one thing that matters most. Love.