Chapter Thirty-Five #2
The grass had become slippery underfoot, and my trainers skidded more than once as I trudged through puddles.
I glanced back across the sea of black and white headstones and saw how far from my mother’s plot I’d travelled.
Did Henry really walk this far between his wife’s resting place and Mum’s?
It seemed unlikely. A niggling doubt that I’d been trying to ignore was starting to grow more insistent.
The rain began falling with a vengeance and it didn’t take long for it to plaster the hair to my head and stick the clothes to my body like a second skin.
The moment when I should have abandoned the search for today had clearly been and gone.
It was now raining so hard it was difficult to read the names on the grave markers; I could easily miss the one I was searching for.
I straightened at the end of a row, on the point of messaging Rhys, only to see there was no need.
Blurred by the deluge, he looked like a mirage as he strode towards me.
But the hug as he drew me into his arms certainly felt real enough.
He was every bit as wet as me, but whereas I was giving out drowned-rat vibes, he was definitely more Mr-Darcy-coming-out-of-the-lake.
I felt a pang of guilt, knowing he’d only stayed out in the rain because I had.
‘I’m done,’ I said, looking up into his face and seeing something that looked an awful lot like concern in his eyes.
‘Come on, let’s get back to the car.’ I was right. Something was definitely troubling him. I could hear it in his voice.
With his arm still around me, we ran through the rain to the car park. Raindrops had found a gap between the back of my neck and my hoodie and were trickling down my spine, making me shiver. At least I think that was the reason.
We fell into his car, and I sent a silent apology to his upholstery for my sodden jeans and saturated sweatshirt.
The latter at least I could remove, or at least I tried to, until I got stuck in the wet fabric and needed Rhys to tug it over my head.
Once done, his hands rested on my ribcage.
I could feel the heat of his palms through the thin fabric of my t-shirt.
Inches above his fingers, my nipples were sharply outlined from the chill.
The fact that his hands never strayed northwards should have alerted me that something was distracting him.
There was a towel on the back seat that he insisted I use first. It wicked most of the water from my hair, even if it did leave me looking more like a scarecrow than a person.
‘I don’t think we’re going to find Bee’s grave,’ Rhys said carefully.
I nodded. ‘No, I think you’re right. It’s too hard in all this rain.’
He shook his head, and I caught again a strained look on his face before he buried it in the towel that I passed him.
‘In fact,’ Rhys said, his eyes fixing on mine, ‘I know we’re not going to find it.’
‘How? How do you know that?’ My voice sounded hollow in the steamed-up car.
‘Because she’s not buried here, Ellie. There’s no one in the cemetery by the name of Bee Thatcher, or Beatrice Thatcher, or even Beatrix Thatcher.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I looked on the cemetery website. One of the groundsmen saw me searching and told me that was the easiest way to find anyone buried here. Every single grave is logged. The records go back hundreds of years. I’m sorry, Ellie, but there’s no one here by that name.’
It felt like there were wheels in my head, not turning, but spinning on mud trying to find traction.
‘There’s a record of every single plot?’
Rhys nodded sadly, allowing me to put all the pieces together. I felt stupid and gullible. Why on earth hadn’t I thought to check the website? But more importantly, had Henry been lying to me for months? And if so, why?
Rhys was already way ahead of me on that score. ‘Has he ever asked you for money?’
Shock bleached all colour from my face.
‘You think I’m being scammed?’
Rhys gave a sympathetic but regretful smile. ‘It’s possible.’
I shook my head. ‘No, it can’t be that. The place where he lives is ridiculously expensive. He’s clearly got money.’
I could tell Rhys was treading carefully. He knew how attached I’d grown to my senior friend and how painful it was to suddenly wonder if I’d been taken for a ride.
‘He might be confused,’ he suggested generously. ‘Perhaps he’s suffering from some kind of dementia and genuinely believes everything he has told you.’
It was a solution, but I couldn’t fit it comfortably with the man I knew, who had always seemed as sharp as a tack.
And if Henry was scamming me, he was very good at it.
I’d believed every single story he’d told me about Bee, and yet now that I thought about it, he’d never once shown me a photograph of her.
Even if he didn’t have a camera on his phone, surely he’d carry pictures of his late wife in his wallet? Why had I never asked to see one?
‘I feel really stupid,’ I said. ‘I thought I was smarter than this.’
‘You don’t know the whole story yet,’ Rhys said, pulling me in for a hug that I really needed right then. ‘There might still be a perfectly logical explanation.’
My lips tightened. ‘Maybe. But you don’t think there is, do you?’
Rhys was very cautious in his choice of words. ‘I think Henry Thatcher has some explaining to do.’
He’d wanted to come with me. That hadn’t surprised me.
But what did was my insistence that I needed to do this alone.
I’d bared my soul to Henry, told him things about my mother and me and our troubled history that even Mel didn’t know.
He’d been a wise and sympathetic sounding board, and even though I no longer understood his motives, I couldn’t deny that meeting him, knowing him, had helped me in a way that maybe even years of therapy might never have done.
‘Go back to your place. Get some dry clothes,’ I said, my hand already on the door handle of his car as soon as he pulled up outside my flat.
‘I could come with you. Even if I just stayed in the car?’
I leant across the centre console and pressed a kiss on his lips.
‘I’ll be fine. Henry might not have been honest with me, but I still believe he’s as fond of me as I am of him. I’m not in any danger here. Besides, I think I could take down an injured guy in his seventies if I had to.’
It was totally too soon to have gone for humour. I knew that from the look of concern that flashed through Rhys’s green eyes.
One more kiss seemed to help. ‘Honestly, Rhys, I’ll be okay.’
But now, freshly showered and dressed in dry clothes, I wondered if I was as prepared for this encounter as I’d made out.
As luck would have it, the same receptionist sat behind the desk at Freeman Manor.
‘Hello again, Miss Harker,’ she said with a cheery smile.
She must have seen my surprise and tapped her temple with a forefinger. ‘Never forget a name, never forget a face.’
For one moment I almost asked her if she knew anyone called Bee Thatcher but then thought better of it. The person who had all the answers I needed was just minutes away from telling me what the hell had been going on for the last few months.
Henry was in his apartment, or so the receptionist told me. I must have clearly passed some kind of test, because she simply gave me directions on how to find it, rather than get someone to escort me.
The new apartments were in a different block, but easy enough to find.
Henry’s was on the second floor and I took my time climbing the stairs, ignoring the lift that would have got me there faster.
I still had no idea what I was going to say, but perhaps it was better if I simply let him do the talking.
I heard his voice through the thickness of his apartment door as he responded to my knock.
‘I’m coming,’ he called out. ‘Give me a moment.’
I used the time it took him to reach the door to concentrate on my breathing. By the time I heard the Yale lock being opened, I was almost in control of my nerves.
‘Ellie. What an unexpected delight.’
He looked so genuinely happy to see me that I immediately felt guilty that I was being every bit as deceitful as I feared he’d been with me.
‘You’re walking better,’ I said, noting he’d made it to the door without needing to use the stick.
‘It was never as bad as it looked,’ he said, taking a step backwards into his hallway and beckoning me in. ‘Please come in.’
I stepped across the threshold, feeling unsettled. He really didn’t seem any different than usual.
‘Can I get you something to drink? I could make us both a coffee, although it won’t be a patch on the ones you bring to the cemetery.’
I was glad he’d said that, because it brought my focus back to the place where we knew each other best. Or at least I’d thought we had.
‘No thanks, Henry.’
Perhaps I wasn’t as good at concealing my emotions as I thought, because he was looking at me with a curiosity that hadn’t been there when he’d found me on his doorstep.
‘Shall we sit down?’ I directed, as though I was the host here.
Something stirred in his eyes. Was that guilt or nerves? It was hard to say for sure.
I waited until he was safely seated before I began. I didn’t want to be responsible for him tumbling to the ground in shock. I might have been taken for a ride, but the fondness I felt for him hadn’t disappeared.
‘I bought some pink roses today,’ I began.
Henry nodded, encouraging me to continue.
‘I asked the florist if she knew of ones called Bee’s Delight. But sadly, she didn’t.’
All the muscles in Henry’s face seemed to have frozen.
‘I thought I’d surprise you by laying them on your wife’s grave. But guess what? I couldn’t find it.’
There was such an expression of regret in Henry’s eyes that I hesitated then, unsure if I had the stomach to finish this.
‘It turns out there isn’t anyone buried in the cemetery called Bee Thatcher. Why is that, Henry? Why couldn’t I find your wife’s grave?’
The room was silent except for the ticking of a carriage clock on the mantelpiece.
Henry sat up straighter in his chair and carefully folded his hands in his lap. Today they weren’t trembling. But mine were.
‘Because my wife was never buried. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the beach near where she grew up. Caroline always loved the sea.’
‘Caroline?’ It felt like the room was a fairground ride and what I’d thought was up was suddenly and inexplicably down. ‘Who is Caroline?’
His smile looked sad and full of nostalgia. ‘Caroline was my wife. We were married for thirty-three years.’
My eyes were darting everywhere as though searching for hidden cameras, because it certainly felt as though I had just been pranked. Big time.
‘Then who is—?’ I broke off as my eyes travelled past something on an ornate dresser and were then yanked back towards it.
‘Why the hell do you have a photograph of my mother? What is going on here?’
The picture frame was still in my hands.
Henry hadn’t asked for it back. He might have had a tug of war on his hands if he had.
Beside me on a side table was an empty glass of whiskey.
It was a spirit I never drank, but I’d knocked it back when he’d pressed it into my hand.
It had burnt all the way down, searing the questions in my throat. At least for now.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the picture in my hands.
It was one I’d never seen before. Mum couldn’t have been much older than her early twenties when it was taken.
But her youth wasn’t the thing that shocked me the most. It was the dancing laughter in her eyes and the unmistakable expression of love that was solely for the person who’d taken the photograph.
‘That’s the only one I have of her,’ Henry said sadly. ‘But it captures her perfectly.’
My eyes scoured the image, trying to see any trace of the person I’d known in the features of the carefree young woman. I could find none.
I had so many questions; there was so much that made absolutely no sense, I had no idea where to begin.
‘So, if your wife was called Caroline, and you have a photograph of my mother in your possession, where the hell does Bee come into this?’
I didn’t apologise for cursing, and I could see he hadn’t expected me to.
‘That is Bee in your hands,’ Henry said, his features softening as his eyes went to the photograph I was holding. ‘The only woman I have ever truly loved.’
I doubted that was something his late wife would ever have wanted to hear.
‘Bee?’ I said, grappling with the first of a thousand questions. ‘Why do you call her that?’
His smile wasn’t that of an old man, it was that of a man who was so in love – was still so in love – that just the mention of her name could warm his heart.
‘She introduced herself as Beth, the very first time we met,’ he said, his eyes faraway as though that first meeting was a video that played on a loop through his memories.
‘That’s what she used to call herself. “Elizabeth isn’t me at all,” she said.
“There’s no fun in that name.” But in the end, I never called her Beth.
She was always Bee to me. It was my nickname for her, and she loved it. ’
I had no idea who the person he was describing might be, but she certainly didn’t sound like the woman I knew.
‘Mum hated nicknames. She never let anyone shorten her name. She said it was lazy; it made her angry.’
Henry looked sad enough to cry. ‘I think a great many of the things you’ve told me about her, the sharp edges, the anger, and the bitterness weren’t really her fault.
’ A single tear escaped, running down his lined cheek.
‘They were down to me. There’s a place in hell for people like me.
I found an angel and then broke her wings.
I’m the one who made her the way she was. ’
The glass of whiskey had been replaced by a cup of sweet tea that I told him I didn’t want, but which, curiously, I appeared to have drained.
‘Tell me,’ I said, my voice not entirely steady. ‘Tell me everything.’