Chapter Forty-Four
The canary-yellow building filled my entire windscreen. I peered at it through the rain, wishing I’d thought to bring an umbrella. I reached for the handle and opened the car door.
Keep moving. Keep busy.
It was a mantra I’d been reciting since about five a.m. when I’d finally abandoned all hope of sleep and climbed out from beneath the tangled duvet and twisted sheets.
I ran through the slanting rain towards the entrance of the storage unit which had just opened its doors. My plans for the day were already proving inadequate. How I’d ever thought that deep cleaning my flat would be sufficient to occupy my mind today, I’ll never know.
As I stripped the sheets from my bed, I found myself wondering if Rhys was waking up for the last time in his empty flat.
As I polished furniture until every surface had a mirror-like glaze, was he looking around his denuded apartment now devoid of everything he owned.
I ran mindlessly through a puddle, not even noticing when the water splashed over the tops of my trainers as I headed for the building in front of me.
Was this the same storage facility where his belongings were housed?
Was I subconsciously trying to get close to the things he was leaving behind?
Things like me? I shook my head. Rhys wasn’t leaving me behind. I had chosen not to go with him.
Even if Rhys’s possessions were here, he certainly wouldn’t be.
I consulted my watch. He’d be leaving for the airport soon.
There was probably a taxi on its way to his flat right now.
Would he pause before climbing into it and check the road one last time, hoping to see my car speeding towards his home?
Or had he already given up on us and was thinking only about his new home, new life, new future? None of which would include me.
‘Stop this,’ I told myself angrily as I punched in the access code to the unit I’d come here to visit.
I bent down and lifted the garage-style roll-up door.
For a moment my senses were assailed by something powerful enough to steal my thoughts away from Rhys.
The unit smelled like my mother’s house.
Months of imprisonment behind the bright yellow doors had done nothing to dispel the heartbreakingly familiar aroma.
I breathed in deeply, hoping to absorb the old comfort of home.
I’d only been here once before, shortly after finding a folder tucked away at the back of my desk drawer.
Within it had been sheaves of paperwork confirming I’d arranged for my mother’s home to be packed up by removers and the contents put into storage.
I’d obviously been preparing to sell it, and yet I’d never pulled the trigger; I’d never put it on the market.
I had no memory of any of this. It was another of the permanently erased events that the lightning had claimed.
They didn’t bother me so much these days.
I’d learnt to accept that some things might be forever lost.
Maybe I should try to get struck by lightning again, I thought as I flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights in the unit. Perhaps next time it could wipe my memory of Rhys, freeing me from the pain of loving, losing, and missing him.
‘It could happen,’ I told the multitude of storage boxes stacked before me.
This morning’s TV weather forecast had predicted thunderstorms later this afternoon.
Not that I could imagine ever being brave enough to venture out when lightning was a possibility.
I was still a long way from conquering that particular phobia.
The box I had come here to sort through wasn’t hard to find.
I’d seen it on my first visit but hadn’t felt brave enough to rip it open.
Photograph Albums was written on the label in a stranger’s handwriting.
My mother had never been much of a chronicler, so it had surprised me to find Box No.
34 – Photograph Albums listed on the remover’s inventory after she died.
I didn’t know where she’d had them hidden, but I certainly hadn’t seen them before.
Searching through the collection for the thing I’d promised Henry I would try to find seemed like a suitably diverting activity for a day when I’d have been worse than useless at work and poor company for anyone.
The brown tape made a satisfying cry of protest as I ripped it from the box.
What lay beneath the lid was enough to steal my thoughts away from Rhys once again.
I’d assumed there might be a couple of albums rattling around inside the box, but there had to be over thirty of them neatly stacked inside the container.
I dropped down to the floor, sitting cross-legged beside the box that my very unsentimental mother had kept hidden from me.
The albums didn’t appear to be in any particular order, so I reached blindly into the box and plucked out the first one my hand fell upon.
Written on the inside cover was a year, penned in my mother’s familiar script.
Every album I pulled out was similarly labelled and beneath the pages of protective film were photographs that chronicled every important moment of my childhood.
There were birthday parties where I saw myself morph from a toddler to a teenager.
There were albums that covered a multitude of firsts: first steps, first day at nursery, then school, and finally university.
Some of the prints I’d seen before; a few had made it into frames that had been dotted around the house, but the majority of the photographs had been kept here as an everlasting record by a woman who eschewed sentimentality as though it was a disease.
A gasp of realisation ran through me and ricocheted around the storage unit.
These albums weren’t for her. And they weren’t for me either.
They were for a person who’d been absent from my life, and who I’d only found after my mother was gone.
They were for Henry. She’d collected every single moment he’d missed.
I’d come here today looking for photographs of her as a younger woman, because Henry had asked if there were any of her that he could have.
But what I had discovered was far more revealing.
Had she secretly hoped that he’d one day return and would want the missing jigsaw pieces of his daughter’s life?
‘Oh, Mum,’ I said on a sigh to the empty room. ‘Why did you never tell me?’ But perhaps the even bigger question was: why did I find this hidden clue today, of all days?
That felt too important to ignore.
I got to my feet, wiping a film of dust from my palms before resealing the lid of the box to protect it from the rain. It was time to deliver these albums to the man who I had no doubt they’d been created for.
The rain was still falling hard as I drove to Henry’s retirement home. Occasionally, when I stopped at a red light or a junction, my glance would go to the box on the passenger seat beside me. It was almost enough to distract me from continually checking the clock on the dashboard.
Rhys was probably halfway to the airport by now.
He’d likely be chatting politely to the cab driver, because that was the kind of person he was: kind, thoughtful, and caring.
What kind of idiot lets a man like that slip through their fingers?
Me, apparently. I took another look at the box beside me. And also, my mother.
‘These are absolutely wonderful,’ Henry exclaimed, pulling yet another album from the box. He’d already leafed through half a dozen volumes, his eyes growing a little mistier with each one. ‘It’ll take me weeks to look through them all properly,’ he said, as though in apology.
‘Take as long as you want. They’re yours anyway. She left them for you – I’m sure of it.’
Henry looked truly wonderstruck by the find and it was nice to bring joy into his day when mine felt so full of sadness.
‘This one looks a little more recent,’ Henry said, pulling out a much slimmer album that had been slid upright at the back of the box. He opened it. I watched from across the width of his lounge as I sipped on the slightly too strong Earl Grey he liked to brew.
‘Oh.’ His smile was soft and full of an expression I couldn’t quite identify. ‘I think this particular one might be for you rather than me.’
He got to his feet and placed the leather-bound folio in my hands. I gave him a quizzical smile and opened the cover. Like all the other albums, this one had the year written on the inner sleeve. But unlike the others, it wasn’t from far in the past. The date was just last year.
The first photograph was of Mum and me. I had no recollection of when or where it had been taken.
But Mum must have been sick by then, for her head was covered in a silk headscarf, her treatment already underway.
I tilted the photograph towards the window, trying to capture more light from the drizzly grey day.
Henry switched on a table lamp and in the warm yellow glow I saw that behind us in the frame was a large ship.
I flipped through the pages, each one making my eyes grow wider and my mouth fall open in surprise.
We were on a cruise. A cruise I had absolutely no recollection of taking.
But the irrefutable evidence was right there in my hands.
It had obviously been a mini voyage – I could see from our outfits we’d only been away for a few days.
But we’d gone on a cruise together and had fulfilled one of her long-held dreams, even if I still couldn’t remember a single moment of it.
Suddenly the travel pills in my bathroom cabinet, the cruise company emails in my inbox, and the curious three-day gap in last year’s diary made sense.
‘I can’t remember this holiday,’ I said, turning tear-filled eyes towards Henry, who was standing beside me, looking at the album.
His hand felt warm and comforting on my shoulder. ‘Maybe now you’ll be able to,’ he said gently, ‘now that the door has been opened. But even if you don’t, these photographs tell you that the bridges between you and Bee had been repaired before she died.’
His age-spotted hand tapped one of the photographs in the album, one that I already knew was going to be my favourite.
Mum and I were dressed up in evening finery, our arms around each other as we posed for what I imagined was an official ship’s photographer.
The portrait had captured us mid-laugh. I had no idea what had amused us, perhaps I never would, but the love that we felt for each other was there shining in both of our eyes like an eternal flame.
Our relationship might not have been perfect – but whose is?
We’d made peace with our differences and come together before it was too late to face a future filled with regrets.
It felt like an important message to learn today.
Perhaps Henry thought so too.
‘Is it today that your young man leaves for Australia?’
I didn’t bother correcting him that Rhys wasn’t my young man anymore. He had been, but then I’d let him go.
I nodded.
‘I may be speaking out of turn here, Ellie, and please feel free to tell me to mind my own business.’
I looked up and gave him a gentle smile. ‘Can’t see me doing that somehow.’
Henry returned my smile, before his face sobered.
‘I know I have no right to be offering parental advice this late in the day. But I can see that whatever course you’ve decided upon, it isn’t one that’s making you happy.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, so close to tears that there could be little doubt that I was lying.
‘Do you love this man, Ellie? Do you really and truly love him the way I did Bee and the way I believe she loved me?’
‘I do,’ I said, as though it was the vow I’d never get to utter before family and friends.
Henry took my hands in his. They looked so alike. And perhaps that wasn’t the only similarity in our lives.
‘Then don’t make the same mistakes I did, Ellie. Don’t tell yourself walking away from the person you’re meant to be with is ever the right decision.’ He lifted one hand and gently stroked my cheek. ‘Because there’s so much you risk losing by making the wrong choice.’
It was hard to speak past the lump in my throat.
‘But there are so many reasons to stay here—’
Henry shook his head, never allowing me to finish.
‘The people who care about you want only your happiness. Nothing else is important to us. We’ll find ways to be together as often as we can.
’ He gave a gentle smile. ‘In fact, I’ve always wanted to see more of the world.
And Australia seems like a very good place to start my travels. ’
I gave a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
‘If Bee was here,’ he began, holding up a hand when it looked like I was going to interrupt him.
‘Not your Elizabeth, but my Bee, I have no doubt what she’d tell you to do.
She’d tell you – no, she’d insist – that you listen to your heart and take a chance on happiness. ’ His eyes went to the box of albums.
‘I truly believe she somehow found a way to make sure you discovered this box today. She wanted you to know that beneath her tough exterior, some part of her always believed that one day I’d come back to her.’ A single tear rolled down his cheek. ‘And I did. I was just too late.’
‘Oh, Dad.’
It was the first time I’d ever called him that, and the joy it brought to his eyes was something I would treasure forever.
Henry’s hand covered mine warmly. ‘I think today might be a very good time for you to be a little less like me, a little less like Elizabeth, and a whole lot more like Bee.’