Chapter 7 Elise
Elise
Elise had always expected to feel awful waking up on Wednesday the third of August, the day that should have been Charlie’s eleventh birthday. But she hadn’t expected to wake feeling icy cold.
Bright sunshine was streaming into the bedroom above the heavy curtains, but still Elise felt chilled right through—her body so cold it was as if she’d been sleeping on a bed of ice cubes. She was shivering and just couldn’t stop.
It was like one of those mornings during her childhood when her bedroom had been unnaturally bright because it had snowed during the night.
Had it snowed? No, of course not; it was August. But somehow Elise felt compelled to check, to make absolutely sure, crossing to pull the curtains with the duvet still wrapped around her.
The sunshine outside was dazzlingly bright.
The roses were in full bloom amongst the tangled mess of weeds. Of course there was no snow.
So why was she so cold?
Letting the curtain drop, Elise quickly thrust her feet into her slippers, teeth chattering.
No, slippers wouldn’t cut it; she needed socks too.
Snatching a thick pair of walking socks from a drawer, Elise sat on the bed to pull them on, then fished for a pair of jogging bottoms and a jumper and put them on, too, finishing off the layers with her dressing gown.
And was still cold.
Was she ill? She didn’t feel it, but what other explanation was there? Tea, she would make tea, then run herself a hot bath. That would warm her up. And yet the thought of taking her clothes off to get into a bath, hot or otherwise, was uninviting in the extreme.
Hurrying in an attempt to get some life back into her limbs, she ran down the stairs to the kitchen, filling the kettle at the sink and hugging herself while she waited for it to boil.
Here, too, the sunlight was streaming in, so she unlocked the outside door, curious to see what the temperature was like outside.
It was warm. Very warm. Birds were singing. Bees were buzzing as they moved between the raggle-taggle collection of roses, wildflowers, and weeds. August was in full swing, and suddenly Elise was overwarm in her unsuitable clothes, her feet tingling in their heavy woollen socks.
The gate opened. It was Sam, calling out to her. “Morning.” He drew closer and frowned, his gaze taking in her outfit. “Are you all right?”
There was no chance of pretending nothing was wrong. Elise felt too weird for that.
“I’m not sure. I woke up feeling really, really cold. I thought . . . Well, it was really strange.” She broke off before she could tell him about thinking it had snowed, aware how mad it would sound.
He touched her hand and drew in a breath. “Your hand’s like ice.”
“I know.”
His hand moved on to the back of her neck, taking her by surprise, his fingers like fire on her bare skin, making her shiver.
“You’re cold all over. Do you feel ill?”
“I don’t think so. Actually, I’m starting to warm up a bit now. I was just going to make myself a cup of tea.”
“I’ll do it. You sit out here in the sun. Unless you’d prefer to go back to bed?”
Elise shuddered at the thought of icy-cold sheets. “No, I’ll stay out here. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a moment.”
“All right. Won’t be long.”
Sam went into the house, and Elise sat on the bench next to the front door, closing her eyes and trying to work out what had just happened to her.
Somewhere a blackbird began to sing. A dog barked.
Somebody laughed, in the distance. And suddenly an image began to form in Elise’s mind.
This garden, but not quite. The grass covered with a thick, silent carpet of white.
Snow-covered bushes. Garden canes providing obscured evidence of cultivation.
Snow was falling, the flakes swirling from the sky in the wind.
A laugh came from round the corner of the house, and a small, indistinct figure came into view—a child’s figure.
A boy. The boy from the photograph who looked like Charlie!
As Elise watched, she saw him scoop something up from the ground, then hold it in his hands for a moment to shape it. A snowball.
Someone else came from round the side of the house, her skirt marking her out as female. The boy threw the snowball at her. There was a whump sound as it made impact. A surprised cry. Laughter. Thoughts, so vivid it was as if Elise was thinking them herself.
Is it wrong to be so happy when so many people are suffering in the world?
Very possibly. But the child brings me such a sweet and simple joy.
Having someone else to care for gives me a purpose in life I’ve lacked for so very long.
And how wonderful it is not to feel lonely any longer.
I didn’t realise quite how lonely I was until now . . .
“Here’s your tea. Cup the mug in your hands, and they’ll soon warm up.”
At Sam’s voice, Elise came to with a start, the boy’s laughter still ringing in her ears.
“Sorry. Had you dozed off?”
“I don’t think so . . .” But perhaps she had, just for a moment. Her hands were still shaking, but this time it was with excitement. Had the boy from the photograph lived here? He must have done.
“I thought . . . I thought I heard someone laughing just now,” she said incoherently. “Did you hear it?”
Sam stood listening, then shook his head. “Perhaps it was sounds drifting here from the campsite.”
People from the campsite throwing snowballs? In August?
“How are you feeling now?” Sam asked.
Just fine. Going out of her mind, but just fine. “I’m warm now. Whatever it was, it seems to have passed.” Elise tugged at her dressing-gown cord, suddenly sweltering. “I’ll go and get dressed, and then I must get on with some work.”
“Good,” said Sam. “Well, you know where I am if you need me. Take your time; enjoy your tea.”
They’d had some good chats when their paths had crossed, she and Sam. Now, still filled with excitement at the thought that the boy from the photograph might have lived here in Marsh House, she longed to tell him about it.
As she got dressed, Elise thought back to the rainy Saturday afternoon when she and Robbie had taken refuge from the elements in the village hall and had accidentally stumbled upon the Our Wartime Memories exhibition.
The hall had been empty except for the exhibits.
These included two shop mannequins—one dressed in the uniform of a Land Girl holding a hoe, the other loosely disguised as a male air-raid warden sporting a white ARP helmet.
Around them, a collection of display cases and noticeboards told the story of the community’s experience of World War Two—posters urging villagers to Dig For Victory, and to Save Kitchen Scraps to Feed the Hens.
Another asking, Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
When Robbie stopped in front of a piece of mangled metal that claimed to be part of a Spitfire that had crashed locally, Elise moved on to examine the contents of the display cases, trying to immerse herself in old ration books and recipes designed to make meals from scant ingredients.
Robbie was still absorbed in reading about the crashed Spitfire. Elise moved on to the next display case.
“Can you believe the pilot survived that crash?” Robbie said. “He bailed out with his parachute. The farmhand on the crash site wasn’t so lucky, though.”
Elise wanted to block his grim words out.
Even started to lift her hands to put them over her ears.
But then suddenly her attention was sucked right away from Robbie, from the exhibition, from the village hall—her eyes fixing on a black-and-white photograph in the display case.
Evacuee children arriving at the village, 1939, read the accompanying label.
But Elise could barely take the information in because every atom of her was focussed on the boy—a boy of about five years old—standing with three other children, staring straight at the camera.
Tremulously, she reached out to touch the photograph, her fingers encountering the glass of the display case instead. How was this even possible? The blood was roaring in her ears. Her throat was sandpaper dry.
When she tried to speak, nothing came out at first. She swallowed. Tried again. “Robbie. Come and look at this.”
“Hmm?” he answered, not looking up from the Spitfire remains. “In a minute.”
“Robbie!” She was almost shouting at him now, her finger prodding the glass.
He frowned, finally coming over. “What is it?”
Elise was looking at his face, so she saw the moment of realisation before it was quickly snuffed out.
“That boy looks exactly like Charlie,” Elise said, turning away from him to gaze at the boy’s unsmiling features again.
“The photograph’s tiny,” Robbie objected. “You can’t really see what he looks like.”
“He looks just like him, Robbie. You can see he does.”
“Same dark hair and eyes, I’ll give you that.”
He saw her face. Sighed. “Elise, you’re making something out of nothing. Why should a random boy in a photograph of evacuees look like Charlie?”
Elise had had absolutely no idea. She still had no idea.
She only knew that he had. Something about the photograph had ignited the side of her that knew who’d come in through her studio door even when her back was turned.
That sometimes knew who was phoning before she’d even looked at the caller display.
Elise sighed, sitting down at the dressing table to brush her hair.
What use was having some sort of sixth sense that chickens had been kept in the garden and that once, one long-ago winter, the people who’d lived here had had a snowball fight?
If she was going to be psychic, why not about something useful?
Why hadn’t she known about the cancer cells multiplying inside her son’s blood?
Somehow she hadn’t told Sam about Charlie yet. She wasn’t sure why, except that perhaps it was a difficult thing to bring into a conversation. Oh, by the way, my son, Charlie, died six months ago.