Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
Bess
Iget Lutek to make Ed and Mistral a coffee, so I can take it over to them and have an excuse to see what happens when I see Ed in the flesh after a sleepless night of wondering if Ed is actually my ideal man.
I mean, on paper, he does alright. He's got a full head of very thick hair, he makes me laugh, he's taller than me, he has a decent job in a respectable profession.
He is handsome. There's no denying that.
And he is very respectful of women. He'd treat his girlfriend extraordinarily well. And he'd definitely do romantic things for her.
My mind throws up a montage of Ed doing clichéd couple-y things with a woman. Walking hand in hand with her by the ocean, sitting beside a fire with her, handing her a bunch of wildflowers, accidentally eating the same string of spaghetti and laughing.
The woman's face turns into Mistral's, which I know is ridiculous. Ed cannot be interested in a girl-woman who starts every sentence with "Okay, so" and ends it with "basically."
I want to burn the whole idea of Ed being romantically attached to someone down anyway. Which is...novel. And entirely unwelcome.
I've known Ed likely has the capacity for doing romantic things for as long as I've known him. He's told me that himself. I've never cared he might do them with someone else before, and I have no idea what to do with that.
Once Lutek has finished practising his foam art on the top of each coffee, I lid them up and walk across the road, suspecting this experiment will have an outcome that will only plunge me further into the Land of What the Fuck?
Mistral is not at her desk. Ed is.
I can't even see most of him. He's working at his computer and looking down at something to his left so I have a view of the back of his head. But my treacherous body reacts anyway.
A tiny fern frond unfurls itself and all its numerous fucking cute little feathery leaves inside my stomach.
I don't like it. I do not like not having control over whatever the fuck is going on between my ovaries and my best friend.
He looks up and over at me and I blurt, "You know it's not you."
He says, "I know."
And then I run away before Mistral can pop up from behind a bookshelf and ask, "What's not him?" and give me the same gleeful look Elly gave me.
Returning to the gallery and packing the day's online orders doesn't provide me with the mental absorption I need to stop asking myself what I'm going to do about it.
I have no idea what I'm going to do about it.
It's strange and new and is diverting energy I need for getting ready for the auction and solving the clues to who the soldier was, and really I just want it to go away.
It doesn't go away. It hovers stubbornly in the back of my mind, like a whiny mosquito after lights out.
It's still there on Thursday, which is extraordinarily unhelpful.
By Friday, out of sheer desperation, and panic because the auction is imminent, I force myself to turn to the one task I've failed spectacularly at for the last couple of weeks. Trying to solve whatever riddle surrounds the letters.
No more letters have come in the last few days. I think, maybe, I've received them all.
I spread the library books on the floor of the gallery in a semi-circle and in the order they were left in the library. Their pages are open to the chapters the letters were placed in, and I write down the Dewey numbers and place the pieces of paper above the books.
It doesn't help. I still have absolutely no bloody clue.
I want to have a bloody clue. The mystery of it all remains lost somewhere in the information in front of me.
I don't know what will happen if I can't solve it. It feels like everyone in the world is watching, waiting for the big reveal, for the story behind the letters to become three-dimensional.
I've got one day to find out who the soldier was or who is sending me the letters before the auction. One day. It feels like I'm grasping at sand and all it's doing is running through my fingers.
"Bess?" calls Lutek. "If you're not busy, we need some help."
I head into the café to assist the crew with the mid-morning rush.
When I return half an hour later, Carlos is sitting on the floor, his back against the counter and his legs stretched out in front of him. Beside him is the pile of books, neatly stacked and in his lap are pen and paper.
"What are you doing down there, Carlos?" I ask, stupidly, because it's pretty bloody obvious what he's been doing.
Then I brace myself to diplomatically deal with whatever rubbish is about to come out of his mouth.
"William Brownly."
"What?"
"William Brownly. That's your soldier."
I cross my arms. "How did you work that out?"
"It's not much of a cipher, dear girl. Primary-school stuff, really. It's the first letter of the book, followed by the second letter of the chapter title. The title of the book is primary, and a chapter is secondary, so that's what I looked for."
I crouch down and pull the first book from the pile. Winged Wonders by Timothy Dale. Sure enough, the second letter of the chapter title, Finding Exotics, is an I.
"Carlos!"
"Indeed."
I stare at him for a beat, wondering who this man, who claims to wear a stranger's feet and to have assassinated a treasonous Margaret Thatcher, really is. "I never knew you had it in you."
"That's because I've been living a life of obfuscation. But when someone I care for is in need..." He spreads his hands, palms up, in front of him. "Of course, if you tell anyone, I shall have to do something extremely violent. Just like in the spy movies. Garrotting, probably."
"I shall take it to my grave."
"If I were you, I'd check the name against the war memorial up the street."
Ah yes, the war memorial. It's the one place I haven't looked, not willing to accept that my soldier never returned home to 'B', and knowing that any one of the names listed for having died in the Second World War could be a possibility.
Carlos raises an arm. "Help me up, my girl. I'll come with you."
A wave of gratitude washes over me. I know this needs to be done and done now because I'm out of time, but I don't think I'm ready to face anything that isn't a happy ending.
I record my video of the clue solving and the soldier's name. Then I ask Lutek to keep an eye on the gallery and, ignoring Jeanette's "What's going on?", head off up the street.
As soon as the war memorial comes into view, a sense of urgency to know, to have the fear of it resolved, comes over me and I quicken my pace.
It's a fairly unassuming-looking monolith in the middle of the roundabout at the top of the high street and has the name of men who died in all the wars Port Derrum men have been involved in in the last one hundred and fifty-ish years.
I am out of breath when I reach it and immediately set to scanning the many names.
It doesn't take me long.
William Brownly is fourth on the list of soldiers who died serving their country in World War Two.
God. There he is. Plain as day and dead before the war was even two years old.
The tragedy of it rolls over me like a breaking wave. He and 'B' never got a life together.
My soldier is real. But he died in action.