Philly
‘... And this is your room,’ says Kendra, stepping back as she opens the door, allowing me to enter first. As I turn to thank her, I’m struck again by her resemblance to her grandmother and for a moment my mind plays one of its silly tricks, making me think I’m back in the dormitory at school more than seven decades ago and she is Ella, my best friend.
I look around, expecting to see the iron bedsteads pushed against the walls and Beatrice, the third of our tight-knit band, sitting on one of them, brushing her copper-coloured hair.
The Three Musketeers, they used to call us.
Ella was the beautiful one. Bea was the artistic one.
And I was the brainy one. But this isn’t school, and they are both gone now. I’m the last one of us left.
I give my head a little shake, trying to clear it, pulling myself back to the here and now.
The room is bright with French sunlight, the only bed a double one, covered with a pretty toile de Jouy quilt.
There’s a painted chest of drawers with a jug of wildflowers set on it and a wooden stand on which hang two neatly folded white towels.
It’s just as I’d always pictured it from Ella’s descriptions, after that first heady summer she spent here so very long ago.
The summer we left school and our lives went in such different directions .
.. I wonder whether Kendra feels Ella’s spirit here, just as I do.
She well knows how much this house on an island just off the west coast of France meant to her grandmother.
I blink, forcing my meandering mind to focus again as the boy clumps up the stairs carrying my suitcase.
He’s at that awkward stage in his early teens, all elbows and knees, and he bumps his shoulder against the door frame as he enters, as if his brain hasn’t quite caught up with how quickly his body has grown.
I wince, thinking he must have hurt himself, but the expression on his face doesn’t flicker.
He uses both hands to lift the case and swing it on to the bed with a bounce.
His straight blond hair hangs to his shoulders and the back is matted into a tangle.
I suppose trips to the hairdresser must get complicated if even the thought of being touched sends you into a frenzy of panic and horror.
‘Careful, Finn,’ says Kendra. ‘Don’t damage Mrs Delaney’s things.’
He doesn’t reply, but turns to look at me, the first time he’s done so directly.
Those eyes. They are the same colour as Ella’s were, sea-green flecked with gold.
But there’s a tautness around them, a look of tired anxiety no child should have to carry.
Despite the sun and the wind – because surely he must spend some of his time outdoors, or is he one of those youngsters who’s glued to a computer screen from dawn to dusk?
– his face is untanned. There’s a pinched, tense look to his features, but otherwise they’re expressionless.
‘What happened to your leg?’ he asks. It’s the first thing he’s said to me, social niceties clearly being surplus to requirements.
‘I lost it in France, a long time ago,’ I say, tapping my walking stick against my prosthesis.
The stump of my knee is swollen from today’s flight and from walking what seemed like miles, firstly at Gatwick and then when we landed at La Rochelle.
The plane had come to rest some distance from the terminal, so I’d had to limp across the expanse of tarmac and then take my place at the back of a long queue for passport control in the early summer heat.
‘You’ve come to the right place to look for it then,’ he says. His face, as pale and waxy as the full moon, holds no hint of a smile. ‘That was a joke, by the way. Haha.’ The tone of his voice is flat, even his laugh lacking inflexion.
‘Finn!’ The tone of Kendra’s voice is sharp; the reprimand makes him wince. ‘I thought we agreed you were going to practise good manners.’
‘Sorry.’ I can see the tension draw tighter around his eyes as he drops his gaze to the floor. I sense he hates being in the wrong, letting his mother down.
‘Don’t worry, it’s a good joke actually,’ I say, smiling to reassure him.
And of course he’s uncannily close to the mark, although it’s not my missing leg I’ve come to look for.
It’s something else altogether. But I keep that to myself.
‘I’ll tell you the whole story sometime.
But right now I think I’d like to freshen up a little after my travels. ’
‘Of course, Philly,’ Kendra says, relief showing in her expression that I haven’t taken umbrage.
I’ve known about Finn’s autism for years.
Ella used to talk about him often, and I know she had a particular soft spot for this special great-grandson of hers.
I’d seen him at the funeral, but he’d kept himself apart, sitting in a corner with a pair of ear defenders clamped on his head.
The noise of chatter in the reception room at that hotel was so loud I thought I wouldn’t have minded donning a pair myself.
Kendra had come over to talk to me, proffering a plate of sandwiches.
And it was there that she’d first issued the invitation to come and spend a couple of weeks with them here at the house on the ?le de Ré.
She’d written Ella’s life story – indeed, she had had some success with the book – and asked whether I’d mind sharing my own experiences.
She was developing her career as a writer, she told me, always on the lookout for new ideas.
She’d heard a little about me from her grandmother and thought she might write my biography, if I’d agree to it. I said I’d think about it.
A couple more years passed, as they do, and her invitation was repeated in each of the Christmas cards she’d send me.
And then I picked up the phone and asked if I could come and stay in the summer. Because I decided it had been long enough, at last. I can now talk about those times. About the things we’d kept so secret for seventy-five years, now they’ve been declassified.
So Kendra’s invitation was a good excuse to come to the island.
And, if I’m being completely honest, I suppose there’s a bit of vanity as well, thinking my life story could be worth writing down.
She’s going to find out that it’s a story without an ending, though, full of loose ends that haven’t been neatly tied up.
But maybe I have it in me after all, to try one last time.
To continue the search I thought I’d given up years ago.
One last chance to try to find out what happened.
I know it’s a fool’s errand really. This is the only place I haven’t yet been to and looked, and of course, there’s a good reason for that.
I already know the war graves in the cemeteries here on the island hold no possibilities.
I ruled them out long ago, back in the days before every new hope became yet another dead end.
As Kendra and Finn leave me to unpack and rest a little, though, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a longing to be back in my own home in England.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have come away. What on earth was I thinking?
Two weeks suddenly seems an eternity to be staying in this house with this family of strangers.
How am I going to manage, with my missing leg and my wonky mind, and my fragile digestive system that’ll never withstand the onslaught of foreign food? What an old fool I am.
I kick off my left shoe and then unstrap the prosthesis from my right knee, gingerly prodding the swollen stump. With a grunt, I lower myself on to the bed and swing my legs up on to the coverlet, exhaling a long sigh of relief.
A breath of sea air stirs the white muslin curtains framing the window, and for a fleeting moment I think I see Ella standing there again. I close my eyes. Yes, I think, coming back to France is a mistake. Continuing the search is nothing but a wild goose chase.
Too many ghosts have followed me here. Too many memories. Faces in the moonlight, their eyes dark with fear. They knew they were risking everything. We all were. But we did it all the same. Because what other choice did we have?