10. Ten

10

PAST

DECEMBER, 10 YEARS AGO

A s it turns out, I’m not particularly good at living ‘in the moment’.

For most people, living each day as if it’s your last means living with gay abandon, and little regard for the consequences. And good for them. I wish they could teach me their ways, because, in reality, it’s kind of exhausting, really, living each day as if it’s your last. Always worrying if you’re enjoying things enough; if you’re truly experiencing life to its absolute fullest, or if there’s perhaps something more you could be doing to ensure you’re appreciating it all appropriately.

Or maybe that’s just me?

I think it has to be just me, because I’m just over a week into ‘living for the moment’ with Elliot, and if my life was a movie, I guess this would be the montage scene.

The snow keeps falling, turning the village into a scene from a Christmas card. We go for walks in it, our hands linked, even though our fingers feel like they’re about to fall off from the cold by the time we head back indoors. We drink mugs of hot chocolate in cozy pubs, with log fires and Christmas carols playing in the background. (I draw the line at mulled wine, but I can’t deny the vibes are still the same… ) We spend long afternoons curled up in Elliot’s sagging double bed in his hotel room; me reading, him writing, both of us just marking time until we can reasonably forget everything else and fall into each other’s arms again.

It’s amazing. It’s perfect, actually. Even the days when I have to work at the bookstore, and Elliot comes and sits at the counter with me, while Dad glares at us from between the bookshelves like a soap opera spy, have a slightly surreal, dreamlike feeling to them, which has me constantly questioning when I’m going to wake up.

And the entire time it’s happening, the knowledge that there’s a time-limit to it all hangs above us like a noose. I try my best to ignore it, because I know perfectly well that’s not how this is supposed to work; that over-thinking everything doesn’t exactly meet the criteria of ‘living in the moment’. That we’re having a fling, not falling in love. But then, every time I meet Elliot’s eye, and he gives me one of those smiles of his, I realize this doesn’t feel like ‘just a fling’ at all; and the thought of his imminent departure becomes a rogue full-stop in the middle of a sentence I wanted to read to the end.

I don’t tell Elliot any of this, though. There isn’t much point. He’s leaving, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it; so I just smile back, and kiss him as if I haven’t realized there’s an upper limit on the number of times we’ll do this.

But there is.

I don’t know what the exact number is, but from the moment we met, Elliot and I were destined to have only a set number of kisses, a certain amount of walks in the snow, and only a handful of days together.

One day soon, all of this will end. And it won’t be anything like losing Mum, because Elliot will still be somewhere out there in the world, but it will still hurt — which is why, I tell myself I’m living in the moment , but, the entire time I’m holding a little of myself back. Telling myself this isn’t serious. That we’re just having fun; or enjoying each other’s company , as Elliot put it.

I tell myself I can do this. That some people are just meant to be a single chapter of your life; even the ones who seem like they’re going to be one of the main characters. That’s how it is for me and Elliot. We’re a short story, nothing more. A one-season romance that will end along with the winter.

And that’s why I can never let him know that, in my head, I’ve been secretly imagining a different ending.”

“So? What do you think?”

We’re lying in Elliot’s bed again, our feet intertwined as I finish reading the latest pages of his manuscript. I put them down beside me and turn to face him.

“I like it,” I say carefully. “I think the characterization is amazing. Your great -grandfather — Luke — especially. I feel like I know him.”

“But…?” Elliot looks at me anxiously. “I’m not wrong, am I? There’s something missing?”

I prop myself up on one elbow and rummage through the piles of paper scattered on the bed until I find what I’m looking for.

“I think it needs something more,” I tell him, holding up the photo of the couple in the square, so he can see it. “I think it needs this. Her . Or someone like her, anyway.”

“Her?” He looks at the photo, then back at me. “The woman in the photo? You think I should turn it into a love story?”

He pulls a face, as if the thought doesn’t exactly appeal to him.

“Not exactly,” I say, smiling as I place the photo back down on top of the others. “It doesn’t have to be the whole story. But maybe a sub plot? Something to, I don’t know, kind of pull people through it? Give them something to hope for — other than that he makes it through the war alive, I mean? I don’t know. It’s just an idea. You’re the writer, here; I just read.”

“Hey. Don’t do that,” Elliot says seriously. “Don’t put yourself down. I asked you to take a look at it because I value your opinion. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

I force a smile, stoically resisting the ever-present impulse to say something self-deprecating, and completely spoil the moment. Because that’s not what ‘live for the moment’ Holly would do, and that’s the Holly I’m currently pretending to be.

“You’re smart, Holly,” Elliot insists, refusing to let me off the hook. “I don’t understand why you seem to think you’re not. Did someone tell you that? Is that why you doubt yourself so much?”

He sits up, as if he’s prepared to leap out of bed and fight them, if I say they did. This time, my smile is genuine.

“No one said that,” I assure him, giggling at the fierce look on his face. “It’s just… well, me , I guess. I tell myself that. Look, I didn’t go to college like you did. Or like all of my friends did. I just stayed at the bookshop. And then the people I grew up with all graduated and moved away, and I’m still here; still in that bookshop, still doing exactly what I’ve always done.”

I do my best to keep my tone light, but Elliot isn’t fooled.

“Well, for one thing, there’s nothing wrong with the bookstore,” he says firmly. “I think it’s pretty cool, actually. And, for another—” he reaches out and threads his fingers through mine — “Just because you’re here right now, it doesn’t mean this is where you’ll always be. There’s a big old world out there, you know. Maybe it’s time to think about seeing some of it?”

The words hang in the air between us. I think about Florida, with its orange groves and theme parks; about California palm trees swaying in the sun. I think about sunshine; the kind of heat that feels like a physical presence — a wall of warmth that hits you as you step off the plane.

Then I think about Dad, trying to manage the bookstore alone; going home each night to an empty flat; getting a little older, and a whole lot lonelier with every year that passes.

The sunshine and the six-lane highways abruptly disappear, like the mirage that they are.

“Maybe I will one day,” I say, as if the thought of leaving doesn’t occupy my every waking thought. “Right now, though, we have this book of yours to think about.”

I pick up the pages again, signaling that this part of the conversation is at an end. Elliot watches me for a few moments longer, then gives the tiniest of shrugs, before reaching out and picking up the photo from the pile on the bed.

“Okay,” he says thoughtfully. “So, what are we thinking? Who is she? How does he meet her?”

I rest my head on his shoulder so I can look at it with him.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who she was in real life,” I say. “But it doesn’t really matter if it’s fiction you’re writing. You can just make something up.”

“It wasn’t going to be fiction,” Elliot says, still looking at the photo. “I had it in my head that it would essentially be a biography. But I get what you mean about it needing a sub-plot. I guess it’s a bit dry without one. And I kind of like the idea of turning real life into a story. That could be fun.”

“Real life is a story,” I protest. “But you could still make this a true one, if you really want to. You could still write it as a biography, I mean. You’d just need to find out who she was, first. If that’s even possible.”

“Oh, it’ll be possible,” he says. “Maybe not easy , granted, but still. It’s not that long ago, really. I found tons of records going back to the war when I visited Fort Stafford — that’s the military base he was stationed at. It’s a museum now, though, so that made it easier.”

I nod, remembering visiting Fort Stafford on a class outing when I was a kid. It’s just a couple of miles from Bramblebury, and the soldiers would apparently frequent the village pubs and dance hall on their time off. It’s strange to think Elliot’s great-grandfather was one of them; that he might even have sat at the bar below us at some point, or visited the bookstore — or whatever it was back then. To Elliot and me, it is just a story, but to him — to the man this book is about — it was very real. It was his life, and he was the main character; just as we all are, in our own stories.

“I like that way of thinking about it,” Elliot says, when I share this thought with him. “I like the idea that we’re all busy writing the story of our life, even if we never put pen to paper. And he never did; which makes me all the more determined to do it for him. Find out the truth. Tell the full story. And I guess that means starting with Mystery Woman here.”

Our heads touch as we peer together at the photo, but the woman in it remains frustratingly indistinct, almost as if she’s a ghost who got caught in the act of disappearing.

“And you’re sure he didn’t leave any letters or diaries?” I ask again, thinking longingly of how amazing it would be to solve the mystery of the woman in the photo by poring over some decades old journals, found in a musty old attic. Like one of those old adventure stories I used to love so much as a child, brought to life.

But Elliot shakes his head.

“Nope. Or, if he did, no one bothered to save them. Like I said, his house was sold years ago; these photos are all that were left. I guess I could go back to the military base and see if there’s anything I missed,” he goes on. “But I doubt there’d be anything useful. They kept records of the men who stayed there, sure. But there’s nothing about their actual lives.”

“No, I guess there wouldn’t be,” I reply, saddened by the thought of all those lives being reduced to simply the known facts: that all that’s left is a start date and an end date, and none of the really important stuff that happened in between.

“I suppose we could try the library?” I go on, not feeling particularly hopeful. “I haven’t gone in there in years, but I guess they might have a local history section. Or I can ask Dad if he has any ideas; he’s pretty into anything involving the war.”

“Maybe his parents knew my great-grandpa?” Elliot says, his eyes lighting up. “Or his lady friend? Shit!” He slaps a hand over his mouth, a look of horror on his face. “What if she’s your great-grandma?”

“Relax,” I reply, laughing. “Neither of my parents were from here. Mum’s family moved down from Scotland when she and Lorraine were just toddlers, and Dad grew up in London. He met Mum at university. So it’s okay; we’re definitely not related.”

“Well, thank God for that.” He pulls me closer. “I’m still not sure you should ask your dad about this, though. I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

I glance up at him. He’s smiling, but his eyes are serious. Also: he’s not exactly wrong.

“He doesn’t hate you,”I tell him, struggling to find a way to explain the hard looks and endless questions Dad fires at Elliot every time he comes into the shop with me. “He’s just a bit over-protective, is all.”

He’s just scared I’m going to run off to America with Elliot and never come back, would be closer to the truth here, but I don’t want to have to admit that this is a possibility that’s so much as entered my head, even in the context of Dad and his paranoia about it, so I let it go.

“I guess that makes sense,” Elliot says, kissing me softly on the top of the head. “You’re all he’s got. I can’t blame the guy for being afraid of losing you. You would be a very hard person to lose, Holly Hart.”

Is it just my imagination, or is there a wistfulness to his tone that suggests it’s not just Dad he’s talking about now?

For a split-second, I consider asking him; of breaking the unspoken promise that we’re not going to talk about anything as serious as ‘us’ — because there is no ‘us’. Not really. Not after Christmas Eve, when he’ll fly back home to Florida and his family, and that’ll be that.

So, I just reach up to kiss him, and I don’t think about how every single kiss takes us one step closer than the one that will be our last.

I don’t think about that at all.

Instead, in the days that follow, I pour all of my energy into helping Elliot try to figure out the identity of the woman in the photo.

We visit the library and the war memorial. We go back to the barracks, and even wander among the graves in the snowy churchyard, holding hands and feeling like characters in a movie who’re about to stumble upon the answer to a decades-old mystery.

But, of course, we don’t.

The village library does, indeed, have a local history section and a selection of old newspapers, which are accessible via an ancient microfiche reader. But none of the books and pamphlets hold any clues for us, and we don’t know what to even search for in the newspapers (“Local woman photographed with U.S. soldier” being an unlikely kind of headline, even for a time without rolling news media…), so we leave empty-handed. The war memorial, of course, contains only the names of the village men lost to the war, and the barracks, as Elliot predicted, can tell us nothing other than that his grandfather was, indeed, stationed there for a while. As for the graveyard, meanwhile … I have no idea what we thought we were looking for in the graveyard. We’re probably not going to be starting new careers as detectives after this, let’s put it that way.

And so the mystery woman remains elusive. But instead of being discouraged by this, Elliot becomes even more determined to find her.

“You know you don’t have to know the truth about her,” I remind him one morning, a few days into the search. “You can just make it up. Turn it into fiction. At least that way, the mystery woman can be whoever you want her to be.”

We’re sitting together on a bench at the top of the hill just outside the village. It’s not a steep hill, or even a very interesting one, but it has a view out over the village itself and the surrounding countryside, which makes it a popular place to come for a stroll.

“I know,” replies Elliot, handing me one of the paper cups filled with hot chocolate which we bought on the way here. “But I don’t want to make it up. I need to know who she was, and what happened to her. I want what I write to be real.”

“She’s really got under your skin, hasn’t she?” I comment, sipping my drink and trying not to feel jealous of a woman who’s either long dead, or almost as old as the hill we’re sitting on.

“It just bothers me,” he replies, taking my hand in his. “I hate the thought that she existed, and then she was gone, and no one seems to know what happened in between. You know that thing about how you’re never really dead until your name’s spoken for the last time? I don’t think that should be just for famous people, or one’s who’ve lived dramatic lives. It should be for everyone. Everyone’s story deserves to be told.”

He turns and smiles at me self-consciously, as if he thinks I might make fun of him for the slightly schmaltzy sentiment. Instead, I just squeeze his hand through my mittens.

“You want to keep her memory alive,” I say simply. “And his, too. I get that. I really get that.”

“You feel the same about your mom, I guess,” Elliot replies. It’s not a question, so there’s no need to answer it, but I give his hand another squeeze, grateful to be understood without having to explain just how hard it is to think Mum could have been here — that she could have lived an entire life, fallen in love, given birth, mattered — and then just suddenly be gone, as if she was never here at all.

I really, really get it.

“You were right, though,” says Elliot. “About the story, I mean. This is exactly what it needs. It needs that element of… well, romance, I guess. A human connection. I like that.”

“That’s what all the best stories are about, aren’t they?” I reply, watching as he sips his hot chocolate, leaving a tiny spec of froth on his upper lip, which I would very much like to lick off. “People. Connections.”

“Exactly,” says Elliot, nodding so enthusiastically he almost spills his drink. “Because what else is there, really? When all’s said and done?”

It’s the kind of thing I’ve always thought, but never actually said, too worried that I’d sound pretentious, or just plain stupid. But Elliot never seems to think about things like that; or, if he does, he doesn’t let it stop him. He just says what he thinks, truthfully, and from the heart. It’s one of the things I admire most about him.

“Are you even real?” I ask, chuckling. “Or am I just imagining you? Because I feel like you must have a flaw of some kind. Maybe not a fatal one, exactly, but still; no one can be this nice and not have a flaw.”

“Oh, now, we agreed you wouldn’t use that word,” he grins, dropping a kiss on the tip of my frozen nose. “Anything but nice, remember?”

He kisses me again, and then he wraps an arm around me, and we sit there and finish our drinks, looking down at the winding streets, and the little snow covered-rooftops. From this distance, and under its unaccustomed blanket of white, Bramblebury actually looks quite pretty. Snow has a way of doing that, though; of tricking you into thinking things are better than they are, by briefly hiding all the imperfections.

That’s why I don’t trust it.

And I shouldn’t trust Elliot, either.

I don’t know that yet, though. So I just sit there, snuggled into his chest, completely unaware that the man beside me does have a flaw.

I just haven’t found out what it is, yet.