14. Fourteen

14

PAST

DECEMBER, 10 YEARS AGO

F or the two days that follow Elliot’s suggestion that I come to America with him for Christmas, I let myself believe I’m actually going to do it; that I’m going to hop on a plane, and my life is finally going to begin.

They’re two of the best days of my adult life, and they are, of course, completely fake. I know it even as I’m looking up the prices of flights during my lunch break and wondering what the temperature’s like in Fort Lauderdale in December. I know I can’t actually go — and even if I didn’t know it, the look on Dad’s face every time he sees me head out to meet Elliot would get the message across loud and clear. But imagining Christmas in Florida is a special treat I allow myself to indulge in, just for a little while. It’s like a vacation for my brain; and Elliot’s right there with me.

“You wouldn’t have to leave right after Christmas,” he says one frozen afternoon as we sit on our favorite bench at the top of the hill, eating fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. “You could stay for New Year. Or, you know, longer. You could stay as long as you like, really. Your dad could manage the shop on his own for a bit, couldn’t he?”

“I’m sure he could,” I agree, there being no point in trying to argue otherwise. Even Elliot, who finds everything about England quaint and magical, has noticed that we never seem to have any customers when he comes to meet me at the store. “It’s whether he’d want to, that worries me.”

This isn’t really up for debate either. I already know exactly what Dad would have to say about the idea of me spending Christmas in America, and it’s not a thought I like to dwell on, because it doesn’t really fit with the fiction I’ve created around the idea.

“What’s your parents’ house like?” I ask Elliot instead, stuffing another chip in my mouth. “Is it near your apartment?”

“Nowhere’s near anywhere in Florida,” he says, grinning. “It’s not like here. You can’t just walk places. You need a car to get anywhere.” I snuggle into his side and listen to him talk about the house he grew up in, with its pool and its golf course view, and think about how different it sounds from the life I’ve known up until now. It seems crazy to me to think that this man I’ve come to know so well inhabits a world I’ve never seen; that I know what his voice sounds like when it’s rusty from sleep, and what he looks like when he’s dreaming, but not what color his bathroom is, or whether he hangs his sweaters or folds them. And I want to know. I want to know everything; from what kind of sofa he has, to how he celebrates his birthday. I want to know what his life looks like; and, more than that, I want to see it for myself.

“What are they like?” I ask, my mind seizing on something new to worry about. “Your family, I mean? D’you think they’d like me?”

It takes him so long to answer, I start to panic that he’s going to say no.

“They’re complicated,” he says finally, screwing the wrapper from his fish and chips into a tight paper ball. “Nice, but… complicated.”

“How so?”

“Oh, just in the way all families are complicated, I guess. Ours isn’t anything out of the ordinary, really. No skeletons in the closet. Well, not that I know of, anyway.”

Elliot rolls his paper ball a little tighter and stares out at the landscape in front of us, which is in its finest Christmas-card form after the unusual amount of snow we’ve had this week.

“You haven’t finished researching your great-granddad yet, though,” I reply teasingly. “Maybe you’ll unearth a few skeletons there.”

The arm I’m leaning against suddenly goes tense, making me look up at him in surprise.

“About that,” Elliot says slowly. “It’s probably best if you don’t mention the book when you … if you see my parents.”

“Really? Why? You don’t think they’d like it?”

“No,” he says shortly. “No, they wouldn’t. Oh, not because of the subject matter,” he adds, sensing my surprise at this. “My dad was the one who got me into researching the family tree in the first place. It’s kind of a passion of his. It’s the writing part he wouldn’t like.”

“He … doesn’t like writing?” Now I’m really confused. “How could he not like writing ?”

“It’s not that he doesn’t like it,” Elliot replies, his fist closing tightly around the wrapper in his hand. “It’s that he doesn’t think it’s a good enough career for one of his sons. I don’t think he sees it as a career at all, actually; just a hobby. And a distraction. He doesn’t want me distracted. He wants me to come back from this trip and go work for the family business, like my brothers. He thinks that’s what I’m going to do.”

“But you don’t want to,” I say, understanding. “You want to write, instead.”

I squeeze his arm gently, thinking about how similar we are; both of us stuck working for businesses we didn’t choose, just because it’s what’s expected of us.

“It isn’t realistic, though, is it?” Elliot replies. “Writing? It’s not like it’s going to earn me enough to live off. It’s probably not going to earn me anything at all, actually. That’s what’s so frustrating about it. I feel like I’m just chasing some stupid dream that’s never going to come true.”

“It could, though,” I tell him firmly, hating this sudden switch from happy, positive Elliot to someone who sounds more like … well, me, really. “Of course it could. It’s not a stupid dream, Elliot. Your book is good. It’s going to be even better once we figure out the finer details of the plot. And there are plenty of people who make a living out of writing. Like Stephen King, say. Or… or other people like Stephen King. Why shouldn’t you be one of them?”

“I don’t think I’m going to be the next Stephen King, somehow,” Elliot laughs, his good humor restored. “And those ‘finer details of the plot’ are kinda important, really. But hey: if I could be one of the people who makes a living from figuring out difficult plot points, then what’s stopping you being one of them, too?”

“Oh, everything.” I sigh dramatically, resting my head on his shoulder. “My dad isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of me doing anything other than working for the family business either, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I guess we’ll find out how he feels about that soon,” Elliot says. “When you speak to him about our Christmas plans.”

He kisses me on the forehead, and we sit there looking out at the view, me turning the idea of ‘our Christmas plans’ slowly over in my head, marveling at how quickly we’ve become people with plans together.

“The thing is,” I say slowly, watching a rise from one of the chimneys below us, in a lazy trail across the winter sky. “This thing … us. It was just supposed to be a fling, wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to last past Christmas Eve.”

“We didn’t actually say that,” Elliot points out, his voice coming from above my head. “We just said we’d enjoy each other’s company while it lasted. So who says we can’t make it last longer?”

His tone is deliberately light, but there’s an entire subtext to what he’s saying, and finding out exactly what it says has just become the most important thing in my life.

“That’s just it, though,” I reply, sitting up, and pushing my hair out of my face so I can see him properly. “We can’t, can we? Not really. Say I do come to Florida. Say I come for Christmas — or even as long as New Year. I’ll still have to come home again, eventually. All we’ll be doing is delaying the inevitable. All we’ll be doing is making it harder when we have to say goodbye. I’m … I’m just not sure I can do that. I’m not sure I want to.”

I stop talking, realizing I’ve done it now: I’ve well and truly destroyed the whole ‘living for the moment’ illusion, and revealed myself as exactly what I am: a girl who’s scared of getting hurt.

It’s true, though, isn’t it? The fact is, I don’t want to be just a chapter of Elliot’s life. I want to be the whole story. And I know it would be greedy of me to expect a happy ending, but the truth is, I want that too.

“You’re not sure you want to spend Christmas with me, or you’re not sure you want to say goodbye?” Elliot asks. “I just … I need to be very clear what you’re saying here, Holly, because it kind of sounds like you might be breaking up with me?”

“I’m not,” I reply, hating the wary look in his eyes, and the fact that I’m the one who put it there. “Well, not yet, anyway. But, I mean, we’ve been breaking up since the day we met, Elliot, haven’t we? Because we know it can’t last. We live on different sides of the world. And me coming to the States with you for a week or two isn’t going to change that. We’re still going to have to say goodbye.”

I chew my bottom lip anxiously, not used to making emotionally charged speeches. Or waiting for a response to them.

Before that response can come, though, there’s a sudden flurry of activity as the birds in the surrounding trees all take off at once, the quiet of the hillside shattered by the arrival of Maisie Poole, who comes trudging up the hill towards us.

“Oh, there you both are!” she says brightly, as Elliot and I exchange surprised looks. “I thought I’d find you two here!”

“Maisie? What on earth?” I say, wondering if the rumors are true and she really does have spies working for her — because that’s the only explanation I can think of for her certainty that she’d find us on top of this hill.

“Budge up,” she says, plonking herself unceremoniously between us, and placing a large leather handbag on her knee. “I have something to show you.”

I risk a glance at Elliot over the top of his head as she opens the bag and rummages inside it, but he’s too focused on Maisie for me to be able to decode the look on his face, or figure out what he might have been planning to say to me before we were interrupted.

I watch impatiently, willing Maisie to hurry up as she continues to search through the contents of her bag. I’m half expecting her to produce a couple of lamps and a hatstand, like Mary Poppins, but instead she pulls out a brown manila envelope, from which she produces an old, black-and-white photograph.

“Ta-da,” she says, smiling triumphantly as Elliot and I lean forward to take a look at it. “The ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, photographed in front of Bramblebury Village Hall, in 1943. Recognize anyone?”

I squint down at the faded photo, which shows around a dozen women standing on the steps of the hall, all of them wearing the same uniform as the mystery woman in Elliot’s photo. It takes me a moment to spot her, and then Elliot and I see her at the same time.

“Look! There she is!”

The mystery woman is standing towards the back of the photo, on the very top step. Her smile isn’t quite as wide as it is in the photo with Elliot’s great-grandfather, but she’s still recognizable from her heart-shaped face and distinctive widow’s peak.

“Evie Snow,” Maisie says, as proudly as if she’s just conjured her out of thin air. “It says so on the back. Look.”

She flips the photo over and shows us the list of names, written in faded ink, by someone who’s presumably long gone by now.

“Evie Snow,” breathes Elliot, taking the photo carefully from Maisie. “The mystery woman has a name.”

And what a name it is, too.

“Surely that can’t have been her real name?” I comment. “She sounds like a character in a book rather than an actual person.”

Elliot’s eyes meet mine over the top of the photograph, both of us thinking the same thing.

“I’m afraid a name is all she has,” Maisie interrupts, clearly relishing her role as messenger. “I had a quick look on one of the library computers — I’m very clued up about the Internet, you know — and there were no Evie Snows in Bramblebury, either on the National Registration that happened in 1939, or the next census, which was in 1951. They didn’t bother during the war, you know; too busy trying to stay alive, I expect.”

“Right. So how would we go about finding her, then?” Elliot asks, undaunted.

“Oh, you can’t,” replies Maisie cheerfully. “Well, you could try the usual routes, I suppose: births, marriages, deaths; that kind of thing. But I’d be surprised if you manage to find anything. I know it’s a bit of an unusual name, but she wouldn’t have been the only Evie, or the only Snow in the country. And that’s assuming she never changed it by marriage.”

“What about the Ministry of Defense?” suggests Elliot. “They’ll have records of members, surely?”

Maisie nods.

“They do,” she agrees. “But they’ll only supply them to next of kin. Is she next of kin, do you think?”

She looks at him eagerly, hoping for some fresh gossip.

“No,” Elliot says, sounding as disappointed as Maisie looks at this. “No, she isn’t. I don’t know who she was. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to find out, either.”

His shoulders sag in defeat. I really want to hug him, but I have to wait while Maisie flutters around, putting the photo of Evie Snow back into its envelope, and then launching into a long, pointless story about her sister Elsie’s next-door neighbor, who she suspects might be ‘up to something’.

Finally, though, she says goodbye, and heads off back down the hill, leaving Elliot and I to digest the fact that the search is over, and we’re still no further forward.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” he says, as the top of Maisie’s red bobble hat disappears behind the crest of the hill. “It looks like this book is going to have to be fiction, after all.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” I ask, puzzled by how seriously he’s taking this. “I know you wanted to figure out what really happened — I did, too. But it was always a long shot, Elliot. There was always a chance we’d have to make that part of the story up.”

“I know,” he says, taking my hand. “I just hate not knowing, is all. I hate loose ends. I hate that someone’s entire life can just … disappear. Like it didn’t matter.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” I point out. “Someone must know what happened to her; what her story was. And even if they don’t, she was still real. She still mattered. Things don’t only become real once someone’s written about them.”

“Don’t they? Do you really think that, Holly?”

Elliot’s words are soft, but his eyes, when I finally meet them, hold a challenge which makes me wonder which one of us I’m trying to convince here.

I’m the one who’s always felt like things haven’t really happened to me until I’ve written them down, after all. That’s why I’ve never written anything about Mum dying; not even in my diary. I always felt like once it was down on paper, it would make it real; and, as long as it isn’t, I can continue to pretend on some level that it didn’t happen.

So I’m a fine one to lecture Elliot about writing and reality, when I don’t even believe my own words.

“What I think is that you can still write an amazing story about them both,” I reply, shrugging off the question. “And I guess the best thing about it is that this way you at least get to decide how it ends.”

“And what about us? How does our story end?”

The question is the one that’s been circling my mind endlessly, almost since we met, but it still comes as a shock to hear it spoken out loud.

“I’m not sure,” I admit, my palms suddenly clammy with nerves despite the chill of the afternoon. “I’ve been trying not to think about it. I just know it has to.”

This time, my words are even less convincing.

“And is that what you want?”

His hand tightens almost imperceptibly around mine, as if he’s steeling himself for an answer he knows he’s not going to like.

“No. Of course not,” I tell him. “It’s the very last thing I want. If it was up to me, it would last forever.”

My voice catches on that last word. Until now, my feelings about Elliot have been a secret I’ve been trying to keep even from myself. But now they’re out there in the open, and it’s a feeling that reminds me of the time I fell off a swing when I was eight years old — or, more specifically, of the moment before I hit the ground, when it felt almost like flying. This, too, could go either way; although, if my past record is anything to go by, I suspect the only way for me is down.

My entire body tenses up, waiting for the moment of impact.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, Elliot takes my face gently in his hands and tilts it up towards his, until I’m forced to look him in the eye.

“That’s settled, then,” he says simply. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“Are … are you making a book pun?” I ask croakily.

Elliot grins.

“Bad time to get cheesy on you, huh?” he says wryly. “Sorry. What I meant to say was that I feel like that too. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to you, Holly. Not on Christmas Eve, and not any time after that, either.”

We look at each other, both of us intensely aware that everything has just changed between us.

“So, what do we do? There’s that whole ‘different continents’ thing to deal with, remember?”

This time, my voice comes out as a whisper rather than a croak. It’s only a marginal improvement, but Elliot doesn’t seem to notice.

“So we’ll deal with it,” he says lightly. “Somehow. I don’t know exactly how yet, but we’ll find a way. It can be one of those plot points we have to figure out.”

“You’re doing it again with the book puns,” I say, laughing. I don’t care, though, because, instead of answering, he just leans forward and kisses me, and it’s the kind of kiss that makes me feel like he might be right; that we can figure this out.

And maybe our story won’t have to end after all.