The Cottingley Secret

by Hazel Gaynor

  SOMETHING NEW OFFICIALLY opened on a breezy November afternoon. With the advice and help of Henry and his nephew, the bookshop finances were much healthier and Olivia managed to furnish (albeit sparsely) and stock the new shop. Nora had been surprisingly civil about it all, and had even given Olivia a lovely oak bookcase her husband had made, which was still in the empty shop. She’d said it was nice to know a little bit of him would always be there and that she’d been silly keeping the place empty all these years.

  “I just couldn’t bear to see anyone else in his shop,” she explained. “But I suppose life goes on . . .”

  Olivia said she understood and felt the same way about Pappy and Something Old.

  It was a truce, of sorts.

  The sign arrived just in time for the opening: the same lettering as Something Old, the same slightly wonky perfection as Olivia hung it deliberately lopsided.

  She was delighted with the small gathering of friends who came to wish her well with her new venture: other shop owners, regular customers, Mrs. Joyce, the ladies from the St. Vincent de Paul, the nurses from St. Bridget’s. Even the solicitor and the accountant came. And of course, Henry and Hemingway. Nora Plunkett made a brief appearance, during which she pointed out that the window frames needed painting, before wishing Olivia all the best with the shop. But it was the addition of Ross and Iris that made the occasion perfect.

  Olivia’s occasional weekend trips to Kerry had become increasingly regular. Henry was happy to take charge at the shop as Olivia willed the miles to pass faster so she could get to Ross sooner. They walked on the hills with Iris during the day, and drank good wine beside the fire at night. Sometimes they opened a second bottle, and it was always a good idea.

  Olivia smiled as they stood side by side across the street from the two shops.

  Something Old.

  Something New.

  A breath in, and a breath out.

  “When do you have to go back?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “So soon?” It was always going to be too soon.

  “Here. I got you something.” He handed Olivia a silver photo frame. “A good-luck gift, and to replace the one the cat broke.” Hemingway had knocked the photo frame over the previous week while Olivia was on the phone with Ross. She’d only mentioned it in passing and was touched that he’d remembered. “I know it meant a lot to you,” he added.

  Olivia took the gift, and as she did she reached for Ross’s hand, wrapping her fingers around his. Pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly.

  THE BELL JINGLED brightly above the door of Something Old as Olivia stepped inside. The old silver picture frame sat on the desk, the glass cracked across Frances’s face where Hemingway had knocked it over. She turned it over, carefully loosening the clasps at the back. They were stiff and unyielding, having not been moved for such a long time. She broke two nails before resorting to scissors to prize the rusted clasps apart.

  When the clasps finally relented, Olivia lifted off the black backing of the frame, then a layer of thin cardboard, beneath which was a lock of red hair and several fragile fragments of paper, which she placed on the desk, fitting them together piece by piece: the faintest hint of lavender, emerald, and blue, the tip of a wing, the edge of a dress. She smiled as she recognized the fairy cutouts from the photograph of Frances and the fairies. How clever of her great-grandmother Ellen to have kept them hidden here. Olivia thought how much she would have liked to meet her. She had a feeling they would have got along very well.

  She turned her focus back to the picture frame then, lifting out a small photograph concealed behind the one of Frances. It was an unusual image, but Olivia recognized the waterfall, the beck, the backdrop of trees and ferns. Half a dozen dots of blurred light patterned the image, wispy strands of something misty and peculiar. She ran her fingertips over them lightly as a broad grin spread across her lips. It was the photograph Nana had described. She had remembered it correctly, after all.

  With great care, Olivia placed everything into the new frame, exactly as it had been in the original. With everything in order, she pushed the clasps shut and stood the frame on the desk. Frances smiled back at her. Her secrets would always be safe.

  The photograph often attracted comment and conversation, and as Olivia discovered, comment and conversation were what ultimately sold books. When people asked her if the fairies were real, she asked them what they thought. With only a few exceptions, most people chose to believe they were. Whether fairies were real or not, Olivia liked to believe in the possibility. As Pappy always said, possibility is where all the best stories begin.

  From the very beginning, as far back as her great-grandmother Ellen, Olivia’s story hadn’t been conventional or easy, but each of the women in her life had kept turning the page, living another chapter, forming the provenance that she would, one day, inherit. Where once she had dreaded what lay ahead, Olivia now relished the prospect of filling the empty page. Hers was a narrative she would write in her own words, in her own time. She would be the mapmaker, the storyteller, the dreamer of dreams.

  On brighter Sundays, when the two shops were closed, she loved to climb to the top of Howth Head and admire the view, and sometimes, when the wind blew in the right direction, she would catch it: a faint whisper at first and then louder. The refrain of a song her mammy used to sing to her, wildly operatic and wonderfully silly. She would close her eyes and listen, the golden autumn sun warm against her cheeks as she thought about the determined, inquisitive little girl she’d once been and the determined, optimistic woman she’d become.

  She had always been there, watching, waiting.

  To find her, all she’d had to do was believe in her.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  I’m always a little conflicted when I write my acknowledgments—excited to be a step closer to the book meeting readers, but sad to say good-bye. It’s a bit like turning the lights on at the end of a great party when everyone has to leave. But leave I must, and I’ll try to be brief with my thanks. Brief-ish.

  Firstly, to Damien, Max, and Sam. I know I go a bit crazy when I write, but, well, you’re stuck with me, so thank you for understanding and keeping me sane! And to all my family, thank you for tolerating my writerly nonsense and for all your support. Special thanks to my father-in-law, Joe, who tells unsuspecting strangers about my books on his holidays.

  Writing a book can be a lonely process but no writer writes alone. It is a huge team effort and I’m so grateful to everyone involved, especially my amazing editors, Lucia Macro and Kate Bradley, who see the potential in a story before I see it myself and who make my words make sense. I adore working with you both.

  Huge thanks to the following teams of wonder-people. In the U.S., my publisher Liate Stehlik, Molly Waxman, Jennifer Hart, Michelle Podberezniak, Carolyn Coons, and all at William Morrow. In the UK, our esteemed leader Charlie Redmayne, my publisher Kate Elton, Kimberly Young, Charlotte Brabbin, Emile Chambeyron, and all at HarperFiction. In Ireland, the inimitable Tony Purdue, Mary Byrne, and Ann Marie Dolan—thank you for everything, especially the Espresso Martinis!

  To my wonderful agent, Michelle Brower, who continues to amaze me with her passion, business sense, baking skills, and calm advice. Thank you for taking me with you (I would have clamped my hands around your ankles if you hadn’t, which could have been awkward).

  So many friends—in real life and online—cheer me on through every page of every book. You are too numerous to thank individually, but you know who you are and I hope you also know how much I appreciate your kindness. Special thanks to Paul Keogh for legal property advice, Ruth Francis Long for taking me through the intricacies of rare books, Heather Webb and Sheena Lambert for early reads and good advice (Heather, I’ll see you in Paris! x), Catherine Ryan Howard for her B&B service and making me laugh most days, and to my Harper-gals, Carmel Harrington and Fionnuala Kearney, it’s such a pleasure to share this journey (and the parti
es!) with you both. Thanks also to everyone at the stunning Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig for providing the perfect writing sanctuary for a few days (and thanks to Miss Worby for not haunting me too much).

  To all the hardworking book bloggers, booksellers, and of course, you, the reader . . . thank you for your amazing support. Please don’t stop!! I must also mention my writing heroes, who inspire me every day and some of whom I was fortunate to meet while I was writing this book (my particular apologies to Tracy Chevalier for being a mumbling star-struck fool in your presence).

  Finally, my sincere thanks to Christine Lynch for inviting me into her home and her family, and for being so gracious with her time and her support for this book, all of which I’m so grateful for. And to Frances, Elsie, and the fairies. Thank you for bringing a little bit of magic into the world. It seems to me that we could do with an awful lot more.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Hazel Gaynor

  About the Book

  * * *

  Hazel’s “Notes on a Fairy Tale”

  The Cottingley Fairy Photos

  Note from Christine Lynch

  Reading Group Questions

  Read On

  * * *

  Further Reading

  About the Author

  Meet Hazel Gaynor

  HAZEL GAYNOR is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from The Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe & Mail Canada bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year.

  Hazel was selected by the U.S. Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015, and her work has been translated into several languages.

  Originally from Yorkshire, England, Hazel now lives in Ireland.

  About the Book

  Hazel’s “Notes on a Fairy Tale”

  THE COTTINGLEY SECRET is my fourth novel and, perhaps more than any other, the one I was always meant to write.

  On a June afternoon in 2015, I was brainstorming ideas for my next book with my agent. I had several possibilities that all excited me, but it was a line in an e-mail from her that gave me goose bumps: “Have you ever thought of doing something around the Cottingley fairies?” I still have that e-mail, and my response: “OMG. I adore the Cottingley fairies! How did you know?!!!!!” I included the iconic image of Frances and the fairy ring with my reply.

  The funny thing is, I’d saved a link to information about the Cottingley Fairies in my Ideas folder years previously, and in 2013 attended a writing workshop in Dublin with author Katharine McMahon, who used the photograph of Frances and the fairies as a writing prompt. I was the only person in the group who recognized it. I wanted to know more about that little girl and the story surrounding the famous photograph.

  But the most astonishing part of my coming to write this book was yet to happen.

  After searching online for information about the Cottingley photographs, and particularly about Frances and Elsie, I sent an e-mail requesting a copy of a book called Reflections of the Cottingley Fairies: Frances Griffiths in Her Own Words. The reply that came back floored me. “Hi Hazel, I published my mother Frances Griffith’s autobiography privately in 2009 . . .” I had unwittingly stumbled across Frances’s daughter, and what’s more, she lived in Belfast, only a two-hour drive from my home. It was an unbelievable coincidence.

  I first met Christine Lynch at her home in September 2015. We spent hours together, talking about Frances and Christine’s memories of her mother. She told me about the book Frances had always wanted to write to tell her side of the story. I told her about my ideas for my novel, which she liked. We kept in touch over the following months as my story began to take shape. We swapped family news and photos. We met again. And again.

  Getting to know Christine, and with exclusive access to Frances’s abandoned writings, I felt a wonderful sense of connection to that young girl in the black-and-white photograph. As I read more about the events that unfolded between 1917 and 1921, what also struck me was how the residents of Cottingley would have been caught up in all the talk of fairies, and this got me wondering: What if someone saw the girls taking the photographs? What if there were others in Cottingley who also believed in fairies? It was these questions, and the generational connection between Christine and Frances, that led to the creation of my fictional characters Ellen, Martha, and Olivia. Through these characters and my imagined connection between them and Frances, I was able to look at the events in Cottingley from another point of view, as well as from the firsthand perspective of Frances and her immediate family.

  Ellen Hogan became my link between this secretive sepia-tinted past and the present. The idea of family secrets and treasured mementos passing down through generations fascinates me, and through Olivia and her Nana Martha, I wanted to explore how the photograph of Frances and the fairies might become that key to unlocking the past, a way for Olivia to find her own truths as she accepts how little time she has to capture her family’s history. My grandma turned ninety-seven as I wrote The Cottingley Secret. I love talking to her about the past and discovering my family history, and the possible secrets hidden within it. We all have them, after all.

  Writing Frances’s story was an amazing experience. She has sat beside me on my desk for nearly two years now, that enigmatic smile watching me, making sure I do her story justice. That such an innocent prank should have become part of national British folklore is testament to the girls themselves. At a time when England mourned for those lost in the horrors of the Great War, Frances and Elsie inadvertently gave people something positive to cling to. In their fairy photographs, they offered hope and something quite magical. It is, perhaps, no great wonder that being rooted in such turbulent times, the photographs and the story associated with them took on such an everlasting life of their own.

  When I visited the Cottingley collection at Brotherton Library at Leeds University, I was amazed by the sheer volume of correspondence about the photographs, and how quickly the story spread following the publication of Conan Doyle’s Strand Magazine articles. When you see the scale and tone of these letters—most of which confirm the photographs as being entirely genuine—it is not difficult to understand why the girls kept quiet. The story took on a life of its own until it must have become impossible to even think about telling the truth. As Elsie said in an interview following her confession, “The joke was to last two hours, and it has lasted 70 years.” Letters from Edward Gardner to both Frances and Elsie in November 1920 must have been alarming to say the least. “I send just this line at once as the Strand is out today and I am already getting numerous enquiries about the fairies. . . . It is just possible you may be found out and an attempt made to interview you despite my endeavour to protect you and yours from discovery. . . .”

  And of course, amid all the fuss surrounding the photographs, Frances knew that she really had seen things at the beck, and her belief in that never wavered. As was reported in the Times in July 1986, beneath the headline “Fairy Lady Dies with Her Secret,” “The girl who photographed fairies 70 years ago in a Yorkshire dell died last week insisting to the end that one of her pictures was genuine. . . . In her half-finished autobiography, she insists that the last photograph taken at Conan Doyle’s behest in 1920 and titled Fairy Bower, showed real fairies.”

  There is still hope among Frances’s family that this fifth image will be analyzed with modern technology to determine once and for all what it shows. As for my suggestion that there is a sixth photograph, this is purely speculation on my part, and yet there is a line in Marjorie Thompson’s book Seeing Fairies that refers to her “remarkable efforts to confirm the rumour of a sixth Cottingley photograph. . . .” It is also suggested that a number of the
marked glass plates given to the girls by Conan Doyle and Gardner were never accounted for. So, who knows?

  The Cottingley Secret is also, in part, a love letter to bookshops. Although entirely fictitious, Something Old was inspired by a lovely little bookshop in Cavan town, in Ireland, called Blackbird Books. I was so sorry to hear that the shop closed shortly before I finished writing this book. All bookshops—but especially independently owned ones—are very special places. We often take them for granted, but we always miss them when they’re gone. If you have a bookshop near you, please please support it. Buy books there for your family and friends and for your children’s friends. Heck, buy books for yourself!

  Like the very best fairy tales, the story of the Cottingley fairy photographs endures and changes a little in each retelling, and with 2017 marking the centenary of the first two photographs, I am sure a new generation will discover these iconic images for the first time. As Frances said in a letter to Gardner in December 1920, “Thank you very much for the £5 which I received yesterday. I am very pleased that the photos have given pleasure to somebody.” I don’t suppose she could ever have imagined that her photographs would still be enchanting us a century after they were first taken.

  Perhaps the final words on the matter are best expressed by a British TV documentary from 1975: “Elsie and Frances have lived happily ever after, and today, sixty years on, the mystery of the fairies they saw here at Cottingley remains delightfully unresolved. Some people believe in it implicitly. Others say it’s nonsense. But the lovely thing about this fairy story is that no one can ever be quite sure. Good night.”

  The Cottingley Fairy Photos

  “Frances and the Fairy Ring” (1917)