“Here we are!” Barney says brightly, clapping his hands as we walk in together at nine o’clock. The room swallows the sound. At the far end of the big table, bending over a pile of folders and notebooks, is Hal Waverley. His red hair gleams as he leans into a shaft of sunlight cutting in through the window. He straightens and looks round at us – seeing first Barney, then me. There’s a flash of surprise, and then his face does something complicated – like a mask slamming down across it in that second when he saw me. Obviously he didn’t know it was me helping him – and maybe he could hide it last night outside his room, but in here…there’s no disguising the fact he hates the idea of crazy, rude Flora helping him with this. Whatever it is.
“Flora, this is Hal Waverley, who’s looking into the history of…” Barney’s voice slides into white noise and I’m back on the pavement in the village, the car stopped in the middle of the road. The look on his face when I asked him to just go. That “Whatever” as he got back into the car. The screech of tyres as he tried to get away as fast as possible. And now here he is, stuck with me.
“…this is Flora Sutherland, who’ll be helping you,” Barney says, holding a hand out to indicate me.
Eyes the colour of faded denim look straight at me…then, almost as quickly, they look away.
“We’ve met,” says Hal Waverley quietly.
“You have?” Barney’s question is loaded, but before I can say anything Hal cuts in.
“I stopped to ask directions to the hotel, and the person who gave them to me was…” There’s the faintest break in his words, then: “Flora,” he finishes.
“Oh. Well. Good.” Barney’s already giving Hal his best management smile. “Flora’s part of the housekeeping team – she’s been with us almost a year now – but she’s a local and she has a little experience with historical research, so she’ll be delighted to help you with anything you need.”
Hal nods. I look at a spot in the middle of the table, waiting for him to mention my standing in the road, or how he’s glad I’m not as rude now as I was then, or whether I’m – you know – okay.
What would Barney do then? Send me back to Mrs Tilney? Pull a face and lower his voice, whispering something about me having had “a difficult time” lately? The sensible bit of me says that Barney would never think that, let alone say it out loud. The less-sensible bit of me, the bit that I have to square with the looks on those faces through the bus windows, is less confident.
There is an awkward silence that stretches on and on and on.
“I’ll…ah, leave you to it then, shall I?” Barney says at last, looking from one to the other of us. “Anything you need, just get reception to give me a buzz.”
Hal nods again, says thank you…and just like that, Barney’s gone and it’s me and Hal Waverley alone in the library.
The silence seeps from the shelves, from between the pages of the books. It slides out and down to the floor, piling up and threatening to bury us. He’s just standing there. And so am I. But what else am I supposed to do? Barney told me I have to help, so here I am.
“A year?” he says, suddenly.
“Sorry?”
“You’ve been here a year. Working.”
“Oh. Yes. Maybe a bit less, but…” I know it’s less than a year – a year ago, at the end of that July, I was still stitching myself back together, figuring out which piece fitted where. I was less person, more puddle. But he doesn’t need to know that.
“When I saw you before I thought it was just, sort of, a summer job? You seem pretty young. To be working, you know?” He blurts it all out in a hurry.
I wonder whether he’s judging me, weighing me up based on what he’s seen so far.
Is this a balanced reaction?
Maybe he’s just trying to make conversation.
I shake my head gently, carefully avoiding his gaze. “It counts towards an apprenticeship, so I can work instead of being in sixth-form college.”
He considers this. “And helping me with this…” He jerks his head towards the piles of paper on the table. “Does that count too?”
“I doubt it,” I mumble, only half-hoping he won’t hear me.
The corner of his mouth twitches and he runs his hands back through his hair, brushing it away from his face. It flops right back into his eyes as he slides a sheet of paper out of the folder closest to him and places it gently on the table in front of me.
“Okay. Right. I guess I need to tell you what I’m – we’re – doing. So. I’m looking for something. A house. A specific house,” he says. “And I think I need someone who knows the area. I asked if there was anyone who could help, and your manager said…” He gestures to the page. It looks old.
“I don’t know how much I can help, but okay.”
I reach for the paper and then stop. Something about it sitting there in the middle of the glossy wood makes it seem vulnerable, fragile. I hesitate, my hand hovering just above it, remembering how carefully he’d handled it. He smiles.
“It’s only a photocopy – it’s all right. You can pick it up.”
The page has been folded and refolded so many times that the paper feels soft. The corners are bashed-up and crumpled, and there are scuff marks and rubbed-out pencil scribbles all around the edges.
Hal watches me examine it. “I’m trying to figure out where somebody came from. A soldier in the First World War. I guess, to start with, I’m trying to work out whether he even existed. I don’t exactly have much to go on, just an old story…and this.”
“What is it?” I peer at the sheet. The copy’s not great – the original can’t have been very clear, because this isn’t much more than a ghost, all muddy shades of grey. It’s a handwritten letter, I realize, but all I can make out is a line in the middle.
I will not conspire in your ruin, nor in deceiving a family of such good standing.
He doesn’t give me a chance to ask more questions. He’s too excited about it, the words tumbling from his lips. “It’s from a woman – Jane, she signs it – to someone. I’ve been trying to pick out the address she sent it to. Look.” He leans a little closer and plants a fingertip next to a particularly smudgy bit near the top. There’s an H, and then a little further along, a D – but the rest of it is too blurry to read. “It’s like that in the original,” he adds.
I squint at it. He’s standing so close. I try to ignore how small the space between our shoulders is and focus on the writing. It’s too blurred to be sure of the word.
“If that letter was sent here, then it means I’m in the right place. Finally.”
“Finally?”
Hal steps away from me with a shrug. “I’ve been trying to find this house for a while now,” he says, turning away. “It’s important.”
“Important?” If I did something like this, Sanjay would give me one of his long, hard looks and ask if I was manic again – and it would be checklist central.
“Personal, then. It’s personal.”
“A First World War soldier?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He closes the folder he’s been flicking through with a slap. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“I guess not.” I shrug and slide the photocopied letter back onto the table. “So how does this fit in?”
“It was with some of the other papers I’ve found while I’ve been researching. It’s the best lead I’ve got.”
“It’s not exactly a good one. You said there was a story. Can that help?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He pulls a chair out for himself and then another one for me, gesturing to it. Nobody’s ever done that before, actually pulling a chair out for me.
We both sit.
It’s weird.
But…nicely weird.
Perhaps he doesn’t think I’m so crazy? Or maybe he’s just really good at hiding it. Better than most people, anyway.
He doesn’t know the half of it, though, does he? He wouldn’t be able to hide it
then. Nobody else can.
He’s lost in his own thoughts for a moment. “There was a soldier,” he says quietly. “He was the only heir to an estate – a big country house, land, the works.”
“Like on Downton Abbey?” It makes me die a little inside to admit I know Downton, but I do. It’s one of Felix’s favourite things ever. He has the box sets. All of them.
This actually gets a smile. “Like on Downton. Except this soldier was killed fighting in the war. When he died, there was no one to take over the estate and the family sold it.”
“But in Downton…”
“There was another bit of the family who could inherit it, yes – I know. Maybe there wasn’t for this estate, or maybe the family couldn’t afford to keep it running or…whatever. This one got sold and I want to find it.” He drums his fingers on the table. “There were a lot of big houses sold just after the war, either because there was no money left or no more owners.”
“And you’ve been to them all?”
“Some.”
“Why?”
“Because.” He shrugs.
“It’s not much to go on.”
Hal looks defensive. “It’s brought me this far.” He blinks at me from under his fringe. “Look, I have to know.”
I stare at the list of bullet points on the Hopwood Home notepad I’ve “borrowed” from the writing desk in the corner of the library. It’s still very short.
As in, it’s two points long, even after a couple of hours of Hal sifting through the first stack of papers, looking up every now and again to frown at the wall or mutter something to himself.
I’m not even sure two points counts as a list.
All this effort, all this trouble and expense, with so little to guide him. I know he said it was personal, but this? It’s more heart than head, more soul than sense.
But something about it tugs at me, deep inside. There’s a puzzle here waiting to be solved. I can feel it – just enough of it anyway.
Glancing up from the notepad, I try to sneak a look at him. He’s staring out of the window. From where I’m sitting, all I can see is the silhouette of his face against the bright light outside. He’s so still, it’s like watching a statue. One with a straight nose and a high forehead and – I suppose, from this angle – some pretty good cheekbones.
Maybe he feels me watching him, or maybe I have really bad timing – either way, he glances around and his eyes meet mine and hold them. But I can’t make out a single thing from his expression. Nothing. I can’t tell if he’s angry or sad or happy or embarrassed. It’s like trying to read stone.
“There has to be more to this.” I pick up the pad and balance it on my lap, pushing my chair back from the table. “Tell me the whole story. All of it.”
“I already told you. Soldier. War. Died.”
“That isn’t all of it, though, is it?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, narrowing his eyes. “What?”
“Look.” I tap my pencil against my pad. “I don’t know you and this is really none of my business. But you’re saying you’ve been all over the place looking for one house that used to belong to one soldier’s family – based on this?” I point at the letter. “I think there’s more, and if you don’t tell me everything, I can’t help you.”
He takes a deep breath and nods. “That story. It’s something my grandfather used to tell me when I was growing up – a story his grandfather used to tell him, about a soldier he knew in the war. There was a big country house. Wealthy family, servants…you know, the works. And the heir to the house, this solider, had fallen in love with one of the housemaids.”
However much I’ve tried to avoid it, I have apparently still seen enough Downton to know how that goes. “I bet that went down well with the family.”
He shakes his head. “They kept it secret. They were going to elope. Run off together, you know?”
“You think that’s what the letter’s about! Ruin and deception.”
He nods. “Exactly. But they never got the chance. The war started, he went off to fight and he never came back.”
A shiver runs through me, starting at the top of my head and working its way all the way down to my feet. I was right: it is a puzzle. One with forbidden love and tragedy and…stuff. But still a puzzle. And puzzles I can do.
Before…after…when I was recovering, I did a lot of jigsaws. It wasn’t exactly a thing I wanted to do, but Sanjay said it might be “a worthwhile exercise”, so I did one – and weirdly, I was kind of good at it. There was something about laying out the pieces and slowly filling the empty spaces with picture, connecting one thing to another – it made sense when nothing else did. And it filled hours when I literally couldn’t do anything else, because my mind was too busy or too tired or sometimes both at once (I still don’t know how that’s even possible, but welcome to my brain). But as I came back into focus, since I’ve been better – or stable, at least – I’ve not even thought about puzzles…until now.
I blow a long breath out between my teeth. “It’s not the most cheerful bedtime story for a kid, is it?”
Hal doesn’t miss a beat. “It wasn’t a bedtime story. It was when I used to hang out in his office.”
Who hangs out in their grandfather’s office? Not that I get the chance to ask, because he’s already talking again, his eyes shining and the story rushing out of him. “Like I said, it was something his grandfather told him, but before that I don’t know where it came from. The way he used to tell it, though, it meant something to him. He really wanted it to be true.”
“And you think it is?”
Hal pulls a face. “Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
The idea there might be a story like that at Hopwood – at the place where I live – is intriguing. Exciting, even. But what do I know about this stuff? How can a school project qualify me to be any use at all? “You need a historian, somebody who knows about houses, like from the National Trust, or one of those BBC programmes. Not me. I’ve barely even got two GCSEs – not exactly research-assistant material.”
“You think I didn’t try? There are a lot of houses that fit the description. They all told me to come back when I had more details, more to work with. They treated me like a kid playing a game. Wasting their time.”
“Then ask your grandfather if he can remember anything else—”
“I can’t.” It’s sharp and louder than I was expecting. It’s a door being slammed.
In my experience, the faster and harder somebody shuts a door, the more interesting everything behind it is. Or messy. It can go either way.
“But…” I try.
He cuts me off. “He won’t be able to help, okay?” Then he sighs, and adds, “And anyway, you live here. If this really is the place, maybe you’ll know things other people – historians, researchers from outside – don’t.”
It feels like he hasn’t finished, so I wait. I wait for what feels a long, long time – and then, after an age, his eyes find mine, and this time I can actually see into them.
“Please,” he says.
There’s more to this than he’s telling me. I get it. I’m a stranger – and if anyone can understand holding back from a stranger, it’s me.
But that doesn’t matter: the letter and the story feel like opposite corners of a jigsaw puzzle and I want to see what’s in the middle.
Besides, the way he’s acting, it doesn’t seem like he thinks I’m so bad after all.
And perhaps escaping into somebody else’s past, someone else’s head for a while is just what I need.
“So? How was it? What’s he like? What did you do?” Mira jogs up the steps from the staff entrance to the wall where I’m sitting waiting for her.
“Do you want me to answer those all together, or maybe one at a time?”
“Either. Whatever.”
We turn onto the gravel path that runs along the side of the hotel towards the gardens, the deer park and home. Through the library windows as we pas
s them, I can see Hal – his head still bent over his stacks of research and notes, his folders full of dead ends and detours. When my shift ended, I said goodbye, that I’d see him in the morning…but he barely even noticed.
She watches me looking back at him and nudges me.
“And?” Her elbow is surprisingly sharp.
“It’s fine.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“He’s researching the hotel, trying to see if it’s a house he’s been looking for. It doesn’t make much sense. But I think he’s been doing it for a while – at least, it sounds like he has.” I glance back at the last library window, but all I can see is the reflection of the gardens. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Rich people,” Mira snorts, as though that explains everything. “I did some research of my own, though, while you’ve been busy.”
“Is this whatever you were studying the other day? What’s that about?”
“Oh.” She rubs at one of her ears. “No. I meant, I was finding out about your Mr Waverley.”
“You know something?”
“Of course.” She gives me a nonchalant smile and keeps on walking, feet crunching on the gravel. “Housekeeping knows everything, no?”
“Go on, then. Prove it.”
“Nineteen. And an Aquarius. He’s mysterious, but also detached.”
“Yeah, he’s detached all right. And how do you know that?”
“That he’s deta—?”
“No, stupid,” I interrupt her, smacking her gently on the arm. “His birthday.”
“Oh. The usual. I asked Kate on reception to check the scan of his passport. I told her I needed it for age verification for the room.”
“That’s genius.”
She beams at me.
“Two years older than me – he’s the same age as you!”
She nods and purses her lips, pressing a hand dramatically to her chest. “But not a majestic Taurus.”
“No. Obviously. And not as broke as you, either. What else did you get?”
The Pieces of Ourselves Page 4