The Pieces of Ourselves

by Maggie Harcourt

  “It is. It becomes an ‘issue’. I become an ‘issue’. And I’m not an issue. Issues don’t have dreams or things they’re scared of. Or dirty laundry on their floor or, you know, a life.”

  He squeezes my hand, just once, and lets go, slipping out from under the blanket and walking over to the window; leaning on the sill, his back to me, he stares out at the park, the gardens, all the way to the house.

  “It was Albie’s letters, wasn’t it? I knew they bothered you. I should have asked or said something.”

  “Why? You didn’t know. It was my head, not yours.”

  “But that’s what it was, right? It was the stuff about shell shock?”

  “A bit. But it’s more than that. It’s bigger.”

  Bigger. Darker. Scarier.

  More complicated.

  But for once, it’s not just black-and-white – it’s a hundred different kinds of grey.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is thicker than usual, and he has to stop and clear his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says again, “that you have to deal with all that.” He turns around to face the room, face me, and his cheeks are flushed. “And I’m sorry that you have to live with it…” The red in his cheeks deepens by three shades. “But if you…I mean, I…aaagggh.” He groans, and runs his hands back through his hair. “You don’t have to deal with it by yourself, is what I’m saying.”

  But before I can say anything, his expression shifts. Something in his face changes, first to confusion…then to complete amazement as he stares at a spot on the sloping ceiling.

  “Flora.”

  “What?”

  “Flora, come here.”

  “What?”

  “Come here!” He waves an arm at me, and I untangle myself from the folds of blanket.

  “What? Is there a spider? Because I hate to break it to you, but I always get Mira to—”

  He turns me round, then lifts his arm up and around me, pointing to a spot where two beams meet just above our heads. The wood is old and cracked, and covered in scratches and dents and holes made by everyone else who’s ever lived here.

  “I don’t get it…”

  But suddenly I do – and the second I see it, I wonder how the hell I ever missed it, because it’s right there.

  They are right there.

  The scratches on the beam in my ceiling rearrange themselves, as if by magic, into two pairs of letters. Initials.

  I spin back around to face Hal so quickly that our faces almost collide.

  IC and AH.

  Iris and Albie.

  The letters might as well be written in fire, they blaze out at us so brightly. How have I never seen them before?

  They were here. Both of them.

  And they have been all along.

  We sit in the dappled shade of the apple tree in the cottage garden, listening to the breeze in the leaves above us. Charlie and Felix have both disappeared, even though I know neither of them are working today. Leaning against the tree, Hal has his head tipped back against the bark, his eyes closed. Stretched out on the grass beside him, I twist my face towards him. “What do we do now?”

  He doesn’t answer. At first, I don’t think he’s heard me, but then he opens his eyes and they search for mine. “I don’t know.”

  “At least now you have the whole story to take back to your grandfather.” I sit up, brushing bits of grass and leaf out of my hair. Hal smiles and plucks a stray daisy out of it, holding it for me to take.

  “It’s going to blow his mind,” he says. “I can’t believe we found him,” he adds quietly.

  “You found him. I just came along for the ride.”

  He has that look again – the complicated one that I recognize now. The one that’s all about how much he loves his grandfather, and how afraid he is.

  Love and fear. Funny how often those two seem to go together – like light and dark, sunshine and shadows.

  “You’re worried that you’re going to lose him, aren’t you? Pa.” I shuffle around so I’m sitting cross-legged, facing him. “He’ll still be there – he’ll always be there. Nobody ever really goes and nobody’s ever completely lost – look at Albie. He’s not been around in over a hundred years, but he’s here now. Because of you.”

  “Because of Pa.” He slips his hand out of mine and rubs the back of it across his eyes. “I really wanted to tell him that Albie had a family. It was the thing Pa always said – he wished he’d asked more questions about that soldier, because then he could have found his family and told them that he was remembered. That he left a mark on the world.”

  I think of the initials carved into my ceiling, still there after all these years; as much of a memorial as the initials cut into the post in the glasshouse. “He did.”

  “But there wasn’t anything else about Iris. What do you think happened to her?”

  “I don’t know – maybe there’s something else about her somewhere? I guess she wouldn’t have stayed, even if the house wasn’t sold. Not after that. I mean…would you?”

  “What, stay? Knowing he wasn’t coming back? Probably not.” Hal stares up into the tree as though the answer’s hidden up in the leaves. “Maybe she married somebody else.”

  “I hope so.” I peer up into the tree with him. Blue patches flicker through the shifting green. “It’d be kind of sad if she didn’t. If she spent her whole life just waiting for Albie, even though she knew he was never coming back.”

  Overhead, a buzzard soars and the swifts dance, just like they always have.

  “You’re leaving tomorrow.” My voice wobbles, but I don’t think he hears.

  “I have to. My father was pretty clear on that one.”

  “I wish you could stay.”

  “I do too.” He sighs. “But this is what he does. He likes to show everyone how much power he’s got over them. When I was a kid, he’d remind me that I didn’t actually own anything. That everything that was ‘mine’ was actually his. The clothes I was wearing, my room, my stuff. None of it really belonged to me. I used to be afraid that one day he’d turn around and take it all away because I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or enough like him. It wasn’t about the stuff, you know? It was more that in his eyes – in the world I grew up in – things were power. They are power. I’d look around my room, or the house, or even in the mirror, and I’d realize that I had nothing – it was all his and he was in control of it all. Including me.”

  He’s showing me inside his heart, the place where he carries all the things he’s afraid of. The place where he thinks he’ll never be smart enough, brave enough, good enough.

  Where he thinks he’ll never be enough.

  He won’t meet my gaze, won’t look me in the eye, as though he’s ashamed. As though saying this somehow makes him weak instead of strong; as though I’ll see him differently now.

  That, I do know something about.

  I shuffle closer, leaning my forehead against his and looking straight at him. “If your father can’t see who you are, he’s the one missing out. I see. And it doesn’t matter what he thinks. It doesn’t matter what he wants you to be – you’re you, and that’s enough. You’re enough. But if you don’t believe that, nobody else is going to – so start, okay?”

  He blinks, and the world flickers.

  All I can hear is his breathing, soft and low and close to me; close enough to feel his breath warm on my lips.

  “Besides, there’s already one of your dad in the world, and that’s plenty. Personally, I’d like there to be more Hal in the world.”

  Inside me, something aches. Because this can’t last. Because he’s leaving and, whether I like it or not, I think I need to find my own balance; my own place.

  I know I ran away to Hopwood. I can’t run away to Hal, however much I want to. And he can’t run away here.

  I have to go.

  Somewhere in my head and my heart, I have to go becomes I have to let go and I understand what I have to do next.

  No safe
ty net. Nothing to catch me if I fall.

  Maybe I’ll come crashing down to earth, maybe I won’t. But I don’t have only one chance. I have a whole lifetime.

  “Was it worth it?” I ask him, and I’m afraid of every answer he could give.

  “Absolutely,” he says. Suddenly his eyes are ablaze, and they lock onto mine and hold them, and his hands are in my hair and his lips are on mine…And I close my eyes, because just for now, here, this – he – one last time, is enough.

  His bags are packed, and the sky is still streaked with flashes of early-dawn purple as we stand on the gravel in front of the Hopwood, waiting for the taxi that will come and take him away.

  Away from me.

  Neither of us has said it, but neither of us needs to. This is still a goodbye. It can’t be anything else, however I look at it. I don’t know where I’m going next – all I know is that it’s not here. I came to Hopwood because I needed to feel safe. And now…?

  I wrap my arms around myself, trying to shake off the early morning chill. There’s a dampness in the air that feels like autumn is trying to remind us it’s only just around the corner. Far down the sweep of the sloping drive in the distance, there’s the sound of a car. Feeling me shiver, Hal slips an arm around me and pulls me closer, one hand rubbing my back and his face nudging against mine.

  “You okay?”

  “I’ll be fine in a minute.”

  If I pull him close enough, will it slow the car at the gates?

  No. Like Sanjay told me once, everything is temporary.

  Even this.

  Somewhere near – far too near – there’s the hoot of a car horn.

  “It’s here,” he says, pulling me even closer. “I have to go.”

  I have to go.

  The taxi makes the last turn of the drive, breaking free of the shadows and out onto the sweep of the gravel. Its tyres crunch on the stones, chewing up the last few moments before I have to let Hal go.

  He turns to face me, his hands cupping my cheeks in his palms and drawing me to him. His kiss is soft – like he’s already pulling away and there’s a veil slipping between us. We already said goodbye, already said everything, because we both knew this is how it would feel. And even though I want to hold him here, keep his lips on mine, I let him go.

  He has to go.

  I have to go.

  With one smooth motion, he slides something into my hand and steps away from me – his eyes still on mine – and then he turns and opens the car door, dropping onto the seat along with his bags. The door closes and all I can see in the tinted glass of the window is my own reflection, standing in front of the Hopwood, my hand raised in goodbye.

  I look down at the piece of paper pressed into my palm; unfold it once, twice, and open it out…and there it is.

  My map.

  The map I drew, standing by the road, the very first time we met.

  He kept it.

  He kept it.

  A hair ribbon, a letter, a map.

  A way out of the maze.

  I watch the car creep forward; watch it turn, watch the rear lights disappear into the shadows of the drive until it’s gone. Until he’s gone. And when he is, I watch the daylight move across the lawn, watch the lines of the terrace and the gardens form in sharp shadows. I watch until the sun finally edges around the trees and bathes the whole of the front of the hotel in warm golden light – and I stand there, letting it wash over me, soaking in it, until someone whistles from behind me and calls my name.

  When I turn around, Philippe is standing by the corner of the building, right by the staff entrance, wearing his checked chef’s trousers and white jacket with the neck hanging open.

  “You want some breakfast? I need a guinea pig for this brioche I’ve been working on!”

  He doesn’t. Philippe can make brioche with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back because that’s his job – but he’s trying to make sure that even when I move out of the sunlight, it stays with me.

  “Sure,” I say. And with one last look at the emptiness of the drive, I head for the staff entrance, shutting the ache that ripples out from my heart behind a door and turning the last key I have left.

  With Hal gone, the world shifts back to how it was – or at least almost how it was. Because even though I’m back on the cleaning shifts with Mira, something is different.

  Me.

  I’m different.

  Or perhaps I’m the same; the same as I was before. Before The Incident. Before…everything.

  After that morning, when he steered me down the steps and into the noise and life of the kitchens, Philippe and I started to talk a lot more. I mean, that wasn’t exactly hard, given how much we didn’t talk before, but any time I’m on my break and he’s around, we actually sit together. He tells me about his family, about growing up in the corner of Brittany in France where he’s from, and about how he really wants to ask Libby from the kitchens out but is convinced she’ll say no. Other times, he’s mostly asking me to test whatever new recipe he’s come up with. I don’t know why we weren’t friends sooner – especially when one day, he tells me how he was diagnosed as bipolar II four years ago.

  Mira gets her place on the fashion course, and suddenly she’s happier than I’ve ever seen her. The funny thing is, I’m actually glad – even though it means she’s one step closer to leaving. Because even though it took some time, I understand now – that’s where she’s supposed to be, and like Charlie said, there’s leaving and there’s leaving, and she’s only leaving. She’ll still be there, because she’s Mira. And she’s my friend.

  As we’re getting our stuff from our lockers one afternoon, she whacks my arm with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Ouch! What was that for?” I rub my elbow.

  “Page fifteen. In the adverts.”

  I skim the page – it’s mostly ads for part-time jobs, things like leafleting, casual work…except for the one at the very bottom.

  “Isn’t that the dress shop?”

  “It’s a sign.”

  “It’s not a sign. It’s an advert.”

  “For a job. Yes. You could do that.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You could – and when you’re not working, you could go back to studying.”

  My mouth drops open. I actually feel it, like I’m in a cartoon.

  Mira rolls her eyes. “We all saw you while he was here.” Like always, she’s careful not to call him by name. I’m grateful, because however much I want to be okay without him here, however much I want to be doing this for me, there hasn’t been a single day since he left that I haven’t thought about him. Every time I knock on the door of room fifteen, part of me hopes he’ll answer. I’ve picked up my phone so many times, almost calling him or messaging him…and it’s only at the last second, as I’ve gone to type his name into the contact box, that I’ve stopped myself.

  But then he hasn’t called me either. Of course he hasn’t.

  It’s better that way, right?

  Yes. And no. I don’t know.

  “And what am I supposed to study, wise one?” I ask her, half-laughing as we push through the door into the service corridor.

  “History. Obviously.” She slides her sunglasses down over her eyes, stepping out of the staff door and onto the drive into the late September sun.

  “Oh, obviously.”

  I try to brush it off, but the thought itches inside my brain the whole walk home, like something trying to put down roots. I could, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I don’t know anything about it…or like I don’t have something I want to find.

  Someone.

  Because ever since Hal left, I’ve been looking for Iris. I’ve combed through every single case in the attics – even the ones we checked already – looking for the tiniest clue. I started to look for her online…but even trying to register on some of the sites that might help nearly gave me a panic attack. When I emailed the British Library, I could practically hear them laughi
ng at me over the internet. I even went back to Fallowmill. Nothing. So I stood in the grotto while Charlie and Felix walked around the gardens, and I tried to hear her voice, just like I’d heard Albie’s in his letters…Still nothing.

  I kick the front door of the cottage shut behind me and drop my bag in the corner of the front room. Flattening the newspaper on the makeshift table made of Felix’s stacked catalogues, I draw a big red ring around the advert for the vintage shop. I mean, I did like it there. And maybe Mira’s right – maybe it is a sign after all.

  “Flora?” Charlie’s voice sounds wrong. Too far away.

  “Yeah – where are you?” I shout back.

  “Up in the attic. Hang on…” There’s some distant thumping far above my head, and then the clatter of feet on a ladder before he appears at the top of the stairs, brushing dust from his hair.

  “Why the hell are you up in the attic?”

  Even the word “attic” makes something under my skin shimmer. It makes me think of him.

  “I need to clear some kit out of the sheds. Thought I might stick it up here for the winter.” He rubs at his hair again, and a little grey cloud floats down the stairs. “How was your shift?”

  “Yeah, fine. I—” And I stop. Because there’s something in the corner of the room that shouldn’t be there. Something I haven’t seen before. A small suitcase, thick with dust. “What’s that?”

  He follows my gaze. “I found it up there. Thought you might be interested.”

  “You found it in our attic?”

  “Mmm.” He clomps downstairs, shedding cobwebs and dust with every step.

  He picks the suitcase up and carries it into the kitchen, setting it down on the table with a dusty thump. It sits there, its clasp rusted and its leather cracked.

  My stomach turns over on itself.

  Faint against the dirt-aged leather, there are two initials embossed on the front of the case.

  AH

  Albert Holmwood. Can it be? Is that too much of a coincidence? Or is it a sign – a sign that he, that the house, is still calling?

  “It was in our attic?”