How I wish I could get this letter to you. None of the others before this matter, only this. I wish that somehow I can get word to you. I would ask Mr & Mrs X to deliver this to you, or word alone, but I cannot. They are doing so much for me, risking their lives every day just by my being here. And now, little Otto is here too and we are praying that he will continue to be as quiet as he has been thus far. I sleep with him at my breast so he never wants for food or comfort. I swaddle him in blankets, his only clothes so far, but I shall sew him more.
Mrs X brings me extra bread and soup, to keep my milk plentiful, and she even slips me an extra piece of meat now and then. I know she’s taking it off her own plate and I’m so grateful but cannot say because she would deny it. Even her nephew sneaks down here now and then to bring us little extras, for which I am deeply grateful. He stays to talk sometimes, too, and provides some welcome distraction, though, given that you are of similar ages, I cannot help but wish he was you.
What do you do every day, in your hiding place? Are you as well cared for as I? I do dearly hope so. How much longer will we have to wait? Will we live? We must. We must survive to raise our son and love him and show him a world that is bright and beautiful, not this wild, terrible world we hide from now. I will write to you every day, telling you news of your son. I shall pray for us all; I shall pray that this madness will soon be over.
Ever Yours,
Marthe & Otto Josef Garritt van Dijk
Chapter Seventeen
At first, Edward is happy. He has everything he’s been longing for. He has his wife back. They sit up late at night and talk. She continues teaching him how to cook – with mixed results. His daughter’s giggles fill the house again. They watch films together in the evening, Edward and Tilly sharing a bowl of overly buttered, slightly burnt popcorn. He and Greer can’t make love, of course, but Edward has so much and feels so blessed that he doesn’t mind forgoing that particular pleasure. He’s so happy, in fact, that he begins applying for architecture jobs again.
‘I was thinking, since it seems you’re here to stay, that we could invite my little sister over for dinner,’ he suggests to Greer one night. ‘What do you think?’
Greer gives him a wry smile. ‘So long as it’s your younger sister and not your older one.’
Edward, who always attempts to be diplomatic about his family, winces slightly. ‘Well, yes, I wasn’t thinking of inviting Charlotte. I don’t think she’d, um, respond very well to our particular situation.’
Greer laughs. ‘You can say that again. Plus, she’s a total bitch.’
‘Sweetheart,’ Edward admonishes. ‘That’s a bit, well, that’s to say, I don’t think …’
Greer raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh, just admit it. She’s absolutely awful.’
Edward remains tight-lipped.
‘Come on,’ Greer teases. ‘She hated me too, you can’t say she didn’t.’
Edward allows himself the flicker of a smile. ‘Well, okay, but Charlotte hates everyone, so you can’t take that personally. Anyway, Alba will be thrilled to see you. Zoë too.’
‘You don’t think they’ll be a little shocked?’
Edward shrugs. ‘Of course, at first. But they’ll get used to it and then they’ll be as thrilled as I am.’
Greer smiles again. ‘Um, maybe not quite as thrilled as you are.’
‘Well, okay,’ Edward admits, ‘maybe not quite. But then I doubt anyone is quite as thrilled as I am right now.’
Greer’s smile fades, though she tries to keep it in place. She’d like to disagree, to argue that she’s just as happy as he but, unfortunately, as the days pass without the musician that’s becoming less and less true.
‘We have news,’ Alba announces, after everyone has finally put down their knives and forks.
‘So do we,’ Edward says, beaming, delighted both by the revelation he’s about to share and the fact that his dinner – nut roast – actually went rather well, for once. He’s so excited, in fact, that he forgets to let his sister go first. He takes his glass of white wine, half filled, and holds it aloft. Greer had argued that they introduce the delicate subject of her return in a subtler way at a subtler occasion, but Edward insisted that such glorious news demanded proper ceremony.
Now he stands, wipes his free hand on his jeans and glances up at the ceiling. The crack he’d fixed seems to be snaking out from underneath the new plaster, stretching its fingers out to grasp what it can. He’ll have to fix it again.
‘Oh, come on, Dad,’ Tilly groans. ‘I’ve got things to do – homework and stuff.’
Edward darts his daughter a suspicious look. Alba and Zoë glance at each other. ‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘I was just waiting for the right moment. I wanted to introduce the topic with the deserving amount of solemnity. I thought—’
‘Dad!’
‘Okay, okay.’ Edward waves his daughter down, then regards his sister with an enormous grin. ‘Greer has come back.’
Tilly slouches back in her chair, arms folded. Alba and Zoë look confused.
‘I don’t understand,’ Alba says slowly, glancing around the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’
In reply, Edward walks over to the door, opens it and sticks his head into the hallway. ‘Darling, I just told them,’ he calls. ‘Where are you? They’re starting to think I’m insane.’
At that, Greer materialises beside the kitchen table. Alba gawps and Zoë emits a small shriek. Edward gives a start.
‘No need to shock them like that,’ he protests. ‘It’s enough of a shock already.’
‘You can say that again,’ Zoë mumbles, once she’s found her voice.
Alba laughs. ‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, Ed? You know I met Aunt Stella the same way.’ Then she jumps up from her chair and is, in the next moment, standing at Greer’s side. ‘I wish I could hug you.’
Her transparent sister-in-law smiles. ‘Me too.’
Zoë sighs. ‘Well, this makes our news seem a little passé.’
Tilly sits up. ‘What’s your news, Aunt Zo?’ She throws a look at her father. ‘I want to know, even if no one else cares.’
‘Till!’ Greer reprimands. ‘Of course we want to know the news too.’
‘Yes, of course we do, Till,’ Edward says, though admittedly he’d totally forgotten the fact of his sister’s news. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Alba and Zoë hold hands.
‘You’re pregnant!’ Tilly exclaims, pointing at Zoë.
Zoë looks shocked. ‘How did you—?’
Edward, nearly dropping his wine glass, looks startled. ‘You are?’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Greer exclaims. ‘Congratulations!’
Despite his shock, Edward can still hear the edge of disquiet in his wife’s voice just as, though he pretends even to himself that he doesn’t, he notices that her own edges are becoming, very gradually, almost imperceptibly, less defined as the days pass.
‘Woo-hoo!’ Tilly cries, hugging a still-bemused Zoë before hopping over to her Aunt Alba and giving her a huge hug too. ‘A baby! A baby! You’re going to have a baby!’ She turns back to Zoë. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
Zoë smiles. ‘We don’t know yet. We’ll find out in a few months.’
‘Ooooh, I really hope it’s a girl,’ Tilly coos. ‘Then I can dress her up in pretty dresses and play with her and, and …’ She sighs.
Edward frowns. ‘I never knew you liked babies so much, Till.’
Tilly shrugs. ‘I guess I wanted a sister, but, you know … Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more, cos now I’m sort of going to have one anyway – a cousin’s the next best thing, isn’t it? I can babysit all the time, right?’ She appeals to Alba and Zoë. ‘And you’ll bring her round all the time, won’t you?’
‘Will you still be so enthusiastic if it’s a boy?’ Alba asks with a smile.
‘Yeah, of course!’ Tilly says. ‘Anyway, when he’s a baby I can still dress him up in pretty stuff, can’t I? He won’t know, so it doesn’t matter
, does it?’
Alba glances at Zoë, who shrugs happily. Alba nods at Edward and addresses Tilly. ‘Well, funnily enough, I believe your dad used to dress up in your Aunt Charlotte’s school uniform when he was a kid and, sometimes, even in Mum’s ballgowns though they were, of course, a little big for him at the time.’
‘Al!’ Edward exclaims. ‘I most certainly did not.’
‘Oh, don’t be embarrassed,’ Alba says. ‘Why shouldn’t boys get to dress up in girls’ clothes when girls get to dress in boys’ clothes and no one thinks anything of it? It’s all social convention, anyway. Two hundred years ago, the sight of a woman in trousers would have been outrageous. Hopefully, before too long, a man could wear a dress without being judged for it—’
‘I do not want to wear dresses,’ Edward protests, as Tilly and Greer both giggle. ‘I don’t care about social convention, I …’
Alba shrugs. ‘I’m just saying.’
Tilly smiles. ‘So long as we’re all okay with dressing up the baby, it’s fine with me.’
‘Do … Did you really want a sister so much, Till?’ Edward turns to his daughter and lowers his voice. ‘Are you sad that you didn’t have one?’
Tilly glances at Greer, who gives her a reassuring smile.
‘Well, yeah, I guess so,’ Tilly admits. ‘I mean, didn’t you want another kid? If Gr—if you could have had one.’
‘No,’ Edward says, too quickly. ‘You’re quite enough of a handful, thank you. God knows I couldn’t cope with another one.’ But, as he speaks he fixes his gaze on his wine glass instead of his wife.
Ava stands at the bottom of the long stone staircase, feeling as if she’s standing at the bottom of Everest, staring up at a three-thousand-mile climb. She takes a deep breath, her fourth in as many seconds. She’s rapidly starting to hyperventilate. Get a grip, she snaps silently at herself. Get a bloody grip.
With one more deep breath, Ava sets her foot on the first step. It’s only a dance class, for goodness’ sake. A few steps of salsa. How hard can it be? It doesn’t matter that she’s never danced before in her life. The flyer had insisted that this was a class for ‘complete beginners’. Thank God. She desperately hopes that everyone else will be as utterly inept as she. Thus somewhat lessening the potential for total, earth-shattering humiliation. But only somewhat. Ava takes another step. Halfway up the stairs she stops to collect and congratulate herself.
‘Hey, lassie, are you comin’ or going?’
Ava glances behind her, in the direction of the voice, but the owner of said voice is already bounding past her on the stairs so she’s forced to look up at him.
‘I … I …’
The man stops at the top and looks down at her with a grin. ‘Well, if you’re comin’, then you’d better get a wee move on, or we’ll be starting without ye.’ And, with that, he bounds off, disappearing through the double doors in a flurry of Scottish flair.
Ava doesn’t move. She presses her left hand against the wall to steady herself. The encounter doesn’t inspire her to keep climbing the mountain. She should probably go home. Taking a tentative step out of your comfort zone is one thing, salsa dancing out of it is quite another. What is she thinking?
And yet. Ava wants to change her life. She wants to feel again the way she felt with Finn. She wants to experience liberation and fun and delight. And the only way she can touch upon these things is to do something different, something she’s never done before. Salsa certainly falls into that category. So she keeps walking, until she reaches the door. Then she pushes it open and walks inside.
A small circle of men and women stand in the centre of a large room. The floor is scratched wood and the walls faded white. A line of plastic chairs – most of them draped in coats, bags and other outdoor paraphernalia – are pushed up against one wall. Ava notices the Scottish man standing in the corner of the room, bending over a battered black stereo, fiddling with its buttons and muttering. A few heavily accented curse words float across the floor.
‘Are you staying for one class or two?’
Ava realises she’s standing in front of a table and a bespectacled, skinny young man is looking up at her with a serious expression.
‘Oh, right, sorry,’ she says, fumbling in her bag for her purse. ‘Just one, please.’ There’s no need to push her luck. It’ll be a miracle if she survives one class, let alone two.
‘Are you a member?’
Ava shakes her head. ‘No, no, thank you.’
‘Okay. That’s six pounds, then.’
Ava nods and pays him. Then she slowly takes off her coat and places it, along with her bag, upon the only empty chair. Then she shuffles across the floor to join the circle.
‘Okay!’ Ross shouts, as he abandons the stereo and strides across the floor. ‘Okay, you wee bunch of swing beginners, we gonna have fun, so let’s get on with it!’
Ava stiffens. Swing? She dips her head in the direction of a timid man standing to her left.
‘Isn’t this a salsa class?’ she asks, under her breath.
Without looking at her, he shakes his head.
‘What’s that, lassie?’ Ross bellows, as he stops in the middle of the circle. ‘If ye’ve got a question, you’ll have to speak up. Be bold! Ye canna dance swing if ye’re gonna be too scared to speak.’
Despite herself, Ava smiles. There’s something about this strange, explosive man that makes him hard to dislike, much as she might want to.
‘I think I’m in the wrong class,’ she says.
‘Nonsense!’ Ross declares. ‘Come here.’
For three seconds Ava is absolutely horrified. Then, Ross snatches her up in his arms and starts flinging her about the dance floor. At least, that’s how Ava feels, for the first few moments. And then, somehow she feels as if she’s gliding on ice, as if she’s floating on air, as if she’s the most elegant, graceful creature in the entire world. She is, all of a sudden, someone else entirely; someone she’s always dreamt of being. Ava feels his large fingers lightly cupping hers, his other hand pressed lightly against her back and she never, ever wants him to let go.
An hour later, after the beginner’s class has ended and the advanced class has begun, Ava leaves the room with the scratched wooden floors and the faded white walls with greater reluctance than she imagined possible. She has danced. Danced! For the first time in her life Ava has danced and, for the most part, she loved every single second. She had a few hiccups, of course. And dancing with the other beginners hadn’t been anywhere near as glorious as when the teacher had scooped her up and twirled her around the floor. But glorious moments were had, echoes of grace and elegance and joy. Moments that made Ava smile deep into her soul.
As she pushes the door open again, Ava glances back at the new group of students standing in a bigger circle. ‘Zoot Suit Riot’ fills the room and the students begin to move, each grabbing a partner and starting to dance. They dip and jump and leap together and Ava stops to watch, entirely lost in the astonishing beauty of it all.
Ross McKinney has a gift, a gift with women, and for them. He was six years old when he first found it, though he had no idea at the time what he was doing. He kissed the cheek of Frieda Fyfe (the shortest, skinniest girl in school, who wore broken glasses fixed with Sellotape and clothes made from curtains) and turned her into the most popular girl in school. By the time he reached secondary school, and after a few more kisses, Ross started to realise what it was he could do. And so he made a mission of it. He sought out every girl who was shy, scared, sad or riddled with self-doubt. And, one by one, he inspired them. He helped them find their courage, he helped them realise who they really were, and just how amazing they were capable of being.
Ross McKinney’s gift is in revealing to women their own brilliance, being a mirror to their potential, making them see what they’re really and truly capable of, if only they decide to do it. When women see themselves through Ross’s eyes, when they see themselves the way he sees them, then all the world opens up an
d they can do anything they set their minds and hearts to doing. So this is what Ross has dedicated his life to doing, this is what he does better than anyone else.
Ross loves what he does. And he falls in love – at least a little bit – with every woman who finds him. And yet, though they’ve only shared a single dance, Ava already intrigues him more than most he’s met. She seems so timid, withheld and full of fear. But, underneath all that, he senses something special: fire, passion and true joie de vivre. And, if he can help her release it all, if he can help her unleash the great glory he sees residing within, well then she’ll be simply magnificent.
Chapter Eighteen
My Otto,
One day, when we are together again, I will read all these letters to you. I will wait, of course, a few days, then you will lay next to me and I shall read you all the words I wrote while we were apart. And, in the reading, the past will be brought into the present and merge with it, so that we will never have been apart at all and we will always be together again. Is that madness? If so, I don’t really care.
I want to read you what I’ve written for you, because I’ve always believed that a letter isn’t complete until it’s read, just like a book. If you talk to someone and they don’t listen, if your words fall into the air unheard, you feel invisible, unimportant, alone. And it is much worse than simply being alone. To feel alone while with another person is, I think, the loneliest we’ll ever feel. I’m so fortunate to have never felt that with you.
But, I digress. I meant to talk about letters. I think that it’s even more important for letters to be read than books, because letters are written to a specific someone, they are a conversation and, if they go unread, it’s as if the person who wrote them went unheard. And I want you to hear me. I want to speak with you again, as much as I want to touch you and hold you and never, ever let go again.
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 12