by Vicky Adin
“Sorry, darling. I forgot about it. It’s in a drawer somewhere. I don’t use it these days.”
“Do you realise what time it is? Where have you been?” Sarah stepped back to study her mother.
“Yes, I know what time it is. I’m sorry if I worried you. I’ve been out.”
“Out! Out, where? Mum, you don’t go out.”
“Well, I will be from now on.” Megan readied herself for her big announcement. “I plan to travel.”
The look on Sarah’s face was priceless. “Pardon?”
Megan laughed, almost surprised she remembered how. “You offered to help me organise a trip or something for my birthday. Remember? I’m going to take you up on it.”
Megan looked at her watch. “I haven’t eaten for hours and I’m starved. There’s still enough time. Do you want to join me? I think I’ll go down to that little Italian place.”
“Mum, what’s got into you? This is so not like you. You’re making me nervous.”
“Grab a bottle of red wine and come with me. I’ll tell you all about it.”
Megan’s eyes sparkled and an enormous grin spread across her face. Feeling young and silly, she would have kicked her heels together had she been able.
Sarah reached for the phone. “Let me call Nick and tell him I’ll be late. There is no way I’m missing this.”
Chapter 5
“Now tell me,” urged Megan after they had settled at the table, placed their order and poured the wine. “What’s so important you needed to ring me several times and come knocking at my door?”
“I was worried about you. You seemed so down yesterday and, I might add, still not keen to go out.” Sarah stared pointedly at her mother. “I thought I’d see if you were okay. When I couldn’t get hold of you, I started to wonder why you weren’t answering.”
“Oh, sweetheart. That’s nice, but what did you think I was doing? You don’t normally check up on me every day.”
“No. I know. But my imagination started running riot, and I just had to find you. You could have had a heart attack or a fall. Or something ...” Sarah trailed off. “I know that sounds silly, but I was frightened I’d lose you too.”
“I’m sorry if I frightened you.” Megan gently squeezed her daughter’s hand across the table in apology.
“Never mind. You’re safe. That’s all that matters. But Mum, what have you been doing? The change in you in twenty-four hours is not only immense, it’s alarming.”
“Well, don’t fret. I feel like a new person. My confidence is coming back, and I think I’m ready to tackle something new. You may not believe it, but I talked with your father in my dreams last night.”
The waiter arrived with their meals, temporarily distracting them.
“This is delicious. How’s yours?” Megan asked.
“Yum, too,” Sarah agreed, refilling their wine glasses. “But back to the point. I’m glad to hear you’re feeling more like your old self, but talking to Dad? That’s weird.”
“It’s not weird. It makes sense to me. I’ve talked things through with your dad since I was eighteen years old. I’m not going to stop now. It helps clear things in my mind even if I already know what he’s going to say.”
“You and Dad always did have the uncanny knack of finishing each other’s sentences. Worse still, you even understood half-finished sentences that made no sense to Jason and me when we were kids.”
“Yes, well. Parents have to keep one step ahead somehow.” Megan smiled. “But you know what? I don’t think it’s that I’m back to my old self as such, but more like I’m about to find a new self.”
“Mum, now you really are not making sense. Enough wine for you if you keep talking like this. What are you on about?”
“Ever since I opened the package from the lawyer yesterday something inside me has woken up. Last night, I started to read that journal in the battered old box. I stayed up quite late and still haven’t finished the whole thing, but I had a weird sense of déjà vu as I read. The young girl writing the diary echoed my inner self. It could have been me – except it wasn’t, of course. She wrote it a hundred years ago.”
“And I thought the letter from the stuffy sounding Great Aunt Constance was interesting, but this sounds much better. So where did you disappear to today?”
While they indulged in some dessert and emptied the bottle of wine, Megan filled in the reasons for her trip to the library. “The lawyer hinted there might be something of great importance and value, if I can prove who I am.”
“Really? That’s exciting.”
“So, I’m on the hunt for my ancestors.”
While at the library, she had found a range of birth, death and marriage records for the New Zealand part of the family. Some records were too new to be digital, and she would have to request the originals. She also found some wills, probates and court records, some of which were quite startling and shocking.
“Poor Grandma Julia suffered a lot. She effectively lost her entire family in one swoop. I’m still trying to understand it all, but 1959 was a catastrophic year for her. It would have broken a lesser woman.”
Megan listed what she had learnt.
“It turns out Grandpa Jeremy was killed in the same car accident that killed my parents. I never knew. How tragic to lose husband and daughter at the same time. I’ve been a mess coping with one loss. I don’t know how I would have coped if I’d lost you too.”
The significance of her words burned deep. Her grandmother had put aside her grief to raise a child. Megan had floundered, swallowed by her grief, without purpose or direction until yesterday, when that purpose had been delivered to her door.
“To make matters worse, the driver was my other grandfather, my father’s father, and he died too. Imagine, her daughter, husband, son-in-law and his father all perished in one car accident.”
Megan suspected that was why she knew nothing about her paternal side. She’d take a bet her respective grandmothers never spoke to each other again either. Megan told Sarah about all the certificates she’d found and the dates, and promised she would draw up a chart to show her the details later.
“That’s the New Zealand part. For Grandma Julia’s side, I need to go to Cornwall.” She paused, trying to judge how Sarah would react to her next announcement.
“Never mind what I find about the family, here or in Cornwall, or anything about some vague inheritance, I’ve decided I want to find more about this young girl who wrote the journal. The thing is, I want to follow her footsteps as she travelled the world. I don’t even know her name. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems right – which is the core of the conversation I had with your father. He assured me my instincts are right and I can do it.”
She couldn’t even explain to herself why she wanted to embark on this journey. The young woman of the journal was barely more than a child. How could a mature woman conjure up similar feelings and possibilities? Nevertheless, she was determined to try.
“What do you think?” Megan hoped her expression looked benign but suspected it portrayed anxiety. “I know my whole idea could fall down like a pack of cards. There is little to justify any of it, but I feel it’s the right thing to do. I could be away for months, even a year.”
She waited for her daughter’s approval.
Sarah’s face only occasionally betrayed her thoughts as she looked steadily at her mother, analysing what she had said. Several long seconds passed before she answered.
“I can’t decide if I’m excited for you or terrified at the thought of you traipsing around the world on your own.”
A few more moments passed. Sarah took a deep breath. “Mum, I think your idea is wonderful. And yes, you should do it. Just promise me one thing? Well, several things really.”
“Depends on what you want,” Megan teased.
“Firstly, let me help you plan the trip. Jason could prove helpful here for a change.” Sarah ticked the list off on her fingers. “Secondly, you must keep i
n touch by text or email and phone once a week. I want to know where you are and that you are safe at all times. And thirdly, please write it all down exactly as your ancestor did.”
Megan could feel the tears prickling, but these were tears of joy not sadness. Relief flooded through her. “Now that I can do.”
Chapter 6
A few days later, Megan heard what sounded like someone kicking the door. When she opened it, she was faced with a solid board.
“Give me a hand,” said the muffled voice.
Megan dodged around the frame to see the bizarre sight of Sarah leaning on the doorpost, struggling with a box balanced on one arm. Her bag had slid off her shoulder to hang in the crook of her elbow; a folder was wedged between her teeth and an easel rested on her knee. Trying not to laugh, Megan took the box and folder then helped Sarah carry the flip chart and easel through to the family room.
“What’s going on? What’s this for?”
“I borrowed this stuff to help with the planning.”
“But Sarah, what’s it all for?” Megan repeated. “Where did this stuff come from?”
“The office. They’re obsolete after the refit. It’s okay, Mum. I checked with my boss,” she assured her. “I’ve picked up some brochures and maps and such like. I thought it’d help if we wrote up some of this stuff as a chart. I’ve also got some Blu-Tack and drawing pins. We can sketch out what we know and then pin the maps and pages to the wall so we can track it better.”
Sarah was in her organising element. She loved it. Whether it was for people, events or houses, Sarah always wanted to be involved.
“That’s a good idea. We could pin them up in the garage, I suppose.”
“No, Mum, not there. You don’t want to work in the garage. Let’s see.” Sarah headed off down the hall. “Let’s take these photos down and put them in the spare room for now, and we can line the walls in sequence.”
Sarah talked as she took the photos off the wall and handed them to her mother. “You can check it when you go past and add things as you think of them. Oh, and by the way, I spoke to Jason. He’s told me what he needs to know so he can start to make enquiries as to what flights are available. Now, what’s our deadline?”
“Deadline? What deadline? What are you talking about?”
“What’s the date on the first page of the journal? If you are going to start this journey you need to start on the same day, don’t you? So, how much time have we got?”
Megan looked blank for a moment, but Sarah was right.
She knew without looking. “Thirtieth of October.”
Megan mentally checked the calendar – a little over six weeks.
For the next hour, as they talked about what needed to be done and in what order, Sarah drew up a dateline, pinning each chart on the wall as it was finished. Some things were obvious: check the expiry date on her passport, work out the itinerary and book flights and accommodation.
Megan admitted Sarah was thinking well ahead of her. She wrote down: buy a new set of luggage with wheels and a detachable carry bag, which would be easy to manage on her own; get a new vanity bag with the right size bottles for going through customs; update to a Smartphone and get sim cards for each country; invest in the latest laptop; organise some foreign money; and set up a way to transfer funds when she needed to.
“Okay, Mum, that’ll do for now. I’d better go. Nick will have picked Bella up from day care and will wonder where I am. Have you got enough to go on with?”
“More than enough. Thanks, honey,” laughed Megan, looking at the list.
“What you need to do now is draw up the family tree as you know it, highlight the missing bits and make a list of what you want to find out. Don’t know if I can do much of that, but it might help sort out what order you want to do things in.”
Sarah picked up her bag, gave her mother a kiss and with a cheery ‘bye’ vanished through the door. Megan went back to the spare room to sort the photos haphazardly spread on the bed. She wrapped and stacked them in the empty drawers of the unit, thinking about what she needed to do first. With some ideas in mind, she went back to the flip chart to write them all down while they were still fresh. To her surprise, Sarah had left her a message: What do you want to do about the house?
Megan sat down, letting her breath go in one whoosh. She’d avoided the topic for a year. She loved her home. It was so sunny and bright, everything had a place and everything was in its place. It was all she and Tony wanted, but now she didn’t quite fill the space. It wasn’t hard to look after, but the logic of keeping a family home going for one person didn’t add up. But she felt safe here with her memories. Now this?
All of a sudden her wish to travel seemed fraught. The message forced her to confront her future head-on. Within a few minutes, she knew the answer. In her heart, she’d known for some time but making the break had seemed too much. Now the decision made sense. She would sell the house, packing away only the things she wanted to keep. When she came back, she could buy her dream cottage, or maybe an apartment, somewhere overlooking a beach.
A weight seemed to lift off her shoulders and, filled with energy, she started to make a new list. There was no time to waste. It would be a very busy six weeks. Grabbing the old suitcases she was going to replace and a couple of large rubbish bags, Megan laid them out on the floor and started to fill them. She went through her wardrobe first and ruthlessly threw out clothes she’d kept for years. They could go to the charity shop. Then she tackled the hard part.
Although Tony’s clothes had already been sorted and given away – or most of them anyway – there were still things she’d kept that were quintessentially Tony: his books, DVDs and CDs – not always to her taste – his favourite pen, cufflinks and his favourite Irish tweed jacket. She rubbed her hand over the rough cloth, remembering the strength of his arm beneath her hand as they walked arm in arm. Memories washed over her as she buried her head in the fabric, still able to discern his unique smell.
She and Tony met at an office ball, clichéd as it sounded, but they were the rage in the seventies. Arriving at the Peter Pan Ballroom in Upper Queen Street, she found they were seated at tables in groups of ten. Before long, this generous, fun-filled, intelligent man had her laughing for the first time since Grandma Julia had died the previous year. They fell in love that night, and he had been her anchor ever since.
With the sound of his laugh ringing in her head, she decided to keep the jacket, and his pen and cufflinks; the rest could go. With a pounding heart, she stuffed what she could into the black bags and tied the books into bundles before she changed her mind.
The evening wore on until her aching back forced her to admit she was too tired to do any more. She made a cup of tea and sat down to check her lists before calling it a night. Happy she could cross off several items and even more pleased some decisions had been easier than she thought, she wrote another list: things to sell, things to store and the odds and ends to give away. Sarah would be proud of her.
For the next two days she worked nonstop, even while doubts niggled. On one hand she argued she shouldn’t be doing this, that she owed it to Tony’s memory to leave everything as it was. Then she’d have another of the many imaginary discussions with Tony, who said she must move on and make a new life for herself. She knew she was wasting her energy with these useless and repetitive arguments. She was committed to her decision, but realising it had been hers and hers alone was frightening.
One of the hardest jobs was sorting the ornaments and treasured knick-knacks filling the china cabinet. She knelt on the floor and weighed up the value and importance of each item: those once belonging to her grandmother, those Tony had given her and those she had collected on their travels. Some were easy to dispose of, knowing neither Sarah nor Jason would be the slightest bit interested; others, not so. Some would have to stay.
The photos meant the most, but the frames she wouldn’t need. She removed the pictures and set them aside to be placed into albums a
nd stored, while the frames went into the suitcases alongside the knick-knacks.
When she boiled it all down, the essential things were those she couldn’t replace. China and glassware didn’t matter. The only items she kept were the photos and the keepsakes Tony had given her – the ones that brought back memories of happy times.
With the difficult tasks completed and her unwanted possessions disposed of, Megan put the house in the hands of a real estate agent.
* * * * *
Before she knew it, auction day was upon her. Fresh flowers arrived, courtesy of Sarah, who had stylishly arranged the house like a showpiece for prospective buyers. Megan nervously paced the house letting her agitation get the better of her. She opened windows, fluffed the perfectly aligned cushions and fussed with the also perfect flower arrangements. If the house sold, it wouldn’t take long to clear the last of her belongings, and the final remnants of her life with Tony would be gone.
Megan didn’t think she’d ever in her life felt quite so nervous and excited at the same time – well, maybe once, on the day of her wedding all those decades ago. This journey was similar to the one she took that day – a step into the unknown, and one that presented both opportunities and pitfalls. Developing a life with Tony as a wife, a mother, and later a businesswoman had been a journey. Building on each experience that led to another had given her confidence and the freedom to reach for higher goals. Now she was on the verge of yet another journey, down paths she barely knew or understood, but where the unexpected could happen.
Did she have the confidence and strength to do this without Tony? Only time would tell, but she felt intoxicated, with a fizzing in the pit of her stomach like champagne bubbles ready to burst.
Barbara, the agent, arrived first, to throw the house open for inspection, followed shortly after by Sarah, Nick and little Isabella, who proved a wonderful distraction for Megan. They opted to stay for the auction and walked around the garden during inspection time and then hid in the kitchen so they could hear the auctioneer.