If Only You Knew

by Claire Allan

Lots of love,

  Betty

  xxx

  A big fat tear plopped onto the page, which Hope quickly tried to brush away before it soaked into the paper and caused the ink to run. Every single emotion on the planet ran through her mind. Guilt at not coming to see Betty more. Love – so much love – and how Betty made her feel. Sadness at the loss her aunt had experienced. Embarrassment that Betty had picked up on the whole completely-unrequited-love thing going on with Dylan.

  And anger at him too – for using her and playing with her emotions.She thought of Betty’s words – how if a man is going to fall in love he just falls in love and he doesn’t wait to see what is out there first. Fuck. Betty had just nailed it. Dylan was keeping her as his in-case-of-emergency girl. She was his fall-back when he needed his breakfast cooked, or his clothes washed or just needed a random shag. He was a shit. A total shit. A big shitty sleep-with-you-the-night-before-his-girlfriend-moves-in kind of a shit. He was exactly the kind of shit she wrote about when she wrote all-men-are-shit articles for glossy magazines. He was exactly the kind of shit her mother warned her about, and her friends warned her about and the whole world warned her about. Grabbing her phone, she stomped to the terrace and dialled his number, anger coursing through her veins. She would tell him. She would rage and tell him just how angry she was – and how she had spent the day with someone who didn’t make her angry and how Betty believed she deserved better.

  The phone rang twice when Cyndi answered, her broad accent bellowing down the phone. “Hiya, Hope!” she said cheerily. “How’s it going?”

  Hope didn’t want to answer how it was going. She didn’t want to explain everything that was going through her mind. She didn’t want to talk to Cyndi at all. Or even think about her. But there she was, part of her life, part of the joint life she had been building with Dylan – reminding her that he wasn’t hers, not even a little bit. He belonged to someone else.

  She felt herself sag – her anger sink from her.

  “Grand,” she replied. “It’s going grand. Is Dylan there?” Though she knew when he came on the phone she wouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t do that to him in front of Cyndi. She wanted him to know how much she was hurting and how she wouldn’t let him hurt her again but she wasn’t a complete bitch. She didn’t want his life to implode. Even if he was a shit.

  “He’s in the shower,” Cyndi giggled.

  Hope took this as code for ‘just had sex, needs shower, is all dirty sexy dirty’ and she felt herself blush with shame at the memory of their most recent night of passion.

  “Oh, okay . . . maybe I’ll get him later . . .” Now that her anger was being replaced by a certain sense of shame, she wanted to get off the phone – and quickly.

  “Nothing important?”

  “No, nothing at all,” Hope replied, saying her quick goodbyes and putting the phone down. She stood for a second on the terrace feeling the evening air wash over her and then she dried her eyes. “If only it were as easy as just moving on, Betty,” she whispered, feeling a little bit like a failure because she couldn’t.

  Chapter 25

  Ava had a fear of attics. She couldn’t quite explain why but they gave her the major heebie-jeebies. There was something about the closed-in space at the top of a house which made her feel uncomfortable. Perhaps she had read Flowers in the Attic one too many times as a teen or maybe it was just that they were horrible places with hidey holes for spiders and creaky ladders acting as your only means of escape should a giant Daddy Long Legs decide to get you in his sights. She shuddered as she climbed steep staircaseto join Hope in Betty’s attic. This had been the part of the entire trip she had been dreading most but, by all accounts, this was where the majority of the work was to be carried out. Looking around her to catch her bearings she was grateful see several small skylights casting a glow of natural light in the room. She hated attics with no windows more than anything. All that wood and darkness and stale air. You might as well just stick her in a coffin and close the lid.

  “Are you okay?” Hope asked, reaching her hand down to help Ava up.

  “Not a fan of attics,” she whispered, clambering up to look around.

  “Oh, I love them!” Hope said, opening the skylight and letting some fresh air in. “They are so romantic.”

  Ava raised her eyebrow. If there was one word she could choose out of all the words in the planet to describe an attic it would not be romantic. “Are you mad? Jeez, they’re old and musty and rotten.”

  “And filled with a lifetime of memories!” Hope sighed, looking at a large wardrobe in the corner of the room. “And obviously I’m a nosey fecker and places like this allow me to indulge the very best of my nosiness.”

  “They freak me out,” Ava said, shivering even though it was exceptionally warm.

  “Come on,” Hope said, reaching out her hand, “get stuck in and you’ll not even have time to think about how they freak you. You never know what we might encounter.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Ava said, having a sudden stomach-churning vision of a mouse running across her feet or a spider spinning down on its web and landing square on her head. “So we should just get this over and done with.Before we call Jean-Luc about the spa and the market,” Hope said determinedly.

  “And maybe about another date with you before we go home?” Ava smiled and watched as Hope shrugged her shoulders.

  Things had been a little awkward the previous evening after Hope had read her letter. She had walked into the kitchen and poured her glass of wine down the sink, saying she wasn’t really in the mood for a drink after all. Ava noticed she had been crying which hadn’t really surprised her. After all, Ava had done a fair bit of weeping after reading her own letter earlier that day. It was unlikely that Hope’s letter had been any less emotion-ridden than hers.

  “Do you need to talk about your letter?” Ava had asked.

  “Not really,” Hope had said. “I hope you don’t mind. I just want to process the information for a bit. You know, work out how I feel about it.”

  “I know what you mean,” Ava said. “I had to take to my bed after mine. My emotions were all over the place.”

  “Hmm,” Hope had said, signalling she really wasn’t quite ready to be drawn into a conversation yet.

  Ava knew it was time to stop probing and, while it smarted a little bit, she realised that maybe she wasn’t ready to talk herself either. I mean it would be a hard call to tell anyone “By the way, Betty thinks I’m a miserable cow so she brought me here to try and sort my head out.”

  Maybe Hope was feeling the same. So they sat in a kind of awkward silence over two cups of tea before Hope had yawned in a slightly melodramatic fashion and declared that she was really sorry but she wanted to go to bed and she knew she was being really awful company anyway.

  Ava had nodded. She was tired herself, despite her afternoon siesta, and could do with more time to think and plot and get excited about the possible changes she would make to her life.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Ava soothed her. “Go and get a rest.”

  “I promise not to be a grumpy hole tomorrow. I’ll be on my best behaviour. We’ll power through that attic and then we’ll treat ourselves to something really girlie. Jean-Luc was telling me about a spa up at the village – at a castle no less. It looks lovely. He said if we wanted to book in just to get in touch. Apparently there are strings he can pull.”

  “Is there no end to his talents?” Ava said with a soft smile.

  “I’ve yet to find out,” Hope said with a sigh which came directly from the soles of her feet, and she hugged Ava goodnight.

  “Tomorrow is another day,” Ava soothed.

  “I hope you’re right, Miss Scarlett,” Hope had drawled in a fake Southern accent. “I hope you are right.”

  She had certainly looked brighter when she padded into the kitchen the following morning. Ava had been sitting nestling a glass of orange juice as if her life depended on it – feeling
very much hungover but knowing the kind of nausea she was feeling was not going to be swept away by a couple of Paracetamol, a fizzy drink and a cooked breakfast. She had woken that morning, overwhelmed by a flash of nausea which had forced her to run to the bathroom where she had retched even though there was nothing left in her stomach to bring up and then she had looked in the mirror at her pale face, bloodshot eyes and straggling hair. “Pregnancy glow, my arse,” she sniped before brushing her teeth (gently so as not to induce gagging), pulling her hair back in a ponytail and dressing in soft cotton cut-off trousers which were loose around the waist and not likely to put any pressure on her digestive system. A glass of orange juice would help, it would bring her blood sugars up and settle the wishy-washy feeling in the pit of her stomach. As she watched Hope bound in, perfectly glowing, her hair glossy and her make-up bright, she felt herself turn a little green again but this time with jealousy. She knew she looked like a dog’s dinner and she felt every inch of it.

  “Are you okay?” Hope had asked, brewing a pot of coffee, the smell of which was not helping the continuing waves of nausea.

  “Morning sickness,” she mouthed. “One of the lesser joys of pregnancy. It feels like a hangover without the pleasant memory of the night before and without the comforting knowledge it will lift in a few hours.”

  Hope grimaced. “You poor thing. Can I make you anything to eat? Anything at all?”

  Ava nodded. “Some dry toast maybe. I’ll be fine in a bit.”

  “Did you have morning sickness when you were pregnant with Maisie?” Hope asked as she busied herself in the kitchen.

  “Just a little. They do say it’s a good sign though – that it means Baby is nice and healthy in there but, Jesus, it’s rotten. I think I had blanked out just how rotten.”

  “Will you be up for the attic?”

  Ava knew this could have been her get-out clause. Sure, she could avoid the attic and all her fears all together by saying that of course she wouldn’t be up for it, but she knew it was the biggest part of the job so she nodded. “In half an hour I’ll be right as rain,” she said, and she was. The nausea had lifted as soon as she’d eaten a slice of toast and then when it lifted the fierce appetite she had been nursing for the last few days returned until she made herself a bacon sandwich and munched her way through a bowl of grapes.

  “Let’s go,” she had said enthusiastically, the thought of a spa treatment later giving her a new lease of life.

  It was only now, standing in the attic, willing herself to open the wardrobe at the end of it, that she felt nervous. And it wasn’t just in case a mouse popped out or a spider fell down. She had a sneaking suspicion somewhere she would uncover another letter which might just unsettle her all over again.

  Hope appeared at her elbow. “Shall we look inside?” she said, her eyes wide.

  Ava laughed. “You’re half expecting to be able to walk right through that thing and smack-bang into Narnia, aren’t you?”

  “Very funny,” Hope mocked, sticking her tongue out. “I’m just curious. That’s all.”

  Ava watched as Hope opened the wardrobe, revealing several suit-carriers neatly hanging on the rail, beside a stack of boxes where old clothes and mementoes had been mothballed and stored away for safe keeping.

  Hope handed Ava a carrier and took one herself. Sitting down on a wooden chair propped against one of the attic walls, Ava unzipped the bag to find a gorgeous ruby-red dress in a soft, shiny satin staring back at her. Strapless and nipped in at the waist before pooling to the floor it looked exactly like the kind of dress a Hollywood starlet would wear. She made an involuntary “Oooh!” sound, before lifting the dress and showing it to Hope whose jaw dropped at the sheer gorgeousness of the frock.

  “Betty had style,” Hope said.

  “And class.”

  “And the good sense to store it all properly, even if it is in a scary attic,” Hope mocked.

  “Very bloody funny. Shall I try it on? Or should you try it on? It might just fit you better?”

  “Stick it there in the try on pile and we’ll take it downstairs later and have our very own, really quite sad, trying-on party.”

  Ava laughed and felt the fug which had engulfed her from yesterday lift. She folded the dress, feeling the softness of the fabric between her fingers and imagined a life where she got to wear fabulous dresses like that one and not just wear clothes which were both stain-repellent and able to withstand the worst a group of over-enthusiastic four and five-year-olds could throw at them. Then she thought of Betty’s words – of her gentle reassurance that life doesn’t have to be so hard and she thought, feck it, she might just get wear out of that dress and she bloody well would try it on just as soon as she could.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by another loud gasp from Hope who was holding up a pale pink chiffon dress, with a high lace collar. Ava could imagine it would look amazing on her cousin with her wavy hair pulled up on her head.

  “Fancy!” she said.

  “Retro,” Hope replied, holding it up against herself. “I love it! A cross between Barbie and Dolly Parton and in my size. One for the trying-on party!” She folded it and sat it on top of the red gown and reached for another carrier which contained perhaps the most offensive banana-yellow all-in-one-suit Ava had ever laid eyes on.

  “So she didn’t get it right all the time . . .” she said, running her hand over the polyester and hoping not to create enough static to shock herself stupid.

  “I’ll give you fifty euro if you try it on!” Hope laughed.

  Grimacing, Ava laughed. “It would take more than fifty euro – it would take more than five hundred euro. But that has given me a laugh.”

  The jumpsuit was folded and placed with the ‘must get rid’ pile and they went on with their search through Betty’s haul which yielded a quite impressive mix of gorgeous and offensive items. When the rail was cleared and the boxes searched through, they were left with just one item – a large rectangular box at the bottom of the wardrobe.

  “This looks interesting,” Hope said, lifting it out and putting it down on a nearby table. “Let’s have a look.”

  Ava lifted the lid to find several layers of yellowing tissue paper which she carefully peeled back to uncover a delicate ivory lace gown. With an emotional thud, she realised this had to be Betty’s wedding dress, recalling the photograph from the bedroom of a smiling bride and groom.

  “Oh Hope!” she sighed. “Oh, look at it!”

  Delicately she unfolded the material, satin sheathed in lace, and thought of all the hopes and dreams which had come with it. Slim and simple, pooling to a small train, with satin-covered buttons and lace-trimmed detailing at the delicate neck-line. It was the perfect wedding gown, elegant and understated. Stunning.

  “You should try it on,” Hope said, softly this time.

  “Have you seen the waist on it? She was so thin then. I wouldn’t dare even try. It would get stuck on my thighs.”

  “We should still keep it,” Hope said, sitting down beside her. “We should definitely keep it.”

  Ava nodded, a lump forming in her throat. “Definitely. It’s beautiful.”

  Hope lifted it and held it to the light. “It absolutely is.”

  Betty had labelled most things in the attic. Each box was marked ‘Bric-a-brac’, ‘Pictures’, ‘Books’ and so on. They were able to sort through most things quite quickly and had gathered together a collection of pictures and ornaments they were only too happy to pass on to Jean-Luc to pass on to the market, having already decided that any profit they made could go to the nursing home which had cared for Betty in her last days.

  What neither woman was expecting to find was the small wooden crib in the corner of the room or the box marked ‘Baby Things’.

  Ava was the first to spot it and her heart lurched a little. Betty had no children. They both knew that. This box of things was not expected. Of everything they had uncovered this was not anywhere on the radar. Ava stood looking at t
he one, medium-sized cardboard box sellotaped up and placed in the crib before she noticed the small white letter on top of the box.

  “I don’t want to read this one,” she said aloud, as much to herself as anyone else.

  “What?” Hope asked, looking up.

  “Betty didn’t have any children? Did she?”

  Hope shook her head. “She never really talked about it. Just said they had never been blessed. I never asked for any more details than that. Why?”

  Ava, feeling a lump form in her throat, pointed to the crib and the box and the letter.

  “Oh,” Hope said, putting the pictures she had been sorting through back into their box and walking over. “Oh. Poor Betty.”

  “I can’t read it,” Ava said, pointing to the letter. She didn’t even want to touch it. She didn’t want to think about what it might say even though her mind was racing with all the possibilities.

  “You don’t have to read it,” Hope said. “We don’t have to read it. We don’t have to read everything she left. We can just pretend we never found it. Sure, she would hardly expect us to find everything, would she? I mean, they’re so scattered we couldn’t find every letter?”

  Ava sat down, and pulled her fingers through her hair, caught in the crux of the dilemma.

  “But we should read it,” she said eventually. “Betty obviously had something she wanted to say.”

  “But we don’t have to now,” Hope said gently. “It’s been a long morning. I’m tired and dusty and more than a bit sweaty and we should be good to ourselves. We’ll take it down, and just leave it on the side for now and come back to it when we’re ready. Come on, let’s go down.”

  Ava picked upthe letter and reminded herself once again that she hated bloody attics. No good could ever come of them and there were scarier things than spiders and mice and banana-yellow jumpsuits to be found in them.

  Chapter 26