Page 10 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Dad thought she was probably very young and frightened, and that when she came to her senses later and realized what she’d done, she must have been relieved to know I’d been found in time.’
‘Your dad sounds a lovely, warm man,’ Edie said, which brought the first tears to my eyes I’d shed since arriving at the chalet. Maybe Sleeping Beauty was starting to wake up?
With her usual brisk efficiency, Edie insisted we contact the insurance companies right away, then downloaded, printed out and filled in all the endless forms, right up to the point where she put a pen in my hand and pointed to the boxes for me to sign.
When she’d gone back to the hotel, I searched out a framed photograph of Dan from one of the boxes: he was standing quite casually on what looked like a stone springboard over a chasm, his blond hairsticking up in spikes and his blue eyes sparkling. And then, finally, I allowed myself to weep a river of tears for what we’d had and what might have been.
It was lucky Edie had sorted out the insurance for me, because Mr Blackwell called shortly afterwards to tell me that Dan’s wife had finally asked about it.
‘I thought I’d better just check that the policy mentioned you by name,’ he said, in his warm, friendly voice, and I remembered how kind he’d been at the funeral.
‘Actually, there are two policies,bothin my name. The friend I’m staying with helped me notify the insurance companies and put in the claims.’ I explained what we’d found.
‘Edie did most of it, because it was all beyond me. I still can’t seem to think straight,’ I found myself confessing, probably because he’d been so nice to me at the funeral that he’d felt like my favourite uncle … if I’d ever had any uncles. ‘But perhaps it’s the pills the doctor has put me on and I could stop them now. I hate taking pills anyway.’
‘Do trust his judgement and only stop taking them when he says you can,’ he advised me. ‘These things take time.’ Then he kindly said he’d always be happy to hear from me if I needed his assistance in future on any matter, and rang off.
And as if by serendipity, only ten minutes later two texts from the insurance companies popped up, one after the other, saying my claims were being expedited. That sounded painful – they mustn’t have wanted to part with the money.
Now I was emerging into the land of the living, I finally began working through the backlog of texts on my phone and then my overflowing email inbox.
Among the junk in the latter I discovered several messages from Robbie, who, entirely oblivious to what had happened to me, was angsting about losing his latest leggy blonde beach babe in his usual self-obsessed fashion.
I found it strangely refreshing. I’d only seen him once in the six orseven years since he moved out to Australia, when he was over to visit his parents, but I was still fond enough of him to hope a Great White Shark didn’t gobble him up on one of his surfing trips.
I sent him a brief message back, saying I was staying with Edie for a bit, so he’d probably just assume I’d broken up with Dan.
I deleted most of the rest of the emails unread: they were from so long ago no one would still be expecting a reply.
It felt fairly cathartic and my brain was clearer. I thought I might even be able to return to my writing at some point soon – I’d left a novella half-finished on my laptop, but when I looked for it, I stumbled across a whole story I’d no recollection of writing at all. Ivaguelyremembered a nightmare I’d had while catatonic, but it seemed from the April date on the document that I’d actually got up and written it all down!
It was a take on the story about a mermaid who falls in love with a mortal, then takes on human form by day so they can be together. At night, she goes back into the sea. But he jealously suspects she’s returning to a merman lover, so imprisons her in a lighthouse. He cuts off her long hair, too, so she can’t do a Rapunzel, but an albatross brings her a long strand of seaweed and she slides down that and escapes. The prince hears the pebbles on the beach murmuring her name as she hurries towards the sea, the damp salt air turning her skin scaly … and then, just as she’s about to dive under the waves, he grabs her. The tale ends with her pulling him under the water with her and, since he won’t release his grip, he drowns.
It was dark, but not bad at all, and definitely my style. How odd to have written something and not remember doing it! All it needed was a polish and it was good to go.
Feeling encouraged, I went up to the hotel again and checked the Amazon reviews for my e-books, and there was a really horrible one that made me feel quite sick. But it also made me so furious that I immediately wrote a story about an author who’d had such a vicious book review that she’d tracked down the perpetrator and unleashed on her a series of revenging goblins, boggarts, wicked fairies and other dark creatures, who all inflicted punishment on her in different and inventive ways.
I feltsomuch better after that and it seemed to light a little spark of me-ness in my heart again … whoever I actuallywas.
In my imagination I’d cast my infant self in many roles, so much more comforting than searching out the truth: I’d been Moses in the bulrushes, the baby princess abandoned in the forest to die, the child left as a sacrifice to the gods on a blasted heath … a Heathcliff heath.
But I was none of those: I wasme, Alice Rose, and for the first time I felt a real need to stop running away from the past and discover who I really was and where I came from. But to do that, I’d finally have to go to Haworth …
The blackberry-dark sky had begun to lighten towards the east as I drove away. I thought I’d be safely home before anyone else was stirring, which made it all the more of a shock when I came round a sharp bend in the narrow, twisty lane and caught the briefest glimpse of a tall figure dragging a large dog on to the narrow verge, her pale face with eyes screwed shut against the sudden glare of my headlights.
Even in that split second, I recognized who it was …
6
Agent of Change
I woke up one morning in early June with the decision to stop taking the antidepressants already fixed in my mind.
I hoped that I wasn’t also cutting the invisible umbilical cord to my sanity, but actually, once the drug had worked its way through my system, I felt instead that the world had shifted fully back into focus, that was all. Everything was brighter, louder, clearer.
The breakdown seemed to have been cathartic, for though I still grieved for Dan and what might have been, I now felt strangely distanced, as if losing him had happened so long ago that I’d come to terms with it.
Perhaps, too, it was partly because I now had a new obsession. What Edie had said about my belonging in Yorkshire had sparked off the idea of moving to Haworth and now I was consumed by it. I had arightto live there. I’d buy a cottage and, if there was enough insurance money left, I’d be able to eke out a living from my e-book sales. I loved baking, but I really didn’t want to work in someone else’s kitchen all my life.
