Page 99 of The Love of Our Lives
Eventually I come to Morton House again. I don’t know if anyone will be in this time around – it’s been almost two months since I received the letter but that’s also two months of her mum receiving nothing in return.
Ringing the buzzer on the huge gates, I hear a voice eventually say, ‘Can I help you?’
Jackie.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ I start, ‘but I’m here with something of Emily’s.’
Immediately, the gates open wide and I walk up to the grand entrance, and standing there waiting for me on the doorstep are both of them – Jackie, and Emily’s mum.
I’m led into the posh lounge I saw when I was last here, and surrounding the room are all the photos of Emily – Emily as a little girl with Jackie in the kitchen drinking milk, Emily spinning in circles in the garden, arms outstretched, staring up with wonder, Emily standing outside her school at eight, twelve, fifteen; Emily in her graduation photo, Emily in a restaurant in London somewhere.
Then nothing.
‘Coffee?’ Jackie says, her anxious eyes on mine.
And I know that this is just as important a visit to Jackie as to Emily’s mum.
‘Yes, please,’ I say reassuringly, ‘that would be lovely.’
Should I really have just dropped in like this? With absolutely no warning? God, maybe I should have written back first – taken my time.
Then I recall the letter again –I wish I could connect those final missing pieces of my only child’s life. But more than anything, I wish I could hold my Stella one more time and tell her I love her – tell her how she was my whole world, and always will be.
After we’re all settled in the room, Emily’s mum sits forwards.
‘So, what is it you have of Emily’s exactly?’
And in that moment, all I can do is tell the truth.
‘I got your letter,’ I say slowly, simply.
And I can see the dawning realisation on both their faces, the tears as they start to flood down their cheeks, and mine now, because I know in this moment that this was the right call, coming here like this. Doing things now, and not later.
Then suddenly we’re embracing, first her mum, and then Jackie. Her dad appears with his rumple of grey hair, clearly disturbed from all the noise, and Emily’s mum is saying, ‘It’s her, it’s the one with Emily’s heart.’ And then he is embracing me too, and it’s the worst, yet most lovely, moment of my life.
Then after everyone has settled down again, I show them the camera.
‘But . . . how did you find us? How did you get this?’ her mum is saying, her pale cheeks stained pink.
I don’t reply immediately because what can I say really? How can any of it be explained?
I have to try though.
‘I went to her flat,’ I try finally, hoping they don’t ask me how I knew where it was, or who she was, ‘and I found it there – I just knew she’d want you to see it.’
The three of them crowd around it, the camera with the missing pieces of her life. Hurriedly I go to the latest pictures and immediately it’s like I’m there again, all of it, except it’s her unique version and not mine – that first selfie of her smiling on the grass with an ice cream, the first pictures she took around the city when she was just feeling her way, trying to find that slower pace she’d always wanted, those walks with Adam and evenings with friends where their love began to blossom; a date with Adam in Glasgow, one on the Isle of Arran, too, it seems. A lot of fun with Charlie as well – dancing, driving, playing instruments and things I’d not thought of, like disco bowling. Then Christmas at Adam’s flat and a ski trip up north, in a different lodge, in a different place and likely with no Charlie accident, and no trip to the hospital. And then it merges again on the train to London, just like I felt on the train tracks that day, when she went down to Fran’s wedding, when she found out the truth about her fiancé and her best friend.
She did some travelling too after that it appears, largely to New Zealand from what I’ve been able to tell. Then finally to Canada, where she went to meet him and take a chance on love again.
Adam and Emily are holding hands in the next photo, their matching grins infectious, then Hope’s birth at the hospital, a party in the Purple Pineapple with everyone the week before Emily died.
It’s all there, her life in a year, slightly different to mine, of course, but still with the same outcome. Because that was the point of it all. That was why I was there I realise now.
It was a gift to me.
And now it’s my gift to them.
EPILOGUE
