Page 70 of The Art of Loving You

‘Wait.’ I held up my hands. It was disconcerting to hear of his plans, his constant use of ‘we’ tugged the control away from me and I grappled to retain my grip on it. ‘Slow down.’

‘Sorry. What would you like to do?’

‘I’ll contact a roofer and—’

‘I can do that.’

It was tempting to let Noah take charge, to pass over the shell of Jack’s dream and wait for him to hand it back to me when it was finished, wrapped with a shiny red bow but this was something I had to do myself.

‘I’ll arrange for the tradesmen to come out and once the roof is fixed and this room is plastered can you decorate please?’

‘Yes. If you’re getting the plasterer out though, it might be worth getting him to do a couple of rooms at once.’

‘No.’ I quoted Sid. ‘It’s a work in progress, not a race.’

Square by square.

After lunch, Noah left and I found myself drifting around the house from room to room, trying to see it through his eyes. I hadn’t been up to the second floor since the day we had moved in when Jack had shown Alice around with boundless enthusiasm.

‘It needs some work but we’ll get there,’ he had said. I lingered outside the room where I’d put some of his possessions that Rhonda and Bryan hadn’t wanted and the ‘Alethic’ sign from the studio, the painting Faith had given me.

Biting down on the urge to cry I moved on to a small dark space at the back of the house. There were still some of Sid’s things here in boxes, cardboard damp and disintegrating. Kneeling on the dusty floorboards I began to carefully lift things out to see if there was anything salvageable. I knew Sid hadn’t been up to the second floor in years. A musty smell emanated from the scraps of material as I sporadically uncovered feathers, pebbles – Norma’s crafting supplies. Nestled deep at the bottom of the box, wrapped in swathes of silk, a book, its soft leather cover the colour of marzipan.

Stretching out my legs, wriggling my toes to get rid of the pins and needles, I opened it. On the first page she had written a title in swirling letters.

Oh, Norma.

‘There was a book. It was extraordinary. She was extraordinary,’ Sid had said, and reading this I understood why. I picked up one of the pebbles, smooth and cold in my hand. If this was dropped into a pond the ripples would spread, creating a change below the surface that we couldn’t always see.

That’s what Norma created, a change.

I held the book to my chest as I rose to my feet. I needed to take it to Sid. ‘It’s been lost over time,’ he had said wistfully. But now …

Finding it had given me faith. Everything lost can be found, can’t it?

Everyone?

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sid was in the garden for once, alone, face upturned, catching the last of the day’s sun.

Butterflies hovered around the buddleia, their pink wings fluttering around violet flowers. Apart from birdsong, it was quiet.

‘Hello,’ I called out as I approached, not wanting to startle him.

He waved. ‘Libby, duck. This is a nice surprise.’

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Afternoon naps.’ Sid shook his head. ‘Honestly, old people. Lightweights, the lot of them.’

‘I’ve found something.’ Before I’d even sat down I was pulling the leather book out of my bag and handing it to him.

I sat onto edge of the chair, my knees bouncing up and down with excitement.

Sid took the book from me and tenderly stroked the cover before opening it up, turning the pages. I could see how overcome he was, his finger trembling as he ran it down the list. The rapid movement of his Adam’s apple as he kept swallowing his emotion back down.

‘This is the book you meant? The extraordinary book you told me about the day you showed me Norma’s quilt? It has Book of Kindness written inside the cover.’

---