CHAPTER 35
March 1960
Hazel’s early morning decision to take the train to Henley-on-Thames was as impulsive as taking the book from Hogan’s. It was almost as if something inside her, a separate piece of her, was making decisions, and she was on the way. She’d called all three nurses that morning: Maeve had no idea about anything as frivolous as a fairy tale and was sorry for Hazel’s loss as she had six children of her own and wouldn’t survive their loss; Lilly had never heard the word Whisperwood and her hard voice informed Hazel that she never wanted to talk about those horrid days again. It was Imogene Wright who never answered the phone no matter how many times Hazel had called this morning.
Now she grabbed her coat from the peg and was on her way to Piccadilly train station. She should tell Barnaby or her mum, who was calling every few hours checking on her, asking if there was news about the source of Peggy Andrews’s story, worried and strung tight.
Hazel rushed out the door and toward the park, morning rising with a soft mist. A squirrel scuttered up a tree, chirping at Hazel for disturbing her. A man on an iron bench chomped down a croissant, a wool hat pulled low on his head.
“Hazel.”
She jumped, turned around.
“Harry.”
He was walking toward her with a paper bag. “I brought you a croissant.”
“What are you doing here?” She slipped the croissant out of the bag, grateful. She hadn’t eaten anything before running out on what was most likely another fool’s errand. She took a warm buttery bite.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “You ran off last night and…”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that.” She smiled at him; damn, she was so happy to see him waiting in the park for her.
“Where you headed?”
“Are you stalking me?” she asked with a grin. “Hanging out in the park waiting to follow me? Seems unlike you.”
He laughed. “No. I don’t have your number and I was afraid to knock on your door in case I disturbed… something.” He shrugged. “This seemed the best option but by the look on your face it wasn’t a very good choice.”
“It’s a good choice and I’m happy for it.” She smiled. “I’m headed to Henley-on-Thames.”
“Whatever for?”
“It’s a story.”
“I want to hear it,” he said. They stood under the unfurling leaves of an oak as a mum pushing a pram rolled past.
She began to walk and he fell into stride with her.
“I was—” She shook her head. “I am going to Henley-on-Thames to talk to one of those nurses who lived in Binsey. Do you remember them?”
He nodded. “I do. Let me come with you?”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said. “We seem to be good at those lately.”
“Like Flora, her name is a flower,” Hazel said as they settled into their train seats, flipped down their trays, and sipped tea. “Iris Taber.”
“That seems a coincidence.”
“And as your mum might say…” Hazel slid closer to the window to twist and face Harry next to her. “There is no such thing as coincidence.”
Their gazes met. Hazel felt a familiar flop in her stomach.
“But if a nurse stole her,” Harry said, “and brought her out here to raise her, wouldn’t Aiden have found out?”
“Not if she hid her, right? Maybe she’s a criminal mastermind—or just lucky, I don’t know,” Hazel said. “I swear it’s like I’ve been struck blind like the king of Algar you told us about all those years ago. Flora is Frideswide, and I’m never meant to find her.”
She thought of Barnaby’s talk of lost causes as the train started up. The station house disappeared, and not long after the landscape shifted from city to country, just as it had when she and Flora had left London all those years ago.
She looked to Harry. “So I thought this was at least worth a try, but… I am ruining things in this quest.”
“How so?”
“I might lose my new job. Barnaby’s upset.” She stared out the window at the passing town, the thatch roofs and steeple of a small church, the graveyard too close to the tracks. She turned to Harry in wonder. There he was, after all these years, sitting right beside her.
“I have to tell you something,” he said. “I should have told you when I first saw you.”
Hazel’s breath puddled in her chest. Was it about Flora? An answer she’d been looking for?
“I did come to find you. Once.”
“What?” Her hand went to her throat.
“It was a year after my last letter, and I went to the flat that you’d been writing from. The dry cleaner gave me your new address and I came to see you.”
“I’m so confused. What happened? Why didn’t…”
“I waited in the same place you saw me this morning. Same bench. Same park. It was dusk, and you were coming home, walking arm in arm with some tall man. You looked so happy. He was kissing you and I thought—I can’t do this. I can’t bring her past into her future. I can’t bring it all back to her. She’s doing so very well and quite obviously in love.”
“So you just left? You just walked away?”
“Yes.”
“My God, Harry, I don’t even remember the name of the man you saw me with. I’d have to go back and try to bring back that year—what was it? 1946?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Whoever it was, it wasn’t love.”
He cringed. “I’m sorry. I saw you and knew I couldn’t ruin whatever new and good life you’d built.”
Hazel wanted to rush backward in time, look up from the tall man whose name she couldn’t recall, see Harry sitting on a park bench just as she found him this morning. She exhaled. “I wish I’d seen you.”
“Me too,” he said. “Me too.”
“Okay, let’s talk about something else?” she asked. “Tell me about St. Ives. It’s so beautiful. Tell me about your art.” She squeezed his hand. “Tell me about you.”
Hazel had learned that Henley-on-Thames was almost equidistant between London and Oxford, said to be in existence since the second century. The stone, brick, and red-roofed village was folded into the undulating hills around it, reached by crossing a four-arched stone bridge. Hazel and Harry walked past white-plaster homes, then stood at a crossroads by the market and bakery. The Thames, said to have taken Flora from them, flowed past silver-gray, moving with swift assurance toward London. Docked boats covered in blue and white tarps bobbed side by side at the edge of the river.
A brutal thought shot through Hazel’s mind: If Flora had drowned, her body could have been carried this far and through the town of Henley-on-Thames. She shuddered and turned away from the river.
“You all right?” Harry asked.
“Yes,” she answered quick enough for him to know it was a lie.
He took her hand and kissed her palm in such a tender gesture that she wanted to wrap her arms around him, allow him to hold her until the image of Flora’s body at the bottom of the river, carried by a current, vanished forever. They were jostled by an older gentleman walking by, a cigarette smoldering in one hand and a leash in the other. A small white dog pranced and preened ahead of him.
“Excuse me,” Harry said.
The man stopped and smiled, tipped his gray wool cap. “Yes?”
“We are a bit lost. We are looking for 17 Allington Way.”
“Ah, Iris Muldoon?”
“Yes.” Harry’s eyes opened wider. “Do you know her? Or her mother, Imogene?”
“I do,” he said. “Everyone does. Is it a dog you’d be wanting?”
“A dog? No…” Hazel stared at him in confusion.
“Imogene saves every wounded animal in town, every stray, and every abandoned animal from birds to dogs to cats. Most who come here looking for her are wanting a pet.”
“And her daughter?” Hazel asked.
“Twenty steps that way”—he pointed east—“and then the second right past the gallery and the fourth house on the right. White with flowers at the window.” He ambled off without a goodbye, and Harry looked to Hazel.
“Well, that was mighty specific.”
“Seems to be a well-known family.”
Hazel averted her gaze from the river as they passed the red brick town hall dominating the view at the end of the main village. Soon they found the house with a walkway made of pebbles and brick that led to a dark wood front door with an iron Celtic cross knocker. Two windows on either side of the front door had window boxes beneath them, overflowing with spring madness.
Hazel and Harry stood on the pavement outside a low white fence with an iron scrolled gate. Ivy crawled up the west wall of the house, winding its way around the corner to the front.
“This looks like a place Snow White would live,” said Hazel. “Like the dwarfs are nearly set to run out.”
Harry pulled her close, kissed her cheek. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Hazel’s hands shook in the pockets of her lightweight wool coat. The afternoon sun cast their shadows long on the ground: two stick people stretched across the cobbled lane.
“Would you know Flora right away if you saw her?” Harry asked.
“I think so. I look for her everywhere; sometimes I don’t even know I’m looking for her. I just glance about a full room or a crowd at a pub or market and realize I’m looking for a six-year-old girl with blond curls and remind myself that she is now twenty-five years old. She could be tall or short or chubby or thin. How do we know?”
“We don’t know, but Hazel, I do hope we find out.”
Hazel lifted the latch on the gate. They walked up the pathway, and she was just set to rap with the knuckles of her other hand when the door opened.
Lamplight from inside the house formed an edge of yellow around a woman’s silhouette. “Hallo?” Iris Taber’s voice was friendly, but with a bit of caution. “May I help you?”
Behind her came the cry of a child, then the yappy bark of a small dog. The woman stepped onto the stoop and shut the door to whatever was inside that she might need to protect.
Iris was a tiny woman, younger than they were—by how much Hazel couldn’t say. Her hair was blond turning custard-hued, and her eyes brown, or maybe green.
“My name’s Hazel Linden and a long time ago I knew a woman named Imogene Wright in Binsey.” The rest of it came out in a torrent. “I knew her when I was a child. She was a nurse in the village during the war with Operation Pied Piper and…” She paused. “I lived with the Aberdeen family.”
“Oh how lovely!” The woman clapped her hands together and held them to her chest. “Mum will be thrilled to know you’re here. She told me about your family and the mum… Bird or…”
“Bridie,” Hazel said. “And this is Harry Aberdeen.”
Iris smiled at Harry. “Let me ring her! She lives just down the lane. She would very much love to see you.”
“Before you do,” Harry said, stepping forward, “may I ask a strange question: How old are you?”
Hazel was shocked at his boldness and feared the answer. It seemed like it was happening too fast.
Hazel took apart the woman’s face in small bits and pieces. The nose, a button. Clear white skin without freckles. High cheekbones. Did these pieces add up to Flora, twenty years later?
Iris bit her lower lip. “Twenty.”
Five years off. It was impossible. Iris Taber was not Flora.
The ground beneath Hazel’s feet turned spongy and unstable.
“Do you have a sister?” Harry asked.
“May I inquire why you’re asking me so many questions?”
“We are so sorry to disturb you.” Harry’s smile, smooth voice, and amiable aura allowed the woman to relax again. “When your mum lived in Binsey, there was a young girl…” He looked back for Hazel’s nod before finishing the sentence.
Iris chimed in, “Yes, a girl disappeared. Mum told me. She never forgot her.”
Hazel spoke up, “That was my sister, Flora.”
“Can we talk to your mum?” Harry asked.
Iris opened the door and motioned inside. “Come in. I’ll put a kettle on and we’ll have a cuppa.”