‘Well, I guess that makes me a blind monkey,’ Eleanor said, as they came back out onto the pavement. ‘Does she mean that Dr Jordan? The one who came to see her in the guest house?’
‘Yup,’ said Lily, fumbling in her bag for the keys.
‘That good-looking one, with the brown eyes?’
‘How did you know he had brown eyes?’
‘Mum, let’s revisit Granny’s blind monkey analogy. Anyone would have noticed that man’s eyes, they were incredible. Actually, the rest of him was pretty incredible as well, to be honest – for an older man. But I don’t understand – does Granny mean that you and he…?’
‘Yup.’ Lily unlocked the van and walked around to the driver’s door.
‘Stop walking away from me! So, you and that doctor were actually getting it together, while we were up in Keswick?’
‘Oh, Eleanor! Don’t make such a big thing of it. Yes, in answer to all your questions. Jake and I were seeing each other. Well, sort of seeing each other. It’s a bit complicated to explain. But we did, as you put it, “get it together” briefly, while we were up in Keswick.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Eleanor sat back in the passenger seat. ‘That’s extraordinary.’
‘Why is it so extraordinary? I’m not exactly a withered old hag with no sexual desires.’
‘I didn’t mean that! I mean, how did you keep it quiet? I can’t believe I didn’t know about it, or even pick up on any signs that something was going on.’
‘More incredible, is that Granny did pick up on it.’ Lily started the engine and adjusted her rear-view mirror. After all these hours, it was strange to have her daughter sitting beside her now, instead of perched behind the table in the back of the van.
‘True.’ Eleanor nodded. ‘She’s a wily old thing. What amazes me is that she knew what was going on, but managed not to say anything about it. If I’d had the faintest clue about it, I would have said something way before now.’
‘Maybe she kept forgetting?’ Lily said, and they turned to each other and grinned. ‘Sorry, that’s unkind of me. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.’
‘Well, she knows now,’ Eleanor said. ‘And more to the point, so do I. What’s your plan then? Are you going to stay in touch? Keswick is a bit of a distance – as we know after today. Did you finish things or will you go back up there?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, El. I can’t go back up there, can I? To be honest I think I may just have to put it down as a holiday romance.’ Lily sighed. ‘Not even that really, it wasn’t like I was on an exotic foreign holiday and he was a handsome waiter in a taverna somewhere.’
‘Wow, Mum, it’s so great that you met him, I’m pleased for you!’
Lily turned to look at her, half expecting sarcasm, but her daughter really did seem happy to hear about all this.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It was fun. He was lovely – more than lovely. He was funny and kind, and I just really enjoyed spending time with him.’ It felt strange to be saying those words out loud; sharing them with Eleanor made what had been going on seem very real. ‘But it’s not such a good thing really, because he’s up there and I’m down here and we’ve both got our own lives. I had a wonderful time, but I can’t let myself get carried away. He is lovely though, El – I think you’d like him. Meeting him made me very happy.’
Eleanor reached out and put her hand on Lily’s arm. ‘It’s wonderful. It’s about time you had someone in your life. Are you sure you can’t work something out?’
Lily smiled at her. ‘No idea. He talked about coming down to visit in a couple of weeks’ time. But he’s busy, so we’ll have to see what happens.’
‘I have to say, speaking as someone who knows what it’s like to have to sit back over many years and watch her father shack up with jailbait,’ added Eleanor. ‘It’s a huge relief that he’s a middle-aged man and not some fit toy boy who’s hardly out of his teens.’
‘Do you know, I have no idea how old he is?’ Lily said. ‘I never thought to ask him. He looks about my age, and he sounds about my age. But he might be a bit younger? In which case, I have been carrying on with a toy boy.’
‘What does it matter,’ Eleanor said. ‘He’s mature in the best possible way, and gorgeous with it. I have to admit, I’m a bit jealous.’
Lily laughed as she turned the key in the ignition. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Enough of all this. Let’s get you back home, to your lovely Paul. Your supper will be incinerated by now.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Eleanor pulled something out of the side compartment in the passenger door. ‘Granny has left something in here. It’s her notebook!’
‘Oh hell,’ said Lily, turning off the engine again. ‘We’d better take it up to her. She’ll get herself into a real state if she can’t find it.’
Eleanor had opened the book and was flicking through the pages.
‘El, don’t do that!’ Lily said. ‘It’s private. Why are you reading it?’
Her daughter was shaking her head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘What? Listen, please put it down, Granny would hate it if she knew we’d been looking at her book before it was finished. She keeps going on about how she’s going to work on it and carry on writing, so we can have her whole life story when it’s done.’
Eleanor looked up at her, frowning.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lily asked. She suddenly realised her heart was thumping loudly and her mouth was dry. What had Eleanor just read? Her mind flashed back to the conversation she’d had with Moira earlier today, in the first services. Had her mother been lying to her about Oliver, after all? She might just have been saying what she knew Lily wanted to hear, reassuring her that there was nothing for her to worry about, that she was Ken’s daughter. But in this book – the one she kept insisting would tell them all about her life – she may have decided to be truthful. And if the truth was that Oliver was Lily’s father, what kind of a mess was that going to cause?
‘Eleanor, please don’t read it. For one thing, it’s private! Whatever she’s saying in there, you mustn’t pay any attention to it. Seriously, put the notebook down. It’s just Granny, getting carried away and imagining things. Don’t believe any of it.’
Eleanor was now looking back down at the book, flicking through the pages. Lily itched to reach out and grab it out of her hands.
‘None of what she’s saying in there, makes any difference,’ Lily said. She knew she was gabbling, could hardly hear herself speak above the pounding of the blood flooding across her temples. She wanted to reach over and grab the book from her daughter’s hands, but was frozen in her seat. ‘None of what you’re reading in there, changes who I am or who you are.’
Eleanor turned the notebook so that they could both see the pages and flicked back to the beginning. Then she slowly began to turn the pages, each one moving across with a snap that sounded like a knife on metal.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Lily. She reached out both hands and took the book, flicking through the pages more quickly, almost in desperation. She looked up at Eleanor, then back down at the book. There were no words. On some pages there were scribbles, on others little drawings and doodles. Twirly decorations covered the edges of most of the pages. In some places there was patterned shading, in others curling or symmetrical designs that were repeated dozens of times across a page.
‘She hasn’t written anything,’ Lily said. ‘Not one word.’
‘What does it mean?’ Eleanor asked. ‘I don’t understand? She hasn’t stopped talking about her book and the fact that she’s writing her life story for us. This book has been the focus of your entire trip! But all this time, she hasn’t been doing anything with it. She hasn’t even been writing any proper words in here.’
Lily closed the notebook and sat with it on her lap, her hands shaking as they rested on top of it. She felt shattered, drained of every ounce of energy as if she’d just run a marathon or cycled up a mountain.
‘Mum, what are you thinking?’ asked Eleanor.
Lily really wasn’t sure what she was thinking, or how she was feeling. Part of her was relieved; she’d had no idea what she was expecting Moira to write about, but there had definitely been an expectation of dark secrets. Even if none were going to be revealed – as her mother had reassured her – Lily had still been nervous about what she might discover. Or what other people might discover about her.
But now none of that was going to happen. Nothing at all would be revealed. To her own surprise, she realised what she was mostly feeling, was incredibly sad. This book had played such a big part in their trip, precisely because it had seemed so important to Moira. Writing it had kept her mother going, it had helped her carry on through her illness and deal with the disappointments she’d encountered along their journey – the scruffy house in Chepstow, the long-forgotten dance hall, Oliver’s inadequate welcome.
‘What do we do?’ Eleanor asked.
‘I don’t think we do anything.’ Lily sat staring out of the windscreen at the back of the car in front, its rear window so filthy that someone had used their finger to draw a row of smiley faces on the glass. ‘I think we just pretend to Granny that we haven’t looked inside her book, and we don’t know what she’s been doing.’
Eleanor nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘She doesn’t need to know, it would just upset her. We have to let her carry on with it and she can keep pretending to write in it, setting down her life story. It really doesn’t matter. None of this is about us, El, it’s about her.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘I’ll take it back to her when I go along in the morning, and pretend I’ve only just found it. We both have to forget about it.’
Eleanor nodded again. ‘Yes, that’s the best thing.’
As Lily put the key in the ignition and started the van engine again, her phone pinged. She glanced at it and couldn’t help smiling when she saw it was from Jake. ‘Just a sec,’ she said. ‘I need to check this.’ She pulled the phone from its holder on the dashboard and swiped to unlock the screen. The text opened; just the latest in a long trail of messages that had been sent backwards and forwards between the two of them over the last few days. But this one was the best of the lot:
THE END