What had changed? At what point had her perception of Georgina shifted from the frosty woman who had undermined her in front of Evelyn, to the woman her heart now ached for? Molly tapped her pencil against her bottom lip.
At what point did someone enter your heart and become so precious to you that you panicked at the thought you might not see them again or you might somehow let them down or disappoint them? When did they become the default person for your fantasies and hopes? And when did a stranger become the person you suddenly decided to take risks for?
Molly had so many questions fogging her thoughts that acting without thinking too much about what she was doing was helping.
It helped her to form a rudimentary plan. If Evelyn confronted her about progress with Georgina, then she would say that she had spoken to Georgina about the Wright room and that she was hopeful of the outcome. Furthermore, if pressed about the painting, Molly would reply that the matter was in hand, which it was after all.
It helped her to make the call to the records office to book this evening for her research and to request Josephine’s and Edith’s archives ahead of her visit.
Sadly, there was nothing to help her not feel a little daunted by the pile of paper that sat waiting on the long desk in front of her.
She glanced around the deserted reading room. She’d chosen the same seat that she had occupied just a few days ago. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the empty chair next to her.
Right, focus. She would look for anything that might link Edith to the painting. Every small detail would matter.
But where on earth should she begin?
Sifting through the archive, her attention was immediately caught by a small tan leather notebook. A thin piece of cream ribbon frayed at its end bound the notebook closed. Could she open it? Should she? Teasing the ribbon apart and releasing the pages to flutter free was like releasing an undergarment. It felt illicit and deeply intimate.
It seemed to be some sort of logbook. Her breath caught at the sight of the initials EH marked in pencil on the back of the front cover. Why had this just been swept up in Josephine’s archive? This was Edith’s book. Edith’s, not Josephine’s. How easily and how indiscriminately Edith’s past had been absorbed away.
She took a long deliberate breath. Her anger wasn’t helping Edith.
She returned her focus to the contents, where every now and then a page was given a date and the dates seemed to run sequentially. Molly turned a page to find a drawing of a man with a really big nose. WW was written in small letters underneath. William Wilberforce? It was more a cartoon than a piece of art. She couldn’t help but smile. By the side of the man were the words And you say we are brazen faced? On the opposite side was the drafting of a poem, declaring female resistance and call to duty. It was titled “Onward Defiance.” It was a good drawing. Wait, Edith could draw?
Where was the scrapbook Fran mentioned? With renewed purpose Molly began to leaf through the archives once more, setting each item carefully aside. And then, half buried, revealing itself like the seabed in the ebbing tide, was the unmistakable shape of a scrapbook.
Molly’s heart thumped.
She looked at her watch. It was seven o’clock. In half an hour the records office would close. Please let there be something in here.
She carefully opened the scrapbook, and a world opened before her. There were programs for events and rallies along with pressed dried grasses and flowers. A note, a line of memory had been written with each item fixed to the stiff textured paper. A blade of pressed dried grass was accompanied with the line A wonderful picnic and walk with Jo in Bradgate Park. Chanced upon a sleeping doe. This was Edith’s scrapbook. These were her treasured memories.
Clippings from newspapers had been pasted next to each other. Molly leaned in further and read the Leicester Chronicle’s passage on the lighting of the first gas lamps on City Walk. Crowds had gathered, the article said. The future had been lit before them. She checked the date. The faded ink read September 1832. For some reason the clipping had been scored with a heavy pencil border. Molly knew that every mark and every underline meant something, but what? Evelyn was right. What on earth did she think she would find?
Dispirited, she eased the scrapbook to her side, and with a heavy heart she bent her elbows and sank her arms flat against the table, resting her head against her hands with her cheek pressing against the cold wood. She stared at the scrapbook, now level with her eyes. Wait a minute. What was that? Towards the back, a corner of a page protruded, and there was something marked out on it. It couldn’t be. Could it?
Molly sat up straight and drew the scrapbook to her once more. At the point of the protruding edge of paper and tucked so deeply in as to be invisible to the casual glance was a collection of charcoal sketches. A couple of the sketches had become unfixed and Molly lifted them gently to rest in front of her.
“Josephine.” She lightly traced her fingers just above the soft dust of charcoal lines that defined neck, chin, and the blush of lips.
Was this Edith’s work?
Molly searched each sketch for Edith’s characteristic EH. Nothing. This was her scrapbook—there was no question that its contents contained her life with Josephine. It had to be her work. It just had to be. If only she could find some evidence.
Think, Molly Goode. Think. Her gaze drifted with her thoughts once more to the logbook open at the drawing of Wilberforce. She lifted the logbook to rest in her palm and turned each page slowly sensing as much as reading and alive to the shape of the letters that formed the word portrait. Where was the loop of the P or the curl of the R? Or the word Josephine with its gentle sweep downward of the J.
Josephine’s name was on nearly every page. It was as if Edith had noted every day they were together and every day they were apart.
Molly looked at her watch. It was twenty past seven.
She urgently scanned every page, and then on almost the last turn of the last page, logged with the date 4th April 1832, was the entry Molly doubted she would ever find.
Words today burn at my lips to speak and smoulder in ink on the page as I write. For I have captured our love in every shade. The sweet stroke of brush upon canvas, the exquisite memory of us. I long to paint you again and know you yet more with every new glance until no part of you is foreign to me.
“Blimey.” Molly stared once more at the sketches as doubt in the heat of evidence evaporated away.
April 1832
Chambers of Brancaster and Lane Solicitors, New Street, Leicester
“Please tell me you have finished, Edith. My neck is stiff, not to mention other parts of me which are quite bereft of feeling.”
“Just wait and let patience soothe your pain. I’m nearly done.” Edith stood back and shook her head.
“I take no confidence from your words when they are undermined by your gestures.”
“It is the background. It is too dark. I need something, a wash of white perhaps, to offset the depths of blue. There, yes. Yes.”
“Good, then we are done.” Josephine slipped from the stool and stretched, holding the small of her back, her chest expanding, while she found new rest in Edith’s arms.
“We will never be done.” Edith drew Josephine into her body, pressing as if to never let go. “Tell me that much, Jo.” She breathed her words between soft kisses brushing against the delicate curve of Josephine’s neck.
“Are we quite content that we locked the door?”
“How you worry.”
“And how you don’t. We will surely invite speculation if we spend too many evenings working late. Please, Edith. We must take care, lest these passions overwhelm us. The choice for our future is not ours to make—you know that as well as I, if not more. It is time for us to see reason. Surely it is time. We must…” Josephine’s words were lost with her breath in the moment.
Edith guided Josephine to the floor and her dress soaked up the drips of paint expanding in wet circles of colour. She untied the ribbons of soft corset, releasing a gasp from Josephine to escape into the evening air.
“I hate that I need you so.” Josephine’s words, sharp with pain, cut at her lips to speak.
“And I hate your words. They wound me, and one day”—Edith slipped her hands underneath Josephine’s skirt—“they will end my life more surer than a knife or gun or burning pyre.”
Josephine let out a cry as Edith found the place which spoke more clearly than words could ever do.
“Are you finished?” The archive assistant arrived to fidget at her side.
“Yes, thank you.” Molly managed a tired half smile. “What time is it?”
The assistant gathered the papers together. “Seven thirty.”
“Right.” Molly reached for her things, casting a last look at the scrapbook that held fast within its pages, tight-lipped, a secret passion that history with all its casual omissions had complicitly kept.