The buzz of a bee is caused by their wings beating 200 times per second – 12,000 times per minute.
It’s only my fourth day at Elderflower Grove, and if I thought about it, I’d notice I’ve been systematically earlier every day so far. It’s a whisker past eight o’clock now, and I’ve only left it this late because I had to pick up bagels on the way and the village shop doesn’t open until eight.
I’ve never had a job where I was eager to get to work. Even in jobs I’ve enjoyed, I’ve still hit the snooze button a few times and groaned and grunted my way to work in a caffeine-fuelled haze, but everything feels good this morning. I walk along empty pavements and grassy verges glisten with early morning dew. There’s not even a dog walker about – it’s just me and the birdsong.
Something’s different as soon as I approach Elderflower Grove. Yesterday, the driveway was covered with spiky weeds that had a narrow path trodden through them, but now it’s clear, and Carey’s cut down the nasty, thorny, stinging weeds and painstakingly trimmed around patches of celandines, daisies, and sprawling buttercups because the bees might feed on them. He’s even left the dandelions, and no one likes dandelions, apart from bees.
The driveway – slightly downhill from the manor house, and wide enough to accommodate three cars side by side – is so much bigger than it seemed and seeing it makes me feel all glowy inside. Carey is so … thoughtful. Helpful. I didn’t think men could be like that, and it makes me want to throw my arms out and spin around in circles on the newly uncovered driveway, but I restrain myself by only walking up to the house with a little bit of an extra skip in my step.
I dump my bag and shrug off my coat and leave them on one of the rooftop benches and say good morning to the bees before I go down the spiral staircase into the house.
‘Good morning!’ I shout as I emerge onto the upper landing area, my voice echoing loudly through the empty home.
‘Sorry,’ I say to the nearest wall. ‘Just trying not to startle him.’
And then I realise I’m talking to a building and hurry on.
I go down the other two flights of stairs and find my way to the kitchen, and it’s mere minutes before Carey appears from the bathroom, rubbing a towel over his just-shaved face.
‘Good morning, Queen Bee,’ he says with a bright grin. ‘You’re early.’
For just a sec, I think he’s going to bend down and hug me, and the seconds stretch on while we hover, but then he swiftly sidesteps and goes around the island in the opposite direction, and I set about slicing and toasting two bagels.
When they’re done, Carey sets two coffees down on the kitchen island and puts two plates ready, side by side instead of opposite like we sat the other day, and I use a spoon to drizzle honey over the bagel halves and watch it soak in.
‘Cheers.’ He knocks his bagel against mine.
‘It takes twelve honeybees their whole lifetime to make one teaspoon of honey. Thank the bees, not me.’
He grins around the piece of bagel he’s just ripped off with his teeth. ‘I still don’t like them, but thank you, bees.’
‘Thanks for doing the driveway. You didn’t have to do that.’
‘You’re in and out all the time now. It’s no fun walking through brambles and god knows what else. Although I’ve missed a trick by not saying it wasn’t me and leaving you to wonder if the ghosts did it.’
‘Last I checked, ghosts weren’t big on garden tools.’ I flash my eyebrows at him and use my bagel half to indicate to his grey marl Tom and Jerry top. ‘Good T-shirt choice today. One of my childhood favourites.’
‘Mine too,’ he says with a grin.
‘You’ve become the highlight of my day.’ I suddenly realise what I’ve said and start backpedalling fast. ‘I meant your T-shirts. Your T-shirts have become the highlight of my day. Just your T-shirts.’
I try to hide my red cheeks behind the coffee mug as I take a swallow, but it hits the back of my throat at the wrong angle and makes me start coughing.
Why do I go to bits in front of this man? Yeah, he’s good-looking and he seems nice, but it’s like it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten how to act around a man who isn’t from a Jane Austen novel.
‘You looking at my T-shirts has become the highlight of my day too.’
We’ve both gone red for no reason. It sounds like flirting even though it isn’t, and I really need to change the subject. ‘So, where are we going to start today?’
‘You really don’t have to help me, you know. You’ve got all those bees to deal with, and I’ve got the rest of the summer to find something. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’
‘Firstly, the bees are fine. I checked them all yesterday, and I don’t want to disrupt them unnecessarily, and secondly, you’re our only hope of saving Elderflower Grove. That is the most important thing. If there’s something in this house that proves you’re an heir to the estate, and you solemnly swear not to turn it into a theme park, then that has got to be worth trying for.’
‘I swear. Solemnly.’ He says it in such a solemn voice that it makes me giggle.
‘Besides, you’re looking for something like paperwork, and there’s a distinct possibility that something like paperwork could be kept in the library.’
It’s his turn to laugh out loud. ‘You really are only in it for the library, aren’t you?’
My grin matches his. He’s not wrong there.
***
‘I have looked, you know,’ he says as we go up the stairs to the second-floor landing. ‘There’s an office-type room upstairs with a big desk that looks like a place where someone might’ve done paperwork, but there’s nothing there, nothing in the bedrooms, and other than that, there’s the rooms with doors that won’t open. The house feels cold and closed off to me, like it doesn’t want me here, even though I’m trying to save it.’
The door on the second floor is plain aged wood, and when Carey leans past me to push it open, it gives a heavy-sounding creak and swings back inch by inch, and the scent of musty paper filters out of the chilly room.
‘I’ve never been in a place that had its own library before.’
‘Me neither.’ He edges around me to reach a pull cord with a dangling crystal on the end, and a chandelier illuminates the room with bulbs that aren’t nearly bright enough.
‘Oh. My. God.’ I unintentionally do my best Janice-from-Friends impression. ‘I know there are unexpected things in Elderflower Grove, but this tops the lot of them.’
The library is ridiculous in the best way possible. The floorboards under our feet are warm mahogany, and covered in such a layer of dust that I can still see the footprints from Carey’s earlier visit, but it gives way to a gigantic room, so tall that I have to strain my neck to see the ceiling, which must go all the way up to the third floor. At the opposite end, there’s an open-tread spiral staircase leading up to a second storey with a balustrade around it, so the library must cover both upper floors of the manor house. Dark mahogany shelves are the same wood as the floor and the staircase, and there are matching ladders to reach the highest shelves. ‘This is incredible. Can you imagine owning a house with a library bigger than the actual local library? It’s like the Beast’s castle, but better.’
‘Can you imagine someone wanting to tear this down?’
‘We’re going to find that proof.’ I point an assertive finger at him. ‘That rotten councilman is not having all these books.’
Although I do realise why he seems so daunted. There must be thousands of books on these shelves. If something was hidden here, how would we ever find it?
I trail my fingers along the spines on the nearest shelf. ‘I wonder who’s lived here over the years. Josie Garringham was in her nineties – that’s an unthinkable amount of time for us, but someone must’ve been here for centuries before her. Families. Look at this.’ I move up a shelf and pull out a copy of Sherlock Holmes, and immediately choke on the cloud of dust it brings with it. ‘This looks like a first edition. How many other books are there like this? This house must hold so many stories.’
‘Literally.’
I give him a sarcastic look. ‘You know what I mean. It’s seen so many things over the decades, and now it’s left here to rot. All of these books are just sitting here, waiting for what? A bulldozer to arrive? Moths to get them? Mould to finally break through the walls? They deserve better than this. Elderflower Grove deserves better than this.’
Somewhere above us, there’s a creaking noise, and my eyes meet Carey’s and we dissolve into nervous laughter.
‘This house seems to agree with a lot of things you say.’
I cross the aisle and look at another shelf. ‘Jane Austen! Look at this, Josie had all of Jane Austen’s books, multiple editions!’ I pull out a copy of Pride and Prejudice, a hardcover released in 1995 with Colin Firth on the front. ‘I knew she was a woman of good taste.’ I carefully brush the dust off it and give it a gentle shake. ‘Oh, you poor darling, shut away for all these years. I bet you were once read by a little girl who took you outside and sat reading by the lake, dreaming of Mr Darcy emerging from the water …’
And then I realise I’m talking to a book and ram it quickly back onto the shelf. When I pluck up the courage to look at Carey, he’s biting his lip in a valiant effort not to laugh. ‘I like books, okay?’
He finally fails in his attempt and lets out a warm laugh. ‘I know. Me too. I just don’t often have full-blown conversations with them.’
I resist the urge to poke my tongue out at him.
‘So what is it about Jane Austen?’ Carey asks as I wander around, rucking up threadbare rugs that need a good wash, brushing away cobwebs that stick to my fingers, and dusting off dust bunnies lurking in the corners of every shelf.
‘It’s a snapshot into a different time of life.’
‘A time when no one had first names?’
I burst out laughing.
‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘It’s all Miss Dashwood and Miss Bennet and Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham. Not one of them has a first name.’
Despite the fact he’s insulting my favourite author, I’m actually quite impressed that he knows Jane Austen well enough to be able to name characters. ‘Men were a different breed back then. They treated women like ladies. They were chivalrous and respectful and they looked after us.’
‘Yes, because women were unequal, weren’t allowed to work or earn their own money, and it was all about dowries and fortunes. A woman’s sole goal in life was to do embroidery, play the piano, and find a rich man. That’s not aspirational.’
‘It’s the principle. Even in this day and age … I want someone to treat me with respect. To look at me like Fitzwilliam Darcy looks at Elizabeth Bennet.’ I say it pointedly to prove that they do have first names. ‘And I love the glamour of the Regency-era balls and the way everyone did the English country dances. It’s a time that doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s my lifelong dream to attend a party like that.’
‘Where you have to “take a turn around the room” to attract a man’s attention in the hopes of securing a dance, and a man is forbidden from introducing himself but must be introduced by a chaperone, and then if he asks you to dance, you’re not allowed to say no?’
‘It was romantic and chivalrous. I even have a Regency dress that I’ll probably never get to wear. It was fifty quid in a charity shop a few years ago. It takes up loads of space, and my mum keeps saying I should throw it away, but I can’t bring myself to. I fell in love the moment I saw it.’ My cheeks burn red because I’m sure he isn’t even vaguely interested in a dress I should never have bought that does take up a chunk of much-needed wardrobe space. ‘And the letters too. I love the romance of the letters. What could be more romantic than the letter Captain Wentworth writes to Anne Elliot in Persuasion? No one communicates anymore, but back then, it was all horse-drawn carriages delivering carefully written fountain-pen letters. Nowadays if you try to communicate with a guy, you’re lucky to get a text that says “’k” back in response, or a text with the poo emoji in it. You know – how was your day? His response – one poo emoji. On a bad day, three poo emojis.’
He’s laughing so hard. ‘Okay, I’ve been off the dating scene for a while, but I can honestly say I’ve never sent a poo emoji to a lady. Or at all, actually. And I think I should speak up on behalf of all men who don’t communicate via the medium of poo emojis.’
I cannot stop laughing either. ‘You must be more verbose than my ex then, because he loved a poo emoji.’
‘I can see why “ex” comes into it.’
‘Oh, if only it had been as simple as the overuse of poo emojis.’
‘Yeah, poo-emoji-related break-ups don’t traumatise you for life.’ He references our toast a couple of days ago. ‘And we really have talked about poo emojis an abnormal amount now.’
Even though any mention of my ex never leaves me with a smile on my face, somehow giggling with Carey makes it feel less raw than it usually does.
I trail my hand along another shelf, wishing there was enough time to clean this library up and give it the love it deserves, but if Elderflower Grove is to be demolished in November … what would be the point?
‘If I ever own this place, Kayl, I’ll get it restored and throw a Jane Austen–themed ball just for you,’ Carey says. ‘And I promise there won’t be a poo emoji in sight.’
‘Aww, that’s probably the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.’
‘Feel free to call me Mr Paxton and curtsey every time I enter or leave a room. I wouldn’t complain, even though Mr Paxton sounds more schoolteacher than dashing gentleman in this day and age.’
‘It’s a good job these books are valuable or I’d throw one at you. Where’d you find Stephen King in this lot?’
He points out an aisle of books that contains horror titles. I wander further and find every sort of book you can imagine, from novels in a selection of genres to non-fiction manuals, cookbooks, craft books, and everything in between. It’s like entering a Waterstones from decades ago.
‘I feel like I should start pulling out books to see if the wall opens and there’s a secret passage.’
‘I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of that. There is a passage though.’
‘What?’ I spin around to face him in surprise. ‘I’ve known you for four days and you’re staying in a place with a secret library passage and you’re only now telling me? Four days, Carey!’
He grins. ‘A, forgive me. B, I’ve had other things on my mind, for example, five hundred jars of honey. C, it’s not secret, it’s on the blueprints, and D, it’s jammed shut and I can’t get it open from either side.’
I follow him to the furthest end of the library where, tucked into a corner, there’s a small wooden door that really does look like an entrance to Wonderland and I’m surprised not to find a ‘drink me’ potion nearby.
‘It’s stuck fast,’ Carey says. ‘There’s no lock, so the wood must’ve swollen and got stuck in the frame. It’s un-openable. If it still won’t open in a couple more weeks, I’ll get my chainsaw on it and cut my way in.’
I reach out and try the door handle, and although it’s a bit stiff, the wooden door opens with a slow creak.
I raise an eyebrow, my voice dripping with teasing pride. ‘What, this door?’
His mouth is open in shock. ‘How did you … I’ve been pushing at that for weeks!’
‘Maybe you haven’t got the biceps …’ I trail off because I’ve made the mistake of looking pointedly at his biceps, and he’s too close for that, and all I can see is smooth, tanned skin where his T-shirt sleeves are taut around his upper arms, which are a lot more capable of door-opening than my flabby ones. I swallow hard. ‘You must’ve loosened it. The weather’s been dry for weeks now, maybe it’s had a chance to dry out and un-swell.’ I’m pretty sure ‘un-swell’ isn’t a word, but Carey’s biceps and his fresh mint-and-apple aftershave has short-circuited my brain and I can barely remember where we are, never mind what my name is.
‘Yeah, maybe.’ He sounds dubious.
‘Thank you!’ I call to the house, just in case it is listening.
‘Do you think that’s where I’m going wrong? Not being polite enough to a building?’
‘Elderflower Grove isn’t just a building.’ I reach out and pat the doorframe. ‘It’s a keeper of hundreds of years of memories. You blundering in with your muscles and threatening it with power tools isn’t going to do any good.’
‘So the solution is to be nice to it? It’s a building.’
‘It’s a better solution than menacing it with a chainsaw. And you’re clearly not off to a good start.’
He mutters as he gets his phone out of his pocket, switches on the torch, and shines it past the open door. It does nothing but illuminate cobwebs and a narrow passageway. ‘What do you know, the secret passage is literally just a passage. You disappoint me, Elderflower Grove.’
‘He didn’t mean that!’ I say to the house and smack his arm for good measure.
The passage has the musty, damp smell of a room that hasn’t been opened for many years, and I wonder what we’re going to find in there, other than several species of spider previously unknown in the UK. I hover by the small doorway, but Carey’s already taken a step inside and at my hesitation, he holds a hand out to me.
Secret passages in movies are always fun and exciting, but this one seems decidedly inhospitable and not the kind of place you voluntarily go into.
‘Hang on.’ I grab a stack of books from a nearby shelf and use them to prop the door open in case it decides to slam shut and trap us inside, and then I put on the light on my phone as well and step in gingerly. I don’t intend to take Carey’s hand, but when a man that gorgeous is holding a hand out, it’s impossible to refuse, and his warm fingers close around mine.
It’s dark and hollow and I’m almost positive I can hear the ‘ooooh’ of a ghost, but it’s probably just my own intake of breath. The wooden floor underneath us feels crumbly and makes splintery noises with each step, and both our phone lights don’t do much to illuminate the tight passage.
‘Be careful, this floor doesn’t feel good.’ Carey shines his torch downwards, but most of the floor is buried by a layer of indistinct grime.
We go a few more steps before the passageway widens, and in the beam of our torchlights, I can make out the silhouettes of … furniture.
Furniture? In a secret corridor?
There are semi-circular uplighter lamps at intervals around the wall, and he looks for a switch and reaches over to press it without letting go of my hand. The room slowly flickers into … well, light would be pushing it, but you can almost hear the fizzle of electricity as the light bulbs ping on one by one, filling the small room with the tonsil-clenching smell of burning dust as the bulbs get warm. Each light casts a yellow glow upwards, onto sumptuous but faded plum-coloured walls, slowly brightening the small room.
I honestly expect to see a skeleton sitting in the chair. It’s the kind of secret room where you’d find a skeleton sitting in a chair.
‘It’s a reading room!’ My hand falls out of his in relief. ‘There’s a reading room attached to the library. It’s a scientific fact that nothing bad has ever happened in a reading room.’
The air is cloying and has the mildewy stench you’d expect from something so shut away, and it’s tiny. I reckon Carey’s about six-foot-one, and his head is at an angle to avoid the ceiling. There’s another moth-eaten circular rug in the centre of the floor, a two-seater sofa, and two armchairs, each with a Tiffany lamp on an end table beside it. There are stacks of books on each table, and a load more piled on the coffee table in front of the small sofa.
I reach down and pull out a yellowed newspaper with curled edges and faded print, a crossword half-completed by a dried-up Biro pen. ‘1979, Care.’ I hold it up to show him.
He’s looking through the book stacks on one of the end tables. ‘Did Josie have a husband?’
‘Not that I know of.’ I think about it. ‘No, she was known as the “lonely old witch”. Our parents used to tell us we’d end up like her if we didn’t find a man. She couldn’t have.’
‘Only this looks very … his and hers. Look, by this chair, there are horror books and true-life war stories, and by this chair, there’s … Sophie Kinsella, which is a lot more modern than that crossword.’ He taps the dust-covered book that’s facedown on top of the pile nearest to the right armchair.
‘Josie liked Sophie Kinsella. I knew she was a woman of taste,’ I repeat. ‘Everyone loves a good romcom. Something to unite generations.’
‘Well, she must’ve liked to mix things up because she also had George Orwell on the go.’ He points to a bookmark inside a fraying book on the opposite table. ‘These to-read piles don’t look like they belong to the same person.’
He’s got a point. It looks like a reading nook for a couple. An armchair each, a sofa to share. But who? Surely the village would have known if Josie had a partner … ‘If she was seeing someone, this is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine curling up together and reading? Picking a book from your own library, bringing a cup of tea into your reading nook, and sitting here in a warm glow with the person you love? Talk about relationship goals.’ I laugh and spin around, but I step backwards and shriek as my foot plunges straight through a crumbling floorboard with a scraping, splintering sound.
‘One way to ruin the romance.’ Carey offers me his arm to hold on to as I pull my foot free, leaving my trainer still stuck in the hole. I put my foot down on the dirty rug as he crouches to free my shoe as well, the wood so decayed that he can break it away with his fingers. I pull at the shoe while he pushes and eventually it comes out with a tearing pop and the momentum sends me sprawling backwards. My leg hits the armchair, which knocks into the table and sends the Sophie Kinsella book tumbling to the floor. I pick it up, but the page is lost.
‘I’m so sorry, I lost your place,’ I say to the house itself. ‘That was an accident, please don’t strike me down.’
As I dust myself off and brush splinters from my shoe, Carey’s looking at me with a quirked eyebrow from where he’s still crouched on the floor.
‘That could be a ghost’s reading material!’
He doesn’t say anything, but he shines his phone light across the floor and examines the wood. ‘Deathwatch beetle in the floorboards. No wonder it feels so dodgy.’
‘Deathwatch?’ I repeat. ‘That sounds friendly and welcoming. Why is there never a “warm and cuddly” beetle?’
‘A beetle that comes in and says, “Hello, I’ll be your beetle for the day, what can I do to make your stay more comfortable?”’
My laugh sounds even louder in the small room. ‘Exactly!’
‘Well, this is the kind of beetle that destroys floorboards beyond repair, and if anyone was trying to save this house, they’d have a large bill to have their flooring torn up and replaced.’
I like how he seems to know something about everything. He’s outdoorsy and obviously an expert at gardens, but he seems able to do everything inside the house too, and he’s fearless when it comes to walking down dark, possibly haunted passages.
‘So where does this lead to? You said you’d been trying to get it open from the other side too?’
‘That office I was saying about earlier. Big desk, filing cabinets, looks like the kind of place someone would keep paperwo— Kayl, there’s something down here.’
‘Don’t tell me, a gang of “I want to kill you” beetles? Poisonous beetles? Beetles crossed with wasps or something pleasant like that?’
‘No, some sort of … box.’ He pushes his hand through the hole in the floorboard and I shine my phone light downwards. There’s a cavity underneath, and I can see something dull and metal. He tries to get hold of it, but the hole is too small, and he pulls his wrist out, wincing as splinters catch.
He looks around for something we can use, and I pick up his hand and brush the splinters off without really thinking about it. ‘There must be an easier way. There’s no way a ninety-two-year-old put this here and then laid the floorboard. We’re missing a way in somewhere.’
I shift aside the rug and use my knees to push an armchair back … Ah ha! ‘Or we could just use this handy trapdoor.’
‘Well, would you look at that!’ He makes a noise of joy. ‘Secret passages and secret trapdoors. I love this house.’
The small ring handle on the trapdoor has a loop of wool tied around it, and when Carey crouches down again to pull it, it lifts without any fuss. ‘Almost like it wanted to be opened.’
He plunges his hand straight into the pitch-dark hole without even looking, ignoring the catch of cobwebs, and feels around, straining until he can reach the metal of the tin and pull it out inch by inch.
He stands up and brushes the dust off the lid carefully, revealing a rusty metal logo of a gardening tin you’d keep packets of seeds in. He’s looking at it like it’s about to spontaneously shatter at any moment. ‘This could be a memory tin, couldn’t it? This is the kind of thing you’d find, I don’t know, mementos of a childhood in, right?’
I nod.
‘And it’s in a hidden hidey-hole in a hidden room. It’s the kind of place you’d hide something you didn’t want to be found …’
I nod again.
‘So this could be it, right?’ His voice is quiet and he seems genuinely emotional, and even though I’ve wondered about his motivations over the past few days, I can see this means something to him. He’s fearless when it comes to walking down dark corridors or plunging his hands into dark places that look more like a bushtucker trial on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here than somewhere you’d willingly insert body parts, but he’s staring at the box like he’s hoping it might unexpectedly open itself.
Eventually he shakes his head and holds it out to me. ‘I can’t do it. You open it.’
I take it from him and sit down in the dusty armchair with the tin on my lap. ‘This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah. I mean, I’m not searching for some great grandmotherly love or anything – I’m lucky in that respect, I grew up with two incredible grandparents – but this … this was my father’s last wish. The one thing he’d always wanted to do and never admitted until it was too late. I owe it to him to find out if my hunch about Josie is right.’
I bite my lip, mainly to stop myself prodding for more information. Carey seems bold and outgoing, but he’s guarded and I get the feeling that he doesn’t open up much. It feels important that he wants me to do this.
I’m holding my breath as I pop the lid open and lift it stiffly back on its rusty hinges, revealing a lot of yellowed envelopes.
‘They’re unsent letters. They’re not stamped or addressed, but the envelopes are all open.’ I start rifling through them in the neat row they’re in inside the tin. ‘They’re to someone called Guillaume.’
One letter after another has the name scrawled across the envelope in looped handwriting, and none of them are sealed, so I pull a letter from the first one, and start reading it out.
June 23rd, 1984
My dearest Guillaume,
I’m on the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The deacon was gifted some beehives and has personally requested my services to take care of them. I never imagined I’d get the chance to visit your home country. It was a dream for so long, but we never could, of course. The city is beautiful. Talk about a summer to remember.
The bees are well-behaved. They have been very nice to me and their honey is excellent. The deacon has been kind enough to gift me several jars. You would’ve liked it. The hum of the hives is my constant companion since you left.
I keep looking down at the square in front of the cathedral and thinking I see you looking back at me, but then I blink, and it’s never you. I’m convinced I’m going to find you here. The universe wouldn’t allow me to be in your country without somehow throwing us into each other’s path. Around every street corner, I expect to bump into you. Every tall chap in a queue at the boulangerie, I am certain it will be you. Why isn’t it you, Guillaume? Why am I living out a dream we shared, but alone? Is this where you went? Back home? I can’t see anywhere you could have gone in England. I feel like you would’ve come home, but maybe I am wrong.
I seem to have been wrong about a lot of things in my life.
Forever love,
Josie
‘Notre Dame …’ I run my fingers over the crisp page. ‘She kept bees on the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral. That’s incredible. I’ve always wanted to go there.’
I tuck the envelope back into the tin where it came from because they look like they’re in some kind of order and I don’t want to mess it up. ‘That’s so sad. Who was this Guillaume? Why doesn’t she know where he is?’
I take another envelope and pull out the letter.
July 9th, 1987
My dearest Guillaume,
I’m writing from the grounds of the Taj Mahal. It’s so very beautiful. I’m spending the summer as a beekeeper here. Whoever thought my bees would bring me the opportunity to travel the world and meet so many people? It’s so hot here, the heat is unbearable some days, and the nights are stifling. It makes me think of you – the way you always loved the warm weather, and I preferred the autumn and winter. We always wanted to travel, and now I travel, but without you. It is wrong, somehow. The joy I should take from it is negated by the fact you are not with me.
I know you’re unlikely to be here in India, but I look for you wherever I go, just in case. I keep thinking I’ll find you one day. Maybe in the most unexpected place. I can’t imagine my life ending without ever seeing you again. I’m old now, 64 this year. Do you still remember my birthday? I make you a cake every year on yours, but I don’t even know if you’re still alive. In my mind, you are always the age you were when I last saw you. I can’t remember what it was like to be young. I can’t remember a time before you.
Forever love,
Josie
Carey’s crouched down beside me, his hand resting across my knee as his little finger keeps the place in the row of letters in the tin. ‘These are heartbreaking. She was heartbroken. Whoever this guy was, he must’ve left her with no explanation.’
I put that letter back inside the envelope and move Carey’s finger so I can return it to the tin and take another one.
December 20th, 1990
My dearest Guillaume,
Instead of a far-off place, today I’m writing to you from the kitchen. It’s nearly Christmas. My eleventh without you. I haven’t bothered with any decorations again. This house used to be a wonderland, but without you, it feels pointless. I’ve been drinking tonight. One of those vintage wines we were saving for a special occasion. I don’t think there’ll ever be a special occasion again. I should be tipsy and happy, but I’m drunk and angry. How could you do it? Did I mean nothing to you? Did our home and our life together mean so little that you could walk away without a second thought? Without even so much as a word? The more time that goes by, the less I understand.
Maybe I’ll get a Christmas miracle this year and you’ll come home.
I used to decorate because I thought you’d be disappointed if you came back and the house wasn’t decorated. I keep making bargains with fate – if I do this thing or that thing, some law of the universe will bring you back to me. It never works. The bargains are only ever one-sided. Fate has no interest in me.
Even my beloved bees are quiet now.
Maybe I will go away for a while. I travel to take my mind off you, but half the time, I’m scared to leave the house for too long in case you come back while I’m not here. I’ve left the spare key in our usual spot.
Wishing for a Christmas miracle and a hangover cure. It’s been a long time since I indulged this much. There is nothing to celebrate any more. Happy Christmas, indeed.
Forever love,
Josie
I return the envelope to its place and put my hand on my chest. My heart feels like it’s breaking on behalf of Josie Garringham. I’m on the verge of tears and have to swallow hard and blink as my eyes readjust to the low light in the room. ‘She’s looking for him, searching for him. Writing letters she’ll never send because she doesn’t have anywhere to send them to.’
‘So she hides them in a box under the floor where no one will ever find them?’
I look down into his blue eyes, closer than they have been up until now, and we blink at each other for a few long moments. Carey looks touched and I’m stupidly emotional over decades-old letters written by someone I didn’t even know, but Josie’s heartache is tangible in every inch of Elderflower Grove, and these letters start to explain what I feel here. Beauty but sadness. Love but abandonment. She must have lost the love of her life and had no idea where he’d gone.
‘Maybe the house wanted us to find them …’ I whisper. Speaking in a normal voice feels wrong. The air is heavy with heartbreak, like opening the tin has reopened old wounds for the house itself, and Carey’s fingers slip from the tin to my knee and tighten gently, and without losing eye contact, his mouth starts to quirk up at one side, the start of a smile, and I’m smiling back despite the sadness those letters have evoked.
And then he overbalances where he’s crouching and only manages to stay upright by clasping a hand on my knee and one on the arm of the chair, sending up a cloud of dust that chokes us both.
He pushes himself upright and walks across the rug, and I put the lid back on the tin. These letters feel valuable somehow. Josie’s jewellery and ornaments and other possessions are scattered around the house as they were when she died. Nothing of monetary value is hidden, but these are.
Carey shoves a hand through his hair. ‘Do you think she was married? Because I’ve checked the archives and there’s no record of a marriage.’
‘I don’t know. She was known as a spinster. I’ve never heard mention of a partner of any kind, and you know what the gossip mill is like around here. If Josie’s husband had left her, people would know, wouldn’t they?’ I bite my lip as I watch him pacing. ‘I’m sorry it’s not exactly what you were hoping would be hidden in this tin.’
‘Well, no, but it’s all part of her life. The mystery of who she was. We have to read the rest of those letters. They might explain something. They might mention a baby.’ He looks between my face and the tin. ‘It doesn’t have to be today.’
‘I want to read them with you. I’m part of this now. We’re in it together.’
‘Maybe we’ll read on and find this ended happily. He could’ve come back and she hid them there because she didn’t want him to see them.’
‘No.’ I shake my head even though I like his optimism. ‘She lived here alone, with the villagers calling her a witch and children making up horror stories about her. It wasn’t the life of a happy woman. I used to see her when I was younger, talking to her bees on the rooftop. She always seemed so strange – she wore floaty dresses and danced around the roof with an imaginary partner. Maybe it was him – maybe she was imagining Guillaume. She sang songs to the bees and spoke to them for hours. My mum used to say she was lonely and had no one else to talk to.’
‘And now we know something happened. There’s a story here. And I don’t know about you, but I’m desperate to find out what happened to Guillaume.’
I nod so hard I’m surprised my head doesn’t fall off and wobble across the floor.
‘There must be a lot more to Elderflower Grove than we think, and we are going to find out before they raze this place to the ground.’ Carey offers his hand to pull me up, and we head back towards the library, the tin clutched tightly in my other hand.
I always thought there was more to Josie Garringham than the ‘old witch’ tales that followed her around Little Kettling, and I can’t help thinking the mysterious recipient of these unsent letters might be the reason.