“That’s just it, though,” I reply, sitting up, and pushing my hair out of my face so I can see him properly. “We can’t, can we? Not really. Say I do come to Florida. Say I come for Christmas — or even as long as New Year. I’ll still have to come home again, eventually. All we’ll be doing is delaying the inevitable. All we’ll be doing is making it harder when we have to say goodbye. I’m … I’m just not sure I can do that. I’m not sure I want to.”
I stop talking, realizing I’ve done it now: I’ve well and truly destroyed the whole ‘living for the moment’ illusion, and revealed myself as exactly what I am: a girl who’s scared of getting hurt.
It’s true, though, isn’t it? The fact is, I don’t want to be just a chapter of Elliot’s life. I want to be the whole story. And I know it would be greedy of me to expect a happy ending, but the truth is, I want that too.
“You’re not sure you want to spend Christmas with me, or you’re not sure you want to say goodbye?” Elliot asks. “I just … I need to be very clear what you’re saying here, Holly, because it kind of sounds like you might be breaking up with me?”
“I’m not,” I reply, hating the wary look in his eyes, and the fact that I’m the one who put it there. “Well, not yet, anyway. But, I mean, we’ve been breaking up since the day we met, Elliot, haven’t we? Because we know it can’t last. We live on different sides of the world. And me coming to the States with you for a week or two isn’t going to change that. We’re still going to have to say goodbye.”
I chew my bottom lip anxiously, not used to making emotionally charged speeches. Or waiting for a response to them.
Before that response can come, though, there’s a sudden flurry of activity as the birds in the surrounding trees all take off at once, the quiet of the hillside shattered by the arrival of Maisie Poole, who comes trudging up the hill towards us.
“Oh, there you both are!” she says brightly, as Elliot and I exchange surprised looks. “I thought I’d find you two here!”
“Maisie? What on earth?” I say, wondering if the rumors are true and she really does have spies working for her — because that’s the only explanation I can think of for her certainty that she’d find us on top of this hill.
“Budge up,” she says, plonking herself unceremoniously between us, and placing a large leather handbag on her knee. “I have something to show you.”
I risk a glance at Elliot over the top of his head as she opens the bag and rummages inside it, but he’s too focused on Maisie for me to be able to decode the look on his face, or figure out what he might have been planning to say to me before we were interrupted.
I watch impatiently, willing Maisie to hurry up as she continues to search through the contents of her bag. I’m half expecting her to produce a couple of lamps and a hatstand, like Mary Poppins, but instead she pulls out a brown manilaenvelope, from which she produces an old, black-and-white photograph.
“Ta-da,” she says, smiling triumphantly as Elliot and I lean forward to take a look at it. “The ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, photographed in front of Bramblebury Village Hall, in 1943. Recognize anyone?”
I squint down at the faded photo, which shows around a dozen women standing on the steps of the hall, all of them wearing the same uniform as the mystery woman in Elliot’s photo. It takes me a moment to spot her, and then Elliot and I see her at the same time.
“Look! There she is!”
The mystery woman is standing towards the back of the photo, on the very top step. Her smile isn’t quite as wide as it is in the photo with Elliot’s great-grandfather, but she’s still recognizable from her heart-shaped face and distinctive widow’s peak.
“Evie Snow,” Maisie says, as proudly as if she’s just conjured her out of thin air. “It says so on the back. Look.”
She flips the photo over and shows us the list of names, written in faded ink, by someone who’s presumably long gone by now.
“Evie Snow,” breathes Elliot, taking the photo carefully from Maisie. “The mystery woman has a name.”
And what a name it is, too.
“Surely that can’t have been her real name?” I comment. “She sounds like a character in a book rather than an actual person.”
Elliot’s eyes meet mine over the top of the photograph, both of us thinking the same thing.
“I’m afraid a name is all she has,” Maisie interrupts, clearly relishing her role as messenger. “I had a quick look on one of the library computers — I’m very clued up about the Internet, you know — and there were no Evie Snows in Bramblebury, either on the National Registration that happened in 1939, or the nextcensus, which was in 1951. They didn’t bother during the war, you know; too busy trying to stay alive, I expect.”
“Right. So how would we go about finding her, then?” Elliot asks, undaunted.
“Oh, you can’t,” replies Maisie cheerfully. “Well, you could try the usual routes, I suppose: births, marriages, deaths; that kind of thing. But I’d be surprised if you manage to find anything. I know it’s a bit of an unusual name, but she wouldn’t have been the only Evie, or the only Snow in the country. And that’s assuming she never changed it by marriage.”
“What about the Ministry of Defense?” suggests Elliot. “They’ll have records of members, surely?”
Maisie nods.
“They do,” she agrees. “But they’ll only supply them to next of kin.Isshe next of kin, do you think?”
She looks at him eagerly, hoping for some fresh gossip.
“No,” Elliot says, sounding as disappointed as Maisie looks at this. “No, she isn’t. I don’t know who she was. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to find out, either.”
