And I cling to him, knowing that I’m really clinging to us, wishing so many things, and most of all that I knew how to stop it all feeling so much like a last, hopeless goodbye.
He doesn’t say goodbye to me when, first thing on the final Friday of November, with everything we need to have done at Doverley somehow suddenlydone– all in the can, along with our blood, sweat and tears – he leaves the estate, speeding up the driveway along with everyone else heading to the coast for the weekend’s shooting.
Felix has gone too.
‘For moral support,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ Ana told him. ‘But you’re not billing anything.’
I’m all alone at Doverley. The trailers have gone, all the sets inside have been taken down too, the rigs and props removed. Even the base has been dismantled and towed away: another episode of this estate’s history consigned to invisibility.
I watch Nick’s car disappear into the drizzle from Doverley’s uneven front step. I’m breathless. I saw him heading out from our room and raced down to catch him. Now that I haven’t, I don’t consider calling him to say what I need to.
It hurts too much that he’s left like this, without saying anything.
I’ll be glad to leave Doverley myself now. It feels empty without him here any more.
Hollow and very lonely.
Phil’s on his way to collect me though. He insisted on taking the day off to come, and has just given me an updated ETA that’s two hours away. We’re going to stop in Cambridge on our way home, for lunch with his mum and dad. It will be lovely. It always is with them. I’d be looking forward to it a lot more if I wasn’t feeling so poleaxed by Nick having given up on us, just as I’ve realised that I can’t let myself do any such thing.
Turning from the bleak morning, I head back into the house, and upstairs to finish packing. It doesn’t take me long; I collect my last bits from the bathroom, keeping that shower cap, and stow it all in my case, along with my copy ofThe Bomber Boys– pausing, as I always have and always will, to look at Robbie’s smile.
You’re only worried because you’re going to have to finally give me an answer tomorrow,Tim told me he was about to say.
I have no memory of it.
Or of Iris’s laughter in response.
Oh, do be quiet, Robbie.
There’s so much I haven’t seen, not only of then, but of Iris’s years with Clara after the war.
And perhaps Tim’s right.
Perhaps my lanterns really are protecting me from those things that are not mine to recall.
Or perhaps my role in my great-grandmother’s life finished the moment I saved it, stopping her from catching that bus.
Or maybe I’m simply no longer searching for what’s passed because I’m ready at last to be here again, moving into my own unknown tomorrows – which, unlike all of them, I have the privilege of being able to count on stretching ahead of me, hopefully for decades yet to come.
But, before I go to those tomorrows, I return, one last time, to the attic.
I haven’t been up this week. I haven’t been able to bring myself to return. And I’ve been angry at myself for never bringing Nick.
Iris would have brought Robbie, I’m sure.
She wouldn’t have hesitated.
Wouldn’t have wasted their time.
Stepping over her and Clare’s creaking threshold, I go to their bureau, and, putting Iris’s hairgrip back where I found it, feel my body loosen in release.
I’m done with it all, at last.
I lay my palm on Clare’s nail polish stain, and look into the mirror, deep into my own hazel eyes staring back at me.
Then, in the enveloping silence, I head to the window, my focus settling on the damp expanse of trodden grass where the base and planes have all stood.
