It’s almost a year since I last saw Ivy. I can’t quite understand how it’s almost a year. Since then I’ve experienced four seasons without her. Her grave has grass growing over it, the arch where were used to go has ivy growing over it, ivy I planted and will probably get in trouble for because it’s invasive or something. I’ve had a Christmas where I thought about what gift to get her, and then realised I couldn’t buy her anything because she wasn’t there.
I thought of you a lot. I thought of you spending Christmas with people you didn’t know well, I thought of how you’d probably lose yourself taking photos, which I’m pretty sure you did. I thought of how it must feel to not have your tethers anymore and where you’ll choose to be next.
You’re welcome here in Puffin Bay. Any time you need a place to be, there will always be here. I hope you know how much I mean that.
I’ve been writing like crazy these last couple of weeks. Some days I wonder if Ivy’s ghost is hanging around the room where I usually write, the one with a view over Elderwood Sound and the expensive houses with their own jetty’s. There’s one for sale and I’m considering having a look round because now more than ever, I feel like I need a permanent tether. Somewhere to call home. Somewhere to come back to when I decide to wander.
If I decide to wander.
I have a date on Saturday. I haven’t actually met her before – a mutual friend, Fleur, suggested that we’d really get along and rather than say no which is what I’d have done before, I agreed.
I think I surprised myself more than anyone.
I have no idea what to wear. I think she’s called Eloise and she knows I’m a writer and my name, so we can always talk about that. Fleur’s shown me a photo and she’s attractive, which is a start. I haven’t told my brothers and I’ve sworn Fleur to secrecy although she’ll tell Thane, her partner, but he won’t say anything because he barely speaks.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
How are you? How’s photographer life?
What happened with the frog person?
Love,
Gully
Dear Gully,
I’m dying to know how your date went. What was she like? Where did you go? Are you seeing her again? I’m currently based in the middle of nowhere – so by the time you get this you’ll possibly be on date number ten with a marriage proposal on the way.
I’m okay, if feeling a little weird when I think too much about things. I miss Ivy – I don’t think that will ever stop and I find myself having conversations in my head with her which probably makes me sound insane but I guess I’ve made her part of my internal voice and that does help, although it makes me miss her more.
I feel guilt because I’m relieved that I no longer have to be on edge about my parents. With both, it was a waiting game. My dad passing was inevitable. He wouldn’t have wanted to have lived his final days like that and I felt anger on his behalf that he had to. My mother didn’t care enough to ever stop drinking and while I could blame her for not loving me enough to want to live, I don’t think that was the case. She loved both Ivy and me, I always knew that.
Now I don’t have to worry about getting that call that something has happened to one or the other of them. That call has happened and I can carry on with my life knowing I’m not going to have to put it on pause to deal with their health or their death.
That relief makes me feel guilty, but I also know they wouldn’t want me to feel guilty, you know?
The frog guy – that’s a cute story. He’s a freelance wildlife photographer and ended up on a mission with a woman who was on a hunt to find this frog in the Amazon that was apparently extinct, only someone thought they’d seen it.
He joined forces with her and they fell in love while finding the frog – you might’ve read the frog stuff in the press. They decided to go their separate ways – she was off looking for another rare species now and he goes where the work takes him, but then she had an accident – a snake bite, I think, so he’s rushed to be with her. I’m expecting a proposal, which makes my heart happy.
I’ve also had a few dates with one of the crew I’m here with. That’s been a good distraction. He’s a nice guy, not sure he’ll be my forever and I don’t think I’m it for him, which is for the best, but we’re having fun.
I’ll need that fun as a distraction. I can’t believe we’re approaching a year since Ivy died. Some days it feels like it’s only just happened. Other days it feels like it was decades ago since I last saw her. Time’s a funny thing.
Meeting you at the coroner’s inquest seems like it happened in a film I once watched. It doesn’t feel real, seeing you again didn’t feel real. Ivy’s funeral felt like it was happening to someone else, that it wasn’t me who was a pallbearer and someone else carried her coffin down the road to the church.
I’ll still be here on the anniversary and I’ll be between projects. I’m thinking of doing something that she would’ve done, something that takes my breath away. I can look at life through her eyes. Although I should add a disclaimer that I was never the risk taker that Ivy was, so my idea of my breath being taken away wouldn’t be the same as hers.
I’ve seen online that your new book is being ‘hotly anticipated’ and that you’ve had four books optioned for a Netflix series and they’ve already started the pre filming work – I feel like I’ve just copied and pasted that from the internet. You must need your ego deflating after all that.
What are you working on now? Another series book or a standalone thriller? I used to love listening to Ivy talk about herideas. She phoned me in the middle of the night once to tell me about an idea she’d had – an hour she was on the phone for. I think that book becameWhispers before Dawn– which I haven’t read and I should. Maybe I’ll read that in the next few days when we have downtime.
My job out here is different from most of the crew and I’m documenting the documentary being made. The photos I’m taking are mainly of the cast and crew rather than the nature stuff they’re intrigued with. It makes me feel as if I’m not really in the crew sometimes, because I’m the only one with this weird role.
Did you go to see that house? I’m intrigued, because I can’t imagine you living anywhere apart from that lighthouse. It seems fitting – a crime writer living in a lighthouse for some reason. Are you ever scared living there? How is it when it storms?
I still feel strange thinking of storms because of, you know, the night she died. I don’t mind them. I’ve never been one to be scared of storms and neither was Ivy. Our dad had an interest in meteorology and when we were little girls he’d tell us stories about the weather – not great stories, it has to be said, because our dad didn’t really have an imagination so he’d start off like it was a fairy tale and it’d end up being a scientific lecture. I think Ivy reckoned she was more powerful than the storm because Dad had always told us we could outwit anything.
