There were two more videos after the snowball fight, the first, a sweeping shot of the scenery. She almost deleted the second one without looking at it, because the thumbnail showed a rather unflattering view of the underside of her chin, but when she pressed play she heard Ben talking, so she laid it down on the coffee table and listened.
What ensued was a ten-minute conversation. The visuals were terrible – it was obvious she’d hit the record button by accident after taking the previous video – but the conversation was gripping.
He was talking about why he’d given up photography, how he’d come back home to look after his niece … and then the whole story came out. His sister’s death. His guilt. It was heart-wrenching. Lili wanted to climb inside the phone and give him a hug.
And it was clear the Lili who’d been there at the time had felt the same way, because the scene went dark and the words become muffled. Lili guessed she’d slipped the phone into her pocket. His voice became louder, even though his was talking more softly, giving her the sense that the two of them had got closer. A lot closer.
‘Don’t …’ she heard herself say, and there was so much tenderness, so much intimacy in that single word.
And then there was silence for a few moments, and his voice come out, hushed and ragged, ‘This is a bad idea.’
Lili’s stomach swooped. She had a gut feeling of what was going on, but it almost felt too intimate to be listening in, as if she was snooping on someone else.
‘I know … but can we just … you know, stay like this for a moment?’ And then there was only breathing, soft and shallow, until the video ended.
Lili closed her eyes. Oh, she didn’t know if it had been a good idea to watch these. It felt as if she were seeing herself in a parallel life, but one she would never be able to find her way back to, one she would never be able to inhabit. Even so, she couldn’t stop scrolling through, exploring that forbidden landscape.
There were coaches, two girls and a guy with a car she didn’t recognise, a motorway service station. A cluster of pictures of musical instruments in what looked like someone’s study, but might have been inside the same hotel featured a few shots earlier. And then she came to another video.
It was the sound that grabbed her, right from the first split-second she heard it – music. But not just any music, a lone violin, and she recognised it … Lili covered her mouth with one hand, her body juddering with silent sobs.
It was her!
She was playing the violin! In the bandstand in Kensington Gardens, literally just a few hundred metres away from Justin’s flat. And she was playing with as much love and joy as she had done before she’d ever set foot in that blasted music school. The sound made her insides soar but also tore her to shreds with each pull of the bow.
How had she done that? She’d never played again after he’d dropped Octavia off the balcony of his flat, even though he’d paid to have her repaired and restored.
Every time she’d looked at the violin after that, she’d only been able to think of the way he’d looked at her that night. The stranger, she’d called him. A visitor who’d appeared more and more often after they’d tied the knot, even on their honeymoon. But it still took her years to work out he wasn’t a stranger at all, that it was therealJustin. It was the one who charmed and love bombed and made everyone adore him who was the decoy.
In the very last seconds of the very last video, the other her – Alice, as Lo had told her she’d named herself – looked Lili in the eye, very seriously, and spoke to her future self. ‘I’ve got one last thing to say before I finish this video diary and begin to rebuild my life, and it’s this … Don’t walk away from him again. Don’t forget Ben.’ Her face crumpled with emotion, then she took a breath and carried on. ‘He’s the sweetest, kindest, most loyal man you will ever meet. You messed up once not trusting him. Don’t make the same mistake again.’
Lili sat there, stunned, her heart aching. When she thought about the man in the videos, she didn’t doubt what she’d told herself one bit. But that was only half the equation wasn’t it? Ben might be Ben, and he might be all the wonderful things she’d said he was, but she wasn’t Alice. She wasn’t the woman he’d spent the last week with. She wasn’t even sure she was a shadow of that person.
After sitting there thoughtfully, the mug of tea going cold in her hands, Lili put it down, stood up and went into her bedroom,where she pulled some things from the bottom of the wardrobe until a hard, shiny case was revealed.
Octavia. Or as much of Octavia which had been able to be salvaged and rebuilt, which wasn’t much. She placed it on the bed and then, with shaking fingers, opened the catches and let the lid fall back onto the duvet. She almost closed it back up again, but then she heard the strains of music in her head, the music she’d heard on the video of her busking in Kensington Gardens.
It was quarter to four, so she picked up the violin and headed for her tiny bathroom in the centre of the flat, the only room without a window and probably the most soundproof. Once the door was firmly closed behind her, she drew a breath, not allowing herself to think too hard about what she was about to do, closed her eyes, and lifted the violin to her chin.
The first note was shaky. As was the second. But it was bearable. It wasdoable.
Faster and faster her bow arm began to move, falling into familiar patterns and rhythms, and then her whole body began to join in, swaying and dipping as she gave herself over to the sound. The notes hit the tiled surfaces and bounced back, reverberating through her, until all that was left was her and Octavia and the music they were creating together, filling every atom of her body and soul.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Now.
BEN STOOD AT the back of Invergarrig’s one and only art gallery, a softly fizzing glass of champagne in his hand. Only last year this space had been yet another of the town’s gift shops, stuffed to the rafters with tartan, shortbread, and ‘Nessie’ soft toys, but now it housed paintings, pottery and various crafts by artists from all over western Scotland. And tonight was the first night of an exhibition by a local photographer – him.
Both Norina and Alice … Lili … had talked to him about not turning his back on something he loved, and he’d taken it to heart. He’d thought it was travel that brought him alive, the rush of the adventure, but now he realised it wasn’t the trains and buses and hotels that had brought him excitement. Doing it with Lili had been the adventure, doing it with someone he cared about.
All he’d ever really been doing all those years he’d skipped around the globe was running away. Cat had accused him of that and she’d been right all along. He’d let his father drive him from his home, and guilt about Cat had kept him running. But Lili had shown him what it was like to be brave, to run towards one’s life,even if you weren’t sure what the future held. And so he’d dug his camera out of the bottom of his wardrobe and had started taking pictures of his hometown, of the surrounding mountains and glens.
The best of his efforts, both recent and over his years of travel, were now proudly displayed on the bare white walls of the gallery. In pride of place was a large print of a young woman in a ruined church. Ben walked towards it, his heart heavy. He’d dithered about including the photo of Lili in the exhibition, but it had been one of his best. He’d avoided looking at it properly while they’d been setting up, but now he made himself stand right in front of it and study every play of the light, every shape and angle.
It transported him back to the moment it was taken. His memories of that day were so vivid that he could almost feel the humid July air on his skin, hear the soft trickle of the fountain nearby. And Lili … It was almost as if he could feel her in the room with him.
‘Nice photo,’ someone said behind him. A woman’s voice.
