‘I would like to drive slowly past the Royal Festival Hall,’ she said.
‘So you won’t be exiting the vehicle?’
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I won’t be.’
I need to drive past one last time. I need to see the place that connects me to Bernard, to that part of my life. I need to see it again one last time before I leave.
Alexandra was tempted to visit her aunt and uncle too. To say goodbye to Belle and explain why she’d left so abruptly and not been in touch since—she’d been like a sister to her, after all—but she knew it would be easier to simply disappear. For all she knew, they’d as good as forgotten about her already.
29
PRESENT DAY
Ella sat and digested everything Alexandra had told her. It was a lot—a story of two young people who’d been manipulated into believing that their life together was never meant to be. Fate had been cruel to her grandmother, of that she was entirely certain, but what she hadn’t told her was how they’d found their way back to each other.
‘May I ask you a question?’ Ella said, softly. ‘And please, I’m not making any judgement, I’m just trying to understand the past.’
Alexandra nodded, her eyes bright as she sat forwards in her chair. She was younger than the grandmother she’d known her entire life, but there was something about her, something that still reminded Ella of the photograph she’d been carrying around. There was an enchanting youthfulness to Alexandra that had most certainly taken Ella by surprise.
‘When you and Bernard were reunited, why didn’t you look for my mother? Didn’t you both want to find her?’
She received a smile in response. ‘Ella, if we were younger, perhaps we would have, but it felt too late by the time we found each other again.’
Ella’s eyebrows rose in wonder. ‘Too late?’
Alexandra laughed. ‘By the time we reconnected, we’d both been married and widowed. It wasn’t a few years but a few decades between when my father sent me to Hope’s House and when I found my dear Bernard again.’
‘Decades?’
‘Oh, yes, we were quite a sight when we were at last reunited,’ Alexandra said, her eyes sparkling as she sat back in the armchair. ‘We must have looked like a pair of star-crossed lovers, but we were old and grey, the pair of us. There was still something about him that took my breath away, or perhaps in my mind I still saw the young, dashing man that he once was.’ Alexandra paused, smiling, although now with a faraway look in her eyes. ‘You see, when you get older, you don’tfeelold. You still feel like someone thirty years younger, or at least I certainly do. It’s just the mirror that deceives you, making you look so much older than you are inside.’
‘Would you be so kind as to tell me how you met, after all those years? What was it like?’
Alexandra stood then, walking to the window again, her knuckles brushing the glass as she lifted a hand. Ella wondered for a long moment if she wasn’t going to say anything, if perhaps she’d asked too many questions, but when Alexandra turned, she knew that she was finally going to hear the last part of her grandmother’s story.
‘Promise me something, Ella.’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
Alexandra walked over to her and sat down, taking her hands and folding them on her lap as she held them. ‘I want you to follow your heart, and not let anyone tell you how to live your life.’ Tears filled the older woman’s eyes as Ella stared back at her, blinking and finding herself nodding. ‘Someone once asked me what advice I’d give to my younger self. An innocent question at the time, of course. But I’d tell her with all my heart not to let anyone stand in the way of what she wanted to do, and not to fear the reaction of someone she loved.’
Ella squeezed Alexandra’s hands. ‘I don’t think it was so easy for you then. Not like it is now, for my generation. I can’t even imagine being sent to a home for unmarried mothers.’
‘Perhaps not, but I wish I’d tried harder to resist. Turned to those who loved me and asked them for help, perhaps. Trusted that they loved me enough to do anything for me.’ Alexandra sighed. ‘I don’t often dwell on the past, so forgive me. No one likes to hear an old lady moan.’
‘Maybe not,’ Ella said. ‘But I would very much like to hear about how you and Bernard crossed paths again. I’m sure it’s terribly romantic.’
Alexandra’s smile lit her face. ‘Would you believe that it involved music?’
‘Given your history, how could it not?’
Alexandra wiped her eyes, and Ella hoped it hadn’t all been too much for her.
‘How about we call it a night,’ she suggested. ‘It’s been quite the day, hearing all about you and your Bernard, but I can always come back tomorrow? I’m in Greece for another week, so there’s no hurry.’
Alexandra’s eyes met hers. ‘You will come back?’ she asked, reaching for her hand and holding it tightly. ‘I don’t want to lose you when I’ve only just found you.’
Ella blinked away her own tears then, seeing how much it meant to Alexandra to be reunited with her, with a family member who she’d clearly long since given up hope of meeting.
