‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mrs – Mrs, erm ...’ She blushed.
‘Please, Tawrie, call me Harriet. I mean, you’ve been inside my head, literally, so I think we’re way past Mrs Wentworth!’ She tried to lighten the moment.
‘Harriet, thank you.’
She liked her nature: open, unassuming, sweet – very much, in fact, like Bear. She was pretty too, naturally so, her stance confident.
‘I was going to say I think you’re incredible; remarkable. Ed has told me bits of what happened, I hope ... hope that’s okay to say,’ she stuttered. ‘I don’t know how you got through it, how you did it. I mean, I’ve had my heart kind of, well ...’ Again that blush and Harriet could see that Bear’s feelings, not least surrounding the complex nature of their beginning, was a shared thing.
‘So I guess this brings us nicely to the final odd thing,’ she interjected. ‘The fact that my son says he’s in love with you after only knowing you for five minutes!’ She laughed, trying to make light of a situation that felt precarious to say the least. It was, however, the elephant in the room and it felt right to mention it. ‘In fact, he said that after one unremarkable chat with you, he would have gone anywhere with you. He just wanted to be with you. It really struck me. I don’t think I’ve felt that way, never had that flash of something that had the power to knock me off my feet, to change the course of my life.’
‘It was the same for me. It is the same for me,’ Tawrie confessed and her face softened at the admission. ‘It’s the same for me. And I’ve tried very hard over the last month or so to switch it off, to walkaway. I’ve even made plans for my future, but it’s not that easy.’ She smiled, suggesting this discovery was far from an issue.
The way she repeated herself suggested to Harriet that it was a realisation.
‘Can I ask you, Harriet, about this?’ She held up the words Bear had transcribed.
‘Yes, of course! Let’s go sit in the kitchen.’ She pulled out a chair for the young woman and sat opposite. ‘Gosh, feels like I’m at an interview.’ She laughed and Tawrie swallowed.
‘That’s what Ed said. We sat here and played Uno.’
‘I thought you were going to say he’d cooked for you and I would actually have fallen off the chair!’
‘He bought crisps, but couldn’t find a bowl to put them in.’
Harriet liked the imagining of it and loved the insight into their time together. It sounded unpretentious, honest and the basis of a friendship that she knew from her own experience, as she pictured Charles at home in his apron, was the best foundation on which to build a long-lasting love. Charles ... for whom she would shuck off this cage around her heart, and for their sons too, who deserved more than a mother and wife who wore the thinnest layer of armour that no matter how tiny, invisible almost, was still a barrier.
‘What part of the diary did you want to ask me about?’ She gripped the sides of the chair, arms braced as if this might enable her to better withstand anything that was uncomfortable to hear.
‘Okay, it feels weird.’ Tawrie held her eyeline.
‘For both of us, trust me!’ She pulled a wide-mouthed face. ‘I think it’s best we treat it like the removal of a Band-Aid – do it quick!’
Harriet smiled weakly. Her words written in that little green book had been like a Band-Aid: the thing that she reached for to help her feel better, to cover up the wounds, to aid her healing.Something, she now realised, she had no further use for, as the wound beneath, the cuts once so deep, were now healed.
‘Here we go.’ Tawrie drew breath. ‘“I study other couples, surreptitiously of course. I stare at them through my sunglasses, either as we walk or I sit...There’s one couple in particular who have caught my attention...Always together, engrossed in one another, come rain or shine, as if the whole world exists just for them and whatever is going on around them is merely the backdrop to their love affair. I feel drawn to them, admiring of their apparent devotion and envious of it too. He has thick curly hair, a stocky man, kind eyes, handsome, and she’s petite, dark hair too, but straighter. She has big brown eyes and seems coy, smiling gently, as if her happiness is a precious thing, a secret that she carries close to her chest. They fascinate me. Forever arm in arm or hand in hand. If they slow or stop, she places her head on his shoulder. As if only this level of contact will do. They are like one person, split down the middle. Golden.”It’s incredible to me that you’re talking about my parents!’
‘I was indeed.’ She remembered them clearly, even writing the words; it had been like holding up a mirror to her and Hugo and all they had lost.
‘I think about them walking, taking the same path that I do each day, walking in my dad’s footsteps.’
‘I understand.’ Harriet thought of her mum, who she missed dearly, and knew that to place her hand on a handle she’d touched, sip from a cup that had felt the curve of her lips or slip a blanket around her shoulders that had brought her mother similar comfort, meant more than she could express.
‘Shall I carry on?’
‘Yes, please.’ Harriet settled back in the chair. It wasn’t quite as painful as she’d envisaged; hearing her words brought to life.
‘This next bit is hard for me. I’ve read it over and over a hundred times today, and it’s like looking at something that’s horrible,scarring and yet compelling, rubbernecking my own parents’ misfortune, kind of.’
‘Would you like me to read it out loud?’
Tawrie nodded and slid the sheets of paper across the tabletop. Harriet took a beat to scan ahead, familiarise herself with her own jottings, thinking again how lucky the couple were to share what, at the time, had been beyond her reach. ‘If you want me to stop at any point just say.’
‘I will.’
She read slowly, deliberately. ‘“The news spread like a lit fuse...travelling along its twisted, looping route, gathering gasps and cries as it went along the way. The worst kind of whisper as each fragment of news was added to, as the bigger picture revealed itself.”’They exchanged a lingering look, both understanding what came next and the magnitude of it. ‘“There’s been an accident...”’she whispered.‘“A man went overboard.”’Oh Tawrie, are you sure you want me to carry on?’
The sight of the young girl’s tears falling from her reddened eyes was almost unbearable to witness. The girl nodded and rolled her hand, indicating for Harriet to continue.
