Mum’s taxi arrived not long after we’d returned to the cottage and Amelia and I walked her to the car, our arms wound around each other’s waists.
‘Twins?’ the driver enquired with the kind of delight we used to get all the time when we were younger. It was dark enough for him not to have seen the difference in our ages, which her illness had made more noticeable lately.
‘Kind of,’ Amelia said.
‘Absolutely,’ I countered.
I’d have loved to have sat up for half the night reminiscing with my sister about the past, but I could see that the evening had wiped her out. It was hard to reconcile how arbitrary FAD was with Amelia’s memories, leaving the ones from twenty years ago virtually intact while obliterating what had happened just a few hours ago.
‘I’m going to get an early night, Lexi,’ she said, pausing at the foot of the stairs as though summoning up the energy to scale Everest rather than climbing to the upper floor.
‘Do you want a hand?’
She shook her head, still as fiercely independent about accepting my help as ever, although she happily leant on the carers who visited the cottage each day.
She paused on the second tread and turned back to face me.
‘I’ve left a little something for you on the pillow in your old room,’ she informed me. ‘An early wedding gift.’
‘Should I wait and open it with Nick tomorrow?’
Amelia shook her head. ‘No. This one is just for you. And before you tell me it’s too much, it isn’t, and I really want you to have it.’
I was intrigued enough to want to follow her up the stairs right there and then, but she insisted I wait until later.
‘Phone that fiancé of yours. From the number of times you’ve checked your mobile this evening, you’re clearly having withdrawal symptoms about being away from him for just one night.’
I accepted her teasing good-naturedly, mainly because she knew me well enough to realise I was indeed missing Nick. It was our first night apart in months and I scarcely waited for the sound of Amelia’s bedroom door to click shut before calling him.
‘I am not enjoying this,’ he said.
‘Charming,’ I heard Doug say in the background over the easily identifiable soundtrack of a pub.
‘I meant being apart from you,’ Nick said into the phone, dropping his voice a little lower so that his friend couldn’t join in our conversation. I didn’t want to keep him long, so we only spoke for a few minutes, but just hearing his voice centred me.
‘I’ll see you in church,’ he murmured softly as we said our goodbyes.
‘I’ll be there,’ I promised, feeling suddenly emotional. ‘I’ll be the one in the big white dress.’
‘I’ll find you,’ he replied. ‘I’ll always find you.’
I’d actually forgotten all about the mysterious gift Amelia had left for me by the time I went to bed. But I saw it the moment I flicked on the lights in my old bedroom.
‘Oh, Mimi,’ I said on a sigh, when I saw the item sitting squarely in the middle of my pillow. I was shaking my head as I crossed to the bed, knowing now why she’d already warned me that she wouldn’t take the gift back.
I lifted the engraved locket from its spot on the pillow, the chain falling like a silver snake into the palm of my hand. The locket had been Amelia’s since her eighteenth birthday and was our grandmother’s last gift to her. It was too much to accept, but Amelia was one step ahead of me, for there was a note beside the pillow.
Yes, this was given to me by our grandmother and now I’m giving it to you. Call it your something old, or your something new – but not your something borrowed, because I want you to keep it. Wear it for me and I’ll always be right there beside you… even when I’m not.
Tears were already falling down my cheeks as my trembling fingers fumbled awkwardly with the clasp before the locket sprang open. I smiled nostalgically as I looked down at the photo of Nick on the beach, taken on the day we’d met. I tilted the locket to inspect the second image. My breath caught as I stared down at one of my favourite photographs of Amelia and me. It had been taken three years ago on a breezy day in Central Park. One of us – I couldn’t remember who – had cracked a daft joke just as the shutter clicked. The photo caught the moment and somehow it captured every best memory I had of us. Two identical faces, both smiling the same smile as our hair tangled together in the wind; we were the same, but still uniquely and wonderfully different. I hadn’t seen this photo in years and had no idea how Amelia had managed to find it, but I was very glad that she had.
I already knew that in a burning house, this locket was the thing I’d rescue before all others, and that I’d be wearing it with pride and love at my wedding the next day.
36
It should have been raining that day. The sky should have been ominously grey with lightning spearing across it like a scar. But the sun was shining through the bedroom window, giving no clue that this would be the day when the world would change forever.
I’d woken, as I always did, locked safely in Nick’s arms. I could never remember inching towards him in the night, but every morning I’d find myself right there, curled into the curve of his body.
