‘I’m sure that’s not what it was,’ I reply, holding her gaze. ‘You’re a beautiful woman now, and I’m sure you were then.’
‘Thank you, but I wasn’t at my best … anyway. That’s a strange thing to be talking about to you of all people, Jess. So, we rubbed along for a while longer, the restaurant was getting there, and then I met Dan. Dan was one of the building inspectors from the council, who used to come around and check up on us. He started calling in for a cuppa, and a chat, and his inspections became a bit more friendly, and … well. We’ve been married since 2011, and this little surprise I’m baking is his first child.’
She has that way of talking about her Dan – an easy-going sense of affection – that tells me she’s happy with him. That she’s happy with the life they’ve built together.
‘It wasn’t sudden, or dramatic, or anything like that,’ she adds. ‘He just became a friend to start with. Joe really liked him, and I think he knew that if he wasn’t around, things might develop into something more. It was weird, actually … and a bit sad. It was as though he saw he could trust Dan with me, and decided to move on. I wasn’t happy at first. There were some harsh words – I think I may have told him I wasn’t a parcel, to be passed from man to man … that wasn’t fair, of course, but I was hurt, and scared, and worried about life without him.’
She clearly doesn’t like this memory of herself, and I reply: ‘That’s understandable. Maybe … maybe you were hoping he’d stay still? And maybe you were upset that he seemed to want to hand you on, even though you probably knew it was for the best?’
‘Maybe you’re right. I always knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t stay forever – I knew he was still restless and he still had unfinished business. And maybe I also felt guilty that I’d kept him for so long. He was too decent a man to abandon me when I needed him most. Adrian was a complete shit, but I’ve been lucky since, having men like Joe and Dan in my life.’
From the corner of my eye, I can see Dan hovering in the next room, cleaning tables and occasionally looking over at us. He’s as tall as a tree and has neat blond hair. He gives me a little wave that makes me smile.
‘Did you keep in touch, after he left?’ I ask, hoping to add even a scrap more information to our dwindling stockpile. The next stop, according to our cards and letters, is London, and it will obviously be even more of a challenge to find him in a city of that size. People go missing there all the time, swallowed into the belly of the beastly metropolis.
London is where it could all go horribly wrong, and I don’t want to face up to that possibility just yet. I’d rather sit here, in this calm and gentle place in a soul-stirring land, talking to a woman who clearly once loved Joe very much.
‘For a little while,’ she says, nodding. ‘He didn’t just do a runner – he wasn’t made like that. He would call every now and then, check on my health, ask about Jamie, see where I was up to with the restaurant and with Dan … He was in London, I know that much. But the number I had for him went dead sometime in 2008. It was after a conversation where I told him I was seeing Dan, properly, and for ages afterwards I wondered …’
‘If that was why he stopped contacting you?’
‘Yes. Which I realise now sounds arrogant. And anyway, I’m sure it’s not true – he sounded delighted for me, genuinely. Maybe even relieved. I did do a bit of digging, trying to track him down, so I could invite him to the wedding, but I didn’t get very far. I’m happy to root out what I have for you, if that would help?’
I tell her that yes, it would, and there is an awkward moment where we are all silent. The only thing tying us together is Joe, and we know more than she does about 2008. That was when Belinda saw me and my mother in town, and told Joe about it.
I don’t know if he’d been holding out hope for all that time – half expecting me to come back into his life once I was well again – but once he heard that, things seemed to change. The number that Belinda and Geraldine had for him, the one that had been written on his letters to me and which of course I had already tried, half terrified in case he answered, was disconnected. Joe himself, it seemed, was disconnected.
‘I think he’d be so thrilled for you right now, Geraldine,’ I say, as she shuffles her bulk around on the sofa. ‘I think he’d be so happy to see you like this. And to see Jamie all grown up and doing so well. He’d be proud.’
‘I like to think you’re right about that. So … what are you going to do? And why didn’t you try and find him sooner, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘It’s a long, sad story,’ I reply, shaking my head, ‘all about people who thought they knew best, and really didn’t. But hopefully we will find him, and I’ll tell him all about you.’
‘That would be lovely. I’d so like to see him again one day … thank him properly for everything he did. Anyway. That’s one for the future. In the meantime, though, where are you all staying?’
We tell her the name of our lodging house, and she pulls a face that confirms our suspicions that we managed to find the worst possible B & B in the whole of southern England.
‘That’s … unfortunate. Would you like to stay here? We still have the caravan. It’s hidden away in the private part of the garden. Jamie used it when he was going through his rebellious period, and, well. I just didn’t want to part with it somehow. It was like a remnant of the best of times and the worst of times.’
Belinda and Michael look to me to take the lead, and I let the thought filter through my mind for a few moments before I make my decision.
Once they drive away, promising to come and fetch me bright and early the next day, Geraldine lends me some essentials, and escorts me with a torch through a deliberately wild patch of meadow flowers and dense oak and hazel. There, tucked away in their private paradise of woodland, is a battered old caravan. Jamie has painted this as well, in bright shades of yellow and blue and green that I can’t see clearly in the torchlight.
‘It’s the ocean,’ she explains as she opens the door and follows me inside. ‘He’s forever finding new ways to paint it. I thought he was going to join the navy at one point …’
I glance around, taking in the shabby but clean upholstery, the fold-up table, the obviously long-unused kitchen. She gives me as much of a hug as she can manage in her enlarged state, and says: ‘That was his room, over there. It’s so wonderful to meet you at last, Jess – it’s like I’ve finally found Joe’s missing half. I just wish I could have known Gracie as well.’
I wave her off, and sit, quiet and still in the torchlight. This place is silent apart from the night-time noises of forest animals and the distant sound of the waves, and try as I might I can’t picture Joe here.
I look at the picture – the one from the pub – and imagine his life in Cornwall. I imagine mine, back home. We were both so very alone, in our own ways.
I remember the notes, the ones I am carrying in my bag. Emergency medicine from Dr Joe.
I find the pale pink envelope of ‘Read Me When You’re Lonely’, and open it, turning the torch so it holds us in a golden spotlight.