“Oh, that’s the best part,” he says, thumbing through the pages. He stops about halfway through, holding it closed against his chest with his finger tucked between the covers to mark the page. “I thought she looked familiar, so we did a little digging to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Come take a look.”
He opens it, turning it to face outwards.
On the left-hand page is another photograph, almost as old, held in place by ornate cardboard corners. It’s a picture of a family: a man, a woman and two young children – one a baby in the woman’s arms, one little more than a toddler. The adults are both looking at the camera – but I can only see her.
It’s the same person.
It’s Iris.
And that’s my grandmother’s old photo album.
My mouth moves, but no sound comes out. My hand tightens around Hal’s, but I can’t move.
What is my grandmother doing with a photo of Iris?
“This,” Charlie says, pointing to the man in the picture, “is Jack Clark. He came from Yorkshire, fought in the Great War and afterwards he went back to the village where he was born. He met a girl who’d moved there to work, and they married and had a family. This –” he taps the picture again, this time pointing at the toddler – “is Sibyl Clark. She grew up, married a man called Alec Downing and had a daughter, Emily.”
Oh my god.
The world spins and the air in the room thins.
Hal is already staring at me, already there too.
“That’s not possible. It’s just not. How?”
Emily Downing was my grandmother.
Which means Iris Campbell, our Iris, Albie’s Iris…was my great-great-grandmother.
Iris and Albie, Flora and Hal.
Not just their story.
Ours.
Hal’s mouth is open and his eyes are wide – and everyone is suddenly talking all at once…and I have to check, but yes, the noise is definitely outside my head and not inside it. It’s not me.
Coincidence on coincidence on coincidence.
When there’s that many, it starts to feel like maybe it’s something else.
All the pieces that had to move, all the stars that had to align; all the paths that had to cross, to join, to meet…
All to find them, out in the dark; to find us.
“Are you okay?” Hal’s voice cuts through the rest of the noise. Of course it does, because he’s in my head. But when I look at him, he’s as pale as I feel.
I just point at the door. It’s all I can manage.
He glances back over his shoulder at his grandfather, who’s dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief and now busily examining the photo album with Charlie and Felix. “I think maybe that’s a really good idea. Come on.”
His hand and mine entwined, his past and mine entwined, we slip out of the library, out through the quiet lobby and into the gardens and, without saying it or even really thinking it, we head for the maze, one hand on the hedge, letting it lead us further and further into the heart of it.
Their photos, their letters, didn’t tell their story – they needed us to finish it. Not to end it, but to complete it. To bring together all the parts and all the pieces of it – of them. To solve the puzzle that was each of them and both of them. And solving that meant I got to solve me too. Or to start to, at least.
One hand on the hedge, one hand in Hal’s.
Maybe it takes a lifetime to solve a person, maybe more. It took more than that to solve Albie. Maybe we’re not even meant to be solved in the end. There are no right or wrong answers. We are not simply one thing or another; not two halves that never quite touch. We are not written in the binary code of ones and zeroes, on or off, up or down, black or white. Manic or depressed.
Maybe we’re all the whole of a compass, complete – and we deserve to be remembered that way.
Him, them…
Me.
And that? That’s enough. How could it not be?
I let my hand drop from the hedge. I don’t need to keep it there any longer.
Hal looks nervous. “We’re not going to get lost, are we?”
I shake my head and lace my fingers more tightly through his, pulling him closer.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “I think I know where I’m going now.”
I never intended to learn so much about the First World War. I never intended to write about it at all, really. I set out to write a story about a girl with a history…and then real history came and got involved. It does that.
The Pieces of Ourselves started as an idea about a girl running away, colliding with a boy running towards, and how that meeting might change them both. In Hal’s case, it’s the past he’s running towards, hiding from his present in it. Flora, meanwhile, is running from her past self – or an image of it that she needs to learn to see more clearly.
I’ve been in Flora’s position, and I know how it feels. I have tried to draw from some of my own experiences in writing her. That’s why she means so much to me, and why it was so important to tell her story with honesty and with hope – because there is always room for both.
I have no experience of war (and definitely not of the First World War) to draw from, so for Albie’s story I have relied on reading and research. I read a lot about shell shock – which we would now broadly recognize as a kind of PTSD – its effects…and its so-called treatments, which were for the vast majority of patients ineffective or even downright cruel. As someone who has needed a little help and support with their mental health several times over the years, it was hard and often heartbreaking reading. The condition was not well understood, and many never received the right kind of help, or any at all.
But today, for those of us – like Flora, like myself and like so many others – who need a similar sort of understanding from time to time, we are much more likely to find it. Every conversation we have about mental health helps to normalize it, to increase our knowledge of it. Most of all, there is help – which can now come in a wide range of forms.
Flora’s mental health is not her story: it affects her story, but it’s only one small part of it. She’s so much more than just that. We all are.
Many people have contributed to this book and made it possible – some in small or surprising ways, others in much bigger, more obvious ones. But without them, it simply would not exist.
My deepest thanks go to my editor at Usborne: Stephanie King, who with her patience, careful reading and feedback, her support and her guidance, has taken Flora’s story and turned it into something far better than I could ever have imagined. Whenever I got lost in the middle of it all, the light at the end of the tunnel was always Stephanie, waving a flare. If this book has a heart, it is hers.
Rebecca Hill, who listened to what was at first a very vague idea and helped to shape it into something that could honestly be called a story worth telling.
Juliet Mushens – for knowing exactly what’s needed and when, always. Liza DeBlock, for a level of admin efficiency that shows the rest of us up. (Or me, anyway.)
Stevie Hopwood, for unending enthusiasm and ideas. The Hopwood couldn’t have been named after a better person.
Sarah Stewart for her copyediting skills, and Anne Finnis and Gareth Collinson for their eagle-eyed proofreading.