The old man’s eyes were fixed on my face in a way that made me uncomfortable.
‘I’m talking to the woman I loved,’ he said unguardedly.
I took a step backwards, unsure if I’d made a colossal mistake and had returned to the wrong grave. Except that was my cardigan right there in his hands. One of us might be at the wrong graveside, but it certainly wasn’t me.
‘I’m sorry, but I think you must be at the wrong plot. This is my mother’s grave. Elizabeth Harker. I’m sure she isn’t the person you’re looking for.’
The old man stared at me for a long moment. He looked weary and worried at the same time. He cleared his throat several times before speaking.
‘Actually, she is,’ he said carefully, before turning what I’d thought was an innocent mistake into a live grenade. ‘Your mother was the love of my life; the woman I should have married, but who I stupidly walked away from.’
For several moments I just stood there, staring back at him in horror and disbelief, shaking my head in denial.
‘I’m afraid you’ve made a terrible mistake. This is my mother’s plot, and she is most definitely not the Elizabeth Harker you are looking for.’
Whatever reaction I’d been expecting, it wasn’t to see his features soften as he studied my face.
‘You look just like her.’
My mouth opened and closed. For the first time in my life, I fully understood the expression lost for words.
The man took advantage of my silence and took a step towards me.
‘Your mother is the person I came here to see. And you, of course.’
‘Me? Why do you want to see me?’ My voice, when I finally found it, sounded about an octave higher than usual.
‘Because you are my daughter.’
The words hung in the air, and I was back to shaking my head again, but there was something in his voice that cut through any hope that this man was lying.
‘You?’ I said, my voice quivering with emotion. ‘You’re the man who walked away from us thirty-five years ago? Who abandoned us for someone else, someone better?’
The man flinched from my words as though they were knives.
‘It was never like that.’
‘Then how was it?’ I spat back before shaking my head vehemently. ‘Do you know what, I don’t care. You’re over three decades too late. You didn’t want either of us back then and we don’t want you now.’
The old man staggered backwards as though I’d struck him, and for a moment the red mist cleared enough for me to realise I wasn’t acting rationally. Grief and shock were making me behave totally out of character, but I was too far down that road to detour now.
‘Whatever it is you’re looking for – redemption, forgiveness, or a family reunion, it isn’t going to happen. Not now. Not ever.’ I’d spent so much of my life longing to know my father, and yet when the moment finally arrived, all I felt was incandescent rage. I spun on my heel and began walking away in angry, scissor-sharp steps.
The man called out to my retreating back. ‘I see now this is all too soon. Your grief is still too raw. Please believe me, I never intended for you to find out like this, Ellie.’
I swirled back to face him.
‘Don’t you dare call me by my name. That was a right you gave up a long time ago.’
‘Ellie?’
Henry’s voice was tentative as it pulled me out of the memory. He’d been crying in the past and was doing so again now.
‘You remember,’ he said sadly.
For a moment my vision blurred and doubled, superimposing the stranger in the winter coat in the snowy cemetery over the man I knew and cared for. Henry. My friend. My father.
‘All these months. All those conversations. You’ve had a thousand opportunities to tell me who you really were. But you never did.’