I tried hard not to let his words find a place in my heart, but they were already halfway there. Was he remembering how I’d once told him that one day I wanted to live beside the ocean? Or was I looking for hidden clues that simply didn’t exist?
He took a step back from my desk and I felt it in my soul.
‘I’ve already broken all the rules, so I don’t have a problem in crossing one last line,’ he said, his eyes travelling over my face as though memorising every line.
‘I love you, Ellie. That’s never going to change. I just wanted to tell you that one last time.’
Responding would have been impossible because my throat was too thick with tears. In any event he left me no time to even think about replying because with the words still echoing in my heart, he turned around and walked out.
I doubt Rhys was even halfway back to his car before I ripped the brown paper from the parcel he’d left me. From its familiar size and shape I was almost certain I knew what it was. It was the same as the many pen-and-ink drawings he’d done for my clients when properties were sold or rented out. Had Rhys done a drawing of my own home, I wondered as I freed the frame from beneath a second layer of tissue paper?
It felt like a very grown-up game of pass-the-parcel, one with hidden consequences. Perhaps that’s why my hands were trembling when they finally revealed the drawing. It wasn’t my house at all, but the image was as familiar to me as the place where I lived. Because I’d seen this piece of art many times before, only then it had been hanging on Rhys’s wall.
I stared down in amazement at the detailed depiction of the oak tree where we’d both been struck by lightning. This was so much bigger and so much more important than a new piece of artwork. I knew how connected Rhys felt to this particular drawing, and it spoke volumes that he had given it to me.
Was that why my vision blurred and a single tear fell upon my desk, followed by another and then another. Or was the cause the small piece of card he’d taped to the edge of the frame. My fingers traced the bold strokes of his handwriting.
The start of us.
I carefully detached the card and lifted it to my lips as though it were his that I was kissing.
Simon would be back at any moment with the coffee neither of us needed, and because I didn’t want him finding me sobbing over a drawing of a tree and asking questions I didn’t feel up to answering, I went to rewrap the gift in the brown paper. That was when I noticed a second note tucked into the back of the frame. It was a single sheet of paper, carefully folded over and over until it was small enough to be slipped into the corner. I opened it carefully.
‘Oh, Rhys,’ I whispered as I looked at his second message. It gave the details of the flight to Sydney he was due to take in two days. Beneath the name of the airline, flight number, and departure time was another poignant sentence.
Please don’t let this be the end of us.
I cradled the paper to my chest, close to my heart where all important decisions since the lightning were made. The only problem was I had no idea what to do.
Chapter Forty-Four
The canary-yellow building filled my entire windscreen. I peered at it through the rain, wishing I’d thought to bring an umbrella. I reached for the handle and opened the car door.
Keep moving. Keep busy.
It was a mantra I’d been reciting since about five a.m. when I’d finally abandoned all hope of sleep and climbed out from beneath the tangled duvet and twisted sheets.
I ran through the slanting rain towards the entrance of the storage unit which had just opened its doors. My plans for the day were already proving inadequate. How I’d ever thought that deep cleaning my flat would be sufficient to occupy my mind today, I’ll never know.
As I stripped the sheets from my bed, I found myself wondering if Rhys was waking up for the last time in his empty flat.
As I polished furniture until every surface had a mirror-like glaze, was he looking around his denuded apartment now devoid of everything he owned.
I ran mindlessly through a puddle, not even noticing when the water splashed over the tops of my trainers as I headed for the building in front of me. Was this the same storage facility where hisbelongings were housed? Was I subconsciously trying to get close to the things he was leaving behind? Things like me? I shook my head. Rhys wasn’t leaving me behind. I had chosen not to go with him.
Even if Rhys’s possessions were here, he certainly wouldn’t be. I consulted my watch. He’d be leaving for the airport soon. There was probably a taxi on its way to his flat right now. Would he pause before climbing into it and check the road one last time, hoping to see my car speeding towards his home? Or had he already given up on us and was thinking only about his new home, new life, new future? None of which would include me.
‘Stop this,’ I told myself angrily as I punched in the access code to the unit I’d come here to visit. I bent down and lifted the garage-style roll-up door. For a moment my senses were assailed by something powerful enough to steal my thoughts away from Rhys. The unit smelled like my mother’s house. Months of imprisonment behind the bright yellow doors had done nothing to dispel the heartbreakingly familiar aroma. I breathed in deeply, hoping to absorb the old comfort of home.
I’d only been here once before, shortly after finding a folder tucked away at the back of my desk drawer. Within it had been sheaves of paperwork confirming I’d arranged for my mother’s home to be packed up by removers and the contents put into storage. I’d obviously been preparing to sell it, and yet I’d never pulled the trigger; I’d never put it on the market. I had no memory of any of this. It was another of the permanently erased events that the lightning had claimed. They didn’t bother me so much these days. I’d learnt to accept that some things might be forever lost.
Maybe I should try to get struck by lightning again, I thought as I flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights in the unit. Perhaps next time it could wipe my memory of Rhys, freeing me from the pain of loving, losing, and missing him.
‘It could happen,’ I told the multitude of storage boxes stacked before me. This morning’s TV weather forecast had predicted thunderstorms later this afternoon. Not that I could imagine ever being brave enough to venture out when lightning was a possibility. I was still a long way from conquering that particular phobia.
The box I had come here to sort through wasn’t hard to find. I’d seen it on my first visit but hadn’t felt brave enough to rip it open. Photograph Albums was written on the label in a stranger’s handwriting. My mother had never been much of a chronicler, so it had surprised me to find Box No. 34 – Photograph Albums listed on the remover’s inventory after she died. I didn’t know where she’d had them hidden, but I certainly hadn’t seen them before.
Searching through the collection for the thing I’d promised Henry I would try to find seemed like a suitably diverting activity for a day when I’d have been worse than useless at work and poor company for anyone.