The brown tape made a satisfying cry of protest as I ripped it from the box. What lay beneath the lid was enough to steal my thoughts away from Rhys once again. I’d assumed there might be a couple of albums rattling around inside the box, but there had to be over thirty of them neatly stacked inside the container.
I dropped down to the floor, sitting cross-legged beside the box that my very unsentimental mother had kept hidden from me. The albums didn’t appear to be in any particular order, so I reached blindly into the box and plucked out the first one my hand fell upon. Written on the inside cover was a year, penned in my mother’s familiar script. Every album I pulled out was similarly labelled and beneath the pages of protective film were photographs that chronicled every important moment of my childhood. There were birthday parties where I saw myself morph from a toddler to a teenager. There were albums that covered a multitude of firsts: first steps, first day at nursery, then school, and finally university. Someof the prints I’d seen before; a few had made it into frames that had been dotted around the house, but the majority of the photographs had been kept here as an everlasting record by a woman who eschewed sentimentality as though it was a disease.
A gasp of realisation ran through me and ricocheted around the storage unit. These albums weren’t for her. And they weren’t for me either. They were for a person who’d been absent from my life, and who I’d only found after my mother was gone. They were for Henry. She’d collected every single moment he’d missed.
I’d come here today looking for photographs of her as a younger woman, because Henry had asked if there were any of her that he could have. But what I had discovered was far more revealing. Had she secretly hoped that he’d one day return and would want the missing jigsaw pieces of his daughter’s life?
‘Oh, Mum,’ I said on a sigh to the empty room. ‘Why did you never tell me?’ But perhaps the even bigger question was: why did I find this hidden clue today, of all days?
That felt too important to ignore.
I got to my feet, wiping a film of dust from my palms before resealing the lid of the box to protect it from the rain. It was time to deliver these albums to the man who I had no doubt they’d been created for.
The rain was still falling hard as I drove to Henry’s retirement home. Occasionally, when I stopped at a red light or a junction, my glance would go to the box on the passenger seat beside me. It was almost enough to distract me from continually checking the clock on the dashboard.
Rhys was probably halfway to the airport by now. He’d likely be chatting politely to the cab driver, because that was the kind of person he was: kind, thoughtful, and caring. What kind of idiot lets a man like that slip through their fingers? Me, apparently. I took another look at the box beside me. And also, my mother.
‘These are absolutely wonderful,’ Henry exclaimed, pulling yet another album from the box. He’d already leafed through half a dozen volumes, his eyes growing a little mistier with each one. ‘It’ll take me weeks to look through them all properly,’ he said, as though in apology.
‘Take as long as you want. They’re yours anyway. She left them for you – I’m sure of it.’
Henry looked truly wonderstruck by the find and it was nice to bring joy into his day when mine felt so full of sadness.
‘This one looks a little more recent,’ Henry said, pulling out a much slimmer album that had been slid upright at the back of the box. He opened it. I watched from across the width of his lounge as I sipped on the slightly too strong Earl Grey he liked to brew.
‘Oh.’ His smile was soft and full of an expression I couldn’t quite identify. ‘I think this particular one might be for you rather than me.’
He got to his feet and placed the leather-bound folio in my hands. I gave him a quizzical smile and opened the cover. Like all the other albums, this one had the year written on the inner sleeve. But unlike the others, it wasn’t from far in the past. The date was just last year.
The first photograph was of Mum and me. I had no recollection of when or where it had been taken. But Mum must have been sick by then, for her head was covered in a silk headscarf, her treatment already underway. I tilted the photograph towards the window, trying to capture more light from the drizzly grey day. Henry switched on a table lamp and in the warm yellow glow I saw that behind us in the frame was a large ship.
I flipped through the pages, each one making my eyes grow wider and my mouth fall open in surprise. We were on a cruise. Acruise I had absolutely no recollection of taking. But the irrefutable evidence was right there in my hands. It had obviously been a mini voyage – I could see from our outfits we’d only been away for a few days. But we’d gone on a cruise together and had fulfilled one of her long-held dreams, even if I still couldn’t remember a single moment of it.
Suddenly the travel pills in my bathroom cabinet, the cruise company emails in my inbox, and the curious three-day gap in last year’s diary made sense.
‘I can’t remember this holiday,’ I said, turning tear-filled eyes towards Henry, who was standing beside me, looking at the album.
His hand felt warm and comforting on my shoulder. ‘Maybe now you’ll be able to,’ he said gently, ‘now that the door has been opened. But even if you don’t, these photographs tell you that the bridges between you and Bee had been repaired before she died.’
His age-spotted hand tapped one of the photographs in the album, one that I already knew was going to be my favourite. Mum and I were dressed up in evening finery, our arms around each other as we posed for what I imagined was an official ship’s photographer. The portrait had captured us mid-laugh. I had no idea what had amused us, perhaps I never would, but the love that we felt for each other was there shining in both of our eyes like an eternal flame. Our relationship might not have been perfect – but whose is? We’d made peace with our differences and come together before it was too late to face a future filled with regrets.
It felt like an important message to learn today.
Perhaps Henry thought so too.
‘Is it today that your young man leaves for Australia?’
I didn’t bother correcting him that Rhys wasn’t my young man anymore. He had been, but then I’d let him go.
I nodded.
‘I may be speaking out of turn here, Ellie, and please feel free to tell me to mind my own business.’
I looked up and gave him a gentle smile. ‘Can’t see me doing that somehow.’
Henry returned my smile, before his face sobered.
‘I know I have no right to be offering parental advice this late in the day. But I can see that whatever course you’ve decided upon, it isn’t one that’s making you happy.’