‘Well, we’re not exactly strangers now, seeing as we’ve introduced ourselves,’ Henry said reasonably. ‘And all the visitors you encounter here, the regulars and the not-so-frequent ones, are allhere to talk to the people we’ve loved and lost. We have so much in common it feels like we’re all already connected, already friends.’
It was a very romanticised way of looking at it, but strangely I rather liked it.
‘But to answer your question, Ellie, I come here each day to be close to the only woman I ever loved. My Bee.’ He turned in his seat and his gaze focused on a row of gravestones on the other side of the path beneath the shade of several willow trees.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said.
‘As am I, for yours,’ Henry replied, his eyes going back to Mum’s plot. ‘It’s very recent for you,’ he observed, no doubt having noticed the dates engraved on the granite plinth.
‘Newer than you can imagine,’ I said.
His eyebrows were white and bushy, in the way older men’s often are. They were currently raised on his forehead, like albino caterpillars.
I bit my lip. Was I really about to confess my failings as a daughter to a total stranger, when I hadn’t even found the courage to do so to either my friends, or to Rhys? Apparently, I was.
‘I... I had an accident a short while ago.’
Henry sat up straighter, his face full of concern. What an incredibly nice man he was.
‘I’m fine now. Well, almost fine. But it did some strange things to my memory.’ I could feel my eyes filling with tears. They were literally one blink away from coursing down my face. My voice dropped to a hoarse confessional box whisper.
‘I forgot my own mother had died.’
His lips parted, closed, and then parted again, as though he kept finding a suitable response and just as quickly discarding it. I didn’t blame him. It was hardly something you heard every day.
‘So, for me it’s been more like a few days to get my head around losing her. I mean, I can now remember bits and pieces of whathappened. I remember her getting sick, and that it all went to shit very soon after that. Sorry,’ I said, apologising for swearing.
He gave a wry smile. ‘I was a schoolteacher for forty-five years, my dear. I don’t think there’s anything you could say that I haven’t heard a thousand times before.’
I knew it.
‘Do you know what’s the worst thing about forgetting?’
Henry inclined his head, encouraging me to continue. ‘It’s not knowing if I came here to visit her during the last six months.’
‘Why would you think that you hadn’t?’
He really did ask excellent questions.
‘My mother and I didn’t always have the best of relationships. She and I clashed... a lot. I don’t think either of us found the other very easy to get along with.’
‘That seems hard to believe,’ Henry said gently. ‘I mean I’ve only known you for...’ He consulted his watch. ‘... less than half an hour, and I find you extremely easy to get on with.’
I smiled at that before my eyes went to my mother’s plot. ‘I don’t think you’d have said the same thing about her, sadly.’ Up went his eyebrows again. ‘She was always very critical, very prickly.’
‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ Henry said sadly. And it really sounded as though he meant it.
Chapter Fifteen
‘You don’t mind taking him again, do you?’
Actually, I sort of did mind, but before I could voice my objection, the eight-month-old baby was thrust back into my arms again.
‘We just want one last quick peek at the bedroom,’ the woman explained as her partner began pulling a tape measure from his pocket.
‘Hello again,’ I said to the infant, who was looking at me suspiciously as his parents disappeared back inside the house I was showing them. If I was bad at talking to seven-year-olds, then my chat with those not yet able to speak had to be heard to be believed.
The clients were clearly the most laid-back parents ever. They appeared to have absolutely no qualms about passing their baby into the arms of someone who was patently not qualified for childminding. They’d done it the first time when I’d been showing them the bathroom with its double-size shower enclosure.