The Return
KING’S CROSS STATION, LONDON, DECEMBER 6: DEPARTURE, 8:47 A.M.
Henry
The hairy trek between concourse and train with an unknown, if kindly, teenager was rapidly turning into the longest walk of Henry’s life. But then so far, nothing at all was going the way he had expected.
He moved steadily forwards, his vision trained in missile lock-on with the carriage door ahead. An invalid! He’d been made to feel like an invalid! And all he’d done was tell a little white lie about the fact he wasn’t travelling alone, and even that wasn’t an entire fabrication.
In Henry’s inside coat pocket a Basildon Bond envelope grazed lightly against his chest. Two tickets had been purchased at his niece, Amy’s, insistence, and yet barely ninety minutes had passed since she’d telephoned to say that she wouldn’t be able to accompany him after all:
‘I’m so sorry, Uncle Henry, but the twins woke up with chickenpox and Dan’s renovation job in Berkshire has overrun. I feel terrible about letting you down, but I’m going to have to stay home and take care of the girls. Will you be all right on your own?’
This, in a way, had been Spanner Number One, though Henry wasted no time at all in assuring her that he was more than capable of making the journey by himself. The point was, her intention to go with him had been there, so what difference did it ultimately make if instead of being here by his side, she was trapped at home in Ladbroke Grove?
As he manoeuvred himself one footstep at a time towards the waiting train, Henry briefly entertained the possibility that somehow, via a perverse twist of fate, he’d inadvertently willed the morning’s events into being. In truth, not once during the course of the last few tumultuous days had he considered it necessary for Amy to escort him – like some glorified minder! – on his trip. And yet, he acknowledged with a faint twinge of guilt, there was no denying that if it hadn’t been for her chance discovery, he wouldn’t now find himself at the epicentre of one of London’s busiest train terminals at all.
Henry brushed the thought from his head and reminded himself that he didn’t need a babysitter; his destination was Scotland, not the moon. And he wasn’t that incapacitated! Just because he was eighty-five (and counting) didn’t mean he couldn’t make it halfway across the country in one piece. Plenty of people his age would have driven!
He squeezed the handle of his suitcase and listened for the reassuring sound of the aged leather creaking beneath his fingers. His joints ached. His mouth, which still tasted ominously of blood, felt stale and dry.
If he could just get himself into his seat… If the guard would only blow his whistle and send the train wheezing and grunting out of the station… If he could put some distance at last between himself and the weary, winter-tide streets of cold, old, lonely London… Then and only then could he be certain that nothing and no one might prevent him from reaching his destination on time.
There had been all of eight days to digest the news, which in Henry’s world was less time than it took for the bulletproof avocados from his local corner shop to embrace their natural-born destiny and ripen. One minute he was pottering on the patio, mimicking the sound of the Papadopouloses’ chickens clucking in their homemade coop next door; the next, he was engaged in the most surreal telephone conversation of his life.
‘Uncle Henry, it’s Amy. I’m calling to say that I’ve found her. I think I’ve found the woman you’ve been searching for all these years.’
Henry pressed a finger to his ear and waited for the punchline, the dénouement, the inevitable Candid Camera reveal.
He stared at the framed reproduction of Monet’s sublime water lilies floating serenely on the hall wall. His instinct, once he’d had a second or two to process Amy’s words, was to gasp, but his jaw fell slack and all he could muster was an acute, ear-splitting silence.
He wrapped his hand around the empty glass vase on the bureau, moving it an inch this way, that way, keeping the pads of his fingers pressed to its cool, hard surface for no other reason than because it was the only object in his immediate line of vision that was solid, and tangible, and real.
A wave of longing rolled through his body. The sensation came close to overwhelming him until it was matched, molecule by molecule, by a slow-moving river of fear in his veins. What if there’d been a mix-up? What if this was all just another terrible mistake?
‘Uncle Henry, are you there?’
‘Yes, Amy,’ he replied. ‘I’m here.’
‘Good, because I need you to listen to this – it’s from an article in last night’s Evening Standard: “The inspiration for the novel came from the author’s mother, Yorkshire girl Francine Keeley, who in the aftermath of the Second World War worked as a waitress at Blackpool’s Shore Hotel.” Did you hear that? It’s her name. Her hotel. Same town. From everything you’ve told me, I don’t think there can be any mistake.’
Slowly, Henry let the vase go. Amy was right. The match was nothing short of perfect.
‘I’m sorry, Amy,’ he managed at last. ‘What exactly is this article about?’
There was a momentary pause.
‘Oh. Sorry, I should have said… It’s a spotlight on a new wave of debut authors, one of whom has written some sort of mystery-thriller set on the Lancashire coast in the 1940s. She credits her mother – “Francine Keeley” – and the Shore Hotel as the jumping-off points for her story. Honestly, you should thank the customer who left the paper behind in the café this morning, because otherwise I would never have seen it. I’ll drop it over to you after work and you can read it for yourself. In the meantime, I think it’s probably safe to assume that according to this, Francine is – or at one point was – married. Either way, the one thing we know for sure is that she has a daughter.’
Henry felt as though he were floating out of his shoes. He reached out his hand and grabbed the edge of the bureau before sinking in a state of burgeoning delirium onto the hallway chair.
Banjo raced in from the patio and began to paw frantically at Henry’s shins. Henry’s body slumped forwards, his elbows skidding to his knees. He was trying his damnedest to formulate a response, but his powers of expression were scrambled, his train of thought unclear.
‘I wouldn’t blame you for thinking it’s too late,’ Amy continued on the other end of the line. ‘It was practically a lifetime ago, after all. Then again – if she really is that important to you – if you make contact with her daughter, you’ll find Francine. The ball’s in your court, Uncle Henry. What do you want to do?’
