It had never occurred to me that he would marry Ellen. I didn’t doubt that he loved her but I didn’t believe he loved her as much as he’d loved me. I felt betrayed. I reminded myself that I had betrayed him first. Finn had moved on and I needed to accept it. But I couldn’t; memories of the life I used to have wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted that life, not the one I had now. By rights, Finn was mine. MINE! Layla’s, not Ellen’s. Not Ellen’s, Layla’s. I felt feverish, sick. Now, more than ever, I needed Finn to know I was back.
I started sending him emails. I didn’t use my name because if I had, Finn would have thought they were coming from someone pretending to be me. He did anyway. I was stunned that he hadn’t understood the significance of the email address – I’d chosen it especially so that he would know my true identity. The Russian doll that I managed to leave, at huge risk, on the plate at The Jackdaw, only compounded his belief that someone was pretending to be me. And I realised that the only way he would believe I was back was if I lured him to the cottage and he saw that the letter had gone.
I could have told him that I’d found it, and saved him a trip. But then I realised that he still wouldn’t know it was me, because sometime over the past twelve years, anyone could have got hold of my keys and taken the letter. It was imperative that he worked out the email address by himself, that he got to the truth by himself. I made a pact; if he couldn’t work out what Rudolph Hill referred to, I would disappear again and let him get on with his life with Ellen. But if he worked it out – well, it would be the start of a whole new chapter.
THIRTY
Finn
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at Ellen’s clothes through the open wardrobe door, noticing for the first time that almost everything is grey – different shades of grey, maybe, but grey nonetheless. There are a few items in other pastels but nothing like the vibrant colours Layla used to wear. My eyes drop to Ellen’s shoes, neatly arranged in two rows at the bottom of the wardrobe, all of them with the same-sized heel, and I feel suddenly stifled at the uniformity of it all.
Ellen is downstairs so I take out my phone and look at the latest email I received from Layla. I haven’t replied to it yet. It’s a tough one. I mean, what am I meant to reply when she asks if I’m happy she’s wearing my ring?
The truth is, I feel a bit emotional at the thought of her wearing it. But I can’t tell her that.
It’s yours, I bought it for you, I reply.
Did you buy one for Ellen?
I think of the little silver knot ring I gave to Ellen after I asked her to marry me. I hadn’t bought her a traditional engagement ring because that wasn’t who she was, unlike Layla, who’d loved anything that glittered. Nevertheless, I decide to side-step her question.
Do you still want to meet?
Is Ellen wearing your ring?
Yes. Do you still want to meet?
I shouldn’t have come back
What do you mean?
It’s too late
No, it isn’t. It’s never too late.
It is. You’re with Ellen now
We need to talk, Layla.
But she’s gone, leaving me as she’s left me before, hoping she’ll be back, not knowing if she will be.
I go down to the kitchen.
‘I’ve made porridge,’ Ellen says, looking up from the saucepan she’s stirring.
‘No, thanks,’ I say shortly. ‘I’ll make myself some bacon.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘It’s fine.’ I move to the oven, take the grill pan out and clatter it onto the side.
‘Is everything alright?’ Ellen asks. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘It’s just—’
‘What?’ I snap.
‘You seem on edge.’
‘Just because I don’t want to eat your damn porridge?’ She looks at me, hurt. ‘Sorry,’ I say, hating that I’m taking my frustration out on her, hating that Layla is coming between us.
‘Is it Grant?’ Ellen asks.
‘Another client. I’m just a bit under pressure, that’s all.’
‘Maybe you can talk to Harry when he comes for lunch tomorrow.’
We eat our breakfast in near-silence. I can’t stop thinking about Layla, about where she might be, if she’s somewhere close by, and I realise she’s consuming me just as she consumed me all those years ago.
‘I thought I’d do pork,’ Ellen is saying. ‘If you could get me some apples, I’ll make a sauce to go with it.’
It takes me a moment to realise she’s still talking about lunch with Harry. ‘I’ll get them now,’ I say, getting to my feet.
‘There’s no rush.’ Ellen’s voice follows me anxiously out of the back door. ‘Pork is alright, isn’t it?’
‘It’s fine,’ I call back. But I can’t bring myself to turn around and smile at her.
When Harry arrives the next day, he seems pretty pleased with himself and when he tells Ellen that he has a surprise for her, I wonder what he’s bought as well as the huge bouquet of flowers he’s already holding.
‘I’ve got something to show you first,’ Ellen says excitedly, taking his hand and drawing him into the kitchen. She stands back and throws her arm out, showing him the worktop where her set of Russian dolls stand. ‘Look!’
Harry looks so bemused that I feel almost sorry for Ellen, although I don’t know why she’s making such a thing of it. He doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea why he should be impressed.
‘She has a full set, Harry,’ I prompt.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Yes, I can see that. Amazing.’
Ellen picks up the littlest doll. ‘I found this lying outside the gate,’ she explains. ‘I couldn’t believe it had turned up after all these years.’
‘Not the same one, surely,’ Harry says.
‘Finn doesn’t think so, but I do.’ She holds out the doll to him. ‘See this smudge of paint? Mine had that too.’
‘I’ve told her that lots of them probably do,’ I tell Harry. What I don’t tell him is that none of the four that are lying at the back of my drawer do.
‘But why would it suddenly turn up after all these years?’ Harry asks. ‘And how?’
Ellen hesitates, and before she can tell him that she thinks she saw Layla in Cheltenham a few weeks back, I jump in quickly. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ I suggest, because if Harry knows there’s a possibility that Layla is alive, he’s not going to let it go after everything he did twelve years ago to find her.
After lunch, we go out to the garden for coffee. Ellen asks me if I’d mind clearing away while she shows Harry her latest illustrations, and it’s only when I’m stacking the dishwasher that I realise she’ll use this time alone with him to tell him that she saw Layla anyway. She won’t be able to help herself. So when he comes to find me in the kitchen half an hour later, and suggests taking Peggy for a walk, I know I’m in for a grilling.
He waits until we’re heading down to the river, then launches his attack.
‘Is everything alright, Finn?’
‘Everything’s fine.’
‘It’s just that you seem a bit restless.’
‘What has Ellen said?’
‘That she thought she saw Layla in Cheltenham a couple of weeks back.’
‘Yes, but it was only someone with the same colour hair.’
‘So you don’t think it was her, then?’
‘No, and Ellen doesn’t either. We agreed she was probably mistaken.’
He raises his eyebrows at my choice of words and a part of me wishes I could confide in him. But he’ll tell me to tell Tony and I don’t want to do that before I know what Layla wants, and why she’s chosen to come back now.
‘What about the Russian doll?’ he says. ‘Strange that it should turn up after all these years.’
‘It’s not the one that Ellen lost all those years ago.’
‘She thinks it is.’
‘It’s wishful thinking. She wants Layla to be back, which is why she’s ma
naged to convince herself that she saw Layla in Cheltenham.’
‘What about you? Do you want Layla to be back?’
I keep my voice calm but my irritation is mounting. ‘Layla’s been missing for years. She isn’t going to come back, not now.’
‘Hmm.’ He slows his pace, reaches into his pocket and draws something out. I look down and see a little Russian doll lying in the palm of his hand. ‘I found this standing on the wall when I arrived earlier and I couldn’t wait to give it to Ellen because I remembered her telling me that she’d lost hers years ago.’ He pauses. ‘But she already had one.’
So that’s why he was acting so strangely. I want to grab the stupid doll and throw it as hard as I can into the water. Luckily, Harry presumes that I’ve gone into some kind of shock at the implications of what he thinks is a second Russian doll turning up.
‘Too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’ he goes on.
‘What are you suggesting, Harry?’ I ask, my voice thick with anger at Layla. Yesterday, she refused to meet up with me, yet she’s willing to risk coming to the house and being seen. Unless she came during the night.
‘That maybe it was Layla that Ellen saw in Cheltenham.’
I sit down on the grassy bank. Harry picks up a stick and throws it into the water for Peggy. She retrieves it and brings it back to him and he throws it for her a couple more times. I stay silent. I know he’ll be assuming all sorts of things about what I’m thinking and I feel an odd sense of power that he has no idea what I know about Layla.
‘Did you show the doll to Ellen?’ I ask, when he finally sits down beside me.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t want her getting her hopes up.’ And the last thing I need is Ellen getting involved in a search for Layla. For the moment, she only knows about the Russian doll that she found, and that’s the way I want it to stay.
‘What about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What about your hopes?’
‘I want Layla to be alive, of course I do,’ I say.
‘Well, it certainly looks as if she might be.’
I give a short laugh. ‘On the basis of two Russian dolls and a possible sighting? Isn’t that a bit weak?’
‘Perhaps. But I always thought she might turn up one day.’
I find myself frowning. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’ve never thought she was dead. Or that she was kidnapped.’
He’s never told me this before. ‘So where has she been all these years? And if you’re right, why has she turned up now? Why not last year, or five years ago, or five months after she first disappeared.’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe it’s all about timing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, with you about to marry Ellen. Maybe she’s been keeping up with your life from wherever she’s been living and doesn’t like the fact that you’re about to marry her sister.’ He turns his eyes on me. ‘You do still want to marry Ellen, don’t you?’
I stretch my legs out and move to stand up. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Even if Layla is back?’
I want to give him another ‘Yes, of course’ but I feel strangely bereft. Maybe Harry senses this because he puts a hand on my arm, as if in apology for asking the question in the first place.
‘Come on, let’s head back. Didn’t Ellen say she would make scones?’
I ask him if he managed to sort out the problem that prevented him from coming down the previous weekend and he tells me about one of his notoriously difficult investors.
‘Sometimes I’d like to get out of it,’ he finishes. ‘I reckon I’m getting too old for this game.’
‘You’re forty-five.’
‘And I’ve been doing it for twenty-five years. It’s been my life. But sometimes I can’t help wishing I’d got married, had a family.’
I laugh. ‘You’d be bored out of your mind tied to one woman.’
He gives a wry grin. ‘Maybe.’
‘Anyway, if that’s what you want – marriage, a family – it’s not too late. What about the current lady in your life? Would you consider making an honest woman of her?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Then don’t waste your time – or hers,’ I advise.
We arrive at the house and I pause, my hand on the gate.
‘Would you mind giving me the Russian doll you found?’ I ask. And Harry, being Harry, hands it over without question, putting it down to my need to have a tangible reminder of Layla.
Later, after he’s left, I go out to my office and open the drawer in my desk. I take out the four little dolls one by one and stand them in a line, then add Harry’s onto the end. Five pairs of unblinking eyes stare straight ahead, five painted mouths smile benignly. Or mockingly. Once again, I find myself asking – what is Layla playing at?
I get a clue when I check my emails and find one from Rudolph Hill.
I STILL LOVE YOU
THIRTY-ONE
Layla
Finn did exactly what I thought he would. He automatically presumed I was talking about the cottage and went straight there, which was good, because I wanted him to know I’d found his letter. But I also needed to get him to Pharos Hill, so that he would know, without doubt, that I was back, because I intended to leave a Russian doll on top of the tree stump, the one I used to tell him was shaped like a Russian doll. So I was glad when he finally worked out the significance of the email address I’d chosen. I doubted he’d been back to Pharos Hill since the day he put up a bench in my memory. What had it been like for him to realise that I’d been there earlier, and had gone? Had it reminded him of the night I’d disappeared from his life?
I’m not really wearing his ring. But sometimes I take it from where I’ve hidden it and slide it onto my ring finger, pretending it fits. And the bitterness comes, at twelve wasted years. It brings me so low I’m afraid I’ll go back to being what I was before, a nothing being, secret and soulless. It took me years of courage to move out of the shadows and into the light. I’m still a lesser being than I was before I disappeared. But at least I exist.
I suppose it’s unfair to blame Finn. But the way I see it, if I hadn’t thought he was going to kill me that night, I wouldn’t have disappeared. Hence my aggressive email, telling him I’d found him. I wanted him to be afraid of me, as I was once afraid of him. I’m not sure why that is. But my emotions have always been volatile. Anyway, Finn replied that he was glad I’d found him. Now why would he say that if he truly loved Ellen?
It brought me back to my original question, the one I asked myself as I sat on the platform at St Mary’s, the day Thomas saw me. If it came down to it, would Finn choose Ellen over me? Or was it possible that he would choose me, and I would get my old life back?
It was time to find out.
THIRTY-TWO
Finn
I push back my chair and put my bare feet up on the desk. They’re wet with dew from where I walked across the lawn ten minutes ago. It’s only six thirty but I couldn’t sleep. I feel as if I’ve reached some sort of crossroads with Layla; her declaration of love has thrown me.
I look around my office, at the paintings on the walls. They are all of the sea in some shape or form. Layla chose the one that hangs on the wall behind the door. Because of its positioning, no one really sees it except me. I pull my feet from the desk and go over to it. There’s an anger to the sea that I’ve never been aware of before. My mind goes back to what Ruby said, about the trail of Russian dolls being the work of someone unbalanced. Did Layla manage to disappear for so long because she had some sort of breakdown? Her mother died when she was just a young girl, her father was violent. To have experienced violence from me might have tipped her over the edge.
And as always, not knowing is worse than knowing.
I can’t stand it any longer. Going back to my desk, I send Layla an email.
I really need to see you, Lay
la.
The minutes tick by without a reply so an hour later, I send another.
Please don’t disappear from my life again.
Two hours later, just when I’ve given up all hope of ever hearing from her again, an email drops into my inbox. Thank you, thank you, God, I breathe, when I see the name Rudolph Hill. I open it quickly.
Do you still love me?
I stare at the screen. Of all the questions she could have asked, it’s the one I wouldn’t have wanted her to. It’s impossible to answer. If I say no, I’ll never hear from her again. Anyway, it would be a lie. I’ve never stopped loving her. But if I tell her that, what then? The pressure to reply is terrible. I take a gamble.
Yes, of course I do. You were a huge part of my life.
More than you love Ellen?
Christ. The love I have for Ellen is different, I reply.
I think you should tell her I’m back
I want to see you first.
There’s no immediate reply so I presume she’s mulling it over. Come on, just give me a time and a place, that’s all I want, just a time and a place. An email arrives.
Tell Ellen that I’m back first
No, I reply stubbornly, not until I’ve seen you.
It’s the wrong thing to say. There’s no answering email granting me my wish, no negotiating. Only silence.
I leave my office and walk across to the house, breathing in the morning air. Ellen isn’t in the kitchen but the door to her office is open, so I move towards it, not to do as Layla asked but to reassure myself that if it came down to it, I would choose her over Layla. Engrossed in her work, she doesn’t realise I’m there so I watch her for a moment, absorbing her, reminding myself how lucky I am to have her. Sensing me there, she looks up and smiles.
‘To what do I owe this honour?’ she teases, and I realise it’s usually her that comes to find me.