Elodie smiled.
‘You were not pleased with my attempts. Feet were stomped, words like “No!” and “Not like that!” bandied about.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. Your mother was a wonderful storyteller.’
Her father fell into a melancholy silence, but Elodie, who was usually mindful not to trespass on her father’s old grief, pressed on gingerly. ‘I wonder, Dad – is it possible that the story actually came from a book?’
‘Would that it had. I’d have been saved a lot of time trying to console my inconsolable child. No, it was an invention, a family story. I remember your mother saying it had been passed down to her when she was young.’
‘I thought so too, but perhaps she got it wrong? Maybe whoever told her the story had read it in a book? One of those illustrated Victorian books for children.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose.’ He frowned. ‘But what’s all this about?’
With a prickle of sudden nerves, Elodie withdrew the sketchbook from her bag and handed it to her father, open to the drawing of the house. ‘I found this at work today, in a box.’
‘It’s lovely … and obviously drawn by a fine artist … wonderful penmanship …’ He looked at it a little longer before glancing at Elodie uncertainly.
‘Dad, can’t you see? It’s the house from the story. An illustration of the very same house.’
He returned his attention to the sketch. ‘Well, it’s a house. And I see there’s a river.’
‘And woods, and a weathervane with a sun and moon.’
‘Yes, but … lovey, I dare say there are dozens of houses fitting that description.’
‘So precisely? Come on, Dad. This is the same house. The details are identical. More than that, the artist has captured the same feel as the house in the story. You must be able to see it?’ The possessive instinct came upon her suddenly and Elodie took the book back from her father. She couldn’t explain more emphatically than she already had: she didn’t know how, or what it meant, or why the sketch had turned up in the archives at work, but she knew it was the house from her mother’s story.
‘I’m sorry, love.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for.’ Even as she said it, Elodie felt the sting of impending tears. Ridiculous! To cry like a child over the provenance of a bedtime story. She grasped for a different subject, something – anything – to move the conversation on. ‘Have you heard from Tip?’
‘Not yet. But you know what he’s like. He doesn’t believe in the telephone.’
‘I’ll go and see him at the weekend.’
Silence fell once more between them, but this time it was neither easy nor companionable. Elodie watched the warm light at play on the leaves of the trees. She didn’t know why she felt so agitated. Even if it were the same house, what did it matter? Either the artist had made sketches for a book that her mother had read, or it was a real-life house that someone had seen and enfolded into the story. She knew she ought to let it go, to think of something pleasant and benign to say—
‘They’re predicting fine weather,’ her father said, at the very same moment Elodie exclaimed, ‘The house has eight chimneys, Dad. Eight!’
‘Oh, lovey.’
‘It’s the house from her story. Look at the gables—’
‘My dear girl.’
‘Dad!’
‘This all makes sense.’
‘What does?’
‘It’s the wedding.’
‘What wedding?’
‘Yours, of course.’ His smile was kind. ‘Big life events have a way of bringing the past back to bear. And you miss your mother. I should have anticipated that you’d be missing her now more than ever.’
‘No, Dad, I—’
‘In fact, there’s something I’ve been wanting to give you. Wait here a minute.’
As her father disappeared down the flight of iron stairs that led back to the house, Elodie sighed. With his apron tied around his middle and his too-sweet duck à l’orange, he just wasn’t the sort of person with whom one could maintain a state of prolonged irritation.
She noticed a blackbird watching her from one of the twin chimney pots. It stared intently before responding to a command she couldn’t hear to fly away. The littlest of the children on the green began to wail, and Elodie thought of her father’s account of her own petulance in the face of his best bedtime story efforts: the years that had stretched out afterwards, just the two of them.
It couldn’t have been easy.
‘I’ve been saving this for you,’ he said, reappearing at the top of the stairs. She had presumed that he was going to fetch the tapes she’d asked him to put aside, but the box he was holding was too small for that, not much bigger than a shoebox. ‘I knew that one day – that the time would be right –’ His eyes were beginning to glisten and he shook his head, handing her the box. ‘Here, you’ll see.’
Elodie lifted the top.
Inside was a swathe of silk organza, light ivory in colour, its scalloped edge trimmed with a fine ribbon of velvet. She knew at once what it was. She had studied the photograph in its gilt frame downstairs many times before.
‘She was so beautiful that day,’ her father said. ‘I’ll never forget the moment she appeared in the doorway of the church. I’d half convinced myself she wouldn’t show. My brother teased me mercilessly in the days beforehand. He thought it was great sport and I’m afraid I made it easy for him. I couldn’t quite believe that she’d said “yes”. I was sure there’d been some sort of mix-up – that it was too good to be true.’
Elodie reached to take his hand. It had been twenty-five years since her mother’s death, but for her father it might as well have happened yesterday. Elodie had only been six, but she could still remember the way he used to look at her mother, the way they’d intertwined their fingers when they walked together. She remembered, too, the knock at the door, the low voices of the policemen, her father’s awful cry.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said with a quick pat to the top of her wrist. ‘You should be heading home, love. Come on downstairs – I’ve found the tapes you were after, too.’
Elodie replaced the lid of the box. She was leaving him to the burdensome company of his memories, but he was right: the journey home was a long one. Besides, Elodie had learned many years before that she was not equal to the task of healing his sorrow. ‘Thanks for keeping the veil for me,’ she said, brushing a kiss on his cheek as she stood.
‘She’d be proud of you.’
Elodie smiled, but as she followed her father downstairs she wondered if that were true.
Home was a small, neat flat that sat at the very top of a Victorian building in Barnes. The communal stairwell smelled like chip grease, courtesy of the fish shop below, but only the merest hint remained on Elodie’s landing. The flat itself was little more than an open-plan sitting room and kitchenette and an oddly shaped bedroom with a tacked-on bathroom; the view, though, made Elodie’s heart sing.
One of her bedroom windows overlooked the back of a row of other Victorians: old bricks, white sash windows and truncated roofs with terracotta chimney pots. In the gaps between drainpipes she could glimpse the Thames. Better yet, if she sat right up on the sill she could look all the way upriver to the bend where the railway bridge made its crossing.