It was as if this stranger on the phone had produced a key to a vault of dusty old memories. I closed my eyes tightly, but like meddling ghosts, they demanded my attention. And there she was, my mother, on the last morning I ever saw her. She was standing at the base of the stairs, holding her arms out to me. I studied her beautiful face, with those chiseled features and arresting, crystal-blue eyes. She wore a long, flowy pale blue dress, with a ruffle at the hem.
The man on the phone cleared his throat, and the image disintegrated like a popped bubble. “I’m sorry, but I must relay some upsetting news,” he continued. “Your mother…she…passed away last Tuesday after a battle with ovarian cancer. However, I’m told that her passing was peaceful and painless.”
I swallowed hard. My arms and legs felt numb—foreign limbs connected to my despondent body. My heart beat so loudly, it was the only thing I could hear. How could she be dead? It seemed so…selfish. As if her last breath was a perfectly executed final blow—to me. While it’s true I’d long since given up on the idea of our reunion, I suppose a small part of me believed it might happen. Someday. The way it turns out in books, when the pain of the past is miraculously healed in the final pages—wrongs righted with the blot of a handkerchief, heartache mended with a needle and thread. I was supposed to have that ending. But, no, mine would be a tragic one: Nick’s letter, and now this. I once read a book about a woman who was struck by lightning three times in one year. It was as if it hunted her.
No, no, no. I blinked back tears. Was I dreaming? Was it all a nightmare?
As Whitaker continued speaking, I fell further into disbelief. I listened, but his words sounded garbled and extraneous.
“Your mother has designated you as the sole heir to her estate. This includes the property she owns in Primrose Hill—which is a fine neighborhood in London, always holds its values. The building is old, but quite comfortable. There are two flats, on the first and second floors. The bookstore is on the ground floor.”
I shook my head, his words finally sinking in. “The…bookstore?”
London, England
January 11, 1968
“You look perfect, El,” my best friend, Millie, reassured me. “The question is, will he be good enough for you?” She tucked her arm around my waist and leaned her head against my shoulder, both of us staring into the hallway mirror in our shared flat.
“Maybe I should wear the blue dress. Is red…too much? Now, be honest, it’s your solemn duty as my friend to tell me if I look like a tart.”
I turned sideways, instantly grateful that I’d skipped tea today. A scone and jam would have certainly burst the zipper. I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care.
I smiled at our reflection—both versions of us were there in the mirror: the little girls who had met at age nine, and also the grown women, navigating the ways of the world. We were an unlikely pair from the beginning—me, a sprite with blond hair and pale skin, and Millie, the tallest girl in primary school, towering above me, with her brunette braids and always a blunt curtain of bangs across her forehead.
Millie had little interest in boys or, later in life, men—but I was quite the opposite. My collection of schoolgirl crushes and young adult romances was as vast as it was unimpressive. But the storybook dream of love remained firmly rooted in my heart. Like my favorite heroines in books, I longed for my own version of true love, even if Millie thought it was all poppycock.
But Roger Williams—the Honorable Roger Williams was hardly poppycock. After my shift ended, he escorted me outside, then asked me to join him for dinner at the Royal Automobile Club. I’d nearly fainted, right there on the corner of Brompton.
True, he ran in upscale circles I might not have been privy to, but it was 1968, not 1928. A girl from the East End could go to dinner with any man she chose, including one from London’s highest of societies.
Millie carefully snipped the tag off the side of my dress. It had been an extravagance that had cut way too far into last week’s paycheck, but it was a necessity for a date with one of London’s most dashing and eligible bachelors. Roger’s father, Sir Richard Williams, was a decorated military commander, one of Churchill’s most trusted wartime confidants. His mother was a frequent visitor at Buckingham Palace.
“How did you meet him again?” Millie asked, as if what I’d previously recounted was somehow insufficient; she was looking for cracks in my story.
“I already told you—at Harrods. Remember, he was shopping for a birthday gift for his mother?”
“Or his girlfriend,” she said with a smirk.
I sighed. “Please, Mill. Can’t you just be happy for me?”
She shrugged. “Well, what did he get her, then?”
“A scarf,” I said with a smile. “Hermès.”
Millie wasn’t impressed. “You wait on him, and then he…asks you on a date? El darling, I don’t doubt that Roger Williams has more charm in his pinky finger than most men have in their entirety, but let’s not forget the fact that he’s one of the most notorious playboys in London.”
“Stop being such a prude,” I said.
“I just…don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”
“I won’t, Mill,” I promised. “I’m going to meet him tonight, and I intend to have a marvelous time.”
Millie looked unconvinced. “What will…Frank think?”
I rolled my eyes. “Frank? You’re seriously worried about Frank?”
“Well, he is in love with you, isn’t he?”
“He is not in love with me,” I countered. “Besides, just because he’s taken me to dinner a few times doesn’t mean I belong to him.”
I stared at my reflection in the mirror a moment longer and even though I was quick to dismiss Millie’s concerns, they held weight. Frank, an American businessman I’d met last month at a bistro in Primrose Hill, was a far cry from my usual suitors—earnest, hair a bit askew. After he bumped into me at the counter and spilled my tea, he insisted on buying me lunch, and for some reason I accepted. I don’t remember ever laughing as much as I did that day. His suit was in need of tailoring, which I noted immediately, but there was something genuine about him. When he asked me to have dinner the following weekend, and the one after that, I said yes. I enjoyed his company, even if my heart didn’t beat faster in his presence.
Millie approved of him immediately. “Finally, you’re going out with a decent gentleman,” she whispered to me as I slid into his car before our second dinner date. She may have been right about that, but my mind wasn’t yet made up on the romantic front. Frank Baker remained a wild card.
A loud thud sounded from the flat above. Shouting, then the cry of a child. Millie and I exchanged knowing looks. In this rough neighborhood of London, mothers were overworked and exhausted, and fathers often turned to the bottle.
Millie had her stories, and I had mine.