Before I left, I asked Mrs. Hogan if she believed our fairy photographs were real. It was the one secret I’d kept from her.
She paused for a moment before answering. “I believe there is more to every photograph than what we see—more to the story than the one the camera captures on the plate. You have to look behind the picture to discover the truth. That’s where you find the real story.”
She smiled, and I smiled in return, and that was all that needed to be said about it.
I slept peacefully that final night in Cottingley; no dreams came to me. Aisling had gone.
And so, it seemed, had my fairies. I thanked them silently and promised I would never forget them, or the magic and hope they had given me when I’d needed it the most. In my heart, I hoped I might see them again one day, but as I always said to Elsie, fairies will not be rushed. They would come back when they were ready.
On the train to Scarborough, as Mummy dozed beside me, I read the final pages of The Water Babies. It was still a favorite of mine, but I no longer cried when I reached the end. “But remember always, as I told you at first, that this is all a fairy tale, and only fun and pretence; and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true.”
As the sun streamed through the carriage window, I closed my eyes and thought about the men from London and Mr. Hodson’s “aural senses” and Mr. Snelling’s photography expertise. I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Without realizing it, Elsie and I had written our own fairy tale. It was, after all, only fun and pretense. In the years since we’d taken that first photograph, I’d come to understand that whatever we might say on the matter now, people had made up their minds. They wouldn’t believe we had faked the photographs even if we said we had, because they didn’t want the truth. They wanted something magical.
People wanted to believe in our fairies, whether we liked it or not.
And perhaps, after all, that was the best way for the story to end.
Sixteen
London and Leeds. Present day.
London was even more chaotic than Olivia remembered. After spending melodic weeks surrounded by nothing but the gentle hush of the bookshop and the nighttime lullaby of the sea, everything was too loud and too frantic. As soon as she stepped into the arrivals hall at Heathrow, the sickening sense of dread that had started on the plane began to swell. It grew all the way through the airport, and on the train into the city center, and on the Underground across London to Waterloo.
Her breathing quickened with each station the train hurtled past: Vauxhall, Queenstown Road, Clapham Junction, Wandsworth; each stop ticked off in her mind, just as she used to mark the stops on her daily commute home: three more stops, two more stops, one more stop. She’d often been relieved to find the apartment empty when she got there.
At Putney, she left the train station, mechanically following High Street toward the river, passing wine bars where she used to drink and the tapas restaurant where she and Jack met and had their first date, all on the same night. She’d been stood up. He was meeting a client whose flight was canceled. The champagne he’d put on ice to celebrate his business deal became Olivia’s first drink with him. He had saved her from eternal mortification and swept her off her feet in the process. For a while, at least.
As she walked, she felt as if she was looking through an old photograph album, turning the pages on memories and moments, fast-forwarding through the life she’d known here.
There was no sense of regret. None at all. Yet, when she reached the apartment block, the tightness in her chest intensified.
When they’d agreed on a date for her to collect a few things, Jack had promised he wouldn’t be there, but still Olivia’s heart raced as the lift ascended. She counted the floors until the doors opened and she stepped into the penthouse apartment.
She could smell him. His aftershave. His hair gel. His leather brogues.
Putting her bag down, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, telling herself to calm down. “Breathe, Olivia. Breathe.” The Thames and all of London spread out before her like a Turner painting in the early evening haze. It was a view that had always held the promise of more, a view she’d often wished she could reverse, so that she was out there among it, not stuck in a flashy penthouse admiring it from a distance. Everything had felt inside out. Disjointed.
She noticed Jack had removed their canvas engagement photo, the pale rectangle against the sun-faded wall the only sign it had ever existed. The empty space reflected perfectly the hollow void their relationship had become, had perhaps always been.
Not wanting to stay too long, Olivia got on with the task. In the guest room wardrobe she found her boxes of books. Disorganized and mismatched and imperfect with their cracked spines and slightly torn dust jackets, brimming with personality and so out of keeping with the high-gloss apartment and its floating shelves. More show house than home, it left Olivia cold and she longed for the cramped coziness of the flat above the bookshop.
It didn’t take long to do what she’d come for. After a couple of hours, she had everything she needed repacked and labeled for the courier who arrived just after seven. Once again, she was shocked to discover how quickly a life could be cleared away.
It was as if she had never been there.
In many ways, she never had.
Before she left, she placed an envelope on the kitchen island. Inside was her engagement ring and a single piece of paper on which she’d written, “I didn’t need diamonds. I needed a best friend. Olivia.”
She took a final moment to look around, a moment to leave behind the memories of the five years she’d spent there. This was where that part of her story ended, where the old Olivia would always be.
She closed the door behind her with a thud, and in that single sound, it was over.
From London she traveled to Leeds, dozing as the train sprinted northward. At her hotel, she sent a text to Henry to ask how Nana was. Having managed without a phone since throwing hers into the sea, it was with a sense of regret she’d bought a new one, but being away from Nana worried her, and she wanted the nursing home to be able to contact her should anything happen while she was away. Henry replied to say Nana was comfortable and Olivia wasn’t to be worrying. She typed a text to Ross then, but deleted it. Too exhausted to read, she fell into bed, too exhausted even to dream.