Chapter 20
Before I put my key in the lock on Monday morning, the door swings open and Charlie is standing there, smiling.
A warmth bubbles up inside me at the sight of his friendly face.
‘Hello!’ we both say.
He holds the door back so I can wheel Nicki’s bike into the hall.
‘How was your weekend?’
‘How did it go?’
We speak at the same time.
‘You first,’ he commands.
‘No, you,’ I reply, unclicking my helmet.
He shrugs. ‘It was fine. Nothing eventful. Adam and I spent Saturday nursing our hangovers. Took April to the beach yesterday.’
I follow him into the kitchen. April beams and babbles at the sight of me, so I go over and pick her up. She presses her cheek against the nape of my neck, clutching onto my shoulders with her little fingers. The radio is on, playing ‘Manic Monday’ by The Bangles, and the atmosphere is so bright and cheerful that the bubbly warmth inside me expands further.
‘Ooh, you’re so lovely and cuddly,’ I say to April, squeezing her to me.
Charlie hops up onto the kitchen counter and sits there, his tanned legs dangling over the side.
He’s in a good mood this morning, as am I. After the upheaval of the weekend, I’m happy to be back into my routine.
‘This hug is longer than seven seconds.’ I glance at Charlie with a smirk.
He shakes his head, amused. ‘That was a good night.’
‘Hilarious. I’ve been giggling about you doing DJ Kool all weekend.’
‘I seriously don’t know how you got me to do that.’
‘A deal’s a deal.’
He creases his brow at me.
‘Don’t you remember?’ I ask. ‘You said you’d do it if I took on Eminem.’
His face lights up with the memory and he throws his head back and laughs. God, that sound. . .
‘That was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen,’ he says. ‘How did you know all the words?’
‘Oh, “Lose Yourself” is an old favourite,’ I reply offhandedly.
After a moment, he jerks his chin up at me. ‘So how did it go?’
It’s almost ten o’clock by the time I’ve filled him in on Ireland and made it upstairs to Nicki’s office. Soon I’m engrossed in the diary she wrote when she was twenty-four.
Nicki grew up in Essex, but moved to Cornwall in her second year of secondary school because her dad got a job at a top restaurant. When her parents divorced, Nicki’s mum wanted to return to Essex, but she agreed to let Nicki finish secondary school first. So, when Nicki set off to university, her mum’s new home in Essex became the place she’d return to outside of term time.
But she missed Cornwall, and, even though she also toyed with the idea of emigrating to Thailand, after university, Cornwall won out.
Nicki’s diaries became less confessional around this point and more general musings. It was clear she still loved to write, but she didn’t seem to feel the need to catalogue every single feeling. It’s a shame, because I’d love to know what was going through her mind when she reconnected with Charlie. She seemed excited to see him again: ‘JUST BUMPED INTO CHARLIE!’ is written in capital letters and is followed by several other references to their catching up. I don’t get the impression he held a grudge over what had happened when they were teenagers, and clearly their friendship soon developed once again into something more.
In the next two years Nicki returned to Thailand four times – during the summer and also at Christmas – and she also started to make notes about ideas she had for her novel. There’s no mention of Isak, so I don’t know if Nicki ever saw him again.
It’s not always easy to follow her jumping thoughts, but I freeze when I turn a page and the words: ‘FEMALE BIGAMIST’ jump out.
Bigamy. . .
Dictionary definition: ‘Crime of being simultaneously twice married’.
Whoa. Does this mean Nicki did intend for Kit to marry both Morris and Timo? Was her initial idea to write a book about a female bigamist?
I glance up at the books about Thailand. There are dozens of yellow Post-it notes sticking out of the tops of them. I get to my feet and pull one of the more heavily noted books down, glancing back up at the shelf to see that there’s another row of books behind the first.
Something calls on me to investigate.
I drag my chair over and climb onto it. An object is poking out from behind the last row of books – out of view from the floor. I reach up and pull it free.
It’s a wooden heart, made of small fragments of driftwood, twisted and kept in place with thin gold wire. A whole section is missing and some of the bits have come loose and need reworking back into the heart shape. It looks like the seahorse, but this creation is half the size – less than a foot in diameter.
I wonder if this is the heart Charlie had planned to finish for April.
I blow on it and a puff of dust fills the air, then I gingerly climb down from my chair, the books on the bookshelf momentarily forgotten.
I feel sick. So sick and sad. I sit there and stare at the heart with its missing piece and suddenly want to cry.
How did Charlie live through losing her? How did he pick himself up and raise a tiny baby when his heart must’ve been so broken he surely found it hard even to breathe?
The thought of him creating something this beautiful and then hiding it away so he wouldn’t have to look at it. . . Does he even remember that he put it there? Didn’t he say that he wanted to find it?
My eyes are drawn to the window. Charlie is outside sawing a piece of wood in half, Nicki’s mustard-yellow bandana keeping his hair out of his eyes. My music is still on – I didn’t realise it was time for April’s nap. I go to turn it down, but then hesitate, looking out of the window again at Charlie. He’s totally engrossed in his work.
I get up and quietly walk out of the office, pausing by April’s open door to check for any sound before venturing forward.
She’s fast asleep, sprawled out on her back. It’s warm in her bedroom and she’s kicked off her covers, her sturdy baby legs sticking out of the short-sleeved, pink-and-white babygrow she’s wearing. Her rosebud mouth is slightly open and her blonde hair is all mussed up and curly. She twitches and I flinch, but her breathing is steady, her little ribcage rising and falling with perfect rhythm.
I glance at her side table, at the white, driftwood picture frames that I now recognise as Charlie’s handiwork. There are photographs of April’s extended family – I spy Adam and Pat standing with whom I presume is Charlie’s dad, and I’m guessing the other people are Nicki’s mum, her sister and family, and her dad – but the other pictures are of Nicki. Nicki laughing and dressed up to the nines at some restaurant with the sun setting behind her, and Nicki with her face bare of make-up, smiling down at the newborn baby in her arms.
Something inside me splinters.
The light on April’s monitor is glowing green, so I’m careful to make no sound as I place the driftwood heart down beside the photo frames before returning to my office.