of it, as he turned back to the door and disappeared inside before she had the chance to say anything else. She wondered if he was regretting his words in the restaurant, regretting coming on this mad crusade with her. Whether they were both on a fool’s errand.
* * *
Breakfast the next morning was quiet, saved only by the running interjections from their host, who delivered heaping plates of bacon, sausages, eggs, and tomatoes to their table. Even baked beans.
Rachel looked at him questioningly, pointing her fork to the beans. “Really?” she whispered.
“Uh-huh. That’s what you get with the full English.” He grinned at her and she grinned back. His good humor had returned and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“North or south?” she asked as she bit into some toast.
“What?”
“Are we driving to London, or back to the islands this morning?”
He gave her a wide grin. “Have a guess.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Cornwall, Spring 2018
Richard closed the door gently behind the pleasant but hopelessly naive couple and walked slowly to the kitchen. Filling the kettle, he lifted it onto the stove before turning to the cluttered dresser. It would be here somewhere, he knew.
Riffling through a sea of old papers, bills, yellowing newspaper clippings, several teaspoons—so that was where they’d disappeared to—takeout menus, window-cleaning flyers, and psychology journals, he found what he was looking for, tucked inside a dusty copy of his book on trauma therapy.
The photograph.
He wiped away a mote of dust from the surface with his thumb and held it up. A moment frozen in time. There they were: George, poor, poor Robbie, Jean, Mrs. Biggs, himself, and Esther. Wilkie, who had given him the print, behind the camera of course.
It could have been yesterday. Events from half a century ago were more immediate to him than those of a few years back nowadays.
All of them—well, apart from Wilkie—so young. He almost couldn’t believe they’d once looked like that, especially him. He’d grown used to the sight of an old man with thickening eyebrows, a large nose, and a face marked by deep lines, not this clear-skinned chap with wavy hair, a ready smile, and a naive belief that he could change the world, or at least help put an end to some of its suffering.
His eyes fixed on Esther and his breath caught at her fragile beauty. She faced the camera with a wary look.
He had been unsurprised when he came across an article in one of the Sunday papers a few years back, a profile of her as a female climbing pioneer. Somehow he had known she would go on to achieve great things; he had seen her strength of mind, knew what it had cost her to make the decisions she had. He had briefly considered getting in touch after that; had held on to the article for several months, clipping it carefully, before his cleaner had consigned it to the recycling without asking him.
He had tried so hard to forget her.
The high-pitched whistle of the kettle roused him from his memories and he put the photograph back down on top of the pile. He went to get a mug from the cupboard, noticing that his hands shook even more than usual and that the china rattled as he placed it on the bench top. Taking extra care, he spooned coffee granules from a jar and poured in the boiling water.
He didn’t risk carrying the coffee through to the living room, but sat down at the kitchen table instead and stared out of the window, marshaling his thoughts. The cup sat by his elbow, untouched, growing cold.
It wasn’t until the cat wandered in from the living room and curled herself around his ankles, purring loudly for her supper, that he got up and went in search of the can opener. “So what do you think, hey, Anna?” he asked. “Should I go and see her?”
* * *
When Rachel and Jonah arrived at Richard’s cottage the next morning, he was ready and waiting for them, wearing dark trousers, a crisp pale blue shirt that matched the color of the morning sky, a tweed jacket, and a perfect Windsor-knotted tie. He’d combed his white hair into neat furrows that were slicked back from his temples and even trimmed his unruly eyebrows. He was clutching a newspaper-wrapped sheaf of narcissi, picked from his garden, in one hand, and wielded a lacquered wooden cane in the other.
“All set?” Jonah asked.
Richard nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”
Traffic on the motorway was light