What good would it do? It was in the past and didn’t affect Chloe’s life in any way. Why did she need to know about past unhappiness? On the other hand, it was part of their family history. Part of what had made Belinda who she was.
Maybe she’d been wrong to stay silent like her mum, but it had been the easy way out. If people didn’t know, they couldn’t judge. But that deathbed promise her mother had extracted from her – did that mean she’d lived her life feeling guilty over things? Or simply that she wanted Belinda to know the truth?
Belinda gave a small groan. How was she going to find the truth all these years later? She glanced up at the hotel building as she turned to walk back and remembered the box in the cupboard. Perhaps that would hold clues? She quickened her pace. Tonight was the night she’d finally go through the box and examine its contents properly.
Once upstairs, Belinda quickly cleared the debris of the evening away and poured herself the last of the wine before opening the cupboard and dragging the box out. Settling down on the floor alongside it, she lifted the lid off and began to take things out.
An hour later, she was stiff, barely able to move and surrounded by small piles of stuff. A pile to throw away consisting mainly of old utility bills, out-of-date passports (hers and her mum’s), old batteries and several old-fashioned Valentine cards. There was another pile of envelopes containing black-and-white photos. Belinda had spent some time looking through these and had pulled out one of her mami to frame and place on her bedside table. There was a small (very small) pile of home-made cards from her to her mum – birthday, mothering Sunday, Christmas, stretching over about five years. She was touched that her mum had kept those, but she didn’t need to keep them, they were destined for the bin. Her school reports and her Baccalauréat certificate were at the very bottom of the box under a large brown envelope with a lot of official papers.
Belinda put the last envelope to one side while she struggled to her feet and began to tidy up a bit. She’d sit on the settee to go through the final envelope once she’d put all the things to keep back in the box.
She was too tired to do more than a cursory look through of the contents of the envelope before she went to bed. It was full of family birth, marriage and death certificates. A real find if she’d been researching family history. And that was it. The box was empty. It hadn’t been hoarding incriminating papers, or the diary that Belinda had secretly been hoping she’d find. A diary that would hold the key to her mother’s life all those years ago.
She glanced at her watch, nearly midnight. Better go to bed and get some sleep or she’d be fit for nothing at work tomorrow.
But sleep wouldn’t come and she tossed and turned for hours until at nearly four o’clock she found herself sitting bolt upright.
Two vitally important things were missing from amongst everything in the box. Two things that would begin to, if not explain everything, at least give her a starting point. But for that she needed to return to Brittany.
24
Tuesday morning and life was almost back to normal in the auberge. The guests had checked out and Fern had left Anouk and Scott chatting over breakfast on the terrace while she made a start on her after-guests routine of changing linen, cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming everywhere.
The weekend had been so good. Saturday and Sunday had been full of fun, laughter and food, so much food! And yesterday Scott had driven them down to Pont-Aven as he’d promised and they’d had a leisurely walk along the river there and then lunch in the hotel overlooking the estuary. The sun had shone, the tide had been in and, all in all, it had been a wonderful day.
Fern pushed the thought of how much she was going to miss Scott when he left out of her mind. Hopefully organising Anouk to move in with her would keep her busy. Not that Anouk had told her yet what she had decided. Fern was driving her home after lunch and would press her for a decision then. She hoped Anouk’s decision would be the one she was praying for.