Authors: Kimberley Freeman
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #Historical, #20th Century, #General
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The Times - Brisbane, May 1901
For Mary-Rose:
what’s said on the mountain, stays on the mountain.
The Times
Brisbane, May 1901
It is believed that all twenty-two souls aboard the barque
Aurora
have been lost in a hurricane off the eastern coast of Australia. Aboard the ship was Mr. Arthur Winterbourne, first son of the late Lord Winterbourne, the London jeweler. Mr. Winterbourne and his wife were accompanying a gift to the new Australian parliament from HRH Queen Victoria. It is understood the gift is a mace, a ceremonial club made of gold and precious gems, and it is priceless. Mr. Percy Winterbourne, the second son, is expected to travel to Australia to conduct a search for the object.
T
he woman’s white skin dazzles in the harsh sun. Her pale blue dress clings wetly to her ankles. The sky makes her eyes ache: it is as though she can see behind the blue to the great arch of the cosmos. The sand squeaks beneath her bare feet. Her shoes were swallowed by the sea. All of her belongings, her husband. All lost, spinning down in cold, dark salt water. All except the chest she drags behind her in the sand.
One footstep after another. She has not seen another human face since that of her husband, as his grip slipped and he vanished between the ship and the lifeboat. He looked almost surprised.
Her arms ache from dragging the chest, but she will never let it go, not while there is breath in her lungs. Inside is something so precious that it makes her heart squeeze against her ribs to think of losing it. The sea roars and retreats, roars and retreats, as it has done since she started to walk. At first she found the sound soothing, but now it irritates her. She wants quiet in her head. She wants silence to think about what has happened, what she has lost, and what on earth she should do next.
2011
L
ibby sat at the back of the small parish church mourning the man she had loved for twelve years. In a congregation of nearly eighty people, not one offered her a warm touch or a sad smile. They didn’t even know who she was. Or if they did, they didn’t show it.
It was a relief in some ways: at least there were no sidelong glances, no murmurs passed from lips to ears behind hands, no cool shoulders on either side of her in the pew. But in other ways it was a sad acknowledgment of the grubby truth. Nobody knew that the man they had come here today to bid farewell forever—the man whose strong body and brilliant life force somehow fit in that narrow box at the front of the church—was the most important man in her world. Mark Winterbourne, dead at fifty-eight from a ruptured aneurysm. He was mourned by family: his wife Emily and their two adult daughters.
Libby wasn’t sure about the rule for secret lovers of the deceased, but she assumed it involved sitting in the back pew with one’s heart aching as though it might crack into pieces while reining in the impulse to stand up and shout, “But none of you loved him as much as I did!”
On her birthday. Her fortieth birthday.
Libby discreetly touched her handkerchief to her leaking eyes again. The church was chill. February snow still lay on the ground outside. She shivered in her long-sleeved jacket. Mark wouldn’t have approved of what she was wearing. He had never liked her in tailored clothes: he said he spent enough time with people in suits. He liked her in jeans, loose dresses, or nothing. When she had pulled on the jacket this morning, an attempt not to stand out in a crowd that she knew would be immaculately dressed, she had remembered the last time she’d worn it. Mark had said, “Where’s that lacy shirt I like? Wear that instead.” The thought that Mark would never again complain about the jacket had hit her hard. Never again in the whole, long future of the universe would Mark say anything to her. Never again would his eyes crinkle with his quiet laughter. Never again would his hands clasp hers, would his lips claim hers, would his body press against hers . . .
Libby’s scalp pinched from trying to hold the sobs inside. It wouldn’t do for this unknown woman in the back pew to break down and let loose a secret held tightly for so long. Mark had always been adamant: his wife and children must never be hurt. They were innocent, they deserved no pain. Mark and Libby had to carry the entire burden. And what a terrible burden it had been, what an exhausting dance of soaring hope and blinding guilt the last twelve years had been.
The first of the tributes started, and Libby listened for a while, then decided these descriptions of Mark were not
her
Mark. So she closed her eyes and thought about what she would say, if she were free to say it.
Mark Winterbourne died at fifty-eight, but don’t make the mistake of thinking him a typical middle-aged man. He was tall and well kept, with a full head of hair and a flat stomach and hard thighs
that were a testament to his healthy lifestyle and love of long-distance running. He was smart and funny and determined. He let nothing slow him down. He overcame childhood illnesses, dyslexia, the death of his father when he was only fifteen. We had so many good times, hidden and stolen though they were. Even after twelve years together, he took my breath away. He was generous, sweet and kind. So kind. The kindest man I have ever known.
Hot tears squeezed from under Libby’s eyelids and ran down her cheeks. She opened her eyes, and saw that Mark’s wife had bent her head and was sobbing into her hands in the front pew. The vicar had come down the stairs to put his arm around her. Libby’s ribs squeezed tight with guilt. She should never have come.
T
he train back down through the Channel tunnel to Paris was largely empty, and Libby put her bag on the seat next to her and laid her head on it. Now the great hollowness could start in earnest. Mark was buried; the line between her old life and her new one had been marked in six feet of soil. She tried not to think of the things that she and Mark had never done, the things he had wanted to do but she had refused. Things that she needed to do herself, now that she was alone. Now that she was so keenly aware of how tenuously life was held. The train bumped and swayed and Libby breathed deeply. In, out, aware of her breath, so temporarily housed in her warm body.
“C
laudette wants to see you.”
Libby looked up. She was just unwinding her scarf and hanging her bag on the back of her chair. Here at Pierre-Louis Design the cubicles were as bland as the reception area was bright. Libby
worked all day on her large-screen Mac designing glossy brochures for jewelry and fashion houses while surrounded by gray furniture and beige room dividers. Gradually the entire building was being refurbished, but somehow the refurbishers never made it to her quarter of the workplace.
“Why does Claudette want to see me?”
Monique, Claudette’s secretary, blinked back as though surprised. “I don’t know. But she said to seize you the moment you came in.”
Libby sighed. It had been hard enough to get up in her little flat in Levallois. The weight of her limbs had astonished her. She had managed to take off the last five days, since Mark died, by claiming illness, and it
was
a kind of illness. An ache from toes to scalp. But it would never go away. She would never be fit for work. “All right,” she said. “I’m coming.”
Libby’s French had been of the awkward, high-school variety when she’d first arrived in Paris twenty years ago. Now she was fluent, could think in French, but she missed speaking English. She missed the nuance available in so many synonyms, she missed being able to string adjectives one after the other like pearls, and she still had to hesitate if she was trying to express herself in French while upset. Claudette, her boss, had a reputation for upsetting her staff, so Libby was on her guard.
Claudette’s office featured floor-to-ceiling windows through which, if she desired, she could watch the Seine all day. But Claudette had purposely placed her desk so her back was turned away from the view. It had been the only change she’d made on her arrival eight months ago, but it had been a telling one. In Claudette’s opinion, there was no time for looking out windows, and the relaxed atmosphere that Libby had once treasured about her work had gradually withered and died.
“Ah, Libby,” Claudette said, indicating the chair at the side of the desk. “Do sit down. We need a little chat.”
Libby sat down, realized her heart was speeding and tried to take a deep breath without Claudette noticing. She crossed her legs and waited while Claudette fixed her with icy blue eyes. The window was open, and she could hear the traffic on the two bridges that bracketed the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis.
“Happy birthday,” Claudette said at last.
Libby was taken aback. “Thank you,” she said.
A pause. Claudette still hadn’t smiled.
“Is that all?” Libby asked.
“I am suspicious,” Claudette said. “You took five days off over your fortieth birthday.”
“I was unwell.”
“And yet you look well this morning.”
She did? “Because I’ve had five days off.”
Claudette narrowed her eyes, then leaned back in her chair, turning a lead pencil over and over in her fingers. “I must believe you, I suppose. I simply do not like being made a fool of, Libby. Five days’ leave costs me a lot of money. I would hate to think you were taking advantage of your employer, simply because you had a milestone birthday to celebrate.”
Claudette was famed for these little offenses, so Libby didn’t bite. “I assure you I was incapable of coming to work.”
“And yet Henri saw you on the platform at Gare du Nord yesterday afternoon.”
“I was coming back from London, from seeing my specialist.”
“Specialist?”
Libby held her ground. “It’s private.”
Claudette frowned. Libby fought back guilt. It wasn’t in her nature to lie, even after twelve years with Mark.
“I can do nothing but accept you are telling the truth,” Claudette said with a little shrug.
“It is the truth,” Libby lied.
Claudette glanced at her notebook. “While I have you here . . . I heard this morning that Mark Winterbourne died. You handled his account, yes?”
Libby’s heart screeched, but she tried not to give any outward sign. “Yes.”
“Can you call his office today and see who is taking his position? We’ve had his account for twelve years and I don’t want to lose it. The Winterbourne catalog is one of our signature productions.”
“Call them today? We don’t normally sign the contract until mid-year.”
“They’ll be distracted. Everything still up in the air. We can’t risk another studio getting the contract.” Claudette shook her head. “He died of an aneurysm, you know,” she said. “I heard it was genetic. He’s not the first Winterbourne to go that way, apparently.”
Libby winced. She hadn’t known that. Of all the intimacies they’d shared, he’d never mentioned a predisposition to drop dead suddenly. Had he not told her because he wanted to protect her from worry? Or had he not told her because she was only his lover?
Claudette shrugged. “Life is short. Let’s get the contract. Call them today.”
Libby returned to her desk with her stomach churning. How could she dial that familiar number now, knowing that he wouldn’t be there to take her call? How could she go on working on the catalog without Mark to plan it with her? Her job, once the sweet refuge where contact with Mark was sanctioned, had emptied out. There was nothing except the beige room dividers and cranky boss. She stared for a long time at her blank computer screen—she
hadn’t even switched it on—wondering if anyone ever recovered from such a loss. Then she stood and picked up her handbag, scarf and coat and, without a word, left the office.