The Missing Pieces of Us Read online

  The Missing Pieces of Us

  Eva Glyn

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

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  Copyright © Eva Glyn 2021

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  Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

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  Eva Glyn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008453299

  Ebook Edition © July 2021 ISBN: 9780008453282

  Version: 2021-06-25

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for reading…

  You will also love…

  About the Author

  Also by Eva Glyn

  One More Chapter...

  About the Publisher

  In memory of my father, who introduced me to folklore and never lost his belief in fairies.

  Chapter One

  Izzie

  The icy air is a slap in the face after the fug of the probate office. And a slap in the face is what I damn well need, but it doesn’t help and I am left feeling disoriented. I have to pull myself together. For Claire’s sake, as much as anything. A father is irreplaceable, after all – a husband is, well… I don’t know… I just don’t know… I can’t even bear to think about the empty space right now.

  She touches my arm. “Come on, Mum, let’s go for a coffee now that’s over.”

  “I thought you had to be in college?”

  “It’s fine – I’ve got time. No class ’til 11:30.”

  The closer we get to Winchester city centre the more crowded the pavements become. The early morning shift of Christmas shoppers battles back to Tower Street car park, carrier bags thudding against their legs. Coats, handbags, reddened faces rush towards me and I sidestep into the gutter. A cyclist curses. Claire grabs my arm.

  “Watch out, Mum.”

  “Sorry… sorry.”

  It is little better when we reach the pedestrian section of the High Street. Crowds ooze around a handcart laden with gloves and scarves. Claire fingers an emerald-green one with orange tassels but I can’t stop now; I can see Caffè Nero ahead and I want to be inside, away from all this. I keep walking.

  My face meets the softness of an anorak. It is the smell of it that makes me recoil. I look up to see a bearded face framed by straggly hair.

  “Sorry,” the man mumbles.

  “No, no, it’s my fault – I wasn’t looking.”

  He melts into the crowd and Claire is tugging at my arm. But I know him; I’m sure I do. Then I’m sure I don’t. How could I?

  Inside the café, Claire sits me down at the nearest table while she queues for our drinks. She’ll be gone a while. I unbutton my coat and spread it over the back and arms of the low leather chair, sliding into its silky lining. I close my eyes but I can still hear Christmas: instrumental carols through the chatter. A face drifts across my memory… a pair of intense hazel eyes. No. It was twenty years ago.

  Claire has two mugs of latte in one hand and a plate of banoffee pie in the other.

  “They’ve run out of trays.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy in here.”

  She hands me a fork and plunges the other one into the pie. “Sugar. We need it.” She savours a mouthful. “Mmmm. It’s delish. Dig in.”

  “I’m OK, Claire. Really.”

  She nods but she doesn’t believe me. Come on, Isobel, get a grip. I clear my throat. “I’m fine, honestly. I was just… wondering… I think I know that tramp I bumped into.”

  Claire frowns. “How do you know a tramp?”

  “He wasn’t a tramp then. It was a very long time ago. I’d only just finished college – if I’m right, of course.”

  “So what makes you think it was him?” She sounds cautiously curious.

  “Two things really – his height and his eyes. You have to admit he was exceptionally tall.”

  “You only came up to his chin.”

  Her words stir a warm memory and I pick up my fork.

  “So who do you think he is, Mum?”

  “Someone I knew before I started my teacher training. I was filling in time selling stationery and he was the office manager at one of the big firms of solicitors.”

  “Office manager? Wow. I wonder what happened?”

  I shrug. “People’s lives change. The last time I saw him he was wearing a suit.” But that’s a lie and I know it; Robin was naked, his face buried in a pillow, our duvet twisted around his legs. I ask Claire what classes she has today.

  The clock ticks past eleven and Claire has to go. The crowds outside are even thicker, but through the shifting shapes of bags and coats I
spy a bearded man in a grubby blue anorak sitting on the bottom step of the Buttercross monument – right opposite the café door. Claire’s eagle eyes don’t miss him either.

  She nudges me. “Mum, it’s your tramp.”

  I nod. “I know. I think I’ll get another coffee.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “Of course I will. Now run along and I’ll pick you up from the station later.”

  I do buy another coffee, but it isn’t for me. I ask for a takeaway and balance some sugar and a stirrer on the lid before fighting the short distance across the street. I put the cup on the step next to the man but he doesn’t look up. I am unsure now, unsure of everything, and I don’t know what to say, but as I turn away I hear him mumble, “Thanks, Izzie.”

  I have only moved a few feet but I keep on walking.

  Chapter Two

  The determination to wrap Claire’s Christmas presents gets me home. There are only a few days left before term breaks up and I need to have them hidden before she starts turning the house upside down looking for them. I wonder if she will this year, without Connor to egg her on. He never grew out of it either – they used to drive me nuts.

  I stop in the hall, one arm out of my coat, as the memory assails me. There is no leather jacket on the hook, no violin case propped at the bottom of the stairs. I want to curl up and cry – die, even – as the gap left by Connor rises up to engulf me. I fight it with everything I’ve got and scramble out of the house and into the car. As my breath slows an idea begins to take shape – a distraction – so I let myself follow it.

  It is literally years since I’ve been to the fairy tree and I wonder if it’s still there. I know it was when Claire was a child – Connor used to take her because she loved it. I used to pretend it was a load of mumbo-jumbo and he shouldn’t encourage her, but he knew at least some of the reason I didn’t go with them. In fact he’d forbidden it, and I was glad.

  Today is a far cry from the late-summer afternoon when Robin brought me here; the stripped trees give little shelter from the wind and the sky is slate grey. No dappled sunlight now to lure me into mysterious dells; how could I have almost believed the magic was real? My laugh sends a pair of pigeons flapping from the highest branches. I sound like a bloody mad woman. Thank God there’s no one around to hear me.

  I suppose I almost believed in the magic because I was almost in love. When Robin showed me the notes from the children in the letterbox tacked to the tree, I cried and he kissed me. The guilt I’d been feeling about my boyfriend was swept away and I couldn’t help but want him. And later, after everything that happened, we held hands around the tree to wish, and I begged and begged the fairies to take all the obstacles away so Robin and I could be together from that moment. Begging? The fairies? What frigging planet was I on?

  It’s much too cold to hang around wondering. I march along the path and suddenly the tree is in front of me: taller, broader, but still festooned with ribbons, necklaces, and small toys. All around it little plastic folk are perched in shrubs and on tree stumps, Tinkerbells and Wonder Women jostling for position to guard the approach.

  The tips of my fingers scrape over the bark. On closer inspection I see it’s studded with coins and I wonder why, but then I spot a note, supposedly from the fairies, thanking the children for the money for Barnardo’s. It looks as though it’s been there a long time. The letterbox is overflowing and the plastic folder pinned to the back of the trunk is almost devoid of replies. Maybe whoever has been perpetrating this elaborate hoax has finally come to their senses.

  I turn away. This isn’t really the tree that’s drawn me back here. There is another one, a willow close to the river that Connor knew nothing about, where Robin and I ran to escape the storm. Where we made love for the very first time, with thunder rolling around the valley and raindrops skating down the leaves above us. I remember afterwards he sat against the trunk and I nestled into the crook of his arm, full of hope for a new beginning.

  But first I had an ending to deal with: my boyfriend Paul. I told Robin I would do it straight away but he was hesitant. “Don’t burn your boats, Izzie,” is what he said.

  I sat up straight and pulled away to look him in the eye. “Do you think you’ve made a mistake?”

  He shook his head. “Not in the way you mean. But you’ve always been open about Paul and I haven’t been the same with you.”

  I felt my shiny, new world slipping from under me. “You’re… you’re not married, are you?”

  “No, nothing like that. I live with my mother. I care for her – she’s in a wheelchair.”

  I relaxed back against his shoulder. “Well that’s OK, it’s not a problem.”

  His fingers dug into the top of my arm. “Izzie, it is. It’s a major, major thing. I have to be there every morning to get her dressed, every night to put her to bed.”

  “But you go to work… and come out…”

  “Thanks to the neighbours, my Auntie Jean especially. Mum will have been with her most of this afternoon.”

  “So your mum doesn’t want you to have a girlfriend?”

  I heard the smile in his voice. “Far from it – she’d love me to. She says she doesn’t want to ruin my life as well. In fact, she knows there’s someone I care for at the moment. I’ve had to promise she’ll meet you if, well, if anything comes of it.”

  “Something has come of it.” I stood and brushed myself down. “Come on, it’s almost stopped raining. I’ll drive you home and I can meet her now.”

  “Izzie, no. Not yet…”

  “Yes, Robin. If it’s as big a thing as you’re making out then I need to meet her before I burn my boats. But I warn you, they’re in flames already.”

  He stood up and took me in his arms. “You’re wonderful, Izzie,” he murmured, “a dream come true.”

  Only, it was actually a nightmare that was about to begin.

  Chapter Three

  Robin

  The tide of Christmas washed me down the High Street. The Salvation Army band was gathered near the Buttercross, the trumpet player’s scales rising into the air and mingling with the scent of roasting chestnuts. Further on, the traffic lights glowed into the leaden morning – red, yellow, green. The colours were coming back.

  Towards King Alfred’s statue the pavements narrowed. Opposite the bus station tourists streamed from a coach, Welsh accents filling the air. I pressed myself against the railings of the park but in truth I need not have bothered. I seemed to have perfected the art of creating an empty space of at least a yard around me. Despite being invisible. One day I’d laugh about it – I hoped.

  It was ice cold next to the river. The wind had torn down the High Street after me, ripping away any hope of shelter by the water. It was no surprise most of the benches were free. I put the carrier bag containing my belongings on the first one I came to and crouched beside it in a fruitless bid to escape the worst of the gale.

  The Itchen was in full spate. A drake huddled on a flat rock, hunkering down to avoid the wind but finding himself splashed by the freezing waters instead. The gardens rising up on the other side of the river were stripped for winter, naked branches shivering. A single holly bush stood out, glossy green, a miserly few berries left by the birds. Red and green… Colours again. They pierced the fog in my mind, even as my body battled the cold.

  I knew when the colours had started. I was on the steps of the Buttercross, nursing the empty paper cup. I turned it in my hand, royal blue with a firmament of Christmas stars. Izzie. A heart-stopping moment of joy, confusion, then shame. But all the same I couldn’t tear myself away. I waited for her there every morning, just in case. I could still taste the coffee – bitter, hot, and strong.

  The faintness of my memory of meeting Izzie for the first time was frustrating me. It was as if she had faded into view: a navy trouser-suit at a business breakfast, a shock of blonde hair across a bar, manicured nails clutching a leather Filofax, and laughter, always laughter. Sitting oppos
ite me, trying to sell me stationery. And succeeding.

  In the mid-80s, graduates in dead-end jobs were not uncommon and Izzie and I were in the same boat. The mathematician and the botanist discussing the relative merits of Tipp-Ex and Snopake, Biros and Bics across a pine boardroom table, our filter coffee (brought in and served by a secretary, naturally) in chunky Denby cups and saucers. I had a habit of spinning the sugar bowl under my hand; it drove Izzie to distraction. The first time she touched me was to give me a slap to make me stop.

  I was the office manager for one of the biggest firms of solicitors in Southampton. My mum was so proud – watching me go off to work in a suit and tie. It was what graduates did in her book, but it wasn’t what botany graduates who’d dreamt of travelling the world did in mine. But it just wasn’t possible – the moment one of her more violent boyfriends had pushed her down the stairs and left her in a wheelchair, my horizons had narrowed too.