Our Happy Days by Julia Holbe

Author:Julia Holbe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2021-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

WHEN MARIE AND Fanny and I had finished breakfast that morning and I’d got the text message from Sean telling me that he was out all day, I went for a walk by the sea, feeling at a loss.

Marie and Fanny had driven into town. I hadn’t told them about Sean’s text.

It was midday and already quite hot, though it was only early summer. I saw sailboats in the distance and a silver strip of sunlight on the horizon.

I sat down on a bench and stared out to sea, trying to get my head around everything.

Why was he out all day? Where was he? Why had he bothered showing up if he had to leave again so suddenly? Why had any of this happened at all?

Deep down, though, I wasn’t surprised that it had happened, even with our history. It would have been the same with Lenica; she’d have plunged right in, the same as ever.

I decided to walk back by another route, leaving the coast behind and looping round via the tail end of the village, past hawthorn hedges and over meadows and fields. The ocean was still very close, but the countryside here had a rural feel and soon lost its seaside character; instead of the sandy coastal path, a strip of trodden grass led between towering brambles. I hadn’t been here for years; the bramble bushes were nothing like as big in those days, though I remembered them weighed down with blackberries in late summer—and perhaps the memory triggered others because I suddenly realised I was heading towards Lenica’s house.

I thought of turning back, but something drew me on. I saw the garden long before I reached it. The paint had peeled off the old wooden palings; they looked as shabby as ever, if not shabbier, but I felt a kind of relief that no one had repainted them—after all, how could you paint a fence that was overgrown with blue clematis? I was stunned by the clematis. It was so beautiful, so wild and rampant; it had completely taken over the fence.

I pushed open the wooden gate, which stood slightly ajar, just as I remembered it, and walked a few steps into the garden. There was still no path to the front door; you simply walked across the grass, which was, as ever, more of a meadow than a lawn.

Then I stopped and looked at the house. There was a broken pane in one of the upstairs windows. The place had an abandoned look to it.

I walked around the house, glancing up, almost instinctively, at the window that had been Lenica’s. It was open. The slate roof was green with moss.

I was about to make a cautious advance when I heard voices. I recognised them immediately. Edouard’s had grown a little cracked—I hadn’t seen him for so long. But he spoke in the same tone of gentle humour, the same singsong that never changed, no matter what mood he was in.

There was another voice, too.

They were somewhere behind the house.

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