“About that,” Elliot says slowly. “It’s probably best if you don’t mention the book when you … if you see my parents.”
“Really? Why? You don’t think they’d like it?”
“No,” he says shortly. “No, they wouldn’t. Oh, not because of the subject matter,” he adds, sensing my surprise at this. “My dad was the one who got me into researching the family tree in the first place. It’s kind of a passion of his. It’s thewritingpart he wouldn’t like.”
“He … doesn’t like writing?” Now I’m really confused. “How could he not likewriting?”
“It’s not that he doesn’tlikeit,” Elliot replies, his fist closing tightly around the wrapper in his hand. “It’s that he doesn’t think it’s a good enough career for one of his sons. I don’t think he sees it as a career at all, actually; just a hobby. And a distraction. He doesn’t want me distracted. He wants me to come back from this trip and go work for the family business, like my brothers. He thinks that’s what I’m going to do.”
“But you don’t want to,” I say, understanding. “You want to write, instead.”
I squeeze his arm gently, thinking about how similar we are; both of us stuck working for businesses we didn’t choose, just because it’s what’s expected of us.
“It isn’t realistic, though, is it?” Elliot replies. “Writing? It’s not like it’s going to earn me enough to live off. It’s probably not going to earn me anything at all, actually. That’s what’s so frustrating about it. I feel like I’m just chasing some stupid dream that’s never going to come true.”
“It could, though,” I tell him firmly, hating this sudden switch from happy, positive Elliot to someone who sounds more like … well,me,really. “Of course it could. It’s not a stupid dream, Elliot. Your book is good. It’s going to be even better once we figure out the finer details of the plot. And there are plenty of people who make a living out of writing. Like Stephen King, say. Or… or other people like Stephen King. Why shouldn’t you be one of them?”
“I don’t think I’m going to be the next Stephen King, somehow,” Elliot laughs, his good humor restored. “And those ‘finer details of the plot’ are kinda important, really. But hey: if I could be one of the people who makes a living from figuring out difficult plot points, then what’s stopping you being one of them, too?”
“Oh, everything.” I sigh dramatically, resting my head on his shoulder. “My dad isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of me doing anything other than working for the family business either, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I guess we’ll find out how he feels about that soon,” Elliot says. “When you speak to him about our Christmas plans.”
He kisses me on the forehead, and we sit there looking out at the view, me turning the idea of ‘our Christmas plans’ slowly over in my head, marveling at how quickly we’ve become people withplanstogether.
“The thing is,” I say slowly, watching a rise from one of the chimneys below us, in a lazy trail across the winter sky. “This thing … us. It was just supposed to be a fling, wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to last past Christmas Eve.”
“We didn’t actually say that,” Elliot points out, his voice coming from above my head. “We just said we’d enjoy each other’s company while it lasted. So who says we can’t make it last longer?”
His tone is deliberately light, but there’s an entire subtext to what he’s saying, and finding out exactly what it says has just become the most important thing in my life.
“That’s just it, though,” I reply, sitting up, and pushing my hair out of my face so I can see him properly. “We can’t, can we? Not really. Say I do come to Florida. Say I come for Christmas — or even as long as New Year. I’ll still have to come home again, eventually. All we’ll be doing is delaying the inevitable. All we’ll be doing is making it harder when we have to say goodbye. I’m … I’m just not sure I can do that. I’m not sure I want to.”
I stop talking, realizing I’ve done it now: I’ve well and truly destroyed the whole ‘living for the moment’ illusion, and revealed myself as exactly what I am: a girl who’s scared of getting hurt.
It’s true, though, isn’t it? The fact is, I don’t want to be just a chapter of Elliot’s life. I want to be the whole story. And I know it would be greedy of me to expect a happy ending, but the truth is, I want that too.
“You’re not sure you want to spend Christmas with me, or you’re not sure you want to say goodbye?” Elliot asks. “I just … I need to be very clear what you’re saying here, Holly, because it kind of sounds like you might be breaking up with me?”
“I’m not,” I reply, hating the wary look in his eyes, and the fact that I’m the one who put it there. “Well, not yet, anyway. But, I mean, we’ve been breaking up since the day we met, Elliot, haven’t we? Because we know it can’t last. We live on different sides of the world. And me coming to the States with you for a week or two isn’t going to change that. We’re still going to have to say goodbye.”
I chew my bottom lip anxiously, not used to making emotionally charged speeches. Or waiting for a response to them.
Before that response can come, though, there’s a sudden flurry of activity as the birds in the surrounding trees all take off at once, the quiet of the hillside shattered by the arrival of Maisie Poole, who comes trudging up the hill towards us.
“Oh, there you both are!” she says brightly, as Elliot and I exchange surprised looks. “I thought I’d find you two here!”
“Maisie? What on earth?” I say, wondering if the rumors are true and she really does have spies working for her — because that’s the only explanation I can think of for her certainty that she’d find us on top of this hill.
“Budge up,” she says, plonking herself unceremoniously between us, and placing a large leather handbag on her knee. “I have something to show you.”
I risk a glance at Elliot over the top of his head as she opens the bag and rummages inside it, but he’s too focused on Maisie for me to beable to decode the look on his face, or figure out what he might have been planning to say to me before we were interrupted.
I watch impatiently, willing Maisie to hurry up as she continues to search through the contents of her bag. I’m half expecting her to produce a couple of lamps and a hatstand, like Mary Poppins, but instead she pulls out a brown manila envelope, from which she produces an old, black-and-white photograph.
“Ta-da,” she says, smiling triumphantly as Elliot and I lean forward to take a look at it. “The ladies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, photographed in front of Bramblebury Village Hall, in 1943. Recognize anyone?”
I squint down at the faded photo, which shows around a dozen women standing on the steps of the hall, all of them wearing the same uniform as the mystery woman in Elliot’s photo. It takes me a moment to spot her, and then Elliot and I see her at the same time.
