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Abigail managed a smile. ‘Oh, yes, the cine film 8. I swear it used to drive me mad. Most people would just buy a digital camera – point and play. Not Toby. He has to be different. And he has to make life difficult for himself.’
Lili wasn’t the only one who noticed that Abigail was referring to Toby in the present tense.
Abigail frowned, realising what she’d just said. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to referring to him in the past tense, to thinking of him as no longer around. It still felt as though he’d just popped to the corner shop or was out at work and would be back soon.
‘It’s what he spent the small spare income he had left over on – making those reels.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the back of the van, where Lili had deposited the old projector and the large box of reels. There was also his old Kodak 8 cine camera. Abigail thought it was an ugly contraption compared to a modern camera, not to mention the mobile phone, which almost everyone now used to take photos. Toby’s contraption was heavy and cumbersome, with little tripod legs that were attached to the rectangular black box and a metal handle on the top to carry it around. Abigail didn’t like it one bit. Although it was from the sixties, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dusty cabinet in a museum full of old memorabilia from the Second World War.
Abigail turned in her seat to face the front. ‘He shot all our home movies on that thing.’
Lili glanced at her and got the impression she wasn’t a fan.
‘Do you know how long it takes to thread a reel into the projector? I swear he spent more time setting it up than we did actually watching them.’
Lili had a thought. ‘Did he have something to play the home movies on? What about a screen?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’
‘But we forgot it. What if you want to play them?’
‘No!’ Abigail cut right across Lili. ‘I do not want to watch those. The only reason I’m happy you brought them along was because … well, what you said, I wouldn’t want to lose them if something happened in the flat.’
‘Was that the only reason?’
‘Absolutely.’ If Lili thought she was going to sit in front of those, she could think again.
They spent the rest of the journey in silence, broken by the odd question from Abigail about Lili’s new life in Suffolk and what she’d been up to. Thankfully, Lili didn’t notice that Abigail wasn’t paying attention; that her mind was drifting to the letter in her handbag and to the cottage, wondering what it was going to feel like arriving there without Toby.
‘Not far now,’ Lili said as dusk approached. She pulled off the motorway and took several twisting country roads, some single-track that seemed to go on an age, and reminded Abigail just how rural some parts of the Suffolk countryside were. The drive took them past fields of corn, softly swaying in the breeze. She spotted village church steeples in the distance, and vistas dotted with thatched and pantile-roofed cottages in the distance.
Seeing all this made Abigail suddenly homesick for her native county. She frowned. Apart from holidaying there several times a year, she had lived more years away in London than she had growing up in Suffolk. And yet the pull to return appeared as strong as it ever was.
I’m not returning here for good. I’ve made up my mind,thought Abigail. Besides, there was no life here without Toby. A little voice in her head said,what difference will there be when you return to London? He’s still gone.
Abigail thought, for a moment, that she felt a tear on her cheek. She touched her cheek, but it was dry. Since Toby’s death, she had yet to shed a tear.Does that make me a bad person?she thought. She shook her head. She didn’t think that was it. She knew what her problem was; she hadn’t started to grieve.Well, I haven’t got time for that!
It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to. The problem was that Abigail had spent her life grieving – for the man she had never known, the father she’d lost on the day she was born; it was as though she didn’t have room to grieve anybody else – not even Toby. Of course, she wouldn’t share that thought with anybody else, not even a close friend. She glanced at Lili. She knew what her friend was up to, persuading her to return to the cottage. She’d brought her here to grieve.
Abigail watched the scenery as they started along the main road into Southwold. The last time she and Toby had been on holiday to the cottage was a glorious week at the beginning of June.They’d had a wonderful time, walking around familiar haunts in the town and visiting their favourite pub, which was tucked down a little street that led directly onto the beach. They’d enjoyed taking walks at dusk from the pier along the promenade as the sun went down, strolling all the way to the beach huts that sat on the beach.
Despite Abigail’s antipathy towards the sea, she had to admit that those times with Toby at The Hideaway had been their best; when they’d had all the time in the world just to devote to each other – no jobs, or alarm clocks, or late shifts and passing each other like ships in the night. Now all she had left were those memories – and that cottage.
Abigail frowned at Lili for making her go back there. It was the solicitor’s fault too, for just turning up like that with the will. And Daphne, and her mysterious trustees, for giving the cottage to Toby.
By the time they turned down the road in Southwold that lead to the cottage by the lighthouse, Abigail had made a decision. There was a simple solution – she was going to sell it.
