AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Callum looked at her. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to get hold of them today.’
‘Oh, well … all right.’
‘Will you lock the door, Mabel, and put the ‘closed’ sign in the window?’
‘Yes, Marjorie,’ Mabel called back to Marjorie before turning her sights on Callum. ‘I just can’t get over how much you look like him. It’s as though …’ she trailed off.
‘As though he came back?’
Mabel nodded.
‘You loved him, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What happened?’ Callum gathered, from what Marjorie had said, that her father didn’t approve of the relationship, but he couldn’t help asking, his curiosity getting the better of him.
Mabel sighed heavily. ‘Father didn’t approve. I didn’t care a jot. I was young and in love, and I’d have travelled to the ends of the earth with Douglas – or to Scotland, if that was where he wanted to return.’
Callum nodded sadly.
Mabel glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘I confided in my sister – told her our plan.’
‘Your plan?’
‘Yes. You see, Douglas and I were going to elope.’
Callum stared at her.Elope. It was such an old-fashioned word, but without her father’s blessing or approval, he imagined she’d have had no choice in those days, but to escape, flee together before someone stopped them.
‘Someone stopped you.’
Mabel shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. We’d agreed when we would meet; it was to be at the train station at midnight. But—’
‘He didn’t turn up.’ Callum guessed what had happened.
‘That’s right. It was a shock. I couldn’t understand it. I thought that if there had been a sudden change of plan, he would have found a way to send word. But that never happened. I thought perhaps there had been an accident. I scoured the newspapers and I visited the hospital and the police station. But he’d … vanished. I was …’ she swallowed. ‘Bereft for quite some time. I thought I could never trust a man again.’
Callum understood. She had been broken-hearted.
‘Then I met my late husband, a very kind, generous, loving man, who loved me so much.’
Callum guessed she had never quite loved him the way she had loved Douglas. He said, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Mabel rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no need to feel sorry. As I said, my late husband … well, a nicer man you couldn’t hope to meet. So all’s well that ends well.’
But does it, thought Callum,end well if you lose the person you truly love above all others?
‘It’s just …’
Callum looked at her. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to know before I die what happened to him.’
Callum looked at her gravely. ‘I wish I could help.’
She smiled. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll never know.’
Callum didn’t think she had.
