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He picked up the photo and passed it to Lettie.
‘I met Esther when I was in my early thirties, at a large restaurant business that we used to sell our fish to, along the coast. There was a man there who worked in the office, a man with no sense of humour and a cruel mouth. I didn’t trust him but I liked his wife when I bumped into her a couple of times. That was my Esther.’
He folded his large hands on his lap. ‘I thought nothing much of it but then I saw her sitting at Cora Head one day, looking so sad. I said hello and we chatted, about nothing really – the weather, the state of the world, and I made her laugh.’ He stared into the distance for a moment, the ghost of a smile on his lips. ‘We started meeting there more regularly, just to talk, and, well… she became very dear to me.’
He lapsed into silence.
‘Did anyone else know?’ asked Lettie, after a few moments.
Claude shook his head. He hadn’t told anyone this story, not really, but now it was all spilling out.
‘There was nothing much to know. It was all very chaste. You youngsters today would laugh at us. She was a woman of honour and didn’t want to cheat on her husband. But we kept on meeting. We were very discreet and kept out of Heaven’s Cove completely.’
‘And you came to really care about her?’
‘She was the love of my life.’ Claude stared at Lettie defiantly, daring her to mock him. But he saw nothing but sadness in her big hazel eyes.
‘What happened?’ she asked softly.
‘I think her husband must have found out, or suspected at the very least. He suddenly got a new job miles away and told her they were moving. Just like that. No discussion, no chance of compromise. She wasn’t going to go with him at first. She was going to tell him the marriage was over and stay with me. She told me she loved me.’
A silence stretched between them broken only by the steady ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘But?’ prompted Lettie gently, after a while.
‘But she changed her mind and moved away with him, up country, and that was that.’
‘Do you know why she changed her mind?’
He was getting to the heart of the story now and suddenly stumbled over his words. ‘She… she found out she was pregnant. I told her… I said I’d take on the child as mine but she couldn’t do it, not to the child, nor to her husband. She must have still loved him, I suppose.’
‘Did she keep in touch with you?’
‘No. She said it was best to have a clean break. And she was right. There was no future in it so what was the point in prolonging things? It was better for her and better for the child. She was a religious woman with a strong moral code and she didn’t find our… friendship easy.’
Claude stared disconsolately out of the window, as Buster laid his head in his lap. He pushed his fingers through the dog’s thick fur. There was no point in telling Lettie the rest of it… that she’d sent a note telling him that their relationship – such as it was – was over. That he’d had a premonition of that the last time he’d seen her and had deliberately not watched her walk away because it was too painful.
‘I’m so sorry, Claude. But that was a long time ago. Why do you want to contact her now?’
‘I’m seventy-five years old, Miss Starcross, and my health’s not what it was.’ The doctor’s face when he’d given him the news flashed through Claude’s mind but he pushed the memory away. Now wasn’t the time to get maudlin over something he couldn’t change. ‘I won’t go on for ever and I need to know what happened to Esther before I go.’
‘You’re not going anywhere soon though, are you?’ asked Lettie, as though it really mattered.
‘Soon enough. But if I’m asking too much, it doesn’t matter. I don’t expect you to care about someone like me.’
But Lettie brushed her hand across her cheek, as though it was wet, and smiled.
‘Of course I’ll help you. I’ll do my best but I can’t guarantee that I can find her.’
‘I’m only asking you to try.’ He gave Lettie a small smile. ‘I appreciate your kindness.’
Lettie left, ten minutes later, with the old newspaper cuttings, and a piece of paper with Esther’s details written down in his heavy capitals.
She’d done a quick check on her phone before leaving, but couldn’t find an Esther Kenvale of the right sort of age.
Perhaps she’s passed away. Claude could hardly bear to think of that and couldn’t say the words, but Lettie had guessed what he was thinking. She’d reassured him that there would probably have been some mention of it, an obituary or the like, in the cloud thing that the youngsters all talked about.
Claude picked up Esther’s photo and spoke to the woman smiling back at him, as he’d often done over the long, lonely years.
‘I’m coming to find you, my love. But do you want to be found?’
