Page 93 of The Christmas Invitation
‘He went very quiet, so I’m not sure. But soon after I arrived here he told me he’d forgiven me for the past, which was kind of him, considering I didn’t do anything.’
‘That was at least well-meaning,’ River said.
‘I did try to tell him the truth, but he said he didn’t want to go over the past and walked off. That made me angry and determined to stay at the Red House over Christmas and not let him drive me away.’
‘Very natural, Meg, but now the time has come for this misunderstanding to be cleared up so that old wounds can finally heal and you can both embrace a happier future.’
‘You mean I have to tell him everything, whether he wants to hear it or not?’
‘Yes, and I feel that if you do that before midnight on the evening of the Winter Solstice, it would be particularly fortuitous.’
‘But that’s tomorrow! It doesn’t give me a lot of time to get him on his own for long enough.’
‘A way will appear,’ he said with certainty.
‘He’ll actually be staying here from tomorrow till New Year.’ I gave a sigh. ‘I knew you’d tell me to have the whole thing out with him, really, so the sooner the better, I suppose.’
River nodded. ‘I don’t feel your aura will recover until you have.’
‘But what if he won’t listen, or doesn’t believe me?’
‘He must believe the truth. And if necessary,Iwill also speak to the young man.’
I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one.
I left him arranging his various crystals and stuff on the top of a chest of drawers and went to my room, where I opened Mum’s tin trunk.
Immediately, I was enveloped in a wave of patchouli and sandalwood, and memories flooded in of my plump, pretty, feckless little butterfly mother, flitting in and out of my life …
Where was she now?
Clara
The ensuing years at Oxford were happy ones and though Henry went off on his globetrotting travels after he had completed his degree, while I continued with my studies, we would come together again whenever we could.
His poetry increasingly found its way into print, while I had already begun to make a name for myself as a ‘joiner’ of fragmentary pieces of epigraphy. You either have an eye for these things, or you don’t, and I had it, along with a near-photographic memory of where I had seen other pieces of what might be the same inscription.
My doctoral dissertation eventually turned into my first non-fiction book … but I am running ahead again and must backtrack a little.
Even when pursuing our careers in different parts of the world, communications flew between us so that when we met, there was never any catching-up to do.
Henry would quite often just turn up while I was attached to a dig, so it was no surprise when I looked up one day from the trench in which I was sitting – Turkey again, as it happened – and saw him standing on the edge.
He was dressed in crumpled white linen and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, somewhat frayed around the edges, to shade his familiar and very dear face from the hot sun.
‘Hello, Henry,’ I said, getting up as if only four minutes instead of four months had passed since we had last met.
I was holding a piece of clay tablet incised with cuneiform writing … though with some interesting variations. I suspected it was an early form.
‘This fragment is fascinating. I was hoping to find a few more pieces, but no luck.’
He gave me his hand to climb out and then kissed me warmly, under the interested gaze of the workmen and my colleagues.
‘I wasn’t expecting you, was I?’ I said.
‘No, I just suddenly felt I’d had enough of travelling to last me a lifetime and wanted to go home – somewhere damp, and cool and probably grey. I thought I’d call in and propose on the way.’
‘Propose what?’ I asked absently, placing the piece of clay tablet in a tray and then brushing dust from my cotton trousers.
