Page 60 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
Ava recoils instantly. ‘You can’t have it back! It’s not yours! You gave it away!’
‘Not intentionally, pet. We were all struggling after our mum died. Sorting her house out was one of the hardest things we’d ever had to face. We knew the book would be somewhere safe, but it had been passed between her and our aunt over the years, depending on the ages of the children they had to read bedtime stories to, so we just thought…’ Her fingers rub over the wooden crate she brought with her. ‘We assumed it was in this box with everything else, and we didn’t find out that it wasn’t until it was too late.’
‘Oh, Dad! Thank God you’re here!’ Ava spots Ren coming back up the steps before I do and races over to grab his arm and drag him over. ‘This lady is trying to take the diary! Tell her she can’t have it! It’s ours, right? You paid for it!’
‘I didn’t…’ Ren looks as surprised as he might if he’d meandered back over and been walloped round the face with a wet mackerel. His eyes flit between us all with a bewildered look. ‘Can someone explain what’s going on?’
Ava rushes through a garbled explanation, and I try to fill in the gaps in her haste.
Ren turns to Pamela. ‘Well, she does have a point. Anyone could come here and make up a story from what they’ve seen on the news last night, although…’ He glances at the wooden crate and then at me, and he can clearly tell from my face that I’m pretty certain she’s for real. ‘We can’t even ask you to tell us what’s in the diary because it’s printed behind us in enlarged font. Is there any way youcanprove it?’
‘Well, I do have some of her other diaries.’ She opens the wooden box and we all step closer to peer in, and sure enough, there are other books in there, notebooks that are clearly old and look very similar to this one.
It’s a realCinderellamoment, like at the end of the animated film when the glass slipper smashes and Cinderella tells the duke not to worry because she has the other one. With everything she’s said, I had very little doubt about her claim anyway, but no one can argue with proof like that.
‘Can I have a look?’ Ren asks politely.
Pamela takes out a thicker book and hands it to him. ‘This is her diary from 1900. The first entry in particular might interest you.’
Ren brushes his hands on his trousers before he takes it from her and opens it carefully, laying it on the plastic display box so all three of us can see it with Lissa peering over my shoulder.
27 June 1900
I never thought I’d see him again. I have spent so many nights crying over what was lost. I have been certain that he died on the night he left the island.
It is Wednesday, another dreary day so like each one before it, and I am asleep when my sister shouts from the stairway. I am always asleep these days – what reason could there be to get up and face life? I know they have found his ship. I know they believe him to have perished – as do I.
My sister tells me that I have a visitor and I must get up to greet him immediately. I do not know why anyone would want to visit me, but I pull a robe around myself and descend the stairs.
It is him.
He is standing in the doorway. He was wearing a cap but has taken it off to come in, although my sister has not permitted him entry further than the front hallway. He looks up as I come down, and the smile that blazes across his face could illuminate the lamps of a thousand lighthouses, and suddenly, the whole world feels brighter.
He is alive. He is here.
Enough tears to refill the ocean are pouring down my face and I momentarily forget that no noise will be heard and let out a scream as I run the rest of the way.
He catches me at the bottom and lifts me from the last stair. He picks me up and spins me around and I feel so happy that I could explode all over my sister’s front hallway, although I must not, because she would consider me even more of an inconvenience than she does currently.
He waits outside while I get dressed and we walk in the local park. He remembered enough information from our time together to come to my village and make enquiries until he came upon my sister’s home. His leg is better – he still limps, but not as badly as almost a year ago. He has had to falsify his last name so as not to serve a prison sentence. He has what he calls ‘friends in the wrong places’ and they have provided him with false paperwork for his journey by ferry across the sea. He must never return to Ireland, but it does not matter. He says he doesn’t want to return there because I am not there. I feel like I do explode right there in the park and a million butterflies come bursting out of me.
At nightfall, as the streetlamps are lit and the stars glitter above us, he sinks to one knee and asks me to be his wife.
I say yes. No sound comes out, but it is the most important word I’ve ever spoken in my life.
We flick through further entries. Mayme and her sister are fighting about the wedding. Her sister wants a big society wedding. Mayme wants a small private one. She writes about how Jeremiah stands up for her where she is used to being overruled by her sister. How he becomes the voice she never had, and she and Jeremiah end up eloping. He is able to get a job, and so is she – as a typist who types an author’s dictated words. They move in together. The stains of happy tears have splashed the page on the day she writes she has fallen pregnant.
It is documenting the happy life she dreamed of, and this time, there is no question that any of it is a fairy story. It’s all as real as she deserved it to be.
It’s amazing to read the further entries and find out the ending that we never thought we’d know, but there’s an undercurrent of tension around the table. Avalovesthis diary. I knew that even Lissa would have trouble persuading her to let it be on display in the museum, but it’s rightfully Pamela’s, and Ava is going to struggle to let it go.
The crate is filled with photographs and letters. Endless notebooks where Mayme wrote down the words she couldn’t voice. As cameras became more accessible, there are photographs of the two of them together. Photos of the children they had.
I’ve got tears in my eyes as we leaf through them. I feel like we’ve got to know this woman over the summer, this stranger from so many years ago, and her lifemattersto me. Tous. I glance over at Ava, who’s given up trying to hide the tears streaming down her face, and Ren’s eyes are watery and he’s got his lower lip clamped between his teeth.
‘Thank you for sharing this with us.’ I carefully place the last of the notebooks back into Pamela’s wooden crate and go to unlock the case displaying the diary, but Ava stops me.
‘No!’ She turns to Pamela. ‘You can’t just waltz in and say, “Oh, that’s mine, that is!” and take it!’
