The Secret Notebook Read online

I nodded, said I thought so too and that I still missed him.

  Our chat, Dear Diary, helped me to better understand Enid and clear the decks between us. In exchange, I confided in her about the telegram and how upset I was, and about the letter that had arrived today. She reiterated what Marian had said, that I must not lose hope, and that no news would be good news. She also said she knew someone who had had a telegram like that – and that had turned out well.

  I’m writing this just before I get into bed. Tom is settled and asleep so I got on my hands and knees and prayed, hard, for Jack to be safe and that I’d have good news before too long.

  I promised Him I would go to church every week and never miss, made any and every kind of bargain I could bring to mind.

  If He would just protect Jack.

  Just let him be alive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Izzie

  Blackpool, Wednesday September 27, 2017

  ‘Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? What they went through. Not knowing.’ Justin glanced at his watch. ‘Bugger, I’d best make tracks, Izzie. I’ve to leave home at five in the morning, I’m hopeful to catch a break weather-wise up in Ambleside.’

  Izzie put the postcard bookmark into the notebook and lingered over the inner front page of keepsakes, her palm running lightly over the different textures out of habit. As she did so, Justin’s eyes stilled on the sketch of Molly. ‘Your granddad drew Molly? That’s good. Reminds me of your style, Izzie.’

  ‘I used to spend hours watching him draw and paint, trying to copy what he did. That is, when I wasn’t making biscuits and buns and then eating them all in the kitchen with Nan.’

  They both laughed and Izzie closed the outer cover and set the notebook safely to the back of the kitchen table as she stood to walk Justin out. ‘I’ve really enjoyed today,’ she said when he turned to face her at the door. She suddenly felt emotional and, as was her habit, her mouth engaged without her brain taking part. ‘I’m glad we’re friends again … you know, friends having a flirt but no ties,’ she added quickly at Justin’s light frown.

  She thought she saw a flicker of intense pain in Justin’s eyes, but then it had gone and she thought she must have imagined it.

  ‘Yeah.’ She sensed him come back into himself. ‘It’s been good.’ Tentatively, he leaned towards her and landed a kiss on her lips, then, when Izzie returned the embrace, palms resting on his shoulders, the kiss deepened.

  ‘I – I’m not sure when I’m back, should be late tomorrow, it all depends on the weather.’ He gave a wonky smile. ‘You know what it’s like in the Lakes, one minute there’s glorious sunshine, the next there’s a monsoon!’

  ‘Difficult when you’re trying for a certain type of photograph, I should think,’ Izzie said. ‘Well, ping me a message or call round when you have some free time – I’d be glad of some help decorating if you want to be a real hero.’

  He laughed at that. ‘A hero, aye?’ His wonderful face-lighting laughter that made Izzie’s insides hitch in response and made her smile broadly.

  ‘Or we can just hang out.’

  He moved along the driveway and raised his hand in farewell before getting into his car.

  As she closed the front door, Izzie leaned back against it and enjoyed the sensation of a real glow of happiness inside, a feeling doubly appreciated because for so long she’d hovered in the darker worlds of disappointment and sadness.

  She was determined to enjoy the brief part that Justin played in her life for the short term.

  Again, she knew a delicious rush of freedom.

  Tomorrow, she thought, whilst she got ready for bed, she would take a long early morning walk on the promenade and then see if she could crack on with some more wallpaper removal. And if she didn’t manage it, what did it matter? She’d given herself until the New Year to finish. She was also getting an itch to contact her old boss, Eddie, at DAS, to see if there were any jobs she could do remotely and ask if he could set her up with work when she eventually returned to London. She planned to fire off a bunch of emails to her workmates, too, to reconnect properly. Just a little reach out to her other world.

  Blackpool, Thursday September 28, 2017

  ‘Oh, that’s great, Eddie, thank you!’ Her boss was sending her some work outlines that could be dealt with remotely – their client wanted a set of watercolours of specific trees that were being featured in a short book about native species.

  ‘Great timing, you ringing! I thought of you when the job came good, Izzie, as I know you love that medium and you didn’t get to do much artwork when you worked for Rufus. And the upside is – there’s no rush. Early next year is pencilled in for delivery of the originals, with photo updates online of your progress.’ Eddie sounded buoyant and the general open office hubbub played out in the background. She’d missed that friendly work atmosphere so much more than she’d let herself admit. Until now.

  ‘Course, if you come south for a visit, come and see us.’

  Izzie assured Eddie that she would and felt better for touching base and knowing work was still available for her.

  After working all day stripping off wallpaper, Izzie, exhausted, had a hot bath and an early night. The gentle buzz of her phone on the bedside table roused her just long enough to read the message with one eye open…

  Just to say goodnight and let you know I’m staying over in the Lakes; weather didn’t work out today, fingers crossed it’ll be okay tomorrow. J

  Izzie pressed ‘x’ on her phone in reply and dropped straight back to sleep.

  Whilst she took a break the following afternoon, Izzie again read through the most recent pages of Molly’s notebook that she’d read with Justin. She replaced the postcard bookmark after reliving Molly’s shock at receiving the Missing in Action telegram and subsequent letter and she thought again about how she had never known anything about this part of her nan and granddad’s lives. She racked her brains to try and remember whether there had ever been an Uncle Joe in her very young life.

  Had he ever been mentioned or had his existence been swept under the carpet? Had he died in the war? Had he married?

  Izzie wondered how the heck Nan had carried on whilst not knowing whether Grandpop was alive, had been captured, injured or killed.

  At least, she thought, they had been reunited. But that was knowledge that Izzie had. Poor Molly had had no idea where her beloved husband was.

  The train of thought stayed with Izzie whilst she returned to the endless task of steaming off the wallpaper.

  She thought how strange life was sometimes. Her dad Tom’s birth had clearly revealed a gentler side of Enid. She had had a gruelling life during her first marriage and the legacy gave rise to her resentment of Molly, who Enid saw as a footloose and fancy-free young woman without a care in the world, doing just what she wanted.

  She thought how different the way folk saw one another was to the reality of how someone actually felt – sometimes the inner truth was a long way from the face shown to the world.

  That thought triggered memories of life with Rufus. There had been good times, certainly, but as time had moved on through their four years and four months of marriage, the face Izzie showed to her husband and the world were completely different to how she felt inside. As Rufus became a snowballing part of her daily life she’d had to squash down her own personality, become more isolated, take up less room in her own life, to make room for all of Rufus’s needs, his moods, his fits… It had happened so gradually at first that she hadn’t fully identified the progression; she had only known how it made her feel. But she’d had to hide her emotions.

  Somehow, in the safe space of the bungalow, Izzie dared to look honestly at her time as Izzie Dean whilst she systematically worked on removing wallpaper.

  She opened the front room windows and the fading scent of lavender wafted in by the warm afternoon breeze brought back a powerful memory of something she’d been ashamed of feeling when it happened back in West Hampstead…

>   It was in 2014, three years and a couple of months into their marriage and work arrangement when Izzie had asked Rufus if he minded her going out for a meal with her ex-work pals.

  Ruby and the crew had invited her to join them for a meal and she wanted to go because she had missed them all so much since she’d started working solely for Rufus.

  Since she married him, she’d transcribed three books for his crime series from his scribbled notes and recordings, she’d handled all the professional and household admin, and in order to meet the deadlines, they’d had very little social life outside a few walks together, and a few days off to wander around Regent’s Park or Kew Gardens. There was less and less time for Izzie to meet, visit or chat with her friends – just a few hurried phone calls to touch base.

  Izzie admitted to herself, as the scent of lavender drifted indoors that she hadn’t fully understood when she’d said yes to marrying Rufus and becoming his full-time companion, was that he’d really meant full-time. And during the last couple of years of their relationship, it turned out to be to the exclusion of anyone and everything else.

  His degenerating illness meant even the very quick phone calls to her work pals dropped away during that time; only her set-in-stone phone calls to her nan on a Sunday night endured of her own routine.

  At first, he’d reminded her of a Cockney pub landlord type, one that was full of life, chat and charm – so sociable. He had joined Izzie and her friends for barbeques, held them in their back garden, joined in her life-affirming fun and friendships. In the early days, it didn’t seem possible that he would ever change as much as he’d warned he may.

  Rufus’s health was beginning to decline, and the effect was that when the seizures began, she couldn’t leave him to fend for himself anymore. It also meant that after three years of working and socialising normally, things began to change quite rapidly.

  So, when her friends invited her out for a meal at a local restaurant, said she should bring Rufus if she didn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone, she’d had to turn them down.

  ‘I don’t feel well enough, Izzie, to be home on my own, and I really don’t want to have a seizure away from home.’ He’d looked tired when he’d said that and his eyes had held sadness.

  ‘Okay, no worries.’ She smiled and dropped a kiss on his cheek, not wanting to make him feel guilty. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  But she had felt the sharp stab of disappointment and had stepped into the garden to take a deep breath and fight off the sense that she was living in a shrinking world.

  She missed her pals.

  Back then, as she had brushed against a lavender bush, the joyous hum of happy bees failed for once to raise her spirits; instead, there in their West Hampstead garden, the fragrance accompanied the sense of isolation she’d felt.

  Brought back to the present by the scent carried through the bungalow’s open window on a light sea breeze, Izzie took a deep breath to better enjoy the perfume, to remember the lazy Summer buzz of the bees that loved the copious buds.

  When Rufus asked her to become Mrs Dean and all that it would entail, she hadn’t fully understood what it meant.

  The timing had been everything – the absolute clincher.

  Attractive Jack the Lad, Rufus Dean, crime writer and all-around good time chap, handed her an escape route from pain, a clawing pain that continually felt like the expression: the first cut is the deepest.

  Rufus offered her a home, something she had always wanted, an income and security for the rest of her life, for doing a job she enjoyed.

  She said yes – it was a no brainer.

  And she had rarely had regrets over saying yes. There was little time or emotional breadth for introspection whilst he was alive.

  It was just that one day that she’d felt it most powerfully – the day she’d had to turn down her old work friends’ invitation for the first time, when she walked out into the garden and inhaled that beautiful scent that she began to fully comprehend the scope of what she had taken on and once she had taken some deep breaths, raised her face to the sky and told herself to get on with it…

  After that she did her best to push aside any caged feelings she had. It was her side of the bargain to simply be there for Rufus and care for him and love him.

  Be there for him in every aspect of his life.

  Turning off the steamer, Izzie tackled bagging up the lengths of sticky wallpaper, then she photographed her progress, which amounted to bare walls, and pinged the photo to Justin along with the message:

  Just so you can see how I’m doing! Izzie x

  Whilst she ran a bath and made a cuppa to take along, a breath-takingly beautiful photograph came through on her messages from Justin.

  Finally managed it. Sunset over Ravenglass. J

  ‘Wow.’ He’d caught a stunning moment in the photograph. A mountain with a dip in its dark profile appeared to hold the white-yellow setting sun, which was throwing off an intense pale-yellow light from behind purple clouds. The sky was a pure orange reflected in the water surrounding the finger of land running out from the mountain into the lake. In the foreground, deep blue water was touched with a blaze of orange. After staring at the photo for ages, Izzie sent a message back:

  Truly awesomely stunning. Izzie x

  * * *

  Thanks. I’ve some good shots, will show you. Driving home soon – just got a hike to the car park! Will message when I’m back, see if you’re up for a visit. No worries if not. J

  Smiling, Izzie sent an emoji of a thumbs-up and turned off the bath taps as bubbles arched up above the top of the deep bath.

  A delicious hot soak and a bit of curl taming later, Izzie flicked on a touch of mascara and pulled on jeans and a bright blue and black checked shirt, grabbed her notebook and settled at the kitchen table. She wrote down all the memories of Rufus she’d visited whilst working earlier, added a few more that needed to be aired.

  She cast her mind back to the course of events that had seen her marry Rufus. Theirs had been a different kind of relationship, and that suited her – Izzie had been determined not to love anyone as intensely as she’d loved Justin.

  The day after Justin’s no show, Izzie returned to London in excruciating emotional agony from Justin’s rejection. She remembered she could barely breathe for the anguish. She could only ever recollect snatches of the train journey back down south; it was lost in a sea of torment, questions, disbelief, misery, and self-pity. Every attempt to contact him failed…

  She thought it must be serendipity when Rufus popped the question within a week of her return to London.

  As she wrote down her memories, Izzie wondered if Rufus had sensed her heartache and sought to help – or if his timing had been pure fate.

  ‘You don’t need to marry me; I’ll stay here and look after you as long as you need me to. I promise I won’t leave you to be alone.’ Surprise had shot the response from her.

  He’d said, ‘Izzie, I’ve had the best time these last six months you’ve been working part-time for me. We both know I’ve not got long left and the only way I can protect your future, make sure you never want for money or for a roof over your head is to marry you. You don’t have to let me know straight away, and I don’t know whether you want a big wedding. I certainly don’t; I’d be happy to have one of those standing on a beach on a tropical island with just two witnesses that neither of us know.’ He laughed then, because Izzie clapped her hands together and said that would be her choice too.

  Her battered self-esteem, the clawing agony she still fought to squash down inside after a week of pure grief… Like a thirsty plant in need of water, she grasped the opportunity as a means of escaping the pain, flattered that Rufus Dean, famous crime writer, had offered her a different version of the life she’d dreamed of. It never even occurred to her that it was a rebound. She only knew that she would make it work.

  ‘I don’t need to think about it. And I don’t care what kind of ceremony we have. I’ll still be
your personal assistant, won’t I?’

  ‘Yes, that’s a huge part of the deal.’

  She hugged him then and their wedding took place a couple of weeks later on the 31st August, by special licence at the local registry office.

  Becoming Mrs Dean had provided Izzie with the ability to completely shut off the agony of having gone up north to meet with Justin … and Justin not showing up.

  Somehow, it had been a natural progression to shift the focus of her emotions to concentrate on Rufus and cut all the love she’d had for Justin off.

  Literally.

  In the kitchen of her nan’s bungalow she wrote down the tumbling thoughts, hoping that writing it all down would help to make sense of things, help her to come to terms with her losses and the choices she’d made.

  Her phone buzzed to herald a message.

  You up for a visitor? I’m home.

  Izzie responded with ‘yes.’

  ‘I love this photograph.’ Izzie marvelled at the way a soft white mist hovered over the water of Lake Windermere, the evenly coloured pale blue sky holding a narrow wash of pink close to the horizon. It was perfectly reflected in the water below. The mist softened the shape of the land around the edge of the lake, the effect incredible.

  ‘It looks so tranquil, Justin.’

  ‘It was just before the sun came up.’

  They sat side by side at the kitchen table, glasses of wine in front of them as Justin shared some more views that he’d captured: some of the black-headed sheep that roamed freely in the Lake District, many capturing the terrifyingly steep roads of Hardknott Pass and the beautiful, scenic hills. Justin had caught it all with stunning clarity and showed the effect clouds had on the side of the steep hills as the greenery began to turn autumnal and golden.