Love at Second Sight (20 page)

‘Do you want to go home?’ asked Tash. ‘Are you up to this?’

‘You’re kidding! Get this close and go home? No way. I’ll be fine. It’s just weird, I’ve never been here before, but I recognise it so well.’

‘Come on in, girls,’ said Mrs Rayner as she opened the front door and beckoned us forward. ‘I’ll put the kettle on then find those photos for you.’

We followed her into the hall. ‘But where are the stairs?’ I blurted as I looked around. I could remember exactly how it used to look, with dark green walls covered with gold-framed
landscapes, and there had been stairs up to the right with polished wooden banisters.

Effy threw me a ‘shut up’ glance but luckily Mrs Rayner just seemed to assume that in a house like this, it was obvious there would have been stairs at one time.

‘Oh, they were taken out years ago,’ she said, ‘when the house was converted to flats. Luckily I was able to keep my front door. The entrance to the upstairs flat is round the
side.’ She ushered us into a sitting room to the left. It was full of dark old fUmiture.

‘Do sit down,’ said Mrs Rayner as she indicated a sofa by the fireplace.

‘I like your antique fUmiture,’ I said as I took a seat.

‘Thank you, Jo,’ said Mrs Rayner. ‘I inherited the fUmiture from my parents along with the house. It was a grand old place before the conversion but too big for them and the
ground-floor flat suited them better when they grew older, as it suits my needs now. I wouldn’t know what to do with floors of empty rooms. Now I’ll go and put that kettle on.’
She disappeared out into the hall and moments later, we could hear the clattering of cups and saucers coming from the back of the house.

As I looked around, I had a strange sensation of past and present merging, like on house makeover shows on TV when you see an image of a room before it’s decorated and then it flashes to
the finished version. In my mind’s eye, I could see the room as it had been but I was looking at it as it was today.

‘This used to be the dining room,’ I said to Tash and Effy. ‘It had deep red walls and a long polished mahogany table in the middle of the room.’

‘Wow. I wish I could see it how it was,’ said Tash. ‘Sounds amazing.’

Mrs Rayner reappeared with a tray which she put down on the coffee table in front of us.

‘So you want to know more about your great-aunt?’ she said after she’d poured us tea and offered us slices of yummy cherry cake. ‘I have a vague recollection of my father
talking about her. I’ll get the album. It’s just in here, in the cabinet.’

She got up and rooted around in the large piece of fUmiture in the corner. ‘Here we are,’ she said as she pulled an album from a lower cupboard. She put it on the table in front of
us and flicked through until she found the page she was looking for. It was a lovely old-fashioned book and each of the photos had been placed in a delicate paper frame of painted leaves and
flowers. She pointed to a sepia photograph on the right-hand page.

‘There she is, I think,’ she said.

I looked down and Effy and Tash moved closer so that they could see as well.

There she was. Henrietta Gleeson. A young woman with dark curly hair smiling out at us from the faded sepia photograph. It had been taken in the garden and she was standing under an apple tree
holding a toddler, a chubby boy in a sailor suit.

‘She’s beautiful!’ Effy exclaimed.

‘Must run in the family,’ said Mrs Rayner as she looked at me. ‘I can see a resemblance around the eyes.’

I felt myself blush deep red and continued to stare at the photograph. I searched the face looking for what Mrs Rayner saw around the eyes but I could see no resemblance myself. It felt eerie to
consider that I was once this person. A woman older than I am now. In a different body. I shivered. I wondered what she was really like. From my regression, I knew that she hadn’t had an easy
life. I hoped that she’d found some happiness with the Watts family. With Howard.

Mrs Rayner pointed at the toddler. ‘That’s my father,’ she said. ‘He must have been about two in that photograph.’ She flicked over to the next page. ‘Here
are some more from that time.’

I looked at the top photograph. ‘Howard!’ I blurted and I pointed to a boy in the shot. There was no mistaking him. He was the boy I’d seen in my regression, and seeing his
picture, all the feelings I’d felt when under hypnosis came rushing back. He was pictured with his family – a formal portrait with his father standing next to him and his mother seated
with Daniel on her knee. In the background was Henrietta, her expression this time serious.
Poor Henrietta
, I thought,
to have been so in love with him but not able to truly be with
him.

‘Hey, he was handsome,’ said Tash.

‘How did you know that is my uncle?’ asked Mrs Rayner as Effy shot me another warning glance.

‘Oh! A good guess,’ I said. ‘We saw the names on the grave ... you know, at the cemetery.’

Mrs Rayner paused for a few moments. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Did you know him?’ asked Tash.

Mrs Rayner shook her head. ‘He died long before I was born. I’d like to have known him though. My father talked about him very fondly. He looks like he was a nice fellow,
doesn’t he?’

‘Er . . . Mrs Rayner, you said you remembered some talk of Henrietta. Can you remember what was said?’ I asked.

‘Some scandal to do with a governess, I believe.’ She came back over and pointed to Henrietta in the photo. ‘I didn’t know her name, but I’ve always thought it must
have been her because later ones looked much older. Yes, that was it, the young governess was dismissed and Howard was sent away to Europe. My father said he missed him dreadfully and made such a
fuss that Howard was allowed to come back after a few years. I seem to remember my father saying that the young governess had been dismissed by then and replaced by a series of older women. I
don’t think he was very keen on any of them. Apparently my grandmother believed that Howard could make a better marriage. It wasn’t done in those days to have relations with servants,
even if she was a governess. But Howard never did marry.’

So that’s what Betty had meant when she’d said something had happened to keep them apart,
I thought. I felt so sad for them both but Howard had been there when Henrietta was
dying so he had clearly found her again at some point.

Mrs Rayner flicked through to later photographs showing a slightly older Daniel with his parents and a stern-faced woman in the background. She laughed. ‘I think this was the next
governess,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine Howard ever having fallen for her, can you? She looks a bit of a battleaxe, doesn’t she?’

I looked at one of the images in front of me. A thin-lipped, middle-aged lady held Daniel on her knee. He didn’t look happy.

‘What happened to Henrietta?’ I asked.

‘After she was dismissed? That I don’t know,’ said Mrs Rayner.

‘She died young,’ said Tash. ‘We saw it on her grave. Aged twenty-three.’

‘How sad,’ said Mrs Rayner. ‘She looked a nice young lady too. They would have made a handsome couple but then things were different in those days.’ She flicked through
some more pages to show more family photos but no others showing Henrietta. ‘My grandfather Edward died before I was born so I never met him. Howard died in the First World War, he was very
young.’ She got up to look in the cabinet. ‘I believe I have his death certificate somewhere. There’s a whole pile of papers, letters and documents from that time. I haven’t
looked at them in years. Let me see what I can find.’

‘Do you have children, Mrs Rayner?’ asked Tash.

‘I do. Two girls. A daughter who lives in New Zealand now and the other lives in south London. She has three children, a boy and two girls. So yes, the Watts family has gone on.’ She
continued her search in the cabinet. ‘Sadly not the family house though. It has been through many changes.’ She pulled out a box. ‘Ah, here we are.’

‘Do you know when the name of the road changed from Trafalgar to Northern?’ asked Tash. ‘When we looked on the census, it said Halville House, Trafalgar Road.’

Ah, that was around the nineteen-sixties. This end of the road was always Trafalgar Road but when the area became more built up, they extended the road down to meet the main street so it made
sense to have one name rather than two for the two different ends and so it became Northern Road.’

‘And when was the house made into flats?’ I asked.

‘Around the same time. So sadly I can’t show you where Henrietta would have had her room but I can show you where she would have worked on this floor. Would you like to have a
look?’

‘We’d love to,’ Effy answered for me.

As we went around, the memories of how the house used to look kept flashing in my mind, sharp and clear. What was now Mrs Rayner’s bedroom, decorated in pale blue and white, had been a
dark and formal parlour with heavy curtains at the bay window. The kitchen had been extended and modernised, but I could see it as it was with an old-fashioned stove, open shelves of pots and pans,
and memories of a cook, always busy preparing something. There also used to be a balcony that looked out over the garden but it was gone and a sunny conservatory built in its place. It was
extraordinary to have so many clear memories of a place which I was visiting for the first time.

Mrs Rayner offered more tea after our tour but we felt it was time to leave so declined her offer and said our goodbyes.

‘Leave me your number, Jo,’ she said to me. And I’ll give you a call if I find anything else. I fancy I might have a root through all the papers for a few hours now that
I’ve got them out. You never know what’s in there.’

I wrote my landline number down for her and then we left.

‘So now we know more about Henrietta,’ said Effy as we stood outside for a moment and looked back at the house. ‘But still no closer to finding Howard if he’s back in
this time too.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. My head was spinning with the enormity of it all. ‘Henrietta’s room was there, up in the attic,’ I said as I pointed at the top floor. You used to
be able to see St George’s in the distance there were fields and hedgerows for miles where now there are rows and rows of houses.’ I pointed down the road. ‘There was a big manor
house in parkland to the left where that row of terraced houses is. And another big house at the end of the road. Lynton Grange, that was it.’

As we walked back to the high street, the memories continued to flood in as if it had only been yesterday. ‘There was a small cottage in the grounds of the Grange. It was where the vet
lived. I remembered taking an assortment of kittens down there to see him. The wood to the back of the house was called Dirt House Wood and at night, soil men used to put excrement there that they
had collected from cesspits from a row of nearby cottages.’

‘Are you making this up?’ asked Effy.

I laughed. ‘No. I promise.’

‘It seems amazing that you remember so much,’ said Effy. ‘I mean, I get that you remembered the house but now you’re teasing us.’

‘I’m not. Honest. I can just see it.’

Effy and Tash exchanged a glance that said, yeah right.

‘See that Barclays Bank at the corner of the road? It used to be Park Hall, the grandest house in the area. The pub over the road, the Bald Faced Stag? That was there when I was Henrietta
but it was a coaching inn.’

Tash burst out laughing. ‘Stop it, Jo. Now we definitely know you’re making it up.’

I laughed. It appeared that we’d swapped roles since that day back on the Heath when I first met Betty. Then I’d thought the whole Henrietta story was baloney but Effy and Tash had
felt there was something in it. Now they were the ones who didn’t know what to believe and I had no doubts whatsoever.

‘Thing is, Howard could be anywhere,’ said Tash with a long sigh.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘We found so much the census records, the grave, the house and even photos of Howard and Henrietta but we’re no closer to finding Howard than we were
that day on the Heath.’

‘Well one thing has changed. You believe it’s all true now,’ said Effy, ‘whereas back then you didn’t.’

‘I know, and sadly, that makes it all feel worse,’ I said. ‘In accepting the story, I also accept that I have lost the great love of my life or should I say lives.’

The skies darkened and moments later, rain began to splash down on the streets.
Exactly how I feel
, I thought as we made a dash for a bus shelter.

When I got home, I threw my jacket off and glanced in the hall mirror. I had the sensation of Henrietta staring back at me again.
Haunted by myself
, I thought. I looked
again. She’d gone. It was Jo Harris staring back at me.

‘That you, Jo?’ Mum called from the kitchen.

‘Yep,’ I called back. I was about to dash upstairs when she appeared in the hall. She didn’t look happy.

‘So when were you going to tell me what’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I’ve just had Mrs Rayner on the phone.’

‘Oh. What did she want?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.

Mum beckoned me to follow her into the kitchen. I went in and sat at the table. Mum didn’t sit. ‘She wanted to tell you something she’d found out about a great-aunt
you’ve been researching,’ she said and gave me a quizzical look. ‘What aunt would that be exactly?’

I felt myself blush and stared at the floor. Mum was quiet for a few moments, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know where to begin.

Finally Mum sighed and sat down opposite. ‘What were you doing hanging around the cemetery? And who’s Howard? And Henrietta?’ I glanced up at Mum and saw that her face looked
concerned. Are you in trouble, Jo?’

‘No!’ As I looked at her worried face, I could see the kindness in her eyes and felt sudden tears at the back of mine.
Why had I shut her out for so long!
I asked myself.
Had I unconsciously blamed her for Dad’s death? Or been angry with her that she couldn’t fix it and keep him well and alive? Before Dad died, I used to chat away to her about
everything, tell her all my secrets.

She reached out and took my hand. ‘You can tell me anything, Jo. I am always here for you.’