The Heart Goes On

An evocative story

It’s the hospital’s summer fete. The aroma from the sizzling barbecue clings to the air and every time the microphone is used, it crackles and whistles. The tide of the crowd ebbs around me as I stand at the book stall.

Welcome sun warms the crown of my head as I study rows of books. Brightlycoloured paperbacks vie for attention in neat rows. Further along the table, there are older books, too – hardbacks with their covers cracked and worn, yellowed pages well-thumbed, much loved. I spot a Bible, a Latin grammar… someone must have had a clear-out.

I glance over them, back to the paperbacks and suddenly I spot a book that makes my heart beat momentarily faster in my breast.

I hesitate before reaching for the novel with its painfully familiar cover.

As soon as I touch the book, a tall woman, standing behind the stall, demands, “Fifty pence.”

Her haircut is so severe, I flinch. I could tell her I have a copy of this at home – a copy signed by the author himself – but I hesitate under her unsympathetic stare and instead dig into my bag for my purse.

“Keep the change – it’s for a good cause,” I say, handing over a fistful of coins. “Besides, I knew the author – very well.”

“Really?” the woman says, although her detached smile sighs, Who cares?

I step back fromthe stall, CLUTCHING the book PROTECTIVELY towards me

I step back from the stall clutching the book protectively towards me. She may not care, but I do. I won’t leave this copy here, to be tossed about by careless hands, thumbed by indifferent browsers. Special Relationship by David Leigh. My index finger coasts the embossed title asmy heart tugs me back to that time when the man I loved was writing this.

The book in my head won’t sit on the page, Snow,” David would laugh, his long, greying hair flopping over his forehead.

Snow wasn’t my first name but he’d christened me that in tribute to the day we met in a bookshop, sheltering from a sudden blizzard.

With a glass of red wine in his hand, he’d settled into the leather armchair that seemed to mould itself around him.

“It will. It’s in there.” I tapped my chest with complete assurance.

He rocked his head in agreement but I could see worry haunting his eyes.

Now, as I stroke the cover, I instantly feel that bond – that connection – to the hours of love poured into his words; the miles he’d travelled to research this, his first novel.

Had an absolute gift of an interview with a couple, running a motel near Needles Bay, he’d started one email, bubbling with excitement for his work. Tell you about it over lunch at Barnaby’s when I come back. And true to his word, he did. That day, we’d met in the car park. Rain pencilled from a moody sky as we ran hand-in-hand to the sanctuary of our favourite restaurant. Barnaby’s was tucked down a side street. The décor was shabby before it became chic but every morsel was cooked to perfection.

It’s great to have you home,” I’d said, desperate to tell him how I felt but hesitating as always. David was so much older. Confident, independent. Could he ever return my love?

His blue eyes had held mine for a moment. I’d held my breath.

“I need to return to the States to write book two,” he said, coughing yet again, as the waiter brought our prawn bisque. Disappointment winded me. “Get that chest checked before you go,” I said, squeezing his hand.

He’d rolled his eyes and smiled, dipping his soup spoon into the fragrant orangey pool.

“Whatever you say, Snow, but I’m fine. You know me – indestructible.”

His health bothered me. I held his gaze, hoping he was right.

Later, as he studied the dessert menu, which he described as “obscene,” he sketched his outline for the next novel.

“Don’t forget to people it,” I’d advised. “You’ve met some real characters on your trips.”

How I envied David! I longed to write a novel but time, commitments, lack of confidence, meant that I’ve never got around to it.

David, by contrast, had found his niche and was working on a series of novels he’d been born to write – laugh a-page travelogues that were part road movies, part political studies on the special relationship we Brits share with our American cousins.

All too soon our lunch was over. The rain ceasing to a pathetic mist, he’d held me close in the car park. The goodbye kiss we shared was searching, lingering.

Should I tell him now? Or would my love for him push between us, spoiling our beautiful friendship? “David, I…” He’d put a finger to my lips. “Tell me later, Snow. When I get back.”

I’d kissed his finger, feeling his touch on my lips long after he’d driven his battered green Jag out of the car park.

Our conversation and my fear that his health wasn’t all it should be, lingered long after we’d parted that day. Two weeks later, he returned to America.

Agent loves what I’ve sent him, his email claimed, the buzz vibrating through his words.

I loved hearing from him, his energy zinging through me, making me feel as if I, too, were part of something magical.

“I retired to write and travel,” he’d told me, that first day we met in the freezing bookshop.

Three trips in and the novel he’d once dreamed of writing had finally been accepted.

So why, when he’d achieved so much, did I feel such sadness for him? Did I somehow sense this was his last trip? That he was running out of time to finish his series?

Sometimes poignancy drifted through his words like sea fret. How I longed for us to have our own special relationship. Such a sociable, funny, kind man shouldn’t be travelling alone.

I’m watching a perfect sunset, one of his last texts had said.

The accompanying photograph did indeed show a glorious, tangerine sun setting over Ventura Bay.

But my mind was more captured by the man behind the lens, who I imagined sitting on the beach in jeans and a cream sweater, the arms knotted loosely around his neck, all too conscious that he was alone…

“David never finished his next book. Tragic. He was a brilliant writer,” I now insist to the sour woman on the book stall, the script of time written hard across her face. “But an even better man…”

She looks at me as if I’ve lost the plot but I say it because she should really, really understand that he was.

Hot in the afternoon sun, I turn to leave, thinking, I’m going home. I’m going to write. David taught me – time, tide and novels wait for no-one.

I love you, I’d typed in that last email exchange. I know, Snow. And so should you. And I did know. I knew he loved me.

His ZINGING ENERGY made me feel Iwas part of something MAGICAL