The Cottingley Secret
Someone called Jack.
Thirteen
Ireland. Present day.
Olivia was processing new orders from the website when the shop bell jangled the next morning. She glanced up, expecting to see Henry or a customer. What she saw took her breath away.
“Jack?” The inflection in her voice carried a dozen questions she couldn’t articulate.
The tightness in her chest constricted her breath, her thoughts, her words, while her hands trembled against the desk as she tried to steady herself and process what was happening: Jack was here. In Ireland. In the bookshop.
“But . . . I thought you were overseas,” she added. “What are you doing here?”
He closed the door behind him and stood in the middle of the shop, legs slightly apart, hands in his chinos pockets. His business stance.
“I’m here to take you back to London. It’s been six weeks, Olivia. It’s ridiculous. People are starting to talk.” He tilted his head to one side and frowned. “What did you do to your hair?”
She touched her hand self-consciously to her neck. “I cut it.”
“I can see that. You look weird.”
She was used to his critical views on her appearance. His words fell off her now like raindrops. “So do you, Jack. You look . . . different.”
He looked terrible. Dark shadows lurked in the hollows beneath his eyes, stubble peppered his chin, and his hair was unusually tousled. Everything about him was wrong, but what struck Olivia most was how wrong it was that he was standing in her shop, how wrong it was that he had invaded this happy little world she’d created from nothing, and how wrong it was that when she looked at the man she was supposed to love more than any other, it was like looking at a stranger, and her heart felt numb.
“So, this is the famous bookshop,” he continued, his eyes scanning the shelves and the teetering piles of books leaning against the edge of the desk. “This is it? This is what’s been keeping you here?”
There was an edge to his voice that Olivia didn’t like, a look in his eye she’d seen when business deals didn’t go his way. It wasn’t anger. It was something deeper than that. A seething dissatisfaction at not getting his own way.
Olivia opened her mouth to speak, but didn’t have the words or the energy to defend herself or the shop, or to explain—again—why she’d needed to stay. She’d repeated herself so often whenever they had spoken over the past few weeks, but Jack couldn’t understand her emotional attachment to the shop. It was a business. There was no place for emotion as far as he was concerned.
“What are you trying to prove, Olivia? Because, really, a secondhand bookshop in a poky little Irish town isn’t exactly going to change the world.”
“Perhaps I’m not going to change the world, but I can change my small part of it.”
Jack smiled in reply. Or was it a sneer? It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Olivia caught a whiff of alcohol as he swayed on the spot. “Have you been drinking?”
He laughed. A loud, false laugh. The one he used in business dinners when he was trying to weasel his way into the favor of someone he secretly loathed. He sauntered toward her, the smell of brandy unmistakable as he leaned forward, placing his hands on the desk. “When were you going to tell me, Olivia?”
“Tell you what?” Her mouth was paper-dry. Her hands clammy.
He slid an envelope across the desk.
She recognized the crest of the consultant’s practice on the front. Her heart thumped double-time in her chest as Jack perched on the edge of the desk, a little too close. Instinctively, she leaned back. “Where did you find that?”
“I found it in your nightstand when I was looking for your birth certificate for the church.” He stared at her. Cold, glassy eyes that she had once fallen for because they had glittered with confidence and she’d been too easily impressed. “You do remember we’re supposed to be getting married in seven weeks?”
She reached for the letter, but he snatched it away. Tears pricked her eyes. She refused to let them fall.
“Jack, we can’t talk about this now. Not here.” She glanced over his shoulder, anxious about customers coming in and finding them in the middle of a domestic.
“Why not? When can we talk about it, then, Olivia?” The crack in his voice was unexpected. Was it emotion? Was Jack Oliver showing his feelings? “Where, then, if not here and now? At the top of the aisle? On our honeymoon? When exactly were you planning to tell me I can never be a father? Where did you think it was going to be convenient for me to find out my wife is infertile?”
His words hit Olivia like a punch in the stomach. Yes, there was emotion in his voice, but it was all for himself. There was no compassion for her. No concern. No offer to help her cope with this devastating news. It was the reaction she’d been dreading, only worse, because it was happening here, in the one place she had always felt safe and sheltered and protected; the place he had belittled and insulted. She could almost feel the books shrink back on their shelves, unwilling spectators to the drama unfolding before them.
Olivia glanced at the photograph of Frances and the fairies on the desk, drawing strength from the memory it stirred of her mother, and her Nana and great-grandma Ellen. Strong, determined women.
She took a deep breath, stood up, and walked around the desk. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Jack. I only found out a few weeks before Pappy died. I’m still trying to come to terms with it myself. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“But it changes everything, Olivia.” He waved the letter frantically in the space between them. “Everything.”
“Does it?”
“Of course! It changes you. It changes our future. You don’t just put something like this in a drawer and forget about it.”
The anger built inside her. “Forget about it? Are you serious? Do you really think I could ever forget something like that? I’ve thought about it every day. Every. Single. Day. This might affect our future, Jack, but it’s my body. The truth of that letter will be with me forever. I’ll never be able to forget it.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Olivia. First you disappear to Ireland and ignore everything to do with the wedding, and now this? If you’re prepared to keep this a secret, how can I trust you?” He threw his hands in the air in exasperation and walked toward the door. When he turned, Olivia saw resentment in his eyes. “Clearly you’re not the person I thought you were.”
Did he mean because she had kept the letter a secret, or because she couldn’t have children? The fact that she wasn’t sure what he meant told her everything she needed to know.
A breeze rattled the letterbox. A rush of air. A reminder. “You don’t need anybody’s permission to live the life you desire, Olivia. You need only the permission of your heart.”
Her heart beat a steady, determined rhythm. “Or maybe I’m just not the perfect cutout wife you want me to be? How very inconvenient of me to end up infertile.” Jack studied her for a moment, clearly surprised by her resolve. She felt nothing as she stared back at him.
“I’m going back on a flight at seven,” he said. “I’ve booked you a seat, and I’ve made an appointment with a fertility expert next week.”
Olivia’s mind was reeling. “You’ve done what?”
“I know people, Olivia. We can get a second opinion and get you fixed.”
It was so typical of Jack. So absolutely typical of him to believe he could fix things with his influence and contacts.
Olivia was furious. “I don’t need your people, Jack. I have my own, and I’ve already had a second opinion. And a third. It is what it is. Nothing will change it. ‘Get me fixed’? This isn’t a business deal you can throw more money at and salvage at the eleventh hour. This is real life, Jack, with real people and real feelings.” She opened the door. “I’m not sure what you thought you would gain by coming here and arranging my life, but I think you should go.”
Jack glanced at her hand on the door han
dle. Whether he noticed the absence of her engagement ring or not, he didn’t say anything.
“The flight departs at seven.” He placed a boarding pass on a shelf beside Olivia. “If you’re not there, I’ll assume you’ve decided there are better things for you here. It’s your decision, Olivia.”
Yes. Yes, it was.
She closed the door behind him, leaning back against it to take a moment to catch her breath and to steady the trembling in her hands. Whatever questions she’d had, Jack had just answered them all for her.
It was only when she heard the scrape of a chair upstairs that she remembered Ross. He must have heard everything. The look on his face as he walked downstairs made Olivia feel small and foolish.
“Ross, I’m so sorry. I . . .”
He waved her apology away. “I’m putting the kettle on. Do you want one?”
“Please.”
“I think we might both need two sugars.”
She smiled a weak smile. “Will you let me explain?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You can if you want, but I think Jack-Ass there just did all the explaining for you.”
SHE DID WHAT she always did when she needed to think. She climbed.
It was a warm afternoon, the breeze unusually calm even at the top of Howth Head, just enough to ruffle the gorse slightly, and yet in Olivia’s heart, a tempest raged.
If things were right between her and Jack, she would have told him about her appointments, let alone the letter. He would have been the first person to confide in, not the last. He’d accused her of hiding the truth from him, but there were far greater truths she’d hidden from herself: That this marriage could never work, that things would never get better, that she would never be happy simply being content.
She thought about something Ross had said when she’d told him everything over a pot of sweet tea. “You have to be passionate about the things you put in your life: the music you listen to, the food you eat, the friends you hang out with, even the bloody towels you hang in the guest bathroom. It’s about choice, Olivia. It is always about choice.”
And her choice came down to this: Did she want to follow convention and settle for the security of a marriage that might work if she made herself believe it could, or did she want to explore a new life in Ireland, with nothing but herself and an old bookshop for company?
Did she want to follow a well-worn trail, or did she want to become a mapmaker?
JACK’S FACE LIT up when he saw her walk into the check-in area.
“I knew you’d see sense.” He hugged her and patted her on the back as if she was a client. “You’ve done the right thing, Olivia. We’ll get you sorted out and everything will be fine.”
As her cheek pressed against the lapel of his blazer, she closed her eyes. She had never felt more certain about anything as she pulled back from him and gave him her boarding pass.
“I’m not coming with you, Jack.”
“What? Of course you are. Don’t be silly.”
She shook her head. “You can’t fix me, Jack. And I can’t fix us.”
His face was as pale as milk. He wasn’t used to losing, to not getting his own way. Olivia wasn’t sure what she felt as she looked at him. Pity? Perhaps a slight tinge of regret that it had come to this. But love? No.
“I’ll contact the wedding planner. I’ll let people know . . .” She looked at him. She even reached for his hand, but he drew his back. “I’m sorry, Jack, but it’s the right thing. For both of us.”
Surrounded by people returning from journeys and setting out on new ones, Olivia turned away from a future she had never truly believed in and walked out into a balmy evening, one step at a time, toward a new future.
Fourteen
Ireland. Present day.
The Evening of Fairy Stories came around quickly. Olivia held Nana’s hand as she sat beside her in the taxi on the way from the nursing home and hoped she’d done the right thing in bringing her. It was hard to know how she would react, but Olivia wanted Nana to see the bookshop full of happy readers and book enthusiasts, just as it had been in its heyday. Nana sat quietly, gazing out of the taxi window like a child caught up in the thrill of a day out. The late afternoon sun made ripe peaches of her cheeks and set life dancing in her eyes.
At the bottom of Little Lane, Olivia helped Nana out of the taxi and looped her arm through hers for support as they picked their way slowly over the cobbles toward Something Old.
Nana paused in front of the old black door, running her hand gently across the grain, as if feeling the contours of a familiar face. “Could do with a lick of paint,” she said. “Tell him, will you? When you see him. To give the door a lick of paint.”
Olivia said she would and pushed the door open.
She remembered how the smell of the shop had struck her that May morning when she’d first learned it belonged to her: pipe tobacco and leather. She wondered if Nana recognized the smell in the same way. She hoped it stirred the same poignant memories for her if she did.
Nana set her handbag down on the desk and walked slowly around the shop, running her hand along the spines of the books, the textured mustard-yellow walls, the handle of Pappy’s pipe. She opened and closed the front door, listening to the jingle-jangle of the bell as Hemingway wound around her legs. He remembered Nana, even if she didn’t remember him. Olivia followed at a distance, giving Nana the space she needed as she walked to Pappy’s chair, resting her palms against the worn faux-velvet fabric. She chuckled and nodded to herself. Olivia hoped she remembered. She hoped, with all her heart, that Nana could feel him here, as she did.
Walking back to the desk, Nana picked up the silver photo frame, running her fingers across the glass.
“There was another photograph,” she said. “Frances took it when she and Elsie had those cameras.”
“There were five photographs in total, Nana.” She took Conan Doyle’s Strand Magazine articles from the old briefcase. “The first article printed the first two photographs and two more photographs were printed in the second article a few months later.” Olivia took the fifth photograph from the desk drawer. “And I found this in a children’s book called Princess Mary’s Gift Book. It is signed to Ellen from Frances. ‘The fifth photograph.’”
Nana peered at the photographs and the yellowing pages. Olivia recognized the look, as half-formed memories flickered across Nana’s face, like butterflies she couldn’t catch. “No. Not these,” she said. “Another one. Fairies at a stream. A waterfall.”
Not wanting to cause any upset, Olivia said she would look for it and settled Nana into Pappy’s chair with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits while she put the finishing touches to the window display.
When Henry arrived, he offered to sit with Nana to keep her company while Olivia finished setting up. Nana looked so at home in the bookshop, as if she had stopped fighting with herself and her memories and was happy just to be there. Olivia smiled as she noticed how Nana brightened around Henry, charmed by his attentiveness as he made sure she was warm enough and comfortable enough and whether she needed a hot drop of tea. He listened with such patience to Nana’s muddled stories and when she grew tired they sat quietly together, observing what was going on around them.
By seven, the shop was full. By half past, people were still arriving. Chairs were borrowed from the other shops on the lane, and impromptu seats were found on windowsills and steps and other people’s knees. Children sat cross-legged on the floor as Olivia, Ross, and Henry each read a short extract from different fairy stories and poems. Ross surprised them all by reading something he had written called The Fairy’s Tale, which had everyone spellbound and earned him the longest and loudest applause of the evening.
At the end of the readings, Olivia encouraged everyone to stay and browse and buy as many books as they could carry home. Lots of people were interested in the Cottingley articles and the photographs Olivia had displayed around the shop. She was surprised to hear herself talking so knowle
dgeably about it, drawing on everything she’d read in Frances’s memoir and the newspaper articles and Conan Doyle’s book The Coming of the Fairies, which one customer took a particular interest in.
“His involvement in the Cottingley affair is fascinating,” he said, turning the book over in his hands.
“Do you know much about it?” Olivia asked.
“A little. It’s generally believed that his interest in spirituality and fairy life came about in the same way as many other people’s did at that time, as a result of the war. People wanted—needed—to believe their loved ones lived on. Conan Doyle lost his son in the war and never got over it. He was involved in writing war propaganda, and held himself partly responsible for his son’s death, and for the deaths of so many young men who volunteered. They didn’t realize the extent of the horrors awaiting them at the Front because the papers withheld the worst details.” He studied the book again. “What are you asking for it?”
Olivia was glad she’d looked up the value. “With the two inscriptions and in such excellent condition, it would be worth around five hundred euros to the right buyer.”
“And are you selling?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. It’s part of a private collection. It isn’t currently listed in the catalog.”
“I’d be very interested if it was.”
Olivia took his details and said she would let him know.
AT THE END of the evening, Olivia took Nana back to St. Bridget’s. Far from finding it upsetting, she had enjoyed the evening and Olivia was pleased she’d taken her. She only wished Pappy could have been there to see the shop so alive. He would have been so proud.
At St. Bridget’s, the nurses made a great fuss over Nana, asking her all about her day out. Olivia waited until Nana was settled in bed before she kissed her good-bye. She hated to leave her, always wondering if it would be the last time. She hugged her as tightly as she dared and told her she loved her, but Nana had already dozed off and didn’t hear.