Little Wishes Read online

  Dedication

  To Dad, without whose life and loss this book would never have been written. I miss you.

  And to Christine.

  Nobody taught me more about what it means to love than you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

  Now

  Then

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  Then

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  Now

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  Now

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  Now

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  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michelle Adams

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Now

  On her favorite day of the year, Elizabeth Davenport awoke alone, as she had done every day for the best part of five decades. Home was a small cottage nestled on the very cusp of the Cornish coast, north of Land’s End and south of just about everywhere else. If you looked at the cottage from the outside, which she doubted many people did, it seemed too small to house two floors and a set of stairs, which ran straight up through the middle. It was almost as if it were hunkered down, fearful of being swept away by the Atlantic currents that simmered only feet away. But it offered Elizabeth more space than she needed, and a perfect view from which she could paint the mercurial scenery without ever having to open the front door. Few reasons existed to venture far nowadays, and little in the outside world concerned her anymore. But today was a different story. Today she cared about what was out there, because it was the one day each year when Tom came back.

  Her eyes adjusted to the sunlight marbling through the lace curtains as a few cheerful voices rose above the lull of the ocean. Being careful to keep her body within the warmth of the covers, she let her hand drift to the empty side of the bed, stroking the sheet, crisp as the day it was ironed. Although Tom had never slept in this bed, she was struck by the feeling that somehow, he was missing from it. And while his absence remained a lifelong void that she could never fill, it was eased by his annual return to Porthsennen, when he came to leave a blue crocus on her doorstep, a wish attached to the pot with a length of garden string. The wish was always for something they would have been doing if they were together on that day, like lounging in bed, eating at a restaurant, or seeing their family grow. And although they had never fulfilled any of those wishes, his return meant that for a short time each year, their lives coalesced. It was a day when everything felt right, when she felt truly like herself, in a way that for the remaining 364 days she did not. And what Elizabeth knew, what made her heart beat each time she saw that little blue flower, was that to go to such effort, to never once fail in all that time, meant that they loved each other just the same now as they had done on the day they first kissed. With her head on the pillow and her eyes closed, she recalled that first wish:

  1969: I wish that today we could lounge in bed all morning, listening to the sound of the waves.

  After a while in bed, Elizabeth rose, her feet cool on the bare wooden floor. Reaching for the pink silk robe hanging on the back of her door, she couldn’t help but smile as she slipped her arms into it. That was something else Tom occasionally did, left other gifts along with the flower. One year it was a pair of hiking boots, another year a bottle of champagne to celebrate a decade of love. So many years had passed that she was no longer sure if she could remember when exactly he’d left that pink robe, but she knew she had worn it every day since. And today marked fifty years since he’d made that promise to love her for the rest of his life, when he gave her the very first crocus flower; her stomach was somersaulting at the mere thought of what he might bring for a day as special as this.

  Pacing carefully down the stairs, Elizabeth drew back the curtains, and light flooded the small living room. A view along Whitesand Bay filled the alcove window, and ahead, just above the rooftops of the old fishing stores, the vast gray of the Atlantic Ocean surged and receded on the tide. A breeze brought forth the scent of whitecaps breaking offshore, and Elizabeth could just hear the clatter of fishing boats rocking as waves danced against their wooden hulls. Cookie, her British Blue, purred for his breakfast, all the while nuzzling against her legs. Getting a cat was certainly one of Tom’s better wishes; Elizabeth and Cookie had enjoyed seventeen good years together now, and his presence was often the only thing to ease the relentlessness of being alone.

  Sunlight catching at the mirrored edge of a photo frame drew Elizabeth’s attention to the windowsill. The image of Kate as a child stared back at her. To think of such happier times with her daughter was bittersweet, painful now to think how long had passed since they had spoken. Of how she missed her. Overcome for a moment, she placed the frame back on the sill and wiped the corner of her eye, lost as to how to help her daughter forgive the most terrible mistake she had ever made as a mother.

  “I suppose you’re hungry, aren’t you?” Elizabeth said at last, following the welcome distraction of the fluffy bundle still fussing at her feet. Cookie’s tail rose poker straight in appreciation as she stroked her hand along his back. Elizabeth set a plate of fish on the floor, then located a half bottle of champagne that she had placed in the fridge the night before. Although she could never bring herself to open the bottle Tom had left on the doorstep many years ago, each year she bought a replacement to toast their memory. It was difficult with her arthritis, but she managed to send the cork flying across the room with a loud pop. Cookie didn’t even flinch. “You must be going deaf,” she told him, laughing to herself as she poured herself a flute. It was too early for it, really, and the alcohol didn’t agree with her blood pressure tablets, but it was just one day out of the year. This was how their special day began, she thought, remembering the wish from 1978: I wish we could sip champagne for breakfast while we sit and gaze at the ocean. Each year she tried to realize Tom’s wishes in whatever way she could, but every year she was reminded that some were more easily fulfilled than others.

  Bubbles fizzed from the flute as a pan of water came to a steady boil on the stove. Soon enough, she had prepared a plate of poached eggs on toast. Stooping to retrieve a small wicker basket from the cupboard alongside the fireplace, she set it down on the table, along with her breakfast. As she took her seat, an old Elvis Presley LP began to play—a scratchy version of a song she loved, one she only ever listened to on this day.

  “Ah yes,” she said aloud, fingering through the little blue slips of paper in the basket until she came across one she liked. “This was a good idea, wasn’t it?”

  On the little note it read: 1993: I wish that you would read my diary, so that you would know every day of this year I was thinking about you. That diary was still in the cupboard along with the unopened champagne, delivered in 1978 along with that year’s wish. True to his word, every daily entry was about how he had been thinking of her. Forty-eight more wishes remained in that basket, each one a testament to something they had missed, to a part of their lives they hadn’t really shared. After reading his diary she had wanted to find him and tell him what a mistake it was that they weren’t together. But the reality of their lives had stopped her, for it wouldn’t have been fair. Knowing that he was married, and that technically so was she, meant that for them to be together was impossible. Still, the
thought of everything they had missed out on, coupled with the strength of his commitment to honor his promise each year, was difficult to digest; his wishes and gifts were enough to make her wonder what kind of life they might have been able to share had they stayed together.

  Tom had been her first love, her only love, and a man she could never forget. In his presence she had felt so much like herself that when he left, it was almost as if he had taken a small part of her with him. That was why she looked forward to this day so much; his annual gifts awakened those parts of herself, and for a short time each year she felt as if she were still that same girl who fell in love all those many years ago.

  Pushing her empty plate aside, she stood up, her head light with bubbles and excitement. Cookie returned to his favored spot, a small basket in one of the windows where he could, should the mood take him, imagine a hunt of the local gulls without having to move too far. For now, he seemed content to have a good wash and settle in for a rest. Replacing the wish in the basket, Elizabeth raised her glass in the air.

  “Here’s to us,” she said, looking at Cookie and thinking of Tom. Her eyes flicked to the door; should she look already? The excitement swelled inside her like a great big inflatable balloon. Even though she knew that a reunion was never in the cards, she had always wondered if one day he might just knock on the door and be standing there with the crocus in his hand rather than left on the doorstep. Especially this year, the fiftieth and most important, as she could see it. That would be her wish this year, she thought, just to have him back. But if those wishes were all they had left, it was enough for her to know that he still cared enough to come. And at least this way, she supposed, they had never suffered the difficult years of marriage, the arguing or disappointments that every couple she knew had experienced along the way. Instead they remained forever young, their relationship one of eternal hope.

  Setting the empty champagne flute back on the table, she moved toward the door. Her anticipation had gotten the better of her, and she couldn’t wait any longer. The key turned with a clunk in the lock, the handle creaking as she pulled it. A gust of sea breeze picked up the edges of her silk robe as she opened the door, the chill of the air taking her breath away as she looked down to the step. But despite all her hope, expectation, and all the ways that she relied on the arrival of his gift, when she looked down there was no little flower or wish waiting to be found. This year, the step was empty.

  Then

  The first Elizabeth knew of the accident was when she woke to the dull thudding of her father’s boots on the stairs. The dark sky was broken by the glimmer of moonlight as it fussed at the edge of a break in the clouds. The clock ticked at her side, and she saw that it was a little after 1 a.m. Somewhere in the distance a door slammed, followed by the faintest ringing of a bell. Was that a voice she could hear too, calling out? Pushing the covers aside, she jumped from the bed, moved toward the window. As she peered into the street, she saw her father rushing from their home in the direction of the sea. His shoes were untied, the blue and white stripes of his pajamas flickering underneath the tails of his coat. There had been calls for such urgent departures in the past, but even in the direst of emergencies he always got dressed. Leaving in his nightclothes was unthinkable.

  Elizabeth pushed her feet into her slippers and opened her bedroom door. With her father gone, the responsibility for her mother was left to her. Even at the age of seventeen she knew it wasn’t good for her mother to wake alone. Ahead, a thin sliver of light shone from the door of her parents’ bedroom, left ajar in an otherwise tenebrous house.

  “Mum,” called Elizabeth as she moved along the landing. They tried to keep her accompanied, since the cruelty of the confusion had set in about a year ago, yet still there were unpredictable moments like this when she ended up alone. Alzheimer’s disease, her father called it. The name didn’t mean much to Elizabeth, but she hated the disease all the same. Only last month they had found her mother trying to take a boat out, with seemingly little idea about where she was and devastatingly unprepared for what might have lain ahead. Her condition was getting steadily worse, just a little bit every day; her presence in their family was like a rock ground down by the constant weight of the tides.

  As she pushed open the door to her parents’ bedroom, an empty bed presented itself, the sheets turned in both left and right. Elizabeth thought she heard a noise then, something in the kitchen, perhaps. Her mother must already be downstairs. Turning to leave she almost missed it, but there, sitting alongside the chest of drawers, was her father’s black doctor’s bag. A fresh worry surfaced; he couldn’t work without his bag, and if there was an emergency great enough to rush from the house still dressed in his pajamas, Elizabeth had to do something. Not long had passed since he’d left, and she wondered if perhaps she could still catch him. Snatching up the bag, she hurried down the stairs. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, Mum,” she called, locking the front door behind her.

  The winding streets of her small village were imprinted in her mind, and she used that knowledge gained through years of childhood play to get to the main road as quickly as she could. The wind bit at her ears, and through the thick coastal dark she could hear the increasing intensity of the sea breaking ground as she inched ever closer. Then overhead a bright light filled the sky, an arc like a comet, followed by the accompanying boom of a flare as it was fired from the lifeboat station. Her fears grew as half-dressed men whizzed past her, en route to answer the lifeboat’s call. Following the commotion of harried voices, she took her first steps onto the sand behind the lifeboat station. It was then that she heard the chilling shriek of her father’s cry, and saw him down at the water’s edge.

  Arms flailed as a small crowd did what they could to hold him back. Mr. Bolitho and another man, whose name she didn’t know, splashed their way into the water ahead, each of them in a state of undress. Flashlights picked out a figure emerging from the water, pulling with him another person, as lifeless and heavy as a wet rag doll hanging at the rescuer’s side. His face was familiar, a young man named Tom whom she once knew from school. He had changed, grown broad in the shoulders, different from the boy Elizabeth used to know. Then her eyes moved to the body hanging limply under his arm. Her father’s bag fell from her hands as she watched her mother slip from Tom’s grip, forming a lifeless heap on the sand.

  Stumbling forward, Elizabeth saw Tom pressing his mouth against her mother’s, filling her lungs with his breath. Her father was still screaming, helpless in a way she had never witnessed before. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Wet sand hit Elizabeth’s knees as she fell to her mother’s side, just as a jet of water came spluttering from her mouth.

  “Oh, Catherine,” her father called as he scrambled to reach her. Her skin had been touched by ice, a sheen of glacial blue that shimmered in the light of the moon.

  “Will she be all right?” Elizabeth asked as she held her mother’s hand, her skin so cold it was almost painful. Gazing upward into the crowd, she searched the desperate faces for an answer.

  “She’ll be all right, miss,” Tom said. He reached across, placed a wet hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Somebody draped a blanket over his back, and then another over her mother. His breath was warm as he leaned in close. “But we need Dr. Warbeck.” Dr. James Warbeck was Elizabeth’s fiancé, and they were due to be married next year. Tom glanced briefly at her father, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your father is in shock. He’s no help here.”

  * * *

  James was already on his way, having woken to the sound of the flare. He was still getting used to coastal life, but it had been a busy summer for the lifeboat crew, and the need for urgency when he heard the call for help was as familiar to him now as it was to hear the trundle of buses passing his window when he’d lived in London. Dropping down onto the beach, sand filling his shoes, he hurried toward the crowd, still unsure what lay before him. Moments later he saw Elizabeth, then her father, next to her mother lying on the s
hore. Elizabeth’s breathing was as quick and short as his own.

  “James, do something, please,” she begged.

  “She’s very cold,” he said after performing a brief examination. “Lizzy, go on ahead, get the fire going. And you,” he said, pointing at Tom. “I suspect you are suffering a little from the exposure. Go with her. The run will do you good. Now come on, gentlemen,” he said to the crowd of local fishermen who had gathered to help. “We need to get this good lady back to the warmth of her home. Who will help me carry her?”

  * * *

  Elizabeth burst through the door to her home, looking left and right as if she had arrived in a place she didn’t know. Her knees still felt cold and damp as she knelt at the fireplace, no idea what to do. The logs seemed too heavy, the coal insufficient as she tried to build the fire. All knowledge of a task she knew well had been lost in the confusion of the night. No matter what she tried, the fire floundered.

  “Let me help,” Tom said, taking the pot from her when a third match went out. His voice broke the silence, reminded Elizabeth that she wasn’t alone. The warmth of his body next to hers evoked the memory of just how cold her mother had seemed at the beach.

  “Do you really think she’ll be all right?” Elizabeth asked as the earliest sparks engulfed the wood. But before he could answer they heard the crowd arriving with her mother, the slam of the door, the shuffle of feet. By the time they got her in the chair, the first flames of a decent fire were licking the sides of the chimney.

  Elizabeth stood aside to let James work, watching as he measured her mother’s blood pressure and listened to her chest. Her father sat at her side, tears welling in his eyes, his cheeks pinched pink by the fire. Elizabeth had never seen him look so helpless. A single tear broke free and streaked across his wrinkled cheeks. The room was silent, her mother too, everybody waiting on James’s verdict.

  “Miss?” Elizabeth heard a whispered voice coming from behind her. Tom was standing alone, his drenched clothes dripping salt water to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said, pushing his wet black hair from his face, “but do you have a towel I could use?”