“Do you think he ever planned to tell me?”
“We can’t know, of course,” Audrey says. “Although he did give you the necklace without removing them first. He must have known you’d discover them at some point. Maybe on some level he wanted you to.”
“It seems strange to cover these up again with my own photos. Do you want them? Do you have another photo of Ilse?”
“No,” Audrey says. “But I think it’s lovely, actually. You’ll keep your own family close for your sake, and you’ll keep Ilse close for your dad’s.”
“And yours,” Kate says, a tear slipping into her lap.
“Thank you, dear. That means a great deal to me.”
Kate can feel her exhaustion finally taking over.
“Where are they buried?” Audrey asks. “Your parents?”
“In London. The Liberal Jewish Cemetery. It’s interfaith, so he and my mum could be buried together. Why?”
Audrey sits up. “I think I would like to go visit his grave.”
Kate looks down at her lap. “I haven’t been since the funeral.”
“Then I think we should go. Together. I want to visit my father’s grave too. To say goodbye before I say hello again.”
“Where is he?”
“Brompton Cemetery, in Chelsea. Not too far from yours.”
Kate fingers the locket, avoiding Audrey’s gaze. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to go back again.”
“I think you need to go back whether you’re ready or not,” Audrey says. “In my experience, a person will never do anything if they always wait until they’re ready. We have to make ourselves uncomfortable, Kate, in order to move. Otherwise we get stuck, stagnating, until we lose the ability to move anywhere at all.”
“I know,” Kate says, tapping the tip of her finger at a spot on her glass. She keeps her eyes downcast. “But I’m afraid.”
“I know, dear,” Audrey says gently. “We all are.”
Chapter 41
Kate
LONDON, ENGLAND | JANUARY 2011
Kate pulls up to the curb outside their bed-and-breakfast in Kensington and turns off the ignition. Her nerves, which were already on edge from her impending visit to the cemetery, are all pins and needles. She’d happily forgotten how anxiety-inducing it is to drive in the city in rush hour traffic. Audrey’s right, though—this trip is necessary. Kate fled her life too quickly to tie up any loose ends, which have a way of unravelling at the most inconvenient of times.
But the shadow of finality hovering over them is undeniable. For both Kate and Audrey, this journey is at once a homecoming and a goodbye. That’s part of what Audrey has been trying to tell her: she has to turn and face her past, her mistakes. She lets out a breath and glances at Audrey, whose lips are pursed in a thin line. She coughs a little.
After they check in, Audrey lies down to take a quick nap before dinner and Kate heads to the room next door. She sends Ian a text that they’ve arrived safe and sound. She had filled him in about all the developments, and he’d been as supportive as she possibly could have wanted. She and Audrey invited him to come with them, but he’d declined, offering instead to stay home with the dogs.
“Audrey and I have our own history already sorted,” he’d said, brushing a strand of hair back off Kate’s face in the warmth of the Rose Room’s bed. “Now it’s your turn. I think this is something the two of you should do together.”
The following day dawns cloudy and cold. Audrey and Kate sit down to breakfast and a large pot of coffee in the dining room of the hotel before setting out for Brompton Cemetery, then on to the Liberal Jewish Cemetery.
“When was the last time you visited?” Kate asks her in the back of a taxi.
They didn’t drive Kate’s car, so they wouldn’t have to worry about parking and walking. Audrey tried to wave Kate down, claiming the taxi was too expensive and they should take the bus, but Kate held firm.
“Not for decades,” Audrey says. She stares pensively out the window at the hustle and bustle of the street as the taxi winds its way down Old Brompton Road to the grand cemetery entrance. “Everything is so much faster now,” she muses. “Everyone’s so hurried. I wonder why. All they’re really rushing toward is death.”
They exit the car and Audrey loops her arm with Kate’s, leading her down a long winding path bordered by tall bare trees that will be lush come springtime, providing plenty of shade for those visiting the graves below, their branches extending outward like comforting arms, soothing the bereaved.
“I’ve always liked cemeteries, you know,” Audrey says beside her. “They give a lot of people the creeps, or they’re superstitious about them. But I find them to be very peaceful. Quiet, still. Treed and cool. And there’s a sort of relief in them. The lives of the people buried inside might have been cut short by accident or disease, whilst others ended later, at the proper time. But there’s this sense of rest that you don’t encounter many other places.”
They walk another minute or so until Audrey points to a set of three gravestones a little way off the path. “Right there.”
They step around the other stones, some so ancient the names and dates can’t be made out, the identities erased by rain and wind and the calloused hands of time. And what a tragedy that seems to Kate, that no one visits those graves anymore; the deceased’s loved ones are long gone themselves. And so moss grows over the stone and it sinks into the earth as the person below is forgotten. She wonders how many unremembered souls there are in this one cemetery alone, and it hits her in that moment, perhaps harder than it ever has, how fleeting a single life is. How enormous, yet insignificant. It’s astonishing how readily people waste time with no consideration that eventually—and maybe without warning—they’re going to run out of it.
Audrey comes to a halt in front of the stones. She’s quiet for a while, and Kate waits, supporting Audrey’s arm. A wind whips up and lifts the fringe off Kate’s forehead.
“I do wish I’d been here for my father’s burial,” Audrey finally says. “Would you help me?”
With Kate’s assistance, Audrey kneels on the snow-dusted grass in front of the plot and sets one of the bouquets of flowers they bought near the hotel—white lilies—in front. She places a gloved hand on her father’s stone, lingering for a moment, eyes closed. Kate wonders what she’s telling him.
“Thank you,” Audrey says, as Kate helps her back up.
Another couple passes by on the path behind them, talking in low tones.
“That’s my plot beside him,” Audrey says, pointing. They both stare at the empty space. A bird calls from a nearby tree. “I thought it would feel more frightening to see my final resting place now that I’m nearing the end. But…”
