There she was

Alastair

He got up at 7am every morning. He made the bed, took a two-minute shower and got dressed. He would look at himself in the mirror, comb his hair over the bald patch at the back of his head and say: ‘Today is the day.’

He always left the house at 8am and went to a little café not far from Cambridge University. As he walked in a little bell above the door sounded, the barista looked up and smiled at him.

‘Morning Mr. C!’

‘Good morning.’

‘Same as usual?’

‘Yes please.’

He took a seat at a table next to the window while the barista brought him a coffee and a croissant. He placed a little black book in front of him and waited. Sometimes he would sit there for hours, before getting up and returning home.

That morning the bell sounded to indicate a customer had entered the café, he looked up and there she was. Even more beautiful than the last time he saw her.

Grace

She always knew she loved him more than he loved her, but they had been happy, in their own way. She thought having children would bring them closer together, but it hadn’t. For it turned out she couldn’t have any. It broke her heart. But they continued their lives as they always had. They got up at 7am. He made the bed and she made breakfast. Then they’d leave for the University. He taught English and she worked in the finance department. And in the evenings, she would read and he would write.

During a trip to New York with a friend, she was walking through Central Park and there she was. She recognised the woman immediately and stopped in her tracks as she stared at the little girl. Clutching a doll in one hand and her mother’s index finger in the other. The resemblance was uncanny. She looked at her and she knew. Just like she knew, years later, when she was taking a shower and felt a lump in her right breast.

Alastair stayed by her side till the end, because he loved her, in his own way. Weeks later, when he was packing up her stuff, he came across a little black book.

Christine

She was eighteen years old when her mother died of the virus in 2020 in a hospital in New York. A few months later she received a phone call from a lawyer’s office. They sent her two envelopes; one with a photo album and one with details of a bank account number in her name, with 20.000 USD on it. They informed her the money was meant for her education. She sat down at the kitchen table, wondering how her mother must’ve saved up for this her entire life. She had worked as a receptionist for as long as she could remember. There had always been food on the table but a financial splurge was out of the question. And now her mother had left her 20.000 dollars? She stared at the paper and then opened the photo album. She had kept everything from Christine’s childhood; it was filled with photos, drawings and anecdotes. The writing on the first page was a little faded, but it said: ‘For a Christine. With love.’

In September 2021 she’d moved to the UK and started her first semester at Cambridge University. She felt right at home. Being in the place she knew her mother had lived and studied too brought her joy.

Two days a week, depending on her schedule, she popped into a little café near campus to grab a coffee before her lecture. The bell above the door rang as she stepped inside, and there she was.

‘Morning Christine!’

‘Morning!’

‘Same as usual?’

‘Yes please.’

She’d fallen for the barista since the day they met. And because she was so distracted, every week, for months, she missed the man sitting at a window table with a little black book in front of him.

Portia

She crossed the road and entered a large glass building. She went up to the 7th floor, greeted her colleagues and walked to her office overlooking Broadway. Her assistant walked in behind her and placed a cappuccino and a thick envelope on her desk. Portia glanced at the senders address on the envelope and then looked at her assistant in surprise.

‘Her daughter dropped it off.’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’

Her assistant left the office, closing the door behind her as she opened the envelope. It contained a manuscript, a stack of envelopes, a photo album, a little black book and a letter addressed to her.

To: Portia Collins , Penguin Random House , 1745 Broadway, New York.

Dear Portia,

I asked my family to get these to you after my funeral, it’s all you need to publish my final book and I know you will do so with the same amount of love and respect as you have done with my work in the past.

The manuscript is a love story based on my life and how I came to be.

The attached photo album, which my mother made, was never meant for me, but for A. Christine. At University she’d fallen in love with a married man and got pregnant. She thought he’d never leave his wife for her, so she moved to the States and never told him.

The envelopes contain love letters, addressed to my mother, written by Alastair Christine. Letters he never sent and she never read. He never meant to fall in love with her, but he had, deeply, and he was devastated when she left without a word. When his wife Grace passed in early 2021, he found my name amongst her belongings. He looked it up on the internet, and when he saw my profile picture he knew. He read I lived in New York and contemplated whether to contact me, but what would he say?

And then one day, there I was, in Cambridge. He was taking his daily walk and he saw me entering a little café to grab a coffee. After that day, he went there every morning and waited, in the hope I’d show up. But even when I did, for months, he didn’t have the courage to come up to me. When he finally did, I knew before he had even spoken. He turned my world upside down, in the best possible way. A year after I lost my mother, I found my father.

And finally, the little black book. In it you will find dates and records of accounting fraud that was never discovered. Over the course of sixteen years Grace Christine embezzled around 14.000 pounds from the finance department at Cambridge University, to support the child she never had for the man she’d always loved.

But I guess, ironically, the money ended up exactly where it came from, for I used it to pay for my degree in English literature.

With love,

Christine