The Day She Came Back(25)

Jim Melrose drew breath and took his time forming his response. ‘In my job I see a lot of people, Victoria, who are grieving the loss of someone they loved. Your situation is even more poignant, as your grandma was effectively your whole family and you are very young. I think that there might be a tendency for some people in your situation to want to believe that this might be a possibility, because it would be the fairy-tale ending, wouldn’t it? To have your mother come back from the dead when you need her most. I’m sorry to say there are charlatans out there who are more than aware of this. I have had some . . .’ He paused. ‘Heartbreaking conversations with people who have paid huge sums to so-called “psychics” to receive messages from those who have died. Of course, it all comes to nothing, it’s a con. I think if anyone did have a real gift, a vocation like that, then they would not be making money from it. They can take advantage of vulnerable people in the worst way. Because they give false hope.’ He looked wistful. ‘And I don’t want to presume or pry, but I think the assumption is that you are now a young woman of means.’

She swallowed the inappropriate desire to laugh as nerves bit, glad Daksha was not within sight. The very phrase a woman of means made her feel like something out of a Jane Austen novel.

The vicar continued. ‘I guess what I am saying is that there are a number of very obvious explanations and sometimes the most likely answers are not the most pleasing ones, not the ones we hope for. I am concerned that your grief and your understandable desire for this to be true might cloud the reality and I would hate to see you get hurt in any way, Victoria. I think you have enough going on right now.’

‘I’m not sure I do have a desire for it to be true!’ She shook her head defiantly, if not convincingly. ‘I think I hope it’s not true, but then if there’s the smallest chance that I could get to meet my mum . . .’ She held her head in her hands briefly. ‘I would hate to see me get hurt too, but what if the hurt comes because I find out that Prim has been lying to me my whole life? What then?’ The thought was enough to make her tears bloom.

Jim Melrose held her eyeline. ‘And why would she have done that? Surely she, more than anyone, would have wanted nothing more than to be reunited with the daughter she mourned?’

‘I guess.’ She looked away, knowing she was more or less going to dismiss his advice. ‘But I think I need to find out.’

‘Well’ – he smiled a little stiffly now – ‘if you are going to meet her, make sure you do it in a public place and not alone. Take all sensible precautions and do not give her any personal information.’

‘I won’t. Thank you for seeing me today at such short notice.’

‘My door is always open.’ He stood to indicate the meeting was over.

‘Thank you.’

‘Any time. And Victoria?’

‘Yes?’ She looked directly at him.

‘Prim was a good woman. She really was. And if anything should come to light, remember that.’

‘I will.’

Victoria walked home with the vicar’s parting words playing on her mind, suggesting that even he didn’t discount the possibility entirely. She looked around and dawdled, partly to use the quiet commute as thinking time, hoping to order her maelstrom of thoughts, and also because, despite a deep sleep, she was bone tired.

As she walked along the pavement, thinking also of the vicar’s note of caution, she thought she heard someone call her name. She ignored it in case she had imagined it or misheard. Today she found it hard to trust both her instinct and her hearing. Then she heard it again.

‘Victoria!’

This time it was unmistakable. She turned in time to see Flynn McNamara as he caught up with her.

‘Thought it was you.’ He was panting a little after the run and, on another day, she would have felt ridiculously flattered that he might have put in this much effort just to walk with her. But the extreme excitement and flurry of joy in her gut that she had felt the last time she had seen him was muted. Unsurprising when she considered what had happened that very evening, and every day since . . .

‘How are you, Flynn? Getting ready for uni?’ She looked down, not caring about her frumpy brown sandals. Gone was the nervous, unnatural speech pattern and the desire to pepper her conversation with words that might make her seem a little more relevant. And the state of her hair and the possible allure of what she was wearing didn’t occur to her. She was calm because she could now see that this boy and her preoccupation with him over the last few years did not matter. Nothing mattered as much as the more pressing issues that dogged her: like recovering from the loss of Prim, trying to figure out whether Sarah Hansen could conceivably be her mother and concentrating on breathing, because with so much going on in her brain, with thoughts and doubts coming at her quicker and faster than she could swallow, she thought she might actually drown . . . her head was working at lightning speed and she wished it would all just – slow down.

‘Yeah, kind of. I go in a month. There’s not that much to do, really. Just pack a bag, buy some posters and try to figure out how to stop my little sister taking over my room the moment I shut the front door.’

‘I’d go for padlocks and a big, snarling dog.’

He laughed, and the old Victoria would have used his laughter as a fuse to spark her self-confidence, but not today.