‘I don’t watch the news,’ Orla told him. ‘How did you find out?’
‘The police called at my house.’
She sighed. ‘I can’t imagine how awful that must have been for you.’
‘I can’t remember much about it, to be honest. It’s all a bit of a blur. The whole month has been. Cards, phone calls, emails. I’ve never had to talk to so many people before.’
‘And I’m so grateful that you thought to contact me.’
‘Helen cared about you. Even though you’d never met.’
‘And I cared about her.’
‘I felt that. I felt that connection between you. It was as real as any regular kind of relationship.’ Luke smiled sadly. ‘She used to look forward to your posts so much and she’d miss them if you didn’t post. She’d look at them each morning at breakfast before she went to work. I think you put her in a good mood for the day. “Something bright in a sometimes dark world”, she’d say of your posts.’
‘Really?’
Luke nodded. ‘She used to share them with me, reading them out and showing me the pictures.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘You have a lot of teacups!’
Orla laughed, tears in her eyes. ‘Yes. I do.’
There was an awkward silence as some of the darkness seemed to seep back into Luke.
‘She sent me a message,’ he began again at last, ‘just before the train crash. She said she had a proposal for me, but I can’t think what it could have been and it’s been driving me crazy.’ He paused and then took a couple of deep breaths before speaking again. ‘I don’t suppose she talked to you about it?’
‘You mean the night of the crash?’
‘Yes. Did she message you, perhaps?’
‘What date was the accident?’
‘The twelfth of April.’
‘Let me check.’ Orla got up and went to get her phone.
‘Have you got anything? Did she message you?’ Luke asked desperately.
‘Wait a minute.’
Luke crossed the room and peered over her shoulder as she searched her phone.
‘Here,’ she said at last. ‘The twelfth. She asked me a question.’
‘What was the question?’
‘“Do you think I can make a living from my photography?”’ Orla looked up at him.
‘She asked you that?’
‘Yes.’ She turned the phone round for him to see and he grabbed it in shaking hands before reading the message, taking a moment to digest it. Orla gave him a bit of space as he absorbed each and every word Helen had written. Finally, he looked up from the screen and suddenly seemed to realise that he’d taken the phone without asking.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, quickly handing it back.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I only read Helen’s—’
‘It’s okay. Really,’ Orla told him.
‘Do you mind me asking what you said to her? I mean, if you replied.’
‘I told her that I thought she could make a living from it and that she should give it a go.’ Orla looked at her phone, reading the words she’d sent to Helen. ‘I said, “Go for it! Your gift for photography and your passion for what you do are a recipe for success!”’
‘Did she answer back?’
‘Just this.’ Orla turned the phone back to Luke so he could see the smiley face that Helen had sent in response.
‘Was that her last message to you?’
Orla nodded.
‘Her last message was a smiley face,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘What time did she send it?’
Orla looked at the screen again.
‘At 18:26.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Luke said. ‘That was just a few minutes before the crash. She messaged me at 18:15 so you must have been the last person she messaged.’
Orla’s fingers closed tightly around the phone as if that knowledge made it all the more precious, and then she looked up at Luke, whose eyes were filled with tears.
‘She left the world with a smile,’ he said.
Chapter 7
Luke walked along the beach, still feeling shaken by the revelations on Orla’s phone. He’d seen the way her hand had closed around it after he’d told her that was probably Helen’s last ever message. He knew how she felt because he felt the same way about his phone. There was a little piece of Helen locked away inside it. As well as the texts and photos she’d sent him, there were voicemails too that he was so glad he’d never got round to deleting. They weren’t especially endearing messages – one was a reminder for him to pick up a bag of self-raising flour on his way home, and another revealed the Helen that could be just a little bit moody when Luke had forgotten to do something. He couldn’t help smiling as he remembered that about her. She was so organised and just couldn’t understand his chronic forgetfulness. But even though her message didn’t show her in the best light, it was her voice, reaching out to him from beyond the barrier of death, and it was so precious to him. He knew he could never delete that message.
It was funny, Luke thought, but you even missed all the little things that used to annoy you about a person when they were no longer around, like the way Helen would leave the entire contents of her make-up bag all over the bathroom when she was in a rush to catch her train for work. How Luke missed that now.
As he walked, he thought about the message Helen had exchanged with Orla. So, she’d really been thinking about making a living from her art. She’d made noises about it before, but he hadn’t thought she was serious. Her photography had always been a passionate hobby. She’d never really said anything about turning it into a job. And now she’d never get the chance. The world beyond her little platform on Galleria would never know how very talented she was.
‘Oh, Helen,’ he whispered into the wind, an immense sadness filling his heart at the thought of her dreams coming to nothing. The waste of a beautiful life. Unfulfilled potential. What would she have been able to achieve? Had she
