The New Year’s fireworks down on South Beach were lovely once again. They are getting bigger every year.

Take care, my darling. Till next I write.

Forever yours,

Ivy

Sitting in his worn-out chair, Charlie felt every day of every year of his eighty-odd years on Earth pressing on him. He’d forgotten how draining being connected with someone could be, especially at his age, especially with the young whose every up and down in life is a drama of Odyssean proportions.

Still, he was glad she’d stuck around. It showed she had character, and character was what he needed her to have. And playing Scrabble with her took his mind back to more pleasant days.

He could still picture Ivy sitting on the bench, him sitting opposite. He often let her win, holding back words that would give him a high score. It was the least he could do for the woman who’d shown a perfect stranger such open kindness. After that stormy evening on the beach, the cloud thick, black and rumbling in anger, the sea grey and violent, she could have simply thanked him or given him a small reward and sent him on his way. She could have ignored him. She could have called the police. But she gave a dishevelled young man shelter. She asked no questions of him; who he was, where he’d come from, how he’d come to be on that damp stretch of sand that day.

She’d saved him. A waste, most people would say, to save a man so he could live alone with his guilt and pain, decade after decade. But that wouldn’t be the harshest thing they could say.

Pulling out his copy of David Copperfield, the cover clean and cared for, he opened it up at the first chapter. He’d read it so many times the words were part of him, the story part of his memory. If only all his memories were so well written.

The opening lines sang in his head and he disappeared into Dickens’s world. ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’

All Charlie knew was that he was no hero. Of his life or anyone else’s. But he could still do something right. The appointment tomorrow with the lawyer in Sydney would enable him to. He hoped.

Twenty-four

Trivia was still half an hour away. Nicole paced the empty rooms of the cottage, read through her lists, checked her phone.

No further messages. Maybe Mark had given up. Nicole blocked his number.

The minutes ticked by, her thoughts drifting to the fact that Danny would be there. His green eyes haunted her, stirring feelings she’d rather remain un-stirred.

With too many untamed thoughts raging through her mind – Mark, Danny, Mark – Nicole turned to Ivy’s words to soothe her soul.