AN: Okay, so I have decided to publish this...I am sorry. It isn't AU but if you will bear with me, it stills harks back to Richard and Camille. And he kind of makes an appearance. I cried a lot writing this. Thoughts would be appreciated even if you can't make it to the end.
One year.
Time had flown. Her feelings had not. It doesn't take much to allow them to escape the places she tries to keep them trapped. Someone asking for tea. A tourist wiping their brow with a handkerchief.
She had been getting better recently at removing the associations, about seeing them less often, but she knew that would not work today. Not on the one-year anniversary since her heart had been ripped in half.
She walks up the steps to the police station, pausing on the veranda to gaze at the sky. She smiles briefly, it is a hot day, he would have complained about that, and she would have rolled her eyes. Her smile falters, today is not the day for smiling.
She takes a steadying breath and enters the station. She feels Dwayne's eyes on her back, but she ignores them. He knew. He would have remembered. A year hadn't changed much really, she still wasn't ready to talk about it, she doubted she ever would be.
She takes the tin out of her desk without thinking. It was his, the one with his jelly babies in. Nowadays the ribbon from the orchids he had given her sits inside. She takes it out now and draws it through her fingers. She stares at it blankly. Her mind drifts to over a year in the past thinking about that evening on the beach. They were quite expensive actually, ridiculous really when you consider they grow in the wild. She laughs to herself, a stray tear stealing its way into her eyes. That was him, always very much to the point, and not at all sentimental or romantic. He saw the world for what it was.
She had loved him. She still does.
Hindsight was never helpful. She had come to feel it was the very worst thing in the world. It was useless. But, it was worse than useless, because it made you feel like the most foolish person all of the time. My, had she been foolish. She had spent too long trying to decipher his feelings, wasting time trying to ask a socially incompetent man, subtly, if he liked her. She should have just asked. Better still, she should have made a move, she'd had enough chances. The fear of ruining one of the best (if most peculiar) friendships she had ever experienced and scaring him, had put her off. But in accepting that fear she had let something greater slip her by. He had gone without her telling him how she felt, without him knowing that she loved him. That she would have loved him always if he had given her a chance.
That she will love him forever.
She closes the tin, ribbon enclosed and returns it to its place in her desk, a shadow in the doorway reminding her that she is in fact at work. She looks up expecting to see her boss and instead is faced with a short woman, about sixty-five, dressed in a floor length white dress. It seems as if she had only been waiting for some kind of acknowledgement, because upon their gazes meeting, she enters the room.
"Hello, I'm looking for Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey." Camille walks around her desk to meet the woman. "I'm Jennifer Poole. That is, Richard Poole's mother." Camille hadn't needed the confirmation. The eyes are the same. The speckled green eyes that she had thought she was never going to see again. She swallows, hard.
"I'm Camille." She holds out her arm to this immaculately dressed woman. Every single hair on her head was pulled perfectly into a lovely voluptuous bun, Camille feels instantly intimidated. The older woman's eyes flick over her but Camille can't focus enough to read her expression. Why was his mother here? He had never come to visit him whilst he had been here, so why was she here now? "Can I help you?"
"Yes, I…" She gestures towards the veranda outside, her eyes flicking to where Dwayne and Florence are working behind them. Camille follows her outside, her heart pounding in her chest. Camille leans against the veranda. Her fingers scratching at the wooden surface. It is unnerving, his mother turning up exactly a year later, staring into those green eyes exactly a year after she had last looked into a very different face bearing them. "You're not what I was expecting to be honest." Camille startles. She had almost forgotten she had a companion, her thoughts had been back there again, his teasing green eyes making the corners of her mouth twitch.
"Sorry?"
"From what Richard said about you. You're not what I expected." She winces as she says his name, her heart doing that double falter as it does every time. Her thoughts caress the idea that he had talked about her to his mother but she quickly boxes it away with all the other thoughts about him. Locking them away removed that terrible hindsight.
"Well…" Camille stops, what was she supposed to say? He had never spoken about his mother to her. "I'm pleased to meet you Mrs Poole."
"I'm sorry I didn't ring ahead. I just wanted to get here. For today." Camille feels the air exit her lungs in a sharp breath. She looks down, pushing her whole weight into the veranda railing. Her eyes fill with water again. Today was always going to be a bad one, but she had thought she was going to be able to make it through with just the discomfort within her. She knew her mother and Dwayne would keep their mouths shut, if they even remembered the date and everyone else…well they didn't know. Not properly. But now, her control was spiralling quickly out of her reach. She tips her head back, willing the tears to go away.
A hand comes to cover hers, and interlaces its fingers with her own. Camille feels the almost imperceptible squeeze and turns to look into the face of his mother, who also has tears gathering in her eyes. It's the eyes. The tears roll onto her cheeks before she has a chance to squeeze her eyelids shut. A handkerchief appears from a mysterious pocket in her dress which makes Camille smile as she takes it.
"He always had one of these stashed away somewhere."
"I tried to teach him properly." She dries her eyes and hands the handkerchief back.
"Mind you, he mainly used it for mopping his forehead." Mrs Poole laughs.
"That sounds like Richard." They lapse into silence again and Camille's mind drifts to that first meeting in his shack, when he had offered her his handkerchief. She hadn't loved him then. My goodness, she had laughed at him. Laughed at how easily he had fallen for her sitting there crying. She never laughed at him seriously after that, at any point. He was far better at his job than she could ever have known sat on his bed sobbing. He had been a marvel. His ability to grapple with a case had never failed to amaze her. That was what she had loved first. He had inspired her. Right from that moment in the cells when he had returned with the picture of the back of her head and known it was her. "The thing is, I have something for you, from Richard."
Mrs Poole says something about meeting her after work, which she agrees to, but hardly consciously decides on. Her heart is drumming between her ribs. The last time it had drummed this hard, this loudly, had been when she had collapsed against Dwayne at the villa a year ago today. What on earth could Mrs Poole have for her? And how on earth was it from him?
Her thoughts start swimming again. He stands before her, in his suit, that crooked smile on his face. His eyes alight with mirth. She hears his soft chuckle, one she rarely heard but she had been graced with on a handful of occasions. She turns her face to the blazing Caribbean sky. The heat he had hated so much. The sky under which they had been brought together and then so cruelly ripped apart.
The pain wasn't getting easier. She had thought it was. She had thought she had been making progress. That the cavity somewhere in her chest was getting smaller. The nightmares were rarer, and shorter. The memories reared their ugly heads less often. But now, today, she knew that boxing it all up, hiding it away had not been progress. She had been setting herself up for this, for today. The day when everything came tumbling out and she couldn't hold it together at all. Memories pour about in her mind unbidden, with no prompting. Regrets overcome her, making her flinch.
Tonight, was going to be hard. More than hard. Impossible. How on earth could she have dinner with his mother? The topic of conversation could only be one thing. She had avoided all talk about him for an entire year. She couldn't even say his name.
They choose the table in the corner of the patio. As far from other people as possible. Mrs Poole sits and places a small package on the table. It's an envelope. Scrawled on the front is her name, in his writing.
She wasn't sure what she had expected. She had thought maybe there was some book he had left to her, or some picture or something. But words…he didn't do words.
"I'm not expecting you to read it now. I imagine you want to read it alone." They lapse into silence, in which her mother arrives with their drinks. She asks about food and Camille nods her head in assent. She could hardly walk away now, however much the need to read that letter was burning in her throat, Mrs Poole had come such a long way.
"You shouldn't have come all this way to give me that. You could have posted it."
"I could have, yes. But I wanted to meet you." Mrs Poole hesitates, a faraway look glancing across her face and then out to the Caribbean Sea. Camille takes a long swig of the cocktail her mother had made her. She was being selfish, she wasn't the only person in the world who had lost him. It had been so easy on the island to forget that. Nobody else had really known him, not properly.
"If you mind me asking, why? I can't imagine he wrote home about me."
"You were mentioned. I should have known then; the only other woman Richard had ever mentioned had been Sasha. Occasionally Angela I suppose, but that was a different kind of mention." Camille stares down at the envelope with her name on it. It seems to beckon at her from the table. He had spoken about her to his parents. Her heart does that little flip and then falls flat. It was too late for that. Much too late. "What did you think of him, Camille?"
The envelope flashes at her again, as if begging for her to say something teasing. To say something that will shock his mother. To get her to tempt out of her mind all those memories, to let them overflow properly. She shakes her head softly to herself, she is analysing an envelope. She looks back up at her companion, the green eyes meeting hers. She blinks. Her mind was playing tricks on her, his face had flashed in front of his mother's, oh so quickly, daring her.
"The first day I met him I was still working undercover. I pretended to be a cleaner in his room. I sobbed and sobbed about the death of his predecessor, and he rolled his eyes at me. The next day he arrested me, put me in a cell with a goat and blew my whole cover. I hated him. But then…then…" She takes another long steadying breath and pinches the corner of her eye where she feels a tear gathering. "We fought like you wouldn't believe, but we never really fell out. It's hard to explain. We complimented each other at work. We solved cases in record times. Yes, we fought and wound each other up, but it was all short-lived, never serious. I learnt to enjoy the heated exchanges, they let me see into his mind, to understand him better. I soon realised that he had built a wall around himself, an emotional barrier from the world. He hid in books and puzzles, he avoided people because he feared them. He was terrified of getting hurt because that had happened too many times before." Camille stops, unsure how to continue, her voice getting increasingly unsteady. "He was the most brilliant man I have ever met, despite being a little infuriating and very pedantic." Mrs Poole laughs, and Camille lets her mouth briefly turn into an upward curve. The two women just look at each other. Lost. Lost in thoughts and memories.
Camille runs her fingers across the edge envelope, letting the corner crease poke at the skin beneath her nail. She pulls her hand away as if the envelope had bitten, it had simply jerked at her touch. Her name had seemed to swirl along the page like a snake. She flips the envelope over, anything to take the soft melodious tone of his voice calling her name to stop swimming in her head.
"Did he ever give you orchids?" Her breath quickens again, her gaze snapping up to Mrs Poole.
"Yes. Why?" She reaches into her bag and pulls out something else. She lays in gently on top of the envelope. It's a bracelet, on which dangles a single charm, a white orchid. She doesn't blink. She just stares. Her vision begins to swim again. What on earth did that mean? He couldn't possibly have brought her a bracelet, this was Richard for goodness sake! And in the very long shot that he had, why on earth had it been flown back to his parents without him ever giving it to her? "I don't think, he wouldn't have –" But she stops herself. There had been moments of sentiment. Behind those built up walls he had been harbouring a very loving heart, one that he wanted to protect. She had said that herself just minutes before. It would be exactly within his character to have purchased her something and not had the courage to give it to her. Just as she had stood on that veranda when he had been returning to England and not had the courage to admit her own feelings.
She doesn't try to stop herself. The tears fall down her cheeks and she once again takes the offered handkerchief. Mrs Poole takes her other hand and holds it between her own on the table between them, she squeezes and caresses before letting it rest on the table and taking up the bracelet, she deftly clasps onto Camille's wrist. The cold metal is jarring. She flicks her gaze up to meet those green eyes.
"I was stupid. I should have told him how I felt. I was just so unsure of what he felt and I didn't want to make him turn even further in on himself, to scare him when he wasn't ready."
"You're not stupid Camille. You understood him. You probably would have scared him. And you weren't to know that time was running out." She shakes her head from side to side. Life was so incredibly cruel.
"No, I wasn't. But I will regret forever not having told him that I loved him." She had never spoken those words aloud before. "Regret will follow me around forever. I'm sure he told you that I always voiced my opinion, that I always riled him up. Irony is, I never told him the only thing that really mattered." They lapse into that silence again. Camille staring at the beautiful bracelet he had taken the time to purchase. Knowing Richard, it would have taken a great deal of debate and anxiety.
"There is something you should know, and I will accept no argument. I found the diary he wrote whilst living here, and I read it." Mrs Poole pulls a brown leather journal from her bag and places it on the table between them. "It was part of the reason I came here. I wanted to meet you. Because, based on what he wrote Camille, his father and I, being all alone in this world now, we are going to leave a vast amount of what is ours to you." Camille shakes her head, an argument forming in her mind, she did not want charity. "I won't let you argue Camille, it's not charity, it's not a peace offering. It's what Richard would have wanted." Mrs Poole holds out her hands and Camille takes them, finding comfort in their warmth, in the tight squeeze, and the understanding that seems to pass between their joined hands. "You should read the diary when you feel ready. It might bring you some peace."
Camille isn't so sure about that. Peace suggests tranquillity, anything about him took her far away from tranquillity, it made her emotional and put her on edge. She had read one of his diaries this time a year ago, the hopes, the dreams, the plans. She wasn't entirely sure she could cope with another one, and one which probably contained thoughts about her. Besides, she still had whatever was in that envelope to digest, that was going to be hard enough.
Her mother brings them their food and they eat in silence. The silence might have looked strange from the outside, two people having dinner and not talking. To other, it might have seemed inevitable given the nature of the relationship between these two women – strangers. But it isn't awkward. Camille, for the first time in a year does feel a little at peace. The silent comfort of the woman opposite her, the silent absorption of her grief by someone who had also lost him. It had not been the same with her mother, Dwayne and Fidel. They had lost him, but not like she had.
They had parted about an hour ago, agreeing to meet again before Mrs Poole departed the island at the end of the week to discuss the future. Camille owed her that, if his parents were serious about leaving her most of what they had she would have to maintain a relationship with them somehow.
Camille had gone to the only place she felt was right to read his letter, the beach which had been his back garden for two years. The beach on which they had shared some of her most cherished moments. It had been a risk coming here with the shack now occupied by Humphrey, whose attentions had not gone unnoticed, but he didn't seem to be about, no doubt out with Dwayne.
She had found the fallen tree on which she had held her orchids with him sat beside her, and taken a seat. For the risk of being interrupted this was the only place she could do this, alone and with his memories swimming in her head.
The waves slither along the sand, the white foam sloshing at the shoreline. The sun was still not fully set, the last of its light trailing across the water. The sky is alight with deep reds and oranges. She had shared more sunsets with him than any other man. Ironic, considering they had never been on a date. Well, they almost had. They should have done.
He had never corrected her that night, not once. The man who was so fond of the truth, and who never failed to speak his mind, however insulting, had stayed silent that night, not letting slip until he had to that he wasn't her blind date. She had sat down, her heart hammering as much as it is now, he must have noticed her nerves, her uncertainty, but he said nothing. Days had gone by after that in which she had thought he might say something, bring up that strange conversation at her mother's bar. But he hadn't.
Hindsight tells her she should have done.
Camille, you look stunning. Nobody had ever told her so sincerely that she was pretty. It was always just come comment that trips off men's tongues, a tick in a box, a part of a process. But that night, that had been sincere. Those had been the words which exited his mouth before he'd had a chance to process them. It had been instinctive. That had been the true him, buried beneath the layers was that raging heart that she had loved.
She takes the envelope from her bag and passes her finger over his formation of her name. The massive 'C' curling around to almost circle half her name and the other letters all swirled together. When had he written this? Had he intended to give it to her? She flips it over and opens the sealed envelope. She pulls out a single folded sheet of fancy writing paper which has his neat script stretched over both sides.
The thumping in her heart spreads to the tips of her fingers, her grip on the letter falters. She manages to keep hold of it, it wouldn't do to get sand on it. He wouldn't thank her for that. She rolls her eyes, and smiles. His aversion to sand had bothered her far more than the suit. She understood the suit, this suit was his barrier, his protection, his status – everything he held dear, but the sand, that had been pedantic. She lies down on the log; her heart rate has slowed a little and she unfolds the sheet of paper.
Camille,
If you're reading this then something strange has happened. Maybe I've left for England and left it behind, but then again, that's unlikely, being as organised as I am. Maybe you've been rummaging through my things whilst I'm not looking and found it. I really rather doubt I've given it to you. Hopefully it's given me the courage I was hoping it would and I've said what I want to say to your face and I'm showing it to you decades later as a laugh. But that doesn't seem likely, you're probably on a date with someone else, married even. I don't know. Chances are you'll never see this. I'm not sure it matters. You can read people like books Camille, you probably already know what I'm trying and failing to say.
I've never been any good with words, you know that. Probably a bit idiotic to try and use them now.
The thing is Camille, you said to me, that night at the weather station, that you quite liked it, my being incompetent at expressing my emotions.
Trouble is, my inability to do this has never impacted on my life before. I've never met anyone that I was remotely interested in sharing my life story with, but now I have, I can't. I've hidden behind a wall that I started to build in my teenage years at school, which was added to by a woman I met at university and completed by the likes of Doug Anderson.
So, here I sit, on a plane back to the UK (with a prisoner for company), back to the place I thought was home. But it's not. Turns out the island in the middle of the Caribbean with a disproportionate number of murders feels more like home than anywhere else in the world. The wall I have built around myself hasn't got thicker or taller since I've been on Saint Marie, if anything it has started to crumble in places. Mainly because of you Camille.
One day I might have the courage to tell you what you mean to me. I hope so. What can be guaranteed is that I'll make a right mess of it. I'll pick the stupidest moment, I'll probably have just insulted you. I will mess it up somehow, I already have once, when I was leaving, stood on the veranda. I did mean that I had loved it on Saint Marie, and loved you. But the tense was wrong, Camille. It should be in the present tense, not the past. But, you looked so sheepish, and you're never sheepish, so, then I just rambled because I'm hopeless with words. Which is what I've done now!
The point is, I can't read you Camille and I don't have the courage, not yet at least, to ask you how you feel, or tell you how I feel. Not aloud. But since the chance of you reading this is so very improbable, I might as well take the risk and write it down. Who knows, someone might unearth it in the future and make all sorts of speculations about what happened to us.
So, Camille, I love you
Sincerely,
Richard
She starts crying somewhere in the middle. The exact word, the exact phrase doesn't matter. It never will. She would probably cry every time she read it. The wound would never heal. Time might make it hurt less, as more memories, more days spread out between what had happened and the rest of her life. But her soul would remain wounded forever.
He had loved her.
She stares out across the sea, listening to it pound against the sand. The same pounding that her heart was mimicking at a deep steady pace. He had been ripped from her cruelly, before his time, before they had been ready. She would never forgive Helen. Ever. She had dealt more than one blow that day. Helen had given him a fatal physical wound and, in the process, had pierced Camille's soul. That same scar has just been ripped back open from the place that she had just about managed to stitch it over. The sensation of loss burnt almost as much tonight as it had a year ago.
A year ago, she had lost the man she loved. Tonight, she had lost love, because he had loved her too.
He had loved her.
He had come back to Saint Marie despite disliking so much about it in the hope that time would have shown him a pathway to her. They had wanted the same thing, they had just both been too scared to admit it. The tears she had thought she had under control start streaking down her face again. She closes her eyes.
He had loved her.
They had let a chance pass them by and now there were no more chances left. She had been scared about scaring him off, and he had not had the confidence to face a woman he thought would never be interested in him. They had both been mistaken. They had both failed at something that was their job – seeking the truth. They had confused each other and in doing so had lost the most valuable thing of all. Each other.
He had been the one reportedly bad with words, but she had been no better. Worse in fact.
Not that I haven't loved it...and you.
He had said it. Twice. Once in front of her on the veranda, in the wrong tense. And once now, in writing, in the letter she was never meant to read.
She had never said it to him.
She opens her eyes and stares up at the star filled sky. She can't see much of it properly, the water in her eyes blurs her vision. She whispers through clouded eyes and a tight throat.
"I don't know if heaven is a thing Richard." Her voice cracks as she uses his name for the first time. "But if it is, or if you can hear me, then the first thing you should know, is that you don't have to sign sincerely on a letter in which you have just proclaimed your love. The second thing you should know is that I quite like it. And the third, the third, is that I love you too."