“No, Mr. Thompson, I absolutely cannot have it done by morning! It’s physically impossible! My team works eight-hour days, not twenty-four!”
Emily paced her tiny London flat, clutching the phone to her ear as if trying to press it straight through her skull. On the other end, her bosss displeased growl rumbled like an unhappy bulldog.
“Emily, spare me the excuses. The project must be delivered. Motivate them. Pay overtime. Thats your responsibility. The client presentation is at nine sharp tomorrow. And if we blow this”
“We wont blow it,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Itll be done.”
She stabbed the end-call button and hurled her phone onto the sofa. Her hands trembled with frustration and exhaustion. Same old story. For the past five years, her life had become one endless racedeadlines, presentations, and nervous breakdowns. A successful project manager at a top firm, a decent salary, yet she felt wrung out like a dishrag. No joy left. Just fatigue.
Her gaze landed on an old framed photo on the shelf. A silver-haired woman with impossibly kind eyes smiled back at her. Granny. Margaret Elizabeth Harris. A sudden, almost painful longing to be with her, in that quiet countryside cottage, overwhelmed Emily. Far from London, from perpetually displeased bosses and sleepless nights.
The decision flashed into her mind like lightning. She snatched up her phone and dialled.
“Gran? Hi, its me. How are you?… No, everythings fine. I just… missed you. Listen, could I come stay for a fortnight?… Yes, tomorrow. Ill take leave. This citys worn me out.”
An hour later, shed submitted her unpaid leave request, booked a train ticket, and for the first time in ages, her mind was quiet. The project would be finished, of courseshed grind herself and her team into the ground overnight. But by morning, shed be on her way.
The train rolled smoothly southward, lulling her with the rhythm of the tracks. Fields, woods, and little stations flickered past the window. Emily watched it all, feeling the tension that had gripped her for months slowly loosen.
The village greeted her with a warm breeze, the scent of freshly cut grass, and the enthusiastic barking of the neighbours spaniel. Grannytiny, wiry, but still sturdyhugged her so tightly on the doorstep, Emilys breath caught.
“Look whos finally dragged herself out of that concrete jungle,” Granny muttered, though her eyes sparkled with genuine delight. “And skin and bones, too! Go on, get inside. Ive made leek and potato soup.”
The house smelled of childhoodof pies, dried herbs, and something indefinably cosy. Emily dropped her bag, wandered into her old room with its carved wooden bed, and collapsed onto it, eyes closed. Silence. Real, thick silence, broken only by the buzz of a bee outside and the steady tick of the grandfather clock in the parlour. Pure bliss.
The first few days melted away. Emily caught up on sleep, stuffed herself with Grannys scones, strolled through the village greeting old-timers who remembered her as a little girl. She helped in the garden, weeding flower beds and watering tomatoes. Simple, physical work under an open sky healed her better than any therapist.
“Emily,” Granny said one evening over mint tea. “Help me clear out the shed, would you? Its piled high with fifty years worth of nonsense. Best sort it before I kick the bucket and leave you lot to deal with it.”
“Gran, dont say things like that,” Emily frowned. “Youll outlive us all. Of course Ill help. Well start tomorrow.”
The shed was a rickety structure, half-sunk into the earth. Inside, dust motes swirled in thin shafts of light slicing through cracks in the walls, illuminating stacks of rusted tools, broken rakes, and boxes tied up with twine.
“Blimey, Gran, thisll take a week,” Emily exhaled, surveying the mess.
“Eyes afraid, hands busy,” Granny remarked philosophically, handing her a pair of worn gloves. “Start in the far corner.”
They worked for hours, hauling out mildewed buckets, a cracked washbasin, an ancient pram. Emily sneezed from the dust but felt an odd satisfaction in the labouras if she were clearing not just the shed, but something inside herself.
When they reached the darkest corner, behind a stack of rotted planks, Emilys fingers brushed against a large wooden chest with an iron latch. Unlocked, thankfully.
“Gran, whats this?” she called.
Granny squinted at it. “Oh, Id forgotten about that. Your grandfathersEdwards chest. He made it himself when he was young. After he passed, I… shoved it in here. Could never bring myself to open it.”
Emily barely remembered Grandad Edward. Hed died when she was three. Just a hazy image of a tall, quiet man with warm, rough hands. Granny rarely spoke of him, and when she did, it was with a quiet sorrow.
“Lets see whats inside,” Emily said, curiosity stirring.
Granny gave a wordless nod.
The hinges groaned as Emily lifted the heavy lid. Inside lay neat stacks of papers tied with ribbon, several thick notebooks, and a small carved box. She carefully lifted one notebook. Faded ink on the cover read, *Diary.*
“He kept diaries?” Emily blinked.
“Dunno,” Granny shrugged. “Private man, he was. Wrote in them evenings, but I thought it was just… thoughts.”
Emily flipped it open randomly. Precise, cramped handwriting filled the yellowed pages. Not just daily accountspoetry.
*”I gaze into your eyestwin forest pools so deep,*
*My soul sinks without sound, surrendered, lost.*
*The world grows hushed, as if enchanted in its sleep,*
*The moment your hand brushed mine, like sunlight crossed.”*
Emily stared up at Granny, stunned. “Gran… he wrote poetry. And its beautiful!”
Granny took the notebook, perched her glasses on her nose, and studied the lines. No surprise, no joy crossed her wrinkled facejust that familiar, quiet sadness.
“Aye, he did,” she said softly. “But not for me.”
“What dyou mean?”
“Take these inside. Read them if you like. Ive the chickens to feed.” And she walked out, leaving Emily baffled.
All evening, Emily couldnt tear herself away from the notebooks. This was a different man entirelynot the stern, silent Grandad Edward shed heard about. In these pages, he was passionate, vulnerable, brimming with feeling. Poems about love, stars, lifes meaning. And on nearly every pagea name. *Lillian.*
*”Saw Lillian at the well today. Her laughter spun gold in the sunlight. The whole village brightened. Why am I such a coward? Why cant I just say, Hello?”*
*”Lillian leaves for Cambridge tomorrow. The village will be grey without her. I should have spoken. Should have told her…”*
*”No reply to my last letter. Shes found her life there, I suppose. And I remain here, with my unsaid words and poems no one will ever read.”*
Emilys eyes prickled. This was a story of great, unrequited love. Her grandfather had loved another woman his whole life. So what about Granny? Had he married her after?
The next day, over tea in the garden, Emily ventured, “Gran… what was Grandad like when you met?”
Granny gazed into the distance, at the gnarled apple trees.
“Just a lad. Hardworking, quiet. Came back from National Service, and Id just left school. Barely noticed me at first. Went about like a man half-drowned.”
“Was he… in love with someone else?” Emily tread carefully.
Granny turned a long, searching look on her. “You read about Lillian, didnt you?”
Emily nodded.
“Knew youd dig that up,” Granny sighed. “Aye, he loved her. Lillian Fairchild, the doctors daughter. Pretty thing, practically a lady. All the lads fancied her. Your grandad too. But he was shybusy scribbling poems while others courted her. She went off to university, married some professor.”
“But you… how did you end up married?”
“How dyou think?” Granny gave a wry smile. “His father came calling. Our families arranged it. He was a decent man, steady job. I was respectable. We made do. He didnt love me, I knew. But he respected me. Good husband. Good father. Never a cross word. Thirty years we had. Built this house. Raised your mum. Never mentioned Lillian once. Though sometimes Id catch him on the porch at dusk, staring at the road to town, that old notebook in his hand. Like he was waiting.”
In the silence that followed, Emily grasped the quiet tragedy of two lives lived together, yet never truly shared.
“Gran… werent you angry?”
“Angry?” Granny considered. “At first, maybe. Young and daft, I was. Thought if I baked enough pies, darned enough socks, hed love me back. Then I realisedyou cant force a heart. He was good to me. Steady as oak. Isnt that enough for a life? Loves like a stormloud, bright, but quick to pass. Respect and companionship? They endure. We had peace.”
Emily saw not just a country grandmother then, but a woman of profound strengthone whod carried her own quiet love through the decades, forgiving the heart her husband had given to another.
Days passed differently now. Emily kept sorting the chest. Beside the diaries lay lettersthree replies from Lillian. Polite, brief, faintly condescending. She thanked him for the “sweet verses,” wrote of her exciting studies, new friends. Clearly, shed never taken the village boys love seriously. The last letter announced her engagement and asked him not to write again.
In the carved box, Emily found what made her chest achea single faded photograph of a serious-eyed young woman with an elegant updo. On the back, Grandads handwriting: *”Lillian. Forever.”* Beside it, a pressed cornflower.
Suddenly, Emily understood why Granny hadnt opened the chest. This wasnt clutter. It was a shrinean altar to a love that never was, carried silently for a lifetime.
One evening on the porch, Emily asked, “Gran… whatever happened to Lillian?”
“Lived in Cambridge till her professor died,” Granny said. “Moved back to the county town after. Worked at the hospital till retirement. No children. Lives alone.”
Emilys pulse jumped. “Shes alive? Nearby?”
“Mm.” Granny eyed her shrewdly. “Fancy meeting her, do you?”
Emily hesitated. It was mad, wasnt it? What would she even say? *”Hello, my grandad loved you his whole life?”* Yet something felt unfinished.
“Gran… would you come with me? Just to… see.”
Granny studied her a long moment, then smiledproperly, for the first time.
“Lets go,” she said. “No old grudges. Just a look.”
The next morning, they boarded the local bus. Emily fretted the whole way, rehearsing speeches. Granny, though, sat perfectly calm, gazing out the window with a faint smile.
They got the address from the hospital. A tidy cottage on the towns edge, roses in the front garden. The door opened to a tall, silver-haired womanthe same serious eyes from the photograph.
“Hello?” She blinked at them. “Can I help you?”
Emilys words evaporated. But Granny stepped forward.
“Hello, Lillian,” she said simply. “Dont recognise me, do you? Im Margaret. Edward Harriss wife.”
Lillian paled. Her gaze flickered between them, then she whispered, “Come in.”
They sat at her kitchen table. Lillian fussed with the teapot, her hands unsteady.
“Edward… hes been gone a long time,” she said faintly.
“He has,” Granny agreed. “But memories linger. My granddaughter found his poems. The ones he wrote you.”
Lillians eyes filled. “I was such a fool,” she whispered. “So young, so vain. I thought life was grander out there. His letters, his verses… they seemed quaint to me then. Only lateryears laterdid I realise… it was the most real thing I ever had. I kept every one.”
She fetched a bundle of yellowed envelopes tied with ribbon. “Here. Ive read them a hundred times. Especially when… when I was alone. And regretted. Oh, how I regretted not seeing…”
Three women sat in silence thentwo whose lives had been shaped by one mans love, and one young woman understanding, for the first time, the weight of choices and chances lost. No blame, no bitterness. Just shared sorrow for what might have been.
On the bus home, Emily held Grannys hand. Something had settled between them todaysome old, quiet pain laid to rest.
Back at the cottage, Emily placed Lillians letters beside Grandads diaries. The story was complete now.
Her holiday neared its end. London awaitedthe deadlines, the frantic pace, the scowling bosses. But the thought no longer panicked her. Something had shifted. Grandads story, Grannys wisdom, that meeting with Lillianit had rearranged her world. She looked at her high-flying life and saw only hollowness. Success, money, ambitionwhere was the real living in that?
On her last evening, she sat with Granny on the porch.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“For what?”
“For letting me see that story. I think… I understand something now.”
She took out her phone, dialled her boss.
“Mr. Thompson? I wont be in on Monday. Or ever, actually. I quit…. No, Im quite sure. Goodbye.”
She hung up, breathed deepproperly, for the first time in years. No fear. Just certainty.
“And whatll you do now, city girl?” Granny asked, though her tone held no judgment.
“Dunno,” Emily admitted. “Might stay the summer. Help you. Then… figure something out. Maybe write. Not poetry, but… stories. Like yours and Grandads.”
She watched the sunset paint the sky peach and gold. London, with its empty rush, seemed a distant dream. Here, in the quiet, among the scent of lavender and Grannys steady presence, she was home. Truly.
