The dream began in a cramped London flat, where Emily Whitmore paced her tiny kitchen, phone pressed to her temple as if trying to merge it with her skull.
“No, Mr. Harrington, I can’t possibly have it ready by morning! My team already works eight-hour daysnot twenty-four!”
The voice on the other end rumbled with displeasure, thick with the impatience of a man who had forgotten what sleep cost.
“Emily, I dont care about excuses. The client presentation is at nine. Motivate them. Pay overtime. This is your responsibility.”
She bit back the words she wanted to scream. “Itll be done.”
The call ended, and she hurled her phone onto the sofa, hands trembling. Five years of thisdeadlines, panicked revisions, the slow erosion of herself. A successful project manager, yes. Well-paid. But hollow as a dried-out husk.
A photograph on the shelf caught her eye. A silver-haired woman smiled from within the frame, her eyes impossibly kind. Granny. Margaret Whitmore. Suddenly, the longing to be with her in that quiet cottage in the Cotswolds hit Emily like a tide. Away from London, from the endless gnash of expectations.
The decision came like lightning. She snatched up her phone.
“Granny? It’s me. How are you? … No, nothings wrong. I justmissed you. Could I come stay for a fortnight? Tomorrow, yes. Ill take leave. This citys worn me to the bone.”
Within an hour, her unpaid leave was approved, her train ticket booked, and for the first time in years, silence settled in her mind.
The train rolled southwest, rocking her into a daze. Fields and hedgerows blurred past, and with each mile, the tension in her shoulders unwound.
The village greeted her with the scent of cut grass and the sharp bark of the neighbours spaniel. Granny, small and wiry but still sturdy, crushed her in a hug at the doorstep.
“Finally, my city dragonfly,” she tutted. “Thin as a reed, arent you? Come in, Ive made pea soup. With fresh mint.”
The cottage smelled of childhoodbaking, dried lavender, something indefinably warm. Emily collapsed onto the carved wooden bed in her old room and let the quiet swallow her whole. No sirens. No emails. Just bees humming beyond the window and the steady tick of the grandfather clock in the parlour.
For days, she did nothing but sleep, eat Grannys scones, and wander the lanes, greeting villagers who still remembered her as a scrap of a girl. She weeded the garden, watered the runner beans. Simple work under open skies, healing her better than any therapist.
Then one evening over chamomile tea, Granny said, “Emily, help me clear the shed. A lifetimes clutter in there. Best sort it while I still can.”
The shed leaned with age, its interior thick with dust and the musky scent of old timber. Sunlight sliced through cracks, illuminating rusted trowels, cracked flowerpots, stacks of yellowed newspapers.
“Good Lord, Granny, thisll take a week,” Emily exhaled.
“Eyes fear, hands do,” Granny replied, handing her gloves.
They worked for hours, pulling out mildewed crates, a broken pram. Emily sneezed but felt oddly soothed, as if clearing not just the shed but something inside herself.
Behind a stack of rotted planks, Emily found a wooden chest, its iron latch stiff but not locked.
“Granny, whats this?”
Margaret squinted. “Oh. Your grandfathers. Henry made it himself when he was young. After he passed, I… couldnt bear to open it.”
Emily barely remembered Grandfather Henryonly a tall, quiet man with warm hands. Granny rarely spoke of him, and when she did, it was with a quiet ache.
“Lets look,” Emily said.
The hinges groaned as the lid lifted. Inside lay bundles of letters, leather-bound journals, a small carved box. Emily lifted one journal. On the cover, in faded ink: *Diaries*.
“Grandfather kept diaries?”
Granny shrugged. “Private man, he was. Wrote at night. I never asked.”
Emily opened it at random. Neat script filled the pagesnot accounts of chores or weather, but poetry.
*”Your eyes, two forest pools so deep,*
*My soul sinks in them, lost, at peace.*
*The world stills, the heavens weep,*
*When your hand brushes mineso brief.”*
Emily gaped. “Grannyhe wrote *poetry*.”
Margaret took the journal, adjusted her glasses, and read. No surprise crossed her face. Only that same quiet sorrow.
“Aye. But not for me.”
“What?”
“Take these inside if you like. Ive the hens to feed.”
That night, Emily devoured the diaries. This wasnt the stern, silent grandfather shed heard of. These pages held a man aflameromantic, aching, alive. And on nearly every one, a name: *Lillian*.
*”Saw Lillian at the market. She laughed, and the sun caught in her hair. Why am I such a coward? Why cant I say, Hello?”*
*”Lillian leaves for Oxford tomorrow. The village will be grayscale without her. I should have spoken. Should have”*
*”No reply to my last letter. Shes found her life there, no doubt. And I remain here, with my unsaid words and poems no one will read.”*
Emilys throat tightened. A love story, but a tragic one. Grandfather had loved another woman. Then how?
The next day, over mint tea on the porch, she ventured, “Granny, what was Grandfather like when you met?”
Margaret gazed at the apple trees. “Solid man. Hardworking. Came back from service, and Id just finished school. He barely noticed me at first. Walked about like a ghost.”
“Was he in love?”
Granny gave her a long look. “You read about Lillian, then.”
Emily nodded.
“Lillian Fairchild. Vicars daughter. Lovely thingall the lads mooned after her. Your grandfather too. Too shy to speak, though. She went off to university, married some academic.”
“And you two…?”
“How dyou think marriages happened here? Parents arranged it. He was decent. Didnt drink. I was respectable. We made do.” She sipped her tea. “He never loved me. But he was kind. A good father. Thirty years we had. He built this house. Raised your mum. Never mentioned Lillian once. But sometimes, evenings, hed sit on this porch with his journal and stare at the road to Oxford. Like he was waiting.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Two lives, bound but never truly entwined.
“Werent you angry?” Emily whispered.
“Angry?” Granny almost smiled. “At first. Young and foolish, I was. Thought if I baked enough, mended shirts enough But hearts arent ledger books, love. He was steady as an oak. Isnt that enough?”
Emily saw her thennot just a country widow, but a woman of quiet, unyielding strength.
Days passed. Emily kept unpacking the chest. Beneath the diaries, three letters from Lillianpolite, distant. Thanking him for his “charming” poems, mentioning her studies, her brilliant friends. The last one asked him never to write again.
In the small carved box: a single photograph. A young woman with a high-collared blouse, solemn eyes. On the back, Grandfathers hand: *”Lillian. Forever.”* And a pressed bluebell beside it.
Emily understood why Granny had left the chest untouched. It wasnt clutter. It was a shrine.
One evening, she asked, “Granny… what happened to Lillian?”
“Outlived her husband. Came back to Cheltenham. Worked at the hospital till retirement. Lives alone.”
Emilys pulse jumped. “Shes *here*?”
Grannys eyes gleamed. “Fancy meeting her?”
The next day, they took the bus. Emily rehearsed speeches in her head, but Granny sat serene.
The house was small, ivy-clad. The woman who opened the door was straight-backed, silver-haired, her gaze as solemn as in the photo.
“Hello,” she said, puzzled.
Granny stepped forward. “Lillian. Its Margaret. Henry Whitmores wife.”
Lillian blanched.
They sat at her kitchen table. Tea went untouched.
“Henry… hes been gone so long,” Lillian murmured.
“Aye,” said Granny. “But memories remain. My granddaughter found his poems. The ones he wrote you.”
Lillians hands trembled around her cup. “I was a fool. Young and vain. His lettersI thought them quaint. It wasnt until I was old that I understood… he was the real thing. The only real thing.” She fetched a ribbon-tied bundle from a drawer. “I kept them. All of them.”
Three women sat in silence. Two whod shared a mans life, one whod inherited his blood. No accusations. Just the weight of what might have been.
On the bus home, Emily held Grannys hand. The sorrow in her seemed lighter somehow, as if a stone had been lifted.
Back at the cottage, Emily placed Lillians letters beside Grandfathers diaries. The circle was complete.
Her leave was ending. London calledits deadlines, its rush, its empty victories. But the thought no longer terrified her. Something had shifted.
On her last evening, she sat with Granny on the porch.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For letting me see this. I think… I understand something now.”
She took out her phone, dialed Harrington.
“I wont be in on Monday. NoIm resigning.”
She hung up, breathed deep. No fear. Only certainty.
Granny arched a brow. “And what now, dragonfly?”
“Dunno. Might stay the summer. Help you. Then… maybe Ill write. Not poetry. Just… stories. Like yours.”
The sunset painted the sky in watercolor hues. London felt like a fading dream. Here, in the hush of the countryside, in the scent of honeysuckle and Grannys steady presence, Emily was home.
