Diary Entry, 10th April
I still love him. He—loved my best friend.
Margaret Whitcombe stood by the window, her hand trembling around the letter the postman had just delivered. The words, written in Charles’s familiar script, turned her world upside down.
“Eleanor, please come. It’s urgent. Anne is ill. Seriously. Margaret.”
Forty years of friendship. They had split everything—joys, sorrows, secrets. And yet, there was one truth Eleanor had never told her closest confidante: the secret that had burned in her heart for twenty-three years.
The bus to the village took two and a half hours. Eleanor sat by the window, memories crashing in. Back when Margaret was twenty-eight and she, twenty-five. Both working at the textile mill in Manchester, living in adjacent flats. Afternoons with tea and endless gossip, dreaming of the future.
Then Charles entered their lives.
Tall, distinguished, with a crisp look and a voice like a well-kept watch. A new foreman at the mill, he captivated every girl—except Margaret. He only had eyes for Eleanor.
“Elsie,” Margaret would whisper at night, her voice a mix of wonder and fear, “I think I’m in love. Truly. First time ever.”
Eleanor lay in the dark, silent. *Me too*, she thought. *I’ve loved him, too.*
Charles courted Margaret with old-world charm—flowers, cinema trips, long walks in the moors. Eleanor sat beside them, smiling, holding the conversation together while her insides crumbled. He was the kind of man she had always imagined marrying: principled, steady, kind.
“Elsie, darling,” Margaret would gush after their dates, clinging to her like a kite to its string, “he kissed me. Said he loves me. Can you believe it?”
“I can,” Eleanor replied, avoiding her gaze.
The wedding was modest but heartfelt. Eleanor gave the toast, danced with guests, and faked every smile. When the newlyweds left for their honeymoon, she spent three days in tears.
A year later, Margaret and Charles had Anne. Eleanor became the godmother. She helped with the baby, packed thermos flasks and jars of homemade marmalade, and every time Charles’s eyes lingered a moment too long, she turned away.
“You’d do for a sister,” Margaret once said, rocking Anne to sleep. “No one could have been better than you.”
*If only you knew,* Eleanor thought.
When Anne turned three, Charles took a job in London. Good pay, a promotion. The family moved.
“Come with us,” Margaret begged. “You can leave the mill, start anew. London’s a world apart.”
Eleanor agonized. Her mother was ill, but the truth lay in the fact that she couldn’t bear to watch them anymore.
“I can’t,” she said finally. “Mama needs me.”
It was half a lie. Her mother *would* need her, but not in the way Eleanor feared.
The farewell was tearful. Margaret cried, Anne clung to Eleanor’s dress. Charles shook her hand, his fingers lingering as if he almost said something.
“Thank you—” he murmured, “—for everything, Eleanor.”
His eyes flickered with something—regret, maybe. Or so Eleanor hoped.
The years that followed were the hardest. She cared for her mother, taught at the village school, dated men who paled in comparison to Charles. Every man sent her back to that memory, and she let them go.
Letters became calls. Margaret shared Anne’s milestones, Charles’s endless work trips. The marriage, Eleanor realized, had grown hollow.
“Anne’s father and I,” Margaret said one day, “we’re like two shipping containers. Share a dock but rarely speak.”
Eleanor felt a strange mix of pain and… relief. It seemed the romance she’d envied had been a mirror.
Her mother died eight years ago. Eleanor remained in their old house, teaching, tending her garden of lavender. Alone, save for her tabby cat, Whiskers.
Margaret and Charles divorced five years ago. Anne married young, had two boys. Margaret moved in with her daughter, doted on the grandchildren.
“Maybe it was for the best,” she said one day. “We grew apart. He’s in a flat in London now, always abroad for work. We’re like distant cousins.”
Eleanor forced a smile. *Was it?* she wondered.
The bus stopped at the familiar village stop. Eleanor picked up her suitcase. The houses had changed—bigger, newer. Margaret’s old home still stood, though the garden was wilder now.
Margaret opened the door, older, thinner, her hair silvered like moth wings.
“Elsie!” She hugged her. “Come in, dear. I’ve got the kettle on.”
They sipped tea in the kitchen, speaking little of the illness at first. But Margaret’s hands trembled, her eyes darted.
“Anne?” Eleanor asked.
Margaret wept, silent, steady. “Breast cancer, stage four. The doctors say…”
Eleanor’s heart seized. Anne—her godchild, the girl she’d taught to read, to ride a bike—now a mother of two, dying.
“She wants to see you,” Margaret said. “And there’s something else…”
Charles had arrived. He’d moved into the house, Anne begging him to stay.
They met that evening—three of them, peeling tea bags in the parlor. Charles looked aged, with hollowness in his eyes, but his voice was warm as ever.
“Eleanor,” he said, when Margaret excused herself, “I’ve missed you. More than I thought possible.”
She stared at her teacup. “You always were… like the thread holding us together,” he continued. “When we left, a part of me—part of *us*—just tore in half.”
Eleanor’s breath hitched. *Did he know?*
That night, over crumpets, he asked, “Why didn’t you come to London all those years ago? The *real* reason?”
She looked at the stars beyond the window. “I loved you,” she whispered. “Outlived that, but I couldn’t let you know.”
He reached for her hand. “And I,” he said, his voice cracking, “might have loved you more than her. But I was married. Thought I couldn’t… *shouldn’t*.”
They held hands in the silence, their decades-long ache dissolving into something fragile.
Anne died a month later. They buried her in the village, all four of them—Margaret, Charles, Eleanor, the grandsons—gathered there.
Charles stayed in the village. Eleanor returned home, then back again, claiming she needed the fresh air.
Now, they live in adjacent cottages. Margaret, content with her grandsons, waves from the garden; Charles and Eleanor share dinner, tending to Anne’s grave together.
Sometimes, as they sip tea beside the fire, Eleanor thinks—maybe love isn’t always the grand gestures. Maybe it waits, patient, until the world catches up.
And maybe, in the end, it’s not about who you love, but who you still choose to hold your hand when the dusk falls.
