The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,2

yourself from all of your old friends and it is not an age where a person should be sitting alone with only their memories to comfort them. Basically, if anyone deserves a little comfort this Christmas, it’s you. I know you usually visit the grave on Christmas Day, but please, for the build-up week at least (which is the best part of Christmas after all) come to Cornwall and allow yourself to be swaddled by our angels for a while (they’re an impressive bunch).

I am happy to beg.

Yours, in desperation,

Gerald.

P.S. Did I mention the gin?

Sitting back in a kitchen chair I’d ruined by half-arsedly daubing it in chalk paint two weeks before, I glanced around the room and thought about Gerald’s offer. On the one hand, why on earth would I want to leave my home at Christmas? It was beautiful. But the energy had changed, and what was once the vibrant epicentre of Exeter’s academia, now hovered in a haze of hushed and silent mourning, like the house was afraid of upsetting me by raising its voice.

A miniature Christmas tree sat on the edge of the dresser looking uncomfortable and embarrassed. I’d decorated it with a selection of outsized wooden ornaments picked up during a day trip to IKEA in November. IKEA in Exeter was my weekly go-to store since James had gone. It was a haven for the lost and lonely. A person (me) can disappear up their own backsides for the whole morning in an unpronounceable maze of fake rooms, rugs, tab-top curtains, plastic plants and kitchen utensils (basically all the crap the Swedes don’t want) before whiling away a good couple of hours gorging themselves on a menu of meatballs and cinnamon swirls, and still have the weirdest selection of booze and confectionary Sweden has to offer (what on earth is Lordagsgodis, anyway?) to look forward to at checkout.

And we wonder why the Swedes are so happy!

But did I really want to spend the run-up to Christmas in IKEA this year? (Part of me actually did – it’s very Scandi-chic Christmassy). But to do it for a third year in a row, with no one to laugh out loud with when we try to pronounce the unpronounceable Swedish word for fold-up bed?

(That was a poor example because a futon is a futon in any language and I really did need to try to control my inner monologue which had gone into overdrive since James died – I was beginning to look excessively absent minded in public).

But did I want to spend Christmas in IKEA this year?

Not really, no.

But the problem (and Gerald knew this, too) was that if I left the house this Christmas, then it would mark the beginning of my letting go, of starting again, of saying that another life – a festive one – could exist beyond James. If I had a good time I might start to forget him, but if I stayed here and kept thinking of him, if I kept the memories alive, re-read the little notes he left me every morning, if I looked through photographs on Facebook, replayed scenes and conversations in my mind, then he would still be here, alive, in me. But if I go away, where would that lead? I knew exactly where it would lead – to the beginning of the end of James. To the beginning of not being able to remember his voice, his smell, his laugh – to the beginning of moving on.

And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

But still …

I knocked back the last of the Merlot while googling train times to Penzance and fished out the last card in a box of IKEA Christmas cards I’d abandoned to the dresser drawer the week before. It was the exact replica of the one I’d already sent him, a golden angel. I took it as a sign and began to scribble …

Dear, Uncle Gerald,

You are quite correct. This kind of thing is indeed ‘right up my Strasse’. Rest assure there will be no need to beg – I shall come!

I arrive in Penzance by the 18.30 train on the 17th and intend to stay (wait for it) until Boxing Day! By which time I am confident that, one way or another, I will have found a solution to your problem. DO NOT, however, feel that you have to entertain me all week. It’s very good of you but actually – and quite selfishly – this trip could be a