The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,36

if – just perhaps – in the passing of that moment in Fenella’s kitchen, I, too, had taken a step towards becoming a coddiwompler.

Chapter 13

Katherine

Noel and Percy

I walked up hill, past the school, the village hall and the pub, half-expecting one of the apostrophe vigilantes to dash out of an alleyway and offer me a bribe, but I didn’t see a single soul. I couldn’t help but glance – OK, stare – though the cottage windows as I walked (stick a tree in your window and you’re asking to be ogled, is my opinion) but most of the cottages seemed to be holiday lets with Cornish Secrets or Cornish Hideaways written on a plaque by the door and were empty. There were a few twinkling trees but absolutely no Santa Stop Here! signs in the gardens and no fake snow daubed round the edges of the windows. The website for Angels Cove I had googled the week before portrayed a different village entirely, one of sparkling lights, mulled wine and lots of people wondering around, smiling inanely. For a village that was famous for its Christmas Eve lights festival and all-round festive spirit, the whole effect was a bit of a damn squib. They really had thrown the towel in this Christmas.

I was just about to turn tail and head back to the cottage when Juliet flashed into my mind. I looked down the street and imagined her, walking to the village hall with Edward at Christmas. The view of the village from the top of the hill would have been more or less the same then as it was now. She would have walked with the same image painted in her mind. I liked that, it peeled away the years. The field where she landed the Tiger Moth would be just up the road, too, and I suddenly wanted to stand there, in the place where she stood, to find the exact place she met Edward, the place she fell in love, to absorb myself in someone else’s love story for a while.

I marched up the road (Fenella’s boots really were very comfy) which was tree-lined, meandering and steep. After ten minutes the woodland gave way to a wide expanse of fields. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and take in the panoramic (if breezy) view of several miles of grazing land that gave way to the sea cliffs and, ultimately, the sea. The fields were ordered to perfection by a patchwork of Cornish stone hedges. A five-bar gate with a stile next to it appeared to my left. A signpost for the coastal path pointed over the stile into the field. I climbed over the stile and followed a well-worn groove in the grass. After backtracking towards the coast for a few minutes, the footpath began to follow the cliff edge. Veering away from the path I crossed the field to a dilapidated barn in the far opposite corner. Could this have been Juliet’s barn? Enormous doors banged in the breeze. Large round bails covered in black plastic had been stacked at the back of the barn. I leant against one of the bails and thought again of Juliet and Edward, how they had pushed her Tiger Moth in here that day in December when an unstoppable process began. The process of falling in love, an involuntary, nonsensical occurrence unmatched for its utter loveliness in the whole spectrum of human emotion.

Suddenly overcome with a wave of tiredness, with my eyes closed and enjoying the shelter of the barn, I decided to have a little lie down across the hay bales. I awoke some time later to the sound of the barn door banging in the wind and the feeling of a very wet nose resting on my face. I opened my eyes and found myself looking straight into a large and shiny brown eye.

I shrieked, which startled the cow who jumped backwards, which isn’t easy when you’re on four legs not two and weigh roughly the same as a small car. Having brought a few of her friends into the barn with her, the cow snorted before glancing at her pals as if to say, ‘We’ve got a right one here, ladies!’ I stirred myself, patted my new friend on the head, pushed past the lot of them and stepped out into the field.

An elderly man with a purposeful stride, wearing a red waterproof jacket with a white fur-lined hood and a woolly hat was