The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,60

have done a little digging and traced you to the Hamble Ferry Pool – sorry if this is intrusive, but I need to know you’re safe. I am in Hampshire for a few days and was hoping we could meet one evening – this evening, perhaps? I will stay at the Bugle pub in Hamble until Friday and eat there each evening in the hope that you might join me.

Yours, as ever.

Edward.

I stood motionless.

‘How did you get this?’ I asked.

‘A chap – a very good-looking chap, by the way – stopped me at the gate as I cycled in. He asked me if I knew Juliet Caron – Caron, you’ll note, not Lanyon – and handed me the note, which of course I read. I’m guessing by the tone that this Edward fellow is not your brother, more’s the pity.’

‘I don’t have a brother,’ I whispered, still looking at the note.

Marie stopped joking around and shuffled me to the mess for a cup of tea. Anna had just landed and was walking in from the flight line. She was grabbed and told to meet us in the mess hall in five minutes – urgent conference required!

‘But you’re obviously going to meet him, whoever he is,’ Marie said, taking a slurp of weak tea and then looking into the cup with despair. ‘Jesus Christ, I hate this shit!’

‘I can’t. I’m delivering a Spit to Turnhouse this afternoon. It’s a priority one. I won’t be back until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow, then?’ Marie pressed.

‘Marie!’ Anna chided. ‘Stop encouraging her. She can’t meet him, she’s married!’

Marie sat back in her chair with a scoff. ‘Oh, poopdie-doo to that!’ She lit a cigarette, took a drag and handed it to me. I didn’t usually smoke, but today …

I took a drag and rested the cigarette on an ashtray, folded the note and placed it in my pocket. There was only one way to deal with this.

‘Anna. I don’t suppose you would do me a very big favour, would you?’

‘Go on …’

‘Nip down to The Bugle tonight, find Edward and tell him I’m very sorry but can’t see him. And tell him …’ I thought for a moment. ‘Tell him that I’m safe – thank you for asking – but I’m married now and that I know he’s married, too, or better still, just tell him I’ve run away with the circus. The flying circus.’

Marie sat up straight. ‘What!? You’re never gonna pass on dinner with a hot guy like that? Are you nuts?!’ She turned to Anna. ‘And he’s desperate to see her, I could tell. There goes a man very definitely in love. It’s in his eyes.’ She turned back to me. ‘Hell, it’s only dinner, Juliet …’

I took the note out of my pocket and read it again.

‘It isn’t though, is it?’

Marie sniffed while Anna just smiled, comfortingly.

‘Well,’ Marie began, standing up and stretching. She was always stretching – or exercising – it was her thing. ‘I’ll leave you two to it, then! I’m flying the Anson this afternoon.’ She leant in and whispered in my ear before she left. ‘Honey, make damn sure you’re certain before you let him go, because I’m not sure that phoney marriage of yours …’

I scrunched my face in disapproval. Marie backed down and stopped whispering.

‘… look, we could all be dead tomorrow. I’m just saying, meet the guy and have dinner. We work hard, why not play hard, too?’

She kissed me on the head and left.

Anna smiled. It was a ‘that’s Marie for you?’ kind of a smile.

‘Do you still want me to go see him for you?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘Absolutely I do, yes.’

The flight to RAF Turnhouse was a turbulent one.

Navigating to Scotland in a fighter aircraft with no instruments or radio to fall back on required a fresh and concentrated mind. I usually adored any trip in the Spitfire – sleek, powerful, edgy on the ground but an angel in the air – but today … today there was no joy to be found in the flight. I could only see Edward’s face … in every field, in every river and every town. The look he gave me across the Empire ballroom was a look of absolute surprise mixed with longing, confusion and disappointment.

The one plus point was that the weather stayed fair for the journey and somehow, even though my mind had been elsewhere for the majority of the flight, I touched down safely at RAF Turnhouse with the satisfied knowledge that another vital delivery