The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,63

circle of stones, like Stonehenge but smaller and without the horizontal capstones, and the other is, well, I’m not sure what it is – was – but it’s called Men an Tol and it’s basically a circular stone that sits on its side. If you crawl through the stone you can make a wish, so I used to come up here to get my head together and make wishes, and Sam did, too.’ Juliet took a cotton embroidered handkerchief out of her handbag and dabbed her eyes. She wasn’t crying, just, happy.

‘We’d bring picnics and make a day of it. Climb through the stone, head up Carn Galver – that’s the crags up there, see? – and then run down the hill to the sea. There’s a cove near Pendeen lighthouse that hardly anyone goes to, although, I suppose more people know about it now. The thing is, I used to bury things – offerings – near the stone (you can’t make a wish without offering something in exchange to the Gods) and I’m wondering if I’ve left the compass there, in my special place.’

‘Special place?’

‘When I sold Lanyon and money was tight, I created a few places scattered around the countryside that I used as my own special … I suppose you’d call them savings deposit boxes. I always liked to have a secret escape fund, you know, just in case … I couldn’t bear the thought of ever not having enough money to fly, so I used to hide a bit of cash away, in ammunition boxes buried in the ground. I always liked to have a plan B, if you know what I mean. Was that terribly bad of me, do you think?’

A secret stash of cash?

‘Not at all. It sounds like a perfectly sensible plan to me. I wish I’d had a plan B on quite a few occasions in my life, I can tell you.’

‘The thing is, I’m pretty certain I have a ring put away in this one, and I’d really like to see it again. And there’s the compass, too. I always thought the compass was in the house, but now I’m not so sure, maybe I put it with the ring … my mind is so jumbled. Maybe I left it in one of my deposit boxes, and I just can’t remember?’

‘And when was the last time you went to this … box?’ I asked.

Juliet took a deep breath and tried to think.

‘The early eighties?’

Ah.

‘Well, it sounds like a fun quest. A ring and a compass – I can do that!’ I reached to the back seat for my coat and Fenella’s boots. ‘Show me exactly where you want me to go and I’ll totter off, but won’t you get cold sitting here alone while I’m gone? Shall I leave the engine running?’

Juliet shook her head.

‘There’s a tearoom just down the road in Morvah. Shuffle me in there and I’ll be perfectly fine for an hour until you get back. I know the owner. It’ll be good to say goodbye.’

Goodbye?Was that how it was to be one hundred years old? Was every hello a possible goodbye?

Having waved au revoir to Juliet, I returned to park at the lay-by, donned my boots and followed a farm track sheltered by high Cornish hedges, until I came across the sign for Men an Tol. I climbed a stile and followed a well-worn path to three desolate stones – two uprights and a holed-out circular stone sitting on its side, between them.

Juliet had said that I should stand next to the circular stone with my back to the relic of a tin mine which was away in the distance, look to my right – two o clock – and find a lone hawthorn tree, its branches shaped to follow the prevailing westerly wind, roughly a hundred yards away across the moor. Amazed that the tree still stood there alone, after all these years, I crossed at a ninety-degree angle to a stone hedge. In the pasture field directly behind the hedge was a flat stone, under the stone I would find a small green ammunition box. I followed the instructions to the letter and by some minor miracle, there the box was.

Having been instructed not to open the box, I set off at a pace back to the car, but not so fast that I didn’t pause to touch the megalith. Juliet had said that there was a theory that the capstone had originally sat atop