The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,73

how desperate I’ve been to see someone from the old place since I got back here. I miss Mabel so much and everything here is just … hellish.’

‘Hey, hey,’ I said, not minding as she wiped her tears on the shoulder of my flying jacket. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It won’t last forever. Everything is going to be fine, just wait and see.’

But in the late afternoon sunshine, with the sound of a heavy Canadian bomber landing on the airfield, Lottie continued to refuse to let me go, and I knew at that moment that I needed to get Lottie home to Lanyon.

I stepped back and held her at arms’ length to take her in before nodding towards Anna.

‘Lottie, meet Anna.’ Anna held out her hand. ‘Anna, this is Lottie, who’s a bit overwrought just now. But we’ll soon sort that out, won’t we Anna?’

Anna shook Lottie’s hand and took an oil cloth out of her pocket to dry Lottie’s tears.

‘Darn right we will!’ She put an arm around Lottie. ‘You’re with the Attagirls now, don’t you know. If I can fly a Spitfire in formation to Yorkshire, then trust me, anything is possible!’

‘You know what?’ she said, smiling. ‘I really think you might be right.’

We spent the evening not in the company of a bar-full of Canadian airmen, but at Lottie’s aunt’s house, which was an impressive double-fronted Edwardian town house, situated on the high street in the local market town of Bedale. Lottie’s Aunt Pru – a women’s rights lobbyist and gardening expert with a penchant for orchids – proved heavenly. But it was after dinner, when Anna and Pru went for a stroll in the garden, that I discovered the extent of Lottie’s despair.

‘The thing is,’ she said, linking her arm through mine as we stepped out of the front door and headed to the park for a stroll. ‘I’ve got this terrible feeling of dread hanging over me. I can’t seem to shift it.’

‘It’s the war, Lottie,’ I said. ‘We all feel that way.’

‘No, I know, we do. But it’s more than that. It’s a very definite feeling that, pretty soon, it’s all going to be all over for silly old Lottie, and I’m worried about what will happen to Mabel.’

I stopped walking.

‘Oh, Lottie,’ I said, embracing her once more. ‘Which one of us can know if we’ll still be here tomorrow?’ I looked her firmly in the eyes. ‘But if any one of us is most likely to survive, it’s you.’ I took her face in my hands and smiled. ‘You’re … what’s the word? Indefatigable. You always have been, Lottie, truly you have. You need to find your spark again, that’s all.’

She shook my hands free of her head.

‘Truly, Lottie,’ I persisted, ‘I think you should look at things realistically. You’re off to RAF Predannack in two weeks’ time, and you’ll be living at Lanyon with Ma and Pa again and dear little Mabel. You’re just missing her, that’s all, and it must have been a terrible loss, to lose Jim. I’m so sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet him, by the way.’

She began to cry.

‘You would have liked him,’ she said, dabbing her nose with the back of her hand.

We entered the park but she stopped walking again to face me. ‘But if anything should happen to me,’ she said, ‘you will look after Mabel, won’t you? I know I asked you before – which was so wrong of me and I’m sorry. But when Charles gets home, if I’m not there, you’ll bring her up as yours, as your daughter, with your own children?’

I hesitated. Lottie took my hands. Her eyes were bordering on wild-looking.

‘Promise me, Juliet.’

I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t promise that.’ I wanted to say, ‘I am not in love with Charles and it was unfair of me to marry him, just as it was unfair of him to marry me, just as it was unfair of you to ask me to raise your child. But all these things were done at the time with the best, if somewhat naïve, intentions.’ But most of all, I wanted to say, ‘I’m in love with Edward Nancarrow, who is in my thoughts and dreams and prayers every second of every day. He is my future, not Lanyon.’

But I couldn’t.

Standing in front of her now, I saw that motherhood and the war had done for Lottie. She had nothing left. And all I could say