want to make the old place feel a bit more Christmassy.
Most importantly, please make yourself at home and have a wonderful time.
Yours,
Sam Lanyon
P.S. … you may find that a particularly vigilant Elf has already pitched up and positioned himself in the house somewhere. He always kept a beady eye on Juliet at this time of year. Give him a tot of whiskey and he’ll be your friend for life!
Smiling, I rested the card against a green coloured glass vase filled with yellow roses and took a cursory glance around the kitchen. There he was – sitting on a shelf, looking directly at me with his legs crossed and auspicious expression on his face.
I crossed the room to take a good look at him.
‘Hello, Mr Elf,’ I said, cheerily. ‘You needn’t worry about me. As Eliza Doolittle once said, I’m a good girl, I am … unfortunately!’
A few half-burned candles were scattered around the worktop and also on the windowsill. I took the matches from the lounge and lit them. There was a notepad and pen on the worktop, as if waiting for the occupier to make a list, and a very pretty russet red shawl was draped over the back of one of the chairs. I picked up the shawl and ran it through my fingers – it smelt of lavender and contentment. A luggage-style label had been sewn onto the shawl at one end. It read—
This was Lottie’s shawl – her comfort blanket. You wrapped Mabel in it on the day Lottie died.
Feeling a sudden chill, I took the liberty of wrapping the shawl around my shoulders and began to put together the makings of dinner – cheese on toast with a bit of tomato and Worcester sauce would do. I took an unsliced loaf out of the breadbin and opened the drawer of a retro cream dresser looking for cutlery. Sitting on top of the cutlery divider was a hard-backed small booklet with a large label attached to it. Another label? I took out the booklet and ran a finger over the indented words, First Officer Juliet Caron, Flying Logbook.
I turned the label over. With very neat handwriting, it read:
This is your flying logbook, Juliet. It is the most significant document of your life. Look at it often (whenever you use cutlery will do) and remember the times when you were happy (Spitfires), the times when you were stressed out (Fairey Battle – awful machine), the times when you had no idea how you survived to fly another day (like that trip in the Hurricane when the barrage balloons went up just as you were leaving Hamble) and that terrible day you tried to get to Cornwall with Anna – the one entry you wish you could delete. Other than the compass, this is your most treasured possession.
My rumbling tummy brought me back to the moment. I filled the kettle, stepped over to the fridge and noticed a laminated note stuck to the door with ‘Read Me’ written on the top. I read it, expecting it to be instructions from Sam, or Gerald.
It wasn’t.
While the kettle was boiling, I read a letter which began:
This is a letter to yourself, Juliet …
So that was what all the labels were for … Juliet had been frightened of losing her memory. I took the letter off the fridge and turned it over.
Where Angels Sing, by Edward Nancarrow
When from this empty world I fall
And the light within me fades
I’ll think, my love, of a sweeter time
When life was light, not shade
With bluebirds from this world I’ll fly
And to a cove I’ll go
To wait for you where angels sing
And when it’s time, you’ll know
To meet me on the far side where
We once led Mermaid home
And finally, my love and I
Will be, as one, alone
And at that moment, after pouring water from Juliet’s kettle into Juliet’s cup, sitting in Juliet’s house and wearing Juliet’s shawl, I felt an overwhelming sensation of being swaddled, that Juliet and I were somehow linked. Gerald would blame my overactive imagination, of course, but I really did feel that I was supposed to come to Angels Cove this Christmas.
With my dinner quickly made and eaten, I set up camp in the lounge and, trying to ignore the other Katherine who was hammering at the door to get in, I decided it was time for Kevin McCloud (such a lovely man) to transport me into his TV world of Grand Designs, into other people’s lives – happier, family lives –