The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,81
the sentence was taking a while to form. I put my hand up.
‘You don’t need to say a word, Anna. Not one word.’
I went to the party at RAF Predannack that night, and I went because Charles urged me to. From the moment we said our forced, ‘Hello’s’ in the lounge in front of Ma, it was obvious that Charles was as uncomfortable as I was at the thought of acting out the part of married couple within the close confines of a much-reduced household and the anxious gaze of his parents. It was with a resigned and weary acceptance that we played our parts, knowing that Christmas at Lanyon would prove, once more, to be nothing short of an odd, displacing and emotionally exhausting time.
The only person Charles would allow to fuss around him was Ma, and as for sleeping in the same room together? Charles suggested it was probably best if I slept in the guest room as he was suffering from insomnia and anyway his valet – who wasn’t a real valet but rather Pa Lanyon’s old retainer who worked at the house for practically nothing – needed to have easy access to him to help with dressing and washing and so on. I was, in all honesty, relieved at this, and thanked God for Anna’s encouraging spirit around the house. Something had changed with Anna recently. I didn’t know if it was the indomitable Marie having a super-charging effect, or if flying the Spitfire was spurring her on, but her confidence and sense of joy had gone from strength to strength.
But there was another reason for Anna’s exuberance this Christmas and the source of the joy could be found at the Predannack party. I sat in a corner for most of the night, catching up and reminiscing with Lottie, while Anna was serenaded by a pilot who asked her to dance – and had continued to ask her to dance until the final number – I’ll Be Seeing You, sung by Jo Stafford.
Until now, Anna had been happy to keep herself to herself on the man front. Yes, she had occasionally agreed to a date rigged up by Marie and gone up town from Hamble with some chap from the Navy or the Royal Marines. Men were not usually looking for a real date, just a bit of fun on a Saturday night, which suited Anna. Being a practical soul, the last thing she wanted to do was fall desperately in love with someone who, in Anna’s words, ‘might not make it past the final furlong’.
‘I do not,’ she said, ‘ever want to be like Lottie!’
But Anna hadn’t reckoned on Bill, the RAF pilot, who had flown in the Battle of Britain and who, within less than an hour of meeting Anna, had fallen madly in love with her. The feeling, much to Anna’s dismay, was mutual.
And as for me? My Christmas was spent with that unsettling feeling of nervous turmoil bubbling around in the pit of my stomach, the sort of turmoil that is the curse of the anxious lover. I roamed for miles around the local area with Anna, showing her our haunts – the Tiger Moth stored in the barn, the village, the church and even (from a suitable distance, of course) Edward’s cottage.
Like any close female friend who is supporting a pal who has suffered heartache, Anna spent hours listening to me ramble on as I went over and over questions buzzing around in my head, the most important one being, why on earth Edward would agree to go to the Christmas drinks party with Lottie if he knew I would be there? Did he have designs on Lottie, after all? Was it revenge for not meeting him? Did he even think of me now? Was my mother right? Had I been fooled by this charmer, this coddiwompler, all along? These were all questions that we couldn’t possibly know the answers to, but as any woman who have ever been desperately in love will know, talking about him endlessly to a patient friend – even in a negative way – made him real.
And so, it was with a sense of both dread and excitement that we prepared for the party by putting up the blackout blinds, lighting the candles on the tree and gathering the house party together in the hallway to welcome the men from the other side of the house into our home. The guests were a sullen bunch, but