The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,86

last night …’

‘Escorted? What on earth?’ He let go of my hand and pulled away. ‘Listen to me, once and for all, Juliet. Mr Lanyon invited all of us – all the guys who work there – to the house for Christmas drinks. I only went because I thought you might be there. I don’t understand why Lottie keeps coming into this. She’s recently widowed, for goodness sake. She’s got a baby to the man – if, indeed, he is the father, which I doubt – and she’s a pal. That’s it. The only woman I will ever – ever– love, in my entire life, is you. I know you’re married and know I shouldn’t have asked you to meet me in London, but you are never out of my mind. When you married Charles, I was devastated. But the fact that we might actually have a chance now …’ His smile was suddenly wide and bright. ‘… I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.’ He took my hand again. ‘Somehow, the two of us need to survive this war. And when we do, we’ll come back to Angels Cove and the rest of the world can go to hell – forever!’

We kissed, we made love, we held on.

We played on the beach, touching each other with the carefree jostle of children mixed with the magnetic body-language and sexuality of adulthood, and in the late afternoon sunshine, we sat quietly on the beach, kept warm by a combination of thick clothes and happy thoughts.

‘Edward,’ I began, scrunching my shoes into the pebbles. ‘I know you can’t give me any real detail about your job, but my friend Marie, well, her friend is quite a big wig in the foreign office and she was telling me about the SOE … and I was wondering … is that what your set up is, here? Can’t you please tell me something – anything – if only so I know how to communicate with you, how to get in touch, that sort of thing?’

‘You’re not far off the mark,’ he said, pausing to throw a pebble into the sea. ‘We plan certain operations … and I travel around making sure those operations go to plan.’

‘You go to Europe?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘By boat from the Helford?’ I pushed.

‘Sometimes.’

That was enough. He was an operative for the SOE, that much was clear – one of the most high-risk jobs of the war – but it wasn’t until much later that I would find out that Edward Nancarrow – or Felix Gruber – codenamed Savage Angel, was so much more than that.

I looked across to the islands. It was high tide. The sun created low shadows across the sea.

‘Those little mounts led me here,’ I said, resting my head on his shoulder. ‘They’re the reason I found you.’

‘Ah, but they’re not actually mounts,’ he corrected, placing an arm around my shoulder and tucking me in closer, ‘they’re angels. They watch over the village and keep it safe – have done for centuries. They do a fabulous job keeping fisherman from peril, playing home to the mermaids, that kind of thing.’

I smiled.

‘Mermaids? Really?’

‘Oh, absolutely. The mermaids live on the far side, though, where only the fisher-people can see them. They protect us, too, of course, the mermaids, when the angels are busy, but only if we’re very good. They’re picky.’

I took a pebble out of Edward’s hand and put it in my coat pocket to save as a memento.

‘Good?’ I sighed. ‘Oh, dear. They’ll send me straight to the devil, then, especially after last night.’

Edward turned my face towards his.

‘Don’t feel that you owe Charles – or the Lanyons –any kind of guilt, because you don’t. They’ve got your money and that’s good enough for them. You’ll end the marriage tonight?’ he asked, more as a statement than a question.

‘I will.’

Charles was in the lounge sitting with his mother listening to the wireless when I arrived at Lanyon.

‘Oh, Juliet! Happy birthday!’ she said, turning to face me. ‘You must be absolutely exhausted.’

I took my flying boots off at the lounge door and glanced inside. Lottie and Anna, who had been playing cards in the kitchen with little Mabel, dashed through the hallway to welcome me home.

Anna raised her eyebrows in my direction but said nothing, while Lottie fussed around me like a mother hen.

‘You absolute poor thing, having to work today! I don’t understand why one of the squadron chaps couldn’t have done the rotten silly