The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,87
test flight, really, I don’t. And look at the state of you. You look like you haven’t slept a wink!’
Anna pursed her lips and tried to suppress a laugh. I glanced across the lounge at Charles and noticed him frown.
Ma Lanyon pushed herself up out of her favourite, if saggy, floral-covered armchair.
‘Come on in and warm yourself by the fire, dear,’ she said, taking my coat and giving orders to Lottie to rustle me up a little supper. She glanced at Charles. ‘On second thoughts, why don’t we all go to the kitchen and make supper for everyone and give Juliet and Charles some private time.’ Lottie began to protest but Ma insisted. ‘No, Lottie … give them some space. Juliet disappears off to Hampshire tomorrow and they’ve hardly had any time alone.’ She scooped Mabel up. ‘Come with Grandmama, little one. Show me what you’ve been baking!’
‘But we haven’t been baking, we’ve been playing cards,’ Mabel said, confused. ‘Anna taught me poker!’
‘Oh, well, show me how to play, then.’
Charles rubbed his forehead, anxiously, as they left.
‘Would you close the door, please, Juliet?’
With the door closed I returned to sit next to Charles. He got straight to the point. I was expecting a blazing confrontation about my day-long absence. I didn’t get one.
‘I spoke with Anna,’ he said, softly. ‘The telephone call last night …’
I couldn’t believe it. Anna must have taken the initiative and told him he was rumbled. What an angel.
‘Yes, it was quite a shock.’ I said.
‘I … I don’t even know where to begin. I met her last summer, in Singapore. She’s a nurse. I … it’s a cliché, I know.’ He wrung his hands before taking mine in his. ‘I can’t be without her, Juliet. I’m so sorry that such a thing should happen. Truly.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ I began. ‘I understand, and much more than you know. You know I do.’
He nodded. ‘Nancarrow?’
‘Yes.’
It was time to tell the truth, finally. Time to discuss our marriage in the cold light of day – the light of Christmas Day. When the conversation was over and I had confessed my feelings towards Edward (and Charles had asked me to pour us both a stiff drink) we hugged each other with a closeness we had not known since the war began. It was a hug that conveyed the absolute relief that the pretence was over, but it also expressed the real love and affection we had always felt for each other – would always feel. But a sibling kind of love was not enough for either of us, not anymore, and no amount of wishful thinking from Lottie or Ma and Pa Lanyon would ever be able to turn it into anything else.
Chapter 30
Katherine
About time
I looked out of the window on Christmas Eve morning to be met by a curtain of dank drizzle. It would have been a duvet day in Exeter, but here in Cornwall, gazing out of the lounge window at the calm sea as it lapped against the islands, I felt drawn to taste the salt on my lips and feel the crunch of pebbles under my boots before driving up to Lanyon to escort Juliet on her penultimate day out.
Meandering across the beach I replayed Juliet’s story in my mind. I crossed to where I imagined she had sat with Edward and looked through the sea fret towards the tiny islands she had used to navigate her way to Lanyon. Once upon a time, I realised, stories from history had fascinated me. I loved to pick through the eye-witness statements of the past – the stories, the rumours – to try to gauge some idea of the truth of what had happened at one particular time and place, while the Earth tumbled through the universe at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour, always seeming to repeat itself in its seasonal, patterned way, day after day, year after year, and yet in reality, never really doing exactly the same thing twice. With each moment in a particular time a space gone forever the very second after it happened, the only way of knowing anything about anything that had gone before was either though memory or the recording of historical data. And as I stepped on the sands of time and the droplets of mist that had soaked previous faces and curled other stray strands of hair, I remembered that, what had interested me the most during my own years as a student – one of James’ students,