The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,9

where dreams really do come true (and maybe a tot or two of that whiskey wouldn’t go amiss either).

Glancing into the sideboard I was mesmerised – it was an Aladdin’s Cave of memorabilia, of yet more labels. Next to the whiskey was a wad of faded A4 paper held together by green string. The top sheet had the typewritten words,

Attagirls!

The war memoirs of Juliet Caron

Lest she forgets

I untied the string and peeled back the top sheet to reveal a letter.

1 June 1996

My dear Sam

How is life at sea treating you? I know I say it too much for your liking, but I’ll say it again – I’m so very proud of you (and a little jealous of all that fabulous flying, too!).

Anyhow, I’m sure you must be busy so I’ll get to the point because I’m worried, Sam. Worried that my older memories are starting to fade and that one day soon they may leave me completely. Sitting here in my little cottage, able to do less and less each day, watching the tide ebb and flow, I have felt suddenly compelled to remember and record what happened in my life during the war. I read somewhere that if you wish to tell a story of war, do not tell the basic facts of the battle, but tell instead of the child’s bonnet removed from the rubble of a Southampton street, or the smell of twisted metal from a burnt Hurricane crashed by a friend, or the lingering smell of a man, robbed of his prime by typhus, as he lays in a strange bed in a foreign land, dying. I’m not sure I shall be able to do this, but even so, I have begun to write everything down. My friend Gerald is helping me. I aim to write one instalment per month – the first one is written already and attached – and send you copies as I write them. It’s an heirloom, I suppose, for you and your children (or if nothing else to give you something sensational to read during those long nights at sea!).

As you read each instalment, remember that my words will be as accurate as my aging mind allows them to be. Certain days stand out more than the rest. Just lately, I find that I can remember 1943 like it was yesterday, and yet events from yesterday elude me as if set in 1943. But what is truth of any situation anyway? I really do feel that life is made up of a constant stream of living, punctuated only by that otherworld of sleep. The fact that we choose to put a time and date to everything is merely a paper exercise. I used to think that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever, resigned only to memory. But now – now that I can no longer take my memory for granted – I realise that this is not the case. Love, for example, once thought lost, can be captured forever, just so long as someone out there strives to keep the memory of that love alive.

And so here is the first in a series of my memories that consist only of certain vivid days. They are memories of a time when suddenly, for a woman, absolutely anything (both the good and the desperately bad) became possible.

Anyway – enough of my ramblings!

Drum roll, please …

‘Ladieeeees and gentlemen! Lift your eyes to the heavens and prepare to be amazed, to be wowed and bedazzled! Here she is … the fearless! The death-defying! The one and only – Juliet Caron!’

I rested the letter on my knee just as a crash outside coincided with the sudden outage of the lights and the television turned to black. The glow from the fire provided sufficient ambient light for me to reach into the sideboard and find the torch, but the battery must have been an old one because the torchlight was weak and to my disappointment, within a few seconds, petered out.

Determined to take on some of the inner strength of the remarkable woman who had written a note to herself at ninety-two years old to never give in, I surrounded myself with candles, stoked the fire and wrapped the russet shawl tighter around my shoulders. And despite knowing that I shouldn’t waste my phone battery on a little light reading, not tonight of all nights, I got myself cosy on the sofa, abandoned Harry Potter, enabled the torch on my phone and began to