The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,92

appeared through the clouds. They were even more surprised when a woman opened the canopy. I explained the circumstances of my arrival and asked to be pointed towards two things – a toilet and a telephone. My only thoughts now were of Anna. Had she turned back to Hamble? Had she diverted to another airfield, or had she, by some miracle, made it to Predannack.

I phoned Hamble and asked if Anna had either returned or checked in. She had done neither. With fear rising in my belly I phoned RAF Predannack and prayed to almighty God that I would be told of her arrival there.

I wasn’t.

I sat in the met office and hovered over the phone, berating myself constantly for bending to the pressure to fly. It took several hours for the news to be confirmed, but eventually it became clear that Anna never made it to Predannack, or to anywhere, in fact. By late evening the news reached Hamble that a gunner on a Royal Navy Frigate operating just off Plymouth had seen what might have been a Spitfire appear through low cloud and fog off the starboard bow. It had ditched into the sea. He thought he’d seen the pilot bail out. The captain of the frigate ordered a search to be conducted, but after several hours of scouring the Channel for any trace of an aircraft or a survivor, the search was abandoned and the aircraft and pilot declared lost.

With all other ATA aircraft accounted for and with no RAF squadron aircraft losses reported, there could be no doubt that the crashed Spitfire was Anna’s, and that my wonderful, kind and beautiful friend, was gone. I wrapped myself in her jacket and wept.

Losing my parents to a flying accident had been unbearable, but with the help of the Lanyons, despite the odds, somehow I got through it. But a part of my soul disintegrated the day I lost Anna. For weeks all I could do was replay the day, picturing what might have been if the course of events had run differently. The what-ifs were agony. What if I had agreed to fly in formation? What if I had followed my conviction that the weather had not improved significantly enough to risk the flight? What if I had never taken her to Lanyon – she would never have met Bill and would not have been desperate to see him. What if his squadron had not been deploying the next day? But the biggest what if of all, was this: what if, on the most important day of my life at an airfield called RAF Upavon, Marie and I hadn’t persuaded Anna to fly the Spitfire when she clearly didn’t want to? The answers all led to only one outcome – my darling Anna would still be alive.

But that was the problem with accidents, if we could only foreshadow them we could very quickly break the chain of events that lead to disaster.

But it was too late.

It was always too late.

A hardness crept into my soul that hadn’t existed before. I flew harder and longer than ever. I was living in a fog of grief and the only scrap of tenderness left in my heart was for Edward. With Marie gone, I dreaded going back to my home in Hamble. Anna floated around in the ether waiting to be grabbed onto. Every room contained a multitude of memories. But now, knowing that the memories could never be replayed in real life, recalling our time together at Hamble no longer brought happiness, but a deep and desperate sadness that suffocates the heart when it finds it necessary to endure the loss of an interconnected soul. Anna was an angel. She was a good woman with not one ounce of badness of selfishness in her. There would never again be any woman in the whole world who I would admire, adore and love so deeply. I have missed her every single day of my life.

Chapter 33

Katherine

Christmas Eve

Yvonne intercepted me on the way to Juliet’s room, guiding me into the manager’s office. She sat me down.

‘Juliet dictated this to the night manager in the early hours,’ she said, handing me a letter. ‘Listen, I know you had the best intentions,’ she continued, with quite a kindly tone for Yvonne, ‘but I think the trip out yesterday was too much for her.’

I opened the note.

My dear Katherine.

Thank you so much for yesterday, it was wonderful day, wasn’t it? I’m so sorry but