The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,94

… nibbled. Fenella, muttering something along the lines of, ‘The little beggars have been at it again,’ took a bread knife out of the drawer and rather than cut me a slice, put the cake on its side and carefully sheared a centimetre off the top of the entire cake. Fruit and crumbs were swept onto the bin leaving a much-reduced cake, in height at least, sitting on the table in front of me.

‘I daren’t ask, but I’m going to have to,’ I said as she cut a couple of slices. ‘Why did you cut the top off?’

She waved the knife, dismissively. ‘Oh, I forgot to cover it when I went to bed last night, and the mice have been at it. Not to worry, they’ve only got little teeth, and even if they pee’d on it, the pee wouldn’t penetrate much more than half an inch down, so it’s fine.’ She handed me a slice on a patterned china plate. ‘Eat up!’

The conversation turned to Juliet.

‘The thing is, she keeps talking about endings,’ I said, taking a mouthful. It was delicious. ‘It’s as though everything she’s doing is quite consciously the last time she’ll do it, like she knows she’s going to die very soon. But how could she know that? Do you think she’s ill?’

Fenella glanced up from her cake.

‘When you reach one hundred years of age, Katherine, I’m sure every day feels like it may be the last.’

‘Yes, I know. But this is different.’

‘It probably is,’ she said with a comforting smile, ‘but don’t you go thinking or worrying about it now. That’s the last thing she would want you to do.’

I nodded.

‘Has she got to France yet?’ she asked.

‘France? No.’

Fenella refilled my teacup with a knowing glance.

‘You’d best get reading, then,’ she said. ‘Because if you think her story has been exciting so far, you just wait till you get to the next bit, and also … well, let’s just say things might become a bit clearer for you.’

***

I declined Fenella’s offer to spend Christmas Eve playing skittles in the pub. I wanted to be alone tonight, to have the time to finish Juliet’s story, and I so desperately wanted to find the compass, too. But this seemed increasingly unlikely now.

As the sun set over the islands, I prepared the lounge for a cosy evening in – candles, firelight, the memoirs and Lottie’s shawl– and poured a glass of wine. But before settling on the sofa I remembered the pile of vinyl records stored away in the sideboard. One of them had a label stuck to it. Our song was all the label said. I smiled. It was We’ll Meet Again. I ran a hand over the cover and imagined Edward, all those years before, at Christmas, taking the record out of the sleeve, polishing it, perhaps, before placing it on the turntable and taking Juliet in his arms. Their whole story had weaved in and out of Christmas, and it was her birthday, too, after all.

I heard the church bell chime five times and wandered through to the kitchen to turn the lights off before settling into the lounge for the evening. I stood in the darkness and looked through the window towards the harbour and smiled at the sight of the Christmas lights draped along the harbour wall. Tourist roamed the village, now, and amongst them – finally – there were quite a few children, wrapped in coats and bobble hats, looking on in wonder at the display. There were a couple of market stalls too, all thanks to Fenella, who was selling mulled wine and chestnuts, she never missed a trick, that one.

But that was their world tonight, and mine … mine was somewhere else entirely.

Chapter 34

Juliet

A surprise visitor

Two weeks before Christmas Edward telephoned to ask if there was any possibility I might make it to Cornwall before the New Year. He sounded edgy and Edward never sounded edgy. I wasn’t particularly hopeful of bagging an ATA delivery to Predannack as my marriage to Charles could no longer be used as leverage. It also seemed wrong to request leave when the continued pressure on the ATA to deliver was immense. My commanding officer had a different idea and called me in for an interview.

I was, she felt, flying on the edge of absolute exhaustion since Anna died, pushing myself too hard and by the look of me, not sleeping well or eating enough. I was offered two weeks’ rest and recuperation and for