Falling for you

Now that she’d captured it, she could wrestle it to death, tearing it to messy shreds and—

‘ Bad dog,’ Sophie said severely, grabbing the envelope from Bean in the nick of time and whisking it out of reach. ‘Mustn’t do that to letters. No,’ she scolded as Bean leaped up once more,

‘it’s not yours.’

Turning it over, Sophie saw that it had Marcella Harvey written on the front. The handwriting was on the wobbly side but that was OK, Sophie could still read it. Her own handwriting was pretty wobbly too.

‘Dad?’ Raising her voice, she ran upstairs and hammered on the bathroom door. Her father, with a casket to deliver, had finished work early in order to shower and change before driving over to Cheltenham.

Above the sound of gushing water, Jake shouted, ‘Yes?’

‘There’s a letter for Gran. I’m going to take it to her,’ Sophie yelled back. She was allowed to visit Marcella’s house on Holly Hill since there was no road-crossing involved.

‘What?’

She heard the shower door open inside the bathroom, enabling Jake to poke his head out and hear what she was saying.

‘ Me and Bean are going up to Gran’s,’ Sophie bellowed. ‘OK. I’ll be back by six,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll pick you up from there, then we’ll go and see Tiff at the hospital.’

‘OK, see you!’ Clapping her hands at Bean, Sophie galloped downstairs clutching the envelope.

Delivering letters was easy; maybe she’d be a postman when she grew up.

Marcella had been out in the garden doing a spot of gentle pruning when Sophie arrived.

Enveloping her beloved granddaughter in an enthusiastic hug, and feeling her heart expand with love, Marcella wondered if holding a child of her very own could possibly feel better than this.

‘Are those really sharp?’ Beadily, Sophie eyed the secateurs in Marcella’s hand. ‘Can I have a go?’

‘In your dreams, sweetheart.’ Tweaking the end of one of Sophie’s braids, Marcella spotted the envelope and said, ‘What’s that? Love letter from Tiff?’

‘It’s for you. See, it’s got your name on it. What are you going to call the baby if it’s a boy?’

Sophie was extremely keen to be involved in the decision-making process. ‘How about Malfoy?’

‘I thought we’d wait until it’s born, then see what it looks like.’ Taking the envelope, Marcella glanced at her name shakily inscribed on the front and headed over to the garden bench. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘On the floor at home. The toothmarks are Bean’s – I rescued it just in time. Can I have a biscuit’ ' said Sophie, because nobody kept a better supply of biscui in their house than Marcella.

‘Hmm? OK, just the one.’ Having. opened the envelope, Marcella’s eye slid automatically to the name at the bottom ofthe letter. It was like bouncing along happily on a cloud, then all of a sudden landing on a tangle of barbed wire. Marcella’s breath caught in her throat and her heart began to race. She wondered if this was someone’s idea of a sick joke.

But the wording of the letter seemed honest enough.

Dear Marcella,

Please don’t ignore this letter. I have liver failure and very little time left to live. I need to speak to you before I die.

This is very important to me, and will be to you too. Please come to Dartington House on Friday afternoon. I’m so very sorry.

Once more, Marcella found herself gazing at the signature at the bottom of the page. It looked like the handwriting of someone hopelessly frail. Pauline McKinnon, no less. Close to death. Saying she was sorry. Well, that was a first.

Without even realising it, Marcella had risen from her seat and was busy deadheading roses.

Needing something to do with her hands she snipped away, doing her level best to block all thoughts of Pauline McKinnon from her

‘ Ouch.’ She snatched her left hand away as a thorn on one of the branches punctured her skin. A bead of blood welled up and Marcella sucked her finger, thinking that if she caught tetanus now, that would be the McKinnons’ fault too.

Why the bloody hell should she go over to Dartington House anyway? What had her doctor told her about avoiding stress? And if seeing that woman again wasn’t stressful, Marcella thought resentfully, she didn’t know what was.

Then again, the woman was dying. Pauline McKinnon had lost her son as a result of the accident, albeit in a less final way than April had been taken from her own family.

And she had just said sorry.

Marcella, barefoot and still sucking her index finger, gazed around the sundrenched garden she loved so much. Her hormones must be getting the better of her; at any other time she would have ripped Pauline McKinnon’s letter to shreds by now, and been stomping around the garden calling her the kind of names no granddaughter should ever overhear.

But as Sophie emerged from the kitchen and came racing across the grass towards her, Marcella found herself sliding the letter into the pocket of her white cotton shirt. Not that this meant she’d definitely be going along to the nursing home tomorrow; she simply hadn’t yet made up her mind.

‘I brought chocolate fingers and Hobnobs, so you can have some too.’ There were telltale chocolate marks around Sophie’s mouth as she generously offered the opened packets to Marcella.

Spotting the letter sticking out of her grandmother’s shirt pocket, and keen to avert attention from the number