wedding band.
‘You do realize,’ I said gently, ‘that he’d think you a person of inestimable fabulousness if he knew you’d lived there once?’
A slight smile ruffled her composure, but her attention didn’t leave her hands.
‘I’m serious. He’s smitten with the place.’
‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I’d prefer it this way.’
‘OK. I understand.’ I didn’t, but I think we’ve established that already, and the way the streetlight was now caressing her cheekbones made her look vulnerable, like a different kind of woman, younger and more breakable somehow, so I didn’t press further. I continued to watch her, though; her attitude was one of such keen contemplation that I couldn’t look away.
‘You know, Edie,’ she said softly, ‘when I was a girl my mother used to send me out around this time of night to fetch your grandfather back from the pub.’
‘Really? By yourself?’
‘It wasn’t uncommon back then, before the war. I’d go and wait by the door of the local and he’d see me and wave and finish his drink and then we’d walk home together.’
‘The two of you were close?’
She tilted her head a little. ‘I perplexed him, I think. Your grandmother, too. Did I ever tell you that she wanted me to become a hairdresser when I left school?’
‘Like Rita.’
She blinked at the night-black street outside. ‘I don’t think I’d have been much good at it.’
‘I don’t know. You’re pretty handy with the secateurs.’
There was a pause and she smiled sideways at me, but not completely naturally, and I had the feeling there was something more she wanted to say. I waited, but whatever it was, she decided against it, soon turning back to stare at the glass pane.
I made a half-hearted attempt to engage her in further conversation about her school days, hoping, I suppose, that it might lead to mention of Thomas Cavill, but she didn’t take the bait. She said only that she’d enjoyed school well enough and asked me whether I’d like a cup of tea.
The single virtue of Mum’s abstraction at that time, was that I was spared having to discuss my break-up with Jamie. Repression being something of a family hobby, Mum didn’t ask for details; neither did she drown me in platitudes. She kindly let us both cling to the myth that I’d made a purely selfless decision to come home and help her with Dad and the house.
The same, I’m afraid, could not be said of Rita. Bad news travels swiftly and my aunt is nothing if not a foul- weather friend, so I expect I shouldn’t have been surprised when I arrived at the Roxy Club for Sam’s hen night only to be accosted at the door. Rita tucked her arm through mine and said, ‘Darling, I’ve heard. Now don’t you worry; you’re not to think it means you’re old and unattractive and destined to be alone for the rest of your life.’
I waved to let the waiter know I was ready to place a rather stiff drink order and realized, with a vague sinking sensation, that I was actually envying my mother her evening at home with Dad and his bell.
‘Lots of people meet “the one” in their later years,’ she continued, ‘and they’re made very happy indeed. Just look at your cousin over there.’ Rita pointed at Sam, who was grinning at me past the G-string of a bronzed stranger. ‘Your turn will come.’
‘Thanks, Auntie Rita.’
‘Good girl.’ She nodded in approval. ‘You have a good time now and put it all behind you.’ And she was about to move on to spread her cheer elsewhere when she grabbed my arm. ‘Almost forgot,’ she said, ‘I’ve brought something for you.’ She dug inside her tote and pulled out a shoebox. The picture on the side was of an embroidered pump slipper, the sort my gran would have cherished, and although it seemed rather an unlikely gift, I had to admit they looked comfy. And not impractical: I was, after all, spending a lot of nights in these days.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How kind.’ And then I lifted the lid and saw that the box didn’t contain slippers at all, but was half-filled with letters.
‘Your mum’s,’ said Auntie Rita with a devilish smile. ‘Just like I promised. You have a good old read of those, won’t you? Cheer yourself up.’
And although I was thrilled by the letters, I felt a curl of dislike for my Auntie Rita then, on behalf of the small girl whose handwriting swirled and looped in earnest lines across the fronts of the envelopes. The young girl whose older sister had deserted her during the evacuation, slinking off to be housed with a friend, leaving little Meredith to fend for herself.
I put the lid back on, anxious suddenly to get the letters out of that club. They didn’t belong there amidst the bump and grind; the unedited thoughts and dreams of a little girl from long ago; the same young girl who’d walked beside me in the corridors of Milderhurst; whom I hoped to know better one day. When the novelty straws appeared, I made my excuses and took the letters home to bed.
All was black as pitch when I arrived and I tiptoed carefully up the stairs, fearful of waking the sleeping bell- ringer. My desk lamp imparted a dusky glow, the house made queer nocturnal noises and I sat on the edge of the bed, shoebox on my lap. This was the moment, I suppose, when I might have done things differently. Two roads forked away from me and I could have followed either. After the merest hesitation, I lifted the lid and pulled the envelopes from within, noticing as I leafed through that they were arranged carefully by date. A photograph dropped loose onto my knees, two girls grinning at the camera. The smaller, darker one I recognized as my mother – earnest brown eyes, bony elbows, hair cut in the short, sensible style my gran favoured – the other, an older girl with long blonde hair. Juniper Blythe, of course. I remembered her from the book I’d bought in Milderhurst village; this was the child with the luminous eyes, all grown up. With a surge of determination, I put the photograph and letters safely back into the box, all except the first, which I unfolded. The letter was dated September 6th, 1939; neat printing in the top right-hand corner.
I’d reached the end of the first page but didn’t turn it over. I sat motionless, as if I were listening very carefully to something. And I was, I suppose; for the little girl’s voice had drifted from the shoebox and was echoing now in the shadow-hung hollows of the room.
The headlights from a car in the street outside threw slivers between my curtains, tinsel shards slid across the ceiling. Silence, dimness again. I turned the page and read on, and as I did so a pressure built behind my chest, as if a warm, firm object were being pushed hard from within against my ribs. The sensation was a little like relief and, oddly, the quenching of a strange sort of homesickness. Which made no sense, only that the girl’s voice was so familiar that reading the letters was a little like re-meeting an old friend. Someone I’d known a long time ago…
ONE
Meredith had never seen her father cry. It wasn’t something fathers did, not hers certainly (and he wasn’t
