Chapter Three
It was the peacefulness that woke Jenna the next morning. She hadn’t felt the need to draw the curtains, and had left the window open allowing cool fresh air in. No one overlooked the cottage; she didn’t know where the nearest neighbour was, but if there was another house close by it was hidden by trees.
She’d slept in the spare bedroom, sparse apart from the bed, a chest of drawers and peeling flowery wallpaper stained from the damp. A stack of letters was piled on the wooden window seat and, warmed by the morning sun streaming in, Jenna sat and looked through them. The same spidery handwriting appeared in every one. The ink was faded and the cream paper yellowed at the edges. They were in date order though, starting from April 1940 with the last letter dated September 1941. All were addressed to ‘My dearest Vivian’ and signed off with ‘All my love, Henry’. Tucked in among them was a black and white moth-eaten photograph of a man in a soldiers’ uniform who she assumed was Henry.
Jenna put the letters back exactly as she’d found them, unsure if she really wanted to pry into the private life of her spinster great aunt or to find out the presumably sad story of why she ended up alone.
Breakfast was a quick bowl of cereal while they leant against the kitchen counter, and then Jenna and Kath continued to sort through Aunt Vi’s belongings. Paperwork, photograph albums or anything of particular interest, they put straight into the boot of the car to be sorted out at home. The aim of the weekend was to empty the house of everything that wasn’t to be kept, in preparation for the builders to start work. It felt weird for Jenna to go through the personal items of a woman she’d only met a couple of times. Over the day she pieced together more about her great aunt, a woman who loved crosswords and knitting, kept piles of old Radio Times, had china dogs on the shelves but didn’t have any family photos on show apart from one of her parents. Jenna bundled up the letters from the window seat and put them in the box of things for her mum to take home. It upset her to think that any chance of happiness with the Henry who wrote the letters had been short-lived.
Tony had been proactive in contacting builders before they’d come down to Cornwall and one builder came by to give a quote in the morning. Another was scheduled for the afternoon. Jenna liked the way her parents were cracking on with the place. She guessed it was a less emotional job when it was a distant relative. She understood their worry about it being financially draining, but like her mum, she was pleased the place wasn’t going to be sold. She imagined coming down here for a holiday with friends once it was finished.
It was typical March weather; a cluster of dark clouds filled the sky early in the day and short sharp showers dumped heavy rainfall, yet by the afternoon the grey clouds had dispersed and high white clouds with pockets of blue allowed sunshine through. Hot and dusty, Jenna escaped to explore the garden. The drive was to one side of the cottage and the garden surrounded the other three sides. There was a smaller area to the front, with the raised lawn surrounded by borders that she’d briefly seen when they’d arrived. A weed-filled path meandered from the front lawn around the side of the house to a much larger area of overgrown lawn at the back. It was hard to see where the garden ended. The edges were shaded by trees, enough to warrant calling it a wood. Where the garden did eventually end, it was edged by a weathered wooden fence with a view across fields to patches of woodland. Was that the sea in the distance? Jenna tried to make out if the blue was sea or sky, thinking how amazing it would be if it really was a sea view, however far away. A cottage in Cornwall with a partial sea view. How lucky had Great Aunt Vi been to live here. Jenna turned back and looked at the wild garden through the trees. Had her great aunt ever really appreciated the place or spent any time out in the garden? It was evident that she hadn’t recently. It was sad to think she’d been on her own for so long. There was a battered picnic table on the overgrown lawn at the front, but she didn’t imagine a ninety-two-year-old lady struggling up the steps and through the long grass to sit out there even on a beautifully sunny summer’s day.
Jenna wandered back through the wooded depths of the garden. Once the grass was cut and the foliage among the trees was thinned out, it would not only open up the garden and make it spacious, but it would draw the eye to the woodland. It was a fairy-tale setting. Jenna imagined summer parties outside, bunting strung through the trees, the lawn filled with people, and barbecue smoke drifting into the air.
Tyres crunched on the drive and Jenna caught sight of ‘Harrison & Son Builders’ in grey and red on the side of
