Chapter 17
Briony found the letters in her handbag. One dropped to the floor. She picked it up and frowned. ‘I don’t think you want this one.’ She tucked the letter she’d written to Freddie that morning back into her bag.
She had ended up leaving Troy and Sam in the kitchen, looking over the plans to the outbuilding. She’d taken her coffee upstairs and had sat down at the old bureau to write her letter to Freddie.
She knew that she could have got a stamp at the post office and posted the letter on the way to the hospital, but for some reason, she hadn’t. I couldn’t leave Luna in the car on her own, or take her into the post office, though. She knew that neither of these excuses were really true.
Briony tucked the letter back in her handbag and looked at the others she’d spread out on the bed. ‘These are for you, Blythe.’ Briony still wasn’t sure what to call her. But it had sounded right when she’d said grandma. ‘Shall I call you Grandma?’ Briony nodded, deciding that was what she’d do.
‘I found them in the old bureau in the outbuilding. I know you’ve never read them, weren’t even aware of them.’
When Briony had ventured into the outbuilding, and discovered the bureau, it had been locked, and at first she hadn’t been able to find the key. It was a sheer fluke that she’d been sorting through boxes of old clothes that she’d presumed had belonged to her great-grandmother and had come across the little key in the pocket of a pinafore dress.
The key had unlocked the drop-leaf bureau, revealing little drawers and cubby holes. That was where she’d made a discovery – love letters addressed to Blythe, written decades earlier when her grandmother was in her teens, with a return address on the back – the music shop in Cobblers Yard. Only one letter had been opened. She suspected Blythe’s parents had opened it and hidden the rest.
She looked at her grandmother and sighed. ‘I don’t know why your parents wanted to keep you and Frank apart.’
Briony thought of Freddie. How would she feel if her parents disliked the man she was with and tried to keep them apart? Troy came to mind next. A question crossed her mind – would her parents like Troy as much as they liked Freddie?
Briony dismissed that thought. She didn’t even know if Troy was single. And even if he was, she was pregnant with another man’s child. Things were just too complicated. She had to put a stop to—
To what, thought Briony. To my feelings?
Briony looked at the letters and thought, I am being so selfish. This isn’t about me. It’s about my grandmother getting well again. Yesterday, when she’d first visited, the nurse had said she might respond to a familiar voice. I think I sound like my mum, thought Briony. What if Blythe has that locked-in syndrome, where she can hear everything but can’t respond?
Briony had no idea. But she thought it was worth a try: reading aloud the letters that her grandmother probably never knew had been sent by her first love – a man called Frank.
Briony had felt a little guilty for opening the letters, but her grandmother couldn’t read them herself, and besides, she had good reason. Perhaps this would help her grandmother wake up.
The letters were dated. ‘I’m going to read them in order, if that’s okay.’
She didn’t expect a response. Luna turned around and put her muzzle on Briony’s lap. Briony looked down at Luna. ‘Well, I’ve got your attention, at least.’
Briony picked up a letter. This would be the first time she had read them. She looked over at her grandmother and sighed. ‘This is stupid. You can’t hear me, can you?’ Her grandmother had no idea she was there with Luna.
She was about to pack all the letters away when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Blythe’s little finger move again.
Luna suddenly shifted her head, moving back to the side of the bed.
‘You saw it too, didn’t you?’ Briony stared at her grandmother. It was a sign – it had to be.
‘All right. I’ll begin at the beginning, with the first letter Frank sent you.’ Briony took a deep breath, wishing she could find Frank, and have him read the letters to her in person.
She lowered the letter for a moment, thinking about Emily’s friend, Clarissa, the journalist. Joss said that he’d enlist Clarissa’s help to find the person who was after Blythe’s house. Clarissa had already offered Briony her help. Perhaps she’d help her find Frank too? Briony made a mental note to ask her the next time she saw her.
Her thoughts turned to Reggie. He had told her all he could about the previous owner of the music shop, Mr Cribbins, and his son Frank. The Gossip Girls, Mabel and Marjorie, whom she’d bumped into in the bookshop, had been much more enlightening. They had known Frank as a child when they’d lived in the bookshop with their father.
Apparently, Frank had had his heart broken, and had gone off and joined the Navy. As far as they were aware, he’d never returned to Cobblers Yard. They’d even said he might not have returned from South America, where he’d been posted during The Falklands War back in the early 1980s.
Briony sighed. She might as well read the letters. Unfortunately, unless Clarissa could work miracles, she imagined the chances of finding Frank were pretty slim.
She held up the letter and started reading the first of many love letters that it seemed her grandmother, aged fifteen, had never received from the sixteen-year-old Frank. As she read the beautiful, heartfelt notes, she was struck by the maturity of one so young.
There was no doubt in her mind how in love this boy, Frank, had been with her grandmother.
Frank’s father, Mr Cribbins, had apparently been the person who tuned the old piano in The Beach House. In one letter, Frank had talked of the very first time he and Blythe had met. She had been five, he had been six, and they’d struck up a friendship that had, over the course of ten summers, developed into love.
Briony guessed they had needed to meet in secret. In his letters, Frank mentioned his father’s little caravan in the caravan park on the road leading to Dunwich Heath, not far from the village. Briony imagined that was where Frank had spent his holidays while he was growing up. Although not far from Aldeburgh, it was a change of scenery – walks in wild heathland and a beautiful sandy beach with sand dunes. It must have been a lovely break from the flat where they lived above the shop in Cobblers Yard.
Even so, it was a far cry from Blythe’s parents’ holiday home right on the beach. But Frank mentioned in one of his letters how fond he knew Blythe was of the little caravan. She had found visiting it such an adventure. When they were both sixteen, Frank’s father had bought him a Vespa – they had been all the rage in the sixties. It sounded as though they’d had to meet at the beach car park, where they’d then take the short drive out of the village and down the single-track road to the caravan park. Not far away, they could take clifftop walks on the heath.
Briony read the last letter, in which Frank begged her to write to him. For some reason, Blythe must have not spent that summer at The Beach House. ‘Oh, no!’ Briony said, interrupting her flow. She’d read that he’d decided it was his last letter. He was leaving for the Navy if she didn’t write and ask him to stay. He must have thought she’d moved on, and didn’t love him.
Tears rolled down Briony’s face. Luna started licking her face, and putting her paw on to Briony’s lap, whining, clearly wondering why she was so upset.
‘It’s all right, Luna. I’m okay. It’s just sad, isn’t it?’ Briony put the last letter down and sat there, thinking. So it was true, what Mabel and Marjorie believed; Frank’s heart had been broken, and that was when he’d enlisted in the Navy, leaving to travel the world and perhaps try to forget Blythe.
She wondered if he’d succeeded.
She took a tissue from an open box on the little table next to her grandmother’s bed, wiped her face, and blew her nose. In her handbag was another pile of letters. These were addressed to Frank, unopened. She’d found these in the bureau too.
Her grandmother had written dozens of letters to him, obviously waiting for a reply that never came. But despite the stamps, there were no postmarks. Whether she’d posted them herself, or left it to her parents, the fact was that somehow they’d been intercepted and had never been sent.
Briony hadn’t opened these. She knew Frank’s were private too, but she’d opened them for a reason, to read them to her grandmother. These, though, belonged to her grandmother. They were tantamount to reading her diary. Briony hoped that one day, if she found Frank, she could give him these letters addressed to him, and he could read them himself.
Briony looked at them. ‘He didn’t get your letters, Grandma – not one of them.’ She stared at her grandmother’s little finger, hoping for a sign that Blythe had heard what she’d just said.
‘Briony?’
She turned at the sound of the nurse’s voice and found her standing in the doorway.
‘Everything all right?’
‘I thought if I read the letters …’ she trailed off.
‘Letters?’
Briony shook her head. She didn’t feel in the mood to explain what this was all about.
‘I spoke with the matron and put in a good word. You can bring Luna again, if you wish.’
‘Thank you so much.’ Briony stroked Luna’s soft fur. ‘I thought Luna—’
‘I know,’ the nurse said softly. ‘Give it time. Perhaps bring along her favourite book next time and read to her.’
Her favourite book? Briony looked at the nurse miserably. How on earth do I know what that is? I don’t know her! Briony heaved a sigh and realised that was the problem. She looked at her grandmother. You don’t know me.
Briony suddenly stood up. ‘I can’t do this!’
The nurse stepped in the room and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I sense things are not … straightforward between you and your grandmother. But whatever is going on, don’t give up on her. I suspect you’re all she has.’
Briony slowly sat back down in the chair.
‘You and Luna.’
Briony stared at the nurse.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Yes please.’
‘All right.’ She paused at the door. ‘The other patients in the ward outside are asking if they can see Luna again before you leave. If that’s all right with you?’
Briony nodded. ‘I’m sure Luna will like that too.’