The Love Note

by Tracy Rees

Genres: Women's Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of The Keeper of Lost Things and The Villa in Italy. Blue lives a charmed life. From her family's townhouse in Richmond, she lives a life of luxury and couldn't want for anything - well, on the surface at least. Then, on the night of her 21st birthday, her father makes a startling toast: he will give his daughter's hand to whichever man can capture her heart best in the form of a love letter. But Blue has other ideas, and, unwilling to play at her father's bewildering games, she sets out on her own path to find her own destiny....

Release date: July 26, 2018

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 544

Sample

Chapter One

All through that shimmering riverside summer of 1925 there seemed to be only one question on everybody’s lips: who was Blue Camberwell going to marry?

‘Jolly well everybody wants to know!’ squealed Juno Forrester in the Richmond Gazette.

Blue dropped the newspaper onto a side table and rested her brow against the window. The lawn was abuzz with preparations for her twenty-first birthday party. Waiters were lining up diamond-bright champagne glasses on long tables spread with white tablecloths smooth as icing. Servants hired for the evening perched on ladders, stringing fairy lights through the trees and looping ribbons from trellis to trellis. In the summerhouse, Midge was carefully positioning a gramophone in readiness for the half hours when the jazz quartet would take a breather. Blue’s father was nowhere to be seen.

Unable to resist what she knew to be a depressing impulse, Blue picked up the article again.

Could that question be answered tonight, at her coming-of-age party? Nothing confirmed, remember! But it is a special occasion, and at least three gentlemen of my acquaintance are head over heels with the young lady.

Three? In love? It was news to Blue.

Whether or not an engagement is announced, this promises to be the party of the year. The guest list includes some of our most distinguished neighbours and yours truly has been privileged with an invitation which I’m clutching in my little paws right now (coloured nail polish – naturally). Dear readers, I promise you a full and faithful account tomorrow. But for now, must dash – time to get my glad rags on!

With a low growl, she dropped the Gazette into the wastepaper basket – a gesture only, since Midge would certainly fish it out later and paste the article into her scrapbook. Blue was used to having her life described in extravagant terms: beautiful Blue and her charmed life; beautiful Blue who lived in a castle with her handsome father, her virtuous stepmother and the elf in the garden . . . She was blessed, that she knew, but life was never just one thing nor the other, not for anyone. As for ‘jolly well everybody’ – they would have to face disappointment. They wouldn’t learn who Blue was going to marry for one simple reason – she didn’t know herself. Blue was far more preoccupied by how she could achieve her dream of becoming a writer than she was by thoughts of romance. But that didn’t make good gossip.

*

Hours later, gauzy twilight hung over the long garden of Ryan’s Castle, which was in fact not a castle at all but a terraced Georgian house on Richmond Hill. A previous owner had named it thus, his reasons now lost in the mists of time. But the name had stuck – quirky and rather gorgeous, Blue always thought, her imagination tantalised by who Ryan might have been and why he saw fit to dub his home a castle.

Blue had swapped her habitual daily garb of three-quarter-length skirt, blouse and lace-up shoes for the obligatory glamour. She wore her signature colour – the misty yet brilliant powder blue of the butterflies in Richmond Park. Midge had made her dress – a silk underlay with dropped waist and fringed hem and a chiffon top layer scattered with thousands of tiny blue beads. The chiffon was so sheer, and the beads so heavy, that dancing was sure to wreck it. This was a dress for just one night; a real labour of love.

Blue’s older sister had styled her. Merrigan might be the married lady now, with a home of her own and a small daughter (eighteen-month-old Cicely of cherubic face and foghorn voice), but she was still the fashionable sister. Blue’s outfit was completed by silver shoes with clippy little heels and a silver headband worn low over her brow, an elaborate seashell-shaped embellishment sitting just above her right ear.

‘But you’re the beauty,’ Merrigan had scolded when Blue questioned the seashell. ‘I’m only ever attractive at best; you’re the one all this jazz isn’t wasted on!’

Blue had scoffed. ‘Attractive at best’ was not a phrase anyone else would apply to Merrigan. Her sleek, nut-brown hair was perfect for the new bob, she had wicked dark eyes that could slay a beau at a hundred paces and she carried herself with aplomb, as though trouble were waiting only a corner away. In contrast, Blue sometimes felt old-fashioned and pallid. She was tall and slim; the new dresses hung on her as though she were just an old coat hanger inside them. (This, Merrigan asserted, was exactly what they were supposed to do.) Her eyes were brown, like her sister’s, but her hair was blonde and meandered across her forehead in a languid wave. Now it was tucked up at the back to imitate a bob, but during the day she often wore it long and loose over her shoulders, a habit that caused Merrigan to shudder. Her mouth was generous, and she had inherited a more feminine version of her father’s aquiline nose, a thing for which she occasionally resented him. It was a nose she often bemoaned as Roman.

‘Roman!’ Merrigan would jeer. ‘It’s not Roman. Darling, it’s barely even Italian!’

Now the guests were arriving and the Camberwells clustered on the threshold to greet them en famille. Blue’s arm was tucked through Merrigan’s. Lawrence Miller, Merrigan’s husband, stood behind his wife, gripping the ankles of their child, who rode on his shoulders and drummed her feet rather determinedly against his chest. Behind Blue stood her father and next to him was Midge.

Blue murmured and smiled as the familiar faces filed past; faces she had seen all her life, people she had grown up amongst. For a moment, as she looked at the glittering, gossiping crowd, all she could see were losses and scars. These were people who had suffered through the war and recovered from it, to a greater or lesser extent, each in their own way. For a moment it was as if her own casings had dissolved – the fabulous house, the spark­ling dress, the happy family – leaving her wounds exposed. These moments often took hold of Blue, allowing her to take nothing for granted. Then she shook herself. Tonight was not the night for feeling like that; tonight was for celebrating. Dear Midge had gone to so much trouble, as usual. Blue reached for her hand and squeezed it. Midge squeezed back.

When most of the guests had arrived, Blue began to circulate. She accepted kisses, gifts and compliments. She shouldered enquiries about her love life with patient smiles and gracefully fielded Juno Forrester’s avid request for an ‘inside scoop’. As far as she knew her, Blue liked Juno, a fast-talking, determined woman in her thirties with a penchant for turbans. But really, Blue thought, are women’s marital prospects all that interest the Gazette readers, even these days?

It wasn’t that Blue wasn’t interested in love. Heavens, who was more romantic than a writer? An aspiring writer, she corrected herself hurriedly. Juno had told her once that aspiring writers were the most romantic people in the world. But real writers didn’t have time for romance, she’d added, blowing out a long, philosophical plume of cigarette smoke. They were too busy meeting deadlines. So Blue had never allowed herself into any situation that might hinder her pursuit of her goal. And she didn’t intend to now.

‘Hello, Blue, old chap. Golly, you look smashing!’

Blue turned to see Foster Foxton, her childhood friend, and gave him a happy hug. The Foxtons and the Camberwells went way back – two fine families, living just around the corner from each other. Foster’s older sister, Tabitha, was Merrigan’s best friend and had virtually lived at Ryan’s Castle before Merrigan married. Foster was a few years younger than Blue.

‘You look rather sharp yourself, Floss,’ she remarked, using his old childhood nickname. ‘Lovely party, isn’t it?’

Foster nodded, looking around. Seventeen now, but still as shy as ever.

‘How’s school?’ asked Blue.

He sighed. ‘Oh, you know. Fellow’s got to get a decent education and all that.’

‘Golly, that doesn’t sound very chipper. Everything all right?’

There was a little pause. Then he gave a trembly smile. ‘It’s fine.’

‘And how about your music?’ asked Blue. Foster played rather wonderfully, according to Tabitha. Blue wouldn’t know; she’d never been treated to a performance. ‘Oh, Floss, you wouldn’t play something for us tonight, would you? At the party? It would be so splendid if you did.’

Foster looked alarmed. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t. Please don’t even think of it.’

‘Please, Flossy, dearest.’

‘I’m sorry, Blue.’ Conflict was writ large upon his face. ‘I’d love to do something like that for you. I mean you’re so . . . But I just can’t. Not with . . . all these people . . .’

There was such fear in his eyes that Blue took pity on him. ‘Never mind then, let’s just enjoy ourselves.’

The night whirled on. Blue danced until her feet ached, including several with Dorian Fields, the most dashing man in Richmond. She laughed and hugged everybody and smiled at the comments she overheard when no one knew she was listening.

‘Who’s Father Time?’ breathed one young woman whom Blue didn’t recognise, and of course, when Blue followed her gaze, it was Blue’s father who had caught her eye.

Kenneth Camberwell – decorated war hero, Cambridge scholar, devoted father – was one of those men. Somehow, the war and the subsequent tragedy of his first wife’s death had not blunted his appreciation for life. He was the sort of person that other people wanted to be around because he always seemed to be living larger than anyone else. Panache, charisma and joie de vivre were all words used frequently by Juno in the Gazette. Occasionally she lapsed into vocabulary like ‘cat’s particulars’ and ‘drool-worthy’.

Blue adored her father; no question of that. But as the night went on and he drank more and more, she exchanged exasperated looks with Merrigan and Midge. Yes, it was his beloved daughter’s twenty-first. Yes, he was presiding over a splendid soirée, the king of the castle. And no, there wasn’t a malicious bone in his body. But his outspoken, boyish charm grew increasingly reckless. Kenneth Camberwell, like a sudden squall at sea, could sometimes wreak devastating effects. Blue was used to it, but even she couldn’t have predicted what he did next.

‘Ladies, gentlemen and those of you who haven’t yet made up your minds!’ he announced, provoking laughter, ringing one of Midge’s crystal bells to summon the revellers from the garden. The bell broke and a servant shot forth with a dustpan and brush. Midge closed her eyes. Kenneth sprang onto the fifth stair. ‘Your attention, please! As you all know, tonight is my best, my most beautiful, daughter’s birthday!’

Blue sighed. Her father’s tact diminished in exact correlation with his consumption of gin cocktails. Beside her, Merrigan snorted. She’d be having words with him tomorrow.

‘Twenty-one today and the loveliest young lady imaginable!’ beamed Kenneth from his podium. ‘Darling Blue, would you please come up here?’

Blue threaded her way through the crowd. Of course he would make a speech. Of course there would be a toast. She just hoped that it wouldn’t be too cringe-making. She joined her father, accompanied by applause and a few whistles. She grinned and bobbed a little curtsey, concentrating on the good feeling in the room rather than on her embarrassment. Midge came to the foot of the stairs, a reassuring presence.

‘Twenty-one years ago today,’ announced Kenneth, ‘my wife Audra – that is, my first wife, Audra – presented me with a squirming, squawking bundle of joy . . .’

If he was starting from her babyhood, Blue had time to daydream. She let her gaze wander. Juno was scribbling avidly by the aspidistra. Avis, the family’s one remaining servant, gleamed in her best dress. Foster was gazing at Blue with all the ardour one freckled, adolescent face could express, his Adam’s apple prominent even from this distance. His sister, Tabitha, stood beside a handsome newcomer, and if Blue wasn’t greatly mistaken, was sliding her hand beneath his coat-tails in the general vicinity of his rear parts. Blue quickly looked away. She caught Dorian’s eye and he gave her a wink. And over there was dear Elf, a family friend of such long standing that it was hard to remember he wasn’t really family at all. He was beaming with paternal pride second only to Kenneth’s own.

Then something her father said caught her attention. ‘Here at Ryan’s Castle, we are aware that there’s considerable speculation about whom Blue will marry. We speculate ourselves!’ He paused and nodded, enjoying the mirth. Blue frowned. This wasn’t her idea of a birthday speech.

‘The inside scoop is . . .’ said Kenneth, and a hush descended. He lowered his voice confidingly. ‘That there isn’t an inside scoop! There is currently no front runner for my lovely daughter’s affections.’

A groan ran through the gathering. Juno’s pen hung from listless fingers.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘I have come up with a scheme! There is no finer state than matrimony and I want Blue to know the happiness that I have known, the happiness I shared with her dear mother.’

Horrified, Blue elbowed him in the ribs.

‘What?’ he asked, peering at her. ‘Oh yes, and that I share now with my new wife, of course.’

Blue dared a glance at Midge, whose game face was firmly in place and gleaming.

‘Yes, yes, jolly lucky, second time around and all that . . .’ Kenneth continued, clearly not quite understanding what he’d said amiss. Blue nudged him again.

‘Quite so, quite so. Yes, well, earlier today I was looking through some of Blue’s old things, sentimental and all that, and I happened across some of her childhood books. She adored fairy tales – like most children, I suppose. Though Merrigan was always more interested in books about steam trains.’ He paused to chuckle. ‘I found Blue’s favourite, in which an old king promises his daughter’s hand in marriage to whichever young buck of the kingdom can slay the dragon. Well, no dragons in Richmond, of course! Only a few geese and some cows in the meadow yonder! But it got me to thinking. What test of merit could I devise in these modern times? What gauntlet could I lay down to suitors aspiring to win my daughter?’

‘Daddy!’ exclaimed Blue. Surely he couldn’t be going where he seemed to be going? Juno was scribbling like fury, a bright light in her eye. Foster was swallowing madly, Adam’s apple bobbing; she could see it from here. She had a horrible feeling he had a small crush. How uncomfortable; Floss was like her little brother.

‘Hope is, as Pliny the Elder said,’ intoned Kenneth, ‘the dream of a waking man. What qualities do I, doting father, hope for in a son-in-law? Well, they may be easily hazarded. Honour, kindness, strength and so forth – all fathers must feel the same. But she must make the choice, she must find someone with whom she is happy to live for the rest of her life. And Blue, as you all know, is a writer.’

Blue poked him. She didn’t want her private aspirations discussed in public. But Kenneth was in full flow.

‘Writers are a rare breed,’ he continued. ‘On the one hand, deeply engaged with the world around them; on the other, reclusive sorts when the mood takes them. Sensitive, changeable, and frankly baffling most of the time! The hopeful suitor wishing to captivate such a woman must set out to capture not only her heart, but also her imagination. My proposal therefore is that anyone who wishes to woo her does so by letter.’

‘Daddy! Shut up, there’s a dear!’ gasped Blue.

‘Kenneth, darling . . .’ cautioned Midge, coming to lay a hand on his arm.

‘An anonymous letter,’ Kenneth rolled on, ‘so that whatever she might know of you cannot prejudice or predispose her. Her choice will be based on nothing but the bond your words can forge. And on this day next year, we will announce her decision.’

‘No, we bloody won’t!’ exclaimed Blue.

‘You have the turning of the seasons,’ concluded Kenneth poetically, ‘to woo and win my daughter. So, as we approach midnight on this special occasion . . .’

Blue glanced at the clock. God help her, it was indeed just approaching midnight. Her father’s flair for the dramatic had surpassed itself.

‘I make this vow. Whoever can win Blue’s heart through a letter can have her hand in marriage. What? Oh – yes, Midge, right ho. And now I propose a toast. To my daughter, on the occasion of her coming of age.’ He lifted his glass. ‘To Ishbel Christina Camberwell. Known to us all as darling Blue.’

The clock began to strike midnight, as if casting some sort of spell on what should have been nothing more than drunken foolery. The guests raised their glasses, the rims glinting in the light like fairy dust. ‘Darling Blue!’

Chapter Two

The following morning, Kenneth’s womenfolk were dreadfully cross with him. When he hadn’t surfaced from his gin-laced slumbers by noon, they stalked from the house without him. Soon, the ladies of the family, plus Tabitha, languished on a picnic blanket in Richmond Park. It was hot as Hades and twice as stuffy, complained Midge, fanning herself with The Ladies’ Quarterly and retreating further into the shade of her parasol. The heat, the anticlimax, the champagne and annoyance had all combined to put them in bad moods.

The park was diabolical in this weather, but the garden at home was out of the question with the servants clattering and calling as they cleared last night’s debris. And there would be too many people at the river . . .

It was nearly two before Kenneth staggered up the hill to join them.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Merrigan with a curl of her upper lip. ‘Shall I scooch over so you can sit beside your best daughter?’

Kenneth groaned. ‘So sorry, Merry, darling. You’re my other best daughter, of course.’

There was no room on the blanket so Kenneth sat on the grass beside them. He was wearing cream slacks, from which any grass stains would be loathsome to remove. Midge compressed her lips and he cast her a harried look.

‘Simply too hot and tired to stand, Midge, poppet.’ He sighed. ‘Even if it were three inches of mud.’

‘Too hot and tired and drunk.’ Blue scowled. ‘I bet you ­haven’t sobered up yet. How much does a father have to drink to sell his own daughter?’

‘To be accurate, oh furious daughter, no sum of money or exchange of goods was mentioned, so I can’t fairly be accused of selling you . . . Oh Lord.’ He sighed, observing the disapproving faces around him. ‘I’ve dropped a stinker, haven’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Blue, ‘you have.’

Tabitha gave him her green-eyed grin. ‘Call me old-­fashioned, but I think it’s romantic. I rather wish my father would do something like that for me.’

‘But you’re hardly short of beaux,’ said Midge. ‘I never knew anyone so popular with the gentlemen.’

‘But not for marriage, darling,’ explained Tabitha. ‘Who on earth would marry me? I simply behave too, too badly.’

‘Then stop?’ suggested Merrigan.

‘Oh, I can’t, Merry, bad behaviour is too much fun. Still. Don’t be too crushing to your handsome Papa, Blue. He meant well, and it was rather sweet.’

‘Sweet? I don’t call it sweet. It’s 1925, for heaven’s sake! Except in Ryan’s Castle, where we’ve apparently returned to feudal times. Marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all for women any more. We work! We have the vote! Well, not us, we’re too young. But some do. Midge does! Times are changing.’

‘Changing, yes,’ conceded Tabitha, ‘but not changed. That’s an important difference. Most parents still want to see their offspring married well. In families like yours and mine, anyway. I know Mother and Father have high hopes for Foster and me. At least one of us is sure to disappoint.’

‘Either way, a girl can’t be blamed for hoping her own father won’t auction her off like a cow at market! Whatever came over you, Daddy?’

‘You know perfectly well,’ said Kenneth, wincing as he raised his sunglasses, and quickly lowering them again. ‘A perfect cacophony of gin came over me, laced with some good old brain-bashing bubbly. That and a fit of nostalgia, I suppose, for simpler days, for romance. I think, in my giddy, impetuous state, I wanted to do something dashing, to get the gods to sit up and take notice of you, to send you someone . . . special.’

Blue frowned. ‘I don’t know how you do it. You can do the most outrageous things and then make them sound almost endearing. The point is, Daddy . . .’

‘I know, fat-headed. But really, darling, as Aristotle said, “No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.”’

‘“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things,”’ countered Blue.

Kenneth squinted. ‘Socrates?’

‘Thoreau.’

‘Ah. Anyway, it wasn’t an auction. It was just an . . . invitation for young men to make their intentions known if they wanted to.’

‘An invitation that should have come from me if anyone! It makes me look incapable of attracting a mate on my own, when in fact various people have described me as . . . Well, I’m supposed to be quite fetching, aren’t I?’

‘Not in that skirt,’ muttered Merrigan.

‘Of course you’re fetching! And everyone knows you’re not just some dolly holding out for a husband. That’s why I said the thing about the writing and the letters . . . I was trying to say that not just anyone – no ordinary situation – would do. For you. Only I made the devil’s own carcass of it.’

He rolled onto his stomach with a groan.

‘Kenneth, darling, put your hat on,’ said Midge. ‘You don’t want sunstroke.’

Tabitha tossed his panama so that it biffed him on the back of the head. He groped for it and jammed it in place.

Blue could never hold a grudge for long, especially when it came to her father. ‘Well, I suppose the good thing is that no one will take any notice,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows you get overexcited and spout nonsense when you’ve had a few. They’ll all talk about it for a bit and then it’ll go away. And I’ll be left in peace to get on with my own priorities.’

‘Which are what, exactly?’ wondered Merrigan, rummaging in the picnic hamper. Merrigan had opinions about Blue’s life choices.

‘I’m afraid I think you’re wrong, Blue, old thing,’ mused Tabitha. ‘I think your Papa has done something he didn’t set out to do.’

‘Make a fool of me?’

‘No. Capture people’s imaginations. Everyone there perked up when he made that speech. It may have been foolish, old-fashioned, downright unrealistic and all that – but isn’t that just what everyone’s secretly craving? Golly, if I were a man, I’d take up writing to you myself! We need a quest. We need meaning. And the times we live in aren’t giving us that. I think young men are going to rise to the challenge. And I think all of Richmond is going to live vicariously through you for the coming year.’

‘What rot,’ scoffed Blue, throwing a bread roll at Tabitha. It bounced off her cheek and landed in the grass. ‘Of course no one’s going to write! If anyone wants to . . . Oh Lord, woo me, to use an absurd phrase, they’ll just knock on the front door and ask me to take a turn along the river! No one writes letters any more; Juno Forrester said so in the Gazette a couple of months ago. And romance is dead! She said that just the other day.’

‘Juno Forrester looked more excited than anyone. Sweetie, I think romance might just have been resurrected.’

Blue lay down, shielding her eyes with a hand and gazing up into the cloudless sky. ‘Rot,’ she said again, uneasily.

Chapter Three

By the following morning, everything had returned to normal. The temporary servants had departed, back to their agencies and whatever assignments next awaited them. Merrigan had returned to her marital home. And Kenneth’s brain cells were rehydrated and restored to a coherent, functioning arrangement.

Blue had been determined that today she would at last conduct the perfect writing day. In her imagination, this involved rising at dawn, sipping a cup of something fortifying whilst gazing at the dew on the lawn, then setting to at seven for some hard graft before breakfast. But she overslept, then she felt ravenous, and now here she was at eleven, wrapped in her new floral dressing gown, reading the paper over kippers and toast.

The gap between intention and reality, between her expectations of the world and the way it really was, had always troubled her. Her mother had possessed the wonderful gift of filling the world with magic. It was easy to long for those vanished years, but when Blue found herself doing it she stopped. Nothing could bring back the past. Blue had learned this the hard way.

She was only ten when the war came and shattered everything. Suddenly her father was gone. Her friends’ fathers were gone. Audra was careful with what she told the girls, but Blue’s imagination filled in the gaps. She could feel the storm clouds that hung over the world; she knew the carefree days of searching for fairies in the garden, of her parents singing her to sleep in harmony, were over.

She learned that her father was away protecting their country, because the nature of the world was such that thousands upon thousands of people were deliberately and systematically killing each other. That reality, combined with fear for Kenneth, turned Blue from a cheerful child who saw magic in everything into a silent presence who watched from the corners, or vanished into a book, where everything was more bearable. There was nothing Audra could say to protect her from the reality of war, because Blue could feel it.

‘Such a sensitive child!’ Avis would whisper.

By the time the war ended, Blue was fourteen. Richmond had changed. The banqueting room of the Star and Garter hotel, where Blue used to go to parties, had been turned into a hospital. Many of the people she had known were dead. Households had been dismantled because servants could earn better pay in munitions factories during the war. Blue became prone to long fits of despair. She felt that the happy world she had known wasn’t real.

Then Kenneth came home, safe and sound, despite everything. ‘Don’t let despair claim you, Blue,’ he implored her. ‘I understand the temptation, believe me, but every life destroyed that way is a small victory for the enemy. What triumph exists in winning the war if only to afford them victory after victory after the fact, one man or woman at a time? That is not what we fought for. What we had before was real. Reality has room for a lot of things in it, good and bad. Make sure yours is as marvellous as possible. It isn’t easy, but it’s our task. Now is the moment, my darling, not the past and not the future. The war was horrendous. It’s over. Now we live our next days.’

But almost at once, the Spanish influenza broke out and soon Audra was dead because of it. Audra, the last holder of magic and sweetness – or so it seemed to Blue. She thought the grief might end her. But gradually Blue came through – changed, but in some ways for the better. Now she knew the depths of her own resilience, when she had never thought of herself as strong before. So she survived, although at first that was the best that could be said of it; she didn’t believe she could hope for more.

Eventually she started to experience the magic again. It would be very fleeting, just the trill of a bird or a particular beam of sunlight falling in a comforting way. Blue started to write all these things down, collecting them, gathering treasures. And life went on. Blue would always yearn for enchantment, and she would choose, whenever there was a choice to be made, to draw on every small beauty rather than succumb to that old despair.

It was hard work sometimes, but here she was, twenty-one – all grown up! – and with so much, still, to be thankful for. Here she was, procrastinating over her work, having succumbed to temptation and read Juno’s latest piece about her party. The long version had run yesterday, with a full and enthusiastic account of her father’s speech. Now there was an excited summary. If it had bypassed anyone on the grapevine, they certainly wouldn’t miss it in the paper.

‘Letter for you, Miss Blue.’ She was interrupted by dark-haired Avis, plump and still pretty at fifty, bringing her a white envelope on a silver tray.

‘Thanks, Avis. How are you today?’

‘Well, thanks, Miss Blue. Always puts a smile on me face, the sunshine.’

‘Me too. Time for a cup?’

‘Not me, Miss Blue. I’ve got a tart in the oven,’ protested Avis, hurrying out. Blue smiled. Any time of day was a good time for baking with Avis at the helm. She slid the onyx-handled letter opener under the fold of the envelope and read the letter.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said, and read it again.

Darling Blue,

Golly, you’re swell. Oh Lord. I’ve gone right in there and said it and I meant to be ever so elegant! But I’ve already ripped up five sheets and this is the last one in my sister’s case. So I’d better make it count.

Blue, you are dearer to me than the nest to a bird, than the song to a sparrow, than the udder to a cow. You’re the most beautiful girl I ever saw and I worship you.

If you would consent to write back to me, and maybe, some day, to be my girl, I’d be the happiest boy th