Page 24 of Mirrors of the Past

‘Oh — yes. The only thing I’ve seen so far is a letter, really. Between Elsie and is it Petra? Patricia? Someone — a “P” name.’

‘Pearl?’ said Sybill.

‘Yes! That’s the one.’ Ryan nodded. He still looked a bit confused, though. Great. He was still useless and couldn’t carry a plan through then, spoke before he thought and all that jazz.

Like other guys we know.

Tegan wanted to tell her conscience or whatever it was to shut the hell up — and to stop talking to her in a New York accent.

‘Pearl and Ernie, yes, that makes sense,’ Coren was saying. ‘Pearl was American and I suspect she brought some traditions over with her.’ He looked at Sybill, then at Ryan. ‘We’re already arranging a pumpkin trail here for the kids, so if you’ve got a letter, we could display it somewhere to complement the trail.’

‘Let me have a look for the letter,’ said Ryan. ‘Just to be sure. And I’ll check for photos or pictures in the archives. And run it by you all.’

‘It does link really well into the wedding,’ said Tegan suddenly. Hang on — where the heck had that come from? But she knew it — she absolutely knew it. There was some sort of link between the events, just nudging at her consciousness. ‘It leads up to it well,’ she said again, almost disbelieving what was coming out of her mouth. How? How did Halloween and Christmas weddings go together at all?

‘Really?’ Sybill was curious. ‘In what way?’

‘Let me pull the information together.’ Tegan felt her cheeks heat up. ‘I’m — I’m sure Merryn mentioned it.’

‘Great.’ Sybill smiled around the table. ‘Now, Coren and I need to have a discussion about some other things.’

Tegan knew it was more than likely to be private matters that concerned nobody but Sybill and Coren — like antenatal appointments, or how they were going to co-parent this child if they lived an hour away from each other — and she didn’t really want to intrude on that. ‘Great.’ She picked up her notebook and smiled blankly around at everyone. ‘Well, I have research to do. Wedding traditions of 1911 and all that. Exciting stuff!’ She couldn’t wait to escape from this room and from Ryan. She wasn’t actually sure where she wanted to work though . . . her office across the hallway just seemed too close to this whole situation for comfort, and anyway—

‘Why don’t you take Ryan for a tour around Pencradoc?’ said Sybill breezily. ‘He’s never been before — it’ll be good for him to see what it’s like.’

‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ said Ryan quickly.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tegan at the same time.

‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ they both said together.

Sybill looked at Coren and raised her eyebrows in amusement. ‘Maybe another time, then,’ she said.

Tegan nodded quickly and hurried out of the room clutching her book. She absolutely desperately needed to be away from the house and from Ryan. It was all a bit much, bumping into him today! She wondered if the Tower Tearoom might be a good choice.

But what if he decided to go there too?

It was simply too difficult!

Whatever, she needed to go and she needed to go now.

* * *

Ryan watched Tegan run out of the office. Thank goodness for that. The last thing he wanted to do was have some enforced time in Tegan Burton’s company.

‘I’ll have a look around like you say,’ he said to Sybill. ‘Text me when you’re ready to leave.’

‘Will do.’ Sybill smiled at him and he nodded farewell to Coren, and slipped outside.

Once he was in the hallway, he exhaled slowly. That was close. He thought he’d acted professionally, anyway. But he had no idea why he’d felt the need to throw Halloween in there.

Tammy had directed him to the letter after their conversation about it, and he had definitely seen it. Elsie had been corresponding with her friend — he now knew it was Pearl, thanks to Sybill — and had said that they were all looking forward to getting together for Halloween and the little ones would be excited about it. He needed to look at it properly.

It would be back at Wheal Mount, filed under . . . well, he didn’t quite know what it would be filed under. H for Halloween was unlikely. Maybe he’d filed it under the year it had been written? And then a sub-folder of that called . . . Correspondence.

Tammy should never have let him loose in those archives.

He shook his head. Unimaginative. Someone would have to redo them all again and finetune it all. With any luck, he’d be in Glasgow looking at Rennie Mackintosh’s correspondence to his wife or his friends before the you-know-what hit the fan . . .