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This isn’t why you’re here, she told herself.You came to Loch Cameron to hide. To heal. To get over losing Claire.
Don’t mind me, Claire’s voice piped up.I wouldn’t want to get in the way of you getting some action at long last, Carrie.
That’s the last thing on my mind, Carrie argued.
Is it, though?Claire asked.
Carrie picked up Maud’s diary as a distraction. She was enjoying reading her great-aunt’s thoughts. It made her feel close to Maud, even though she had written them down so many years ago.
Why not think about him?Claire asked, butting in. I would. If I wasn’t madly in love with Graham, of course.
‘Because he’s my boss,’ Carrie said out loud. Now that she was at the cottage alone, she could do weird things like talk to her dead sister’s voice in her head, without anyone knowing. ‘It’s inappropriate. And I’m trying to read, here.’
People meet at work all the time. Where else is there, apart from the internet?Claire asked.I met Graham at work. When are you two going to make friends, by the way? I don’t like the fact you’re still ignoring each other. I did die, you know. The least you could do is keep my memory alive, together.
‘I’m not likely to forget you, am I?’ Carrie tutted. ‘Graham and I never got on.’
You mean, you never gave him a chance. I don’t think you’ve ever even had a proper conversation.
‘Whatever. Claire, I don’t want to talk to him about you,’ Carrie protested. ‘I can’t. Not yet.’
Claire’s voice went silent, and Carrie picked up Maud’s diary again. If it was teaching her anything, it was that love hurt. Maud and William’s affair was doomed – anyone could see that. Carrie read on, hoping she was wrong, but knowing that she likely was not.
20thJanuary 1958
I feel like I’m writing a novel about me and William, but it is a strange story, how it all came to be. I was going to write how it worked out there for a moment, but of course it hasn’t worked out at all. Clara is still alive. William and Clara are still married.
Now, of course, I don’t want Clara to die. That would be appalling. But she has been ill for a long time now, and it has taken a toll on William.
I see everyone, as postmistress. When I took over the job from Mother in 1952, I was just twenty-two but somehow, that uniform gave me a kind of power over Loch Cameron. People didn’t see bookish, odd Maud Rose McKinley anymore: they saw the postmistress, someone who they thought they could entrust all their secrets to – and all those belonging to other people, in particular.
Now, I’m not one for gossip. I listen, because I have to. But I don’t pass it on. Yet, when I started to hear the rumours about Clara’s mystery illness, like everyone else, I wondered what it could be.
I did sometimes see them around the village. Of course, I did. Loch Cameron isn’t that big. And my mother was friends with William’s mother, so we even ended up at the same parties sometimes. I’d been to William and Clara’s wedding, but I also ended up at the christening party for their first child, Alice. And the second, Luke.
However, William, Clara and I weren’t friends, particularly. It was just that Loch Cameron was – and is – a small place, and there would be crowds of people who gathered at these kind of events all the time. I was just one of the crowd.
They seemed happy, but on the other hand, I wasn’t really paying attention. Running the post office was busy, not least because it wasn’t just the post office; there was the adjoining shop to take care of, and all the other things: tobacco, the newspaper orders, groceries.
And then I started to hear that Clara couldn’t get out of bed. That she’d been very sick after Luke was born, and that she’d almost bled to death during the birth. My mother went round to see if she could help, and I remember she came back with terrible tales about Clara. That she just stared at the wall and refused to move. That she was neglecting her baby, and neglecting Alice. That she was as thin as a rake and hardly ate.
Still, it wasn’t until William came into the post office almost two years later with both children that we had a conversation. Both children were crying, that I recall. William looked exhausted; I don’t doubt that he was, considering that he was caring for the children and Clara at that time. His family did help, though.
He wanted two stamps. I tore them off the strip for him. Little Alice was running around the shop causing havoc, and Luke was still crying. I came out from behind the desk, caught Alice up in my arms and took the envelopes from William and stuck the stamps on for him. I gave both little ones some sweets, free of charge. It was something I did sometimes if I needed to quiet rowdy children. Luke was probably too young, but he seemed to take to it very happily and William didn’t seem to mind.
He thanked me, and while Alice and Luke enjoyed their sweets, I asked if he wanted a cup of tea. There wasn’t anyone else in the post office, and I thought he looked like he needed it. And he said yes. So we all went into the back room and I made us a cup of tea and put some biscuits out for the children too.
And William talked. For the first time he really talked to me, despite us knowing each other so long, but also never really knowing each other at all. He told me everything that had happened with Clara. That she still refused to get out of bed, and that she was so weak that she had to be spoon-fed. The doctor couldn’t see anything medically wrong with her, although she had had a very traumatic birth with Luke. He stumbled over his words as he told me how Clara bled heavily all the time, so much that he’d had to buy new sheets on many occasions, and how his mother was always having to bleach Clara’s blood out of them. Still, the doctor just said that it was women’s problems, and that the bleeding would probably go away on its own.
I didn’t know what to say to him, so I listened. It seemed like that was something he needed. He told me about how happy he and Clara had been, but that he still always had nightmares about the war. He wouldn’t talk about what those nightmares were, though I found out later.
He told me he didn’t know what to do. Clara didn’t seem to be getting any better, and he was struggling to cope on his own, even though his mother looked after the children when he went to work. He was a boat builder. Still is. When he came back from the war, his uncle took him in and apprenticed him.
I didn’t have any wisdom to offer him. I just listened, and I thought about how handsome he was, and how sad. Then he finished his tea and went home.
After that, he started staying for tea at the post office fairly frequently. He always brought the children with him, as if they were some kind of barrier between us, providing safety. Making our conversations above board.
And they were above board. Until they weren’t.
