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32
Lettie was woken soon after seven o’clock by gulls screeching outside. Sunlight was streaming through the thin curtains and pooling on the floorboards, and when she pulled the curtains back, Heaven’s Cove was reborn.
The only trace of the storm was detritus strewn across the narrow, cobbled lane. Lettie spotted a lobster pot and fishing line tangled in a branch that the wind had ripped from a tree nearby. But the sky was a washed pale blue with no trace of cloud, and the sea was as calm as a millpond. The heavy heat of the last few days had dissipated, leaving a fresh early morning chill that made her shiver.
She jumped back into bed and looked at the papers on the bedside table. She should place them back in their hiding place, leave Heaven’s Cove, go back to London and find a steady job in customer care. Daisy would welcome her with open arms and she could slip back into her routine of child care, Sunday lunches en famille, and fending off her mother’s matchmaking efforts. It wouldn’t be so bad really. Iris would have understood.
Lettie settled back down under the covers and closed her eyes, ready to slip back into sleep for another half hour.
Five minutes later, still wide awake, she sat up, grabbed the papers and began to untie the red satin ribbon that encircled them. She couldn’t just pretend they’d never been found. Cornelius wanted Iris to have these, she told herself. That was why he bequeathed her his desk. And as Iris’s great-niece, she surely had a right to read them. After all, Iris had left her the key and her dying wish had been for Lettie to ‘find out’.
The bundle held a folded letter and a rolled-up piece of paper. Lettie carefully unfolded the letter first.
Iris, my best girl,
If you’re reading this it means the worst has happened. I hope I was brave when death came calling and I didn’t let you and my family down. I know for sure that you were on my mind as I drew my last breath. Don’t cry, Iris. I don’t regret being untruthful and going to war. It’s the right thing to do when so many friends are facing danger for our future, and I have to do my bit. My only regrets are the tears you’ve shed trying to make me stay, and that our bright future will never be. You’re a smashing girl, Iris, and you mean the world to me. But you will find another man who loves you. Take every chance to be happy, but throw a flower into the sea and think of me sometimes. I’ve left you this present. My family might jib against it so I’m making sure you receive it directly. Tell them it’s what I want and they must respect my wishes or I shall return to haunt them! Tell them, too, that I love them, and make sure that darling Florrie behaves. I fear she will be lost without me.
Chin up, sweet Iris. We will meet again in the afterlife. I’m sure of it.
Your sweetheart,
Cornelius
Lettie wipedtears from her eyes and placed the letter on her pillow. Florence had believed all her life that when Cornelius had lied about his health to go to war, Iris had encouraged him. But this letter proved it was quite the contrary.
It was so sad that Iris had never received it, this outpouring of love from beyond the grave. All she had was a mystery that had remained unsolved. Perhaps she would have found another love in the years left to her if she’d thought she had Cornelius’s permission? And what was the present for her that he talked about?
Lettie unrolled the second piece of paper. This seemed to be some sort of legal agreement. She scanned down it and noticed Cornelius’s name scrawled at the end. The agreement spoke about a parcel of land, which Cornelius was leaving as a gift, To Iris Eleanor Starcross and her descendants.
Would Iris have stayed in Heaven’s Cove if she’d received this? wondered Lettie. And how tragic that she never knew of Cornelius’s generous gift. She shed more tears for the great-aunt she had loved, and the man she’d never met who had loved her too. There were sounds in the house – a door closing and the kettle whistling on the stove. Florence or Corey were up and about, which meant Lettie had to make a decision about what to do next. She really had opened a can of worms.
Lettie stood at the bedroom window, going back and forth over her choices. She could put the letter and legal paper back into their hiding place in the desk and pretend she’d never found them. That would save her confessing to Corey and his grandmother that she’d been snooping round the room in the middle of the night.
But Cornelius’s words had been hidden for long enough, and they absolved Iris from the blame the Allfords had thrust upon her. Cornelius had made up his own mind to go off to war and Iris had tried hard to stop him. They were also words from the grave that might give Florence some peace.
Lettie stood on tiptoes so she could glimpse the quayside. It looked a little battered after the storm. The waves must almost have reached Lobster Pot Cottage. She hoped that Claude had been all right overnight, and felt reassured that at least he’d had Buster for company.
‘Yoo-hoo!’
Belinda was walking past in the street below and started waving madly, after glancing up at the window. Lettie waved back, aware that being in Florence’s house first thing in the morning while wearing Corey’s pyjamas was Gossip Gold.
‘Are you all right after yesterday?’ Belinda mouthed, her face contorting as she over-emphasised the words. News obviously travelled fast in Heaven’s Cove. ‘So brave!’
‘Fine,’ mouthed Lettie back, realising as she did so that her throat was sore from the salt water. But she smiled broadly anyway and Belinda nodded before trotting off at top speed, like a woman on a mission.
A rich smell of coffee and toast had started wafting upstairs and Lettie knew she couldn’t stay in the bedroom much longer. She would have to make a decision and see it through.
When she opened the bedroom door, she found that a T-shirt and a pair of jeans she recognised as her own had been left outside in a neat pile on the landing, along with a faded bath towel. The handwritten note on top said: Dropped off clothes first thing this morning. Hope you’re OK. Rosie x Rosie must have come home early and collected them from her room at Driftwood House. That was so kind of her.
But then Heaven’s Cove was a kind sort of village, Lettie mused while she had a quick wash in the old-fashioned bathroom and slipped into her clothes. Neighbours here knew each other and seemed quick to lend a helping hand, whereas in London Lettie had never even spoken to some of the people who lived in her block of flats.
She was still thinking about her boxy flat with its view of the cemetery and its place under a noisy flightpath as she walked into the kitchen.
‘You’re up!’ said Florence, lifting her head from the newspaper she was reading at the breakfast table. ‘Corey wanted to check on you but I said you needed your sleep after all the drama yesterday.’ She put the paper down and peered at Lettie over her half-moon glasses. ‘Local people will be very impressed that you saved Claude’s dog. That really was courageous and selfless of you.’
‘It was rather stupid of me, to be honest. I don’t know what I’d have done without your grandson coming to the rescue.’
‘He is rather heroic, though don’t tell him I said so. I don’t want him getting a big head.’
