Victoria Cooke - It Started With A Note - A brand-new uplifting read of love and new adventures for 2018!

I hope Rose is looking after you. I know how you worry, but I’ll be fine. We’re working quite closely with the French and I’ve even been learning a little of the language. I’ll teach you both when I get home.

Avec amour (I hope that’s correct)

Yours,

Will

My eyes begin to burn a little and a ball forms in my throat. This is a letter to my great-grandmother from my great-grandfather. I remember my mum telling me the story of how her grandfather volunteered to fight in the First World War. He’d been killed in Belgium I think. Her mother, my grandmother, was five years old at the time and hadn’t really remembered him, something I could always relate to. Naturally, my mother didn’t know too much about him other than that he was twenty-four when he died.

Kieran bursts into my mind. He’s not much different in age to what my great-grandfather had been. I try to imagine him going out to war. The thought of it twists and knots my insides, and I can’t fathom how the mothers of the WWI soldiers felt, waving their sons off to war.

Of course, Kieran wouldn’t have survived the boot-polishing stage, never mind the trench-digging and gunfire. I love him to bits, but he’s a bone-idle little so-and-so, a trait that must be from his father’s side. I couldn’t imagine why a twenty-four-year-old man with a wife and daughter and his whole life ahead of him would want to go to the front line for the king’s shilling. It was so brutal and horrific, but I suppose back then people did it for their country.

I read the letter again; the part about him wanting to take my grandmother and great-grandmother to France stands out. My grandma never even had a passport, never mind visiting France. That makes me feel sad – that one of the only surviving pieces of communication from her father said that he wanted her to see France, and she never went. Granted, there was another war soon after the first, but my grandmother lived until the late Eighties and still never made the trip.

I take out the next letter, which is addressed directly to my grandmother. The date is too faded to read but I can just about make out the intricate penmanship.

My dearest Rose,

I hope your mother is well. I miss you. I hear you’ve grown somewhat. You’ll be as tall as me when I come home. When I return, I’ll have many stories to share with you. As I write this, I’m on leave looking out on luscious green fields with red poppies and blue cornflowers growing. It’s quite the picture beneath the blue summer sky. You’ll have to see this one day. It’s ‘un lieu de beauté’ as the French say. I’ve picked up a bit of the language.

Some of my comrades have taken up poetry. It’s not something I’m good at, but I’ll send you a poem as soon as I get the chance.

Take care, my darling.

Yours,

Daddy

The letter squeezes my chest. Something about the upbeat tone suggests he really did think he’d return home – or he was putting on a brave tone for his daughter. Hindsight paints a tragic picture of a happy family destined for heartbreak.

There are a few more letters and, strangely, some are written in French. I place them all back inside the box carefully and make a note to ask someone to translate the others when I get a chance.

The letters play on my mind all evening. Knowing my grandma never went to France in the end saddens me somewhat. I’m a lot like she was: a homebody, unadventurous and happy in the safe familiarity of where I’ve always lived. But it was her destiny to travel to France, or at least it should have been, and that thought is still weaving through my mind when Gary returns, partially inebriated, from the pub.

‘Have you been buying posh plonk?’ he asks, picking up the bottle of cava and inspecting it as he walks in.

‘I … err … yes,’ I say, no longer in the mood to celebrate.

‘Two glasses, eh?’

I remain silent.

‘One was for me, wasn’t it?’ he says with a small laugh. Like it’s so implausible that I’d have company round. ‘You don’t have twenty quid I can borrow since you’re splashing out on fizz, do you? I’ve had a lot of outgoings this past fortnight and I need something to tide me over until my next JSA payment.’ He pops the cork with ease and pours two glasses of fizz into large wine glasses since I don’t own fancy flutes.

The hair on the back of my neck bristles and I take a deep breath to ensure what I say next comes out nonchalantly. The last thing I want is an argument. ‘No news on the job front yet?’

He pauses, and his face reminds me of a Transformer as the different muscles pull together almost mechanically to arrange some kind of pained expression. ‘’Fraid not. They don’t seem to be able to find anything to match my skills. Twenty years I worked as an engineer and I’m not going to throw away that kind of experience sweeping school corridors or stacking shelves. No offence.’

I’m far from offended, but I’m very close to cross. ‘Well, maybe you’ll have to.’ I maintain an even tone. ‘You’re spending more than you have coming in and it’s a vicious cycle. Jim said he’d offered you a few shifts so you might have to take him up on it, or I can see if there’s anything going at my place if you like?’

‘Cath, look, I’m waiting for the right job.’ There’s agitation in his tone. ‘If I take up a few shifts with Jim, my JSA will stop and I’ll be worse off.’

‘You can work at my place while you’re waiting for the right job . You could work full-time there.’

‘Oh yeah.’ He lets out a dry, humourless laugh. ‘And get stuck there like you did because there’s no time to look for anything better once you’ve been suckered in. What is it you’ve been there now? Eighteen years?’

His words sting and I glare at him. It’s true. I was bright at school, did well in most of my GCSEs and even got my A levels in English Literature, history and media, but after falling pregnant I needed money for the bills and the shift patterns worked well for me with a baby. ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ I say eventually, standing up to leave.

‘Aren’t you drinking your plonk?’ he says, oblivious to how he’s made me feel.

‘You have it, it’s warm anyway,’ I say before storming out of my own kitchen. Hot tears well in my eyes. Not through sadness, but through embarrassment. Embarrassment that he feels he’s better than me despite spending the last half a year in a parasitic state. Embarrassment for thinking he’d be pleased for me when I showed him what I had in the envelope. And embarrassment for not standing up for myself.

I hate how he makes me feel as if he thinks everything I’ve done is insignificant – but I’ve raised a child, I’ve always paid my way, and I’ve saved him from the streets. I may not have an engineering degree, but I like to think that being a good person counts for something. I know it’s his circumstances making him so bitter, but it’s still hard to take. He’s a good person underneath and I’m sure he’ll find himself again.

I just don’t want to be in the crossfire.

It’s time for him to leave.

‘Look!’ Kaitlynn squeals, waggling her newly taloned hands in front of my face as I walk into the staff room the next day.

‘Oh, very nice,’ I say politely, acknowledging her luminous pink, sparkly-tipped nails.

‘Well, I had to treat myself with the annual bonus money, didn’t I? It was a whopper this year! Can you believe how much we got?’ Her voice is so high it penetrates my eardrums like a laser. ‘ And I have a date on Saturday with this total ten I met on Tinder,’ she gushes.