Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

I was seized by a sudden urge to cry.

‘You were just a little girl. I didn’t think you’d remember. We weren’t there for long. As it happens, I lacked the courage to go any further than the front gates.’ She didn’t meet my eyes, hugging her novel firmly to her chest. ‘It was wrong what I did, pretending that you’d imagined the whole thing. It was just… such a shock when you asked. I was unprepared. I didn’t mean to lie about it. Can you forgive me?’

Is it possible not to wilt before a request like that? ‘Of course.’

‘I loved that place,’ she said, lips drawing. ‘I never wanted to leave it.’

‘Oh, Mum.’ I wanted to reach out and touch her.

‘I loved her, too: Juniper Blythe.’ And then she looked up and the expression on her face was so lost, so forlorn, that my breath caught in my throat.

‘Tell me about her, Mum.’

There was a pause, an enduring pause, and I could see by her eyes that she was far away and long ago. ‘She was… like no one else I’d ever met.’ Mum brushed a phantom strand of hair from her forehead. ‘She was enchanting. And I say that quite earnestly. She enchanted me.’

I thought of the silver-haired woman I’d met within the shadowy corridor of Milderhurst; the utter transformation of her face when she smiled; Theo’s account of his brother’s love-mad letters. The little girl in the photograph, caught unawares and staring at the camera with those wide-apart eyes.

‘You didn’t want to come home from Milderhurst.’

‘No.’

‘You wanted to stay with Juniper.’

She nodded.

‘And Gran was angry.’

‘Oh, yes. She’d wanted me home for months, but I’d… I’d managed to persuade her that I should stay. Then the Blitz happened and they were pleased, I think, that I was safe. She sent my father to get me in the end, though, and I never went back to the castle. But I always wondered.’

‘About Milderhurst?’

She shook her head. ‘About Juniper and Mr Cavill.’

My skin actually tingled and I held the bedrail very tightly.

‘That was my favourite teacher’s name,’ she continued. ‘Thomas Cavill. They became engaged, you see, and I never heard from either one of them again.’

‘Until the lost letter arrived from Juniper.’

At mention of the letter, Mum flinched. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And it made you cry.’

‘Yes.’ And for a long moment I thought she might do so again. ‘But not because it was sad, not the letter itself. Not really. All that time, you see, all the time that it was lost, I thought that she’d forgotten.’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘Why, me, of course.’ Mum’s lips were trembling. ‘I thought that they’d got married and forgotten all about me.’

‘But they hadn’t.’

‘No.’

‘They hadn’t even got married, for that matter.’

‘No, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t realize until you told me. All I knew was that I never heard from either one of them again. I’d sent something to Juniper, you see, something very important to me, and I was waiting to hear back from her. I waited and waited and checked the post twice every day, but nothing came.’

‘Did you write back to her? To find out why, to check that she’d received it?’

‘I almost did a number of times but it seemed so needy. Then I bumped into one of Mr Cavill’s sisters at the grocery shop and she told me that he’d run off to get married without telling any of them.’

‘Oh, Mum. I’m sorry.’

She set her book down on the quilt beside her and said, softly, ‘I hated them both after that. I was so hurt. Rejection is a cancer, Edie. It eats away at a person.’ I shifted closer and took her hand in mine; she held on tightly. There were tears on her cheeks. ‘I hated her and I loved her and it hurt so very deeply.’ She reached into the pocket of her dressing gown and handed me an envelope. ‘And then this. Fifty years later.’

It was Juniper’s lost letter. I took it from Mum, unable to speak, uncertain whether she meant for me to read it. I met her eyes and she nodded slightly.

Fingers trembling, I opened it and began.

Dearest Merry,

My clever, clever chicken! Your story arrived safely and soundly and I wept when I read it. What a beautiful, beautiful piece! Joyous and terribly sad, and oh! so beautifully observed. What a clever young Miss you are! There is such honesty in your writing, Merry; a truthfulness to which many aspire, but which few attain. You must keep on; there is no reason why you shouldn’t do exactly what you wish with your life. There is nothing holding you back, my little friend.

I would love to have been able to tell you this in person, to hand your manuscript back to you beneath the tree in the park, the one with the little diamonds of sunlight caught within its leaves, but I’m sorry to say that I won’t be back in London as I thought. Not for a time, at any rate. Things here have not worked out as I’d imagined. I can’t say too much, only that something has happened and it’s best for me to stay at home for now. I miss you, Merry. You were my first and only friend, did I ever tell you that? I think often of our time here together, especially that afternoon on the roof – do you remember? You’d only been with us a few days and hadn’t yet told me you were frightened of heights. You asked me what I was frightened of and I told you. I’d never spoken of it to anyone else.

Goodbye, little chicken,

Much love always,

Juniper x

I read it again, I had to, tracing the scratchy, cursive handwriting with my eyes. There was so much within the letter that made me curious, but one thing in particular to which my focus returned. Mum had shown it to me so I’d understand about Juniper, about their friendship, but all I could think of was Mum and me. My whole adult life had been spent happily immersed in the world of writers and their manuscripts: I’d brought countless anecdotes home to the dinner table even though I knew they were falling on deaf ears and I’d presumed myself since childhood an aberration. Not once had Mum even hinted that she’d harboured literary aspirations of her own. Rita had said as much, of course, but until that moment, with Juniper’s letter in hand and my mother watching me nervously, I don’t think I’d fully believed her. I handed the letter back to Mum, swallowing the clot of aggrievement that had settled in my throat. ‘You sent her a manuscript? Something you’d written?’

‘It was a childish fancy, something I grew out of.’

But I could tell by the way she wouldn’t meet my eyes that it had been far more than that. I wanted to press harder, to ask if she ever wrote now, if she still had any of her work, if she’d ever show it to me. But I didn’t. She was gazing at the letter again, her expression so sad that I couldn’t. I said instead, ‘You were good friends.’

‘Yes.’

My first and only friend, I loved her, Mum had said, Juniper had written. And yet they’d parted in 1941 and never made contact again. I thought carefully before saying, ‘What does Juniper mean, Mum? What do you think she means when she says that something happened?’

Mum smoothed the letter. ‘I expect she means that Thomas ran off with another woman. You’re the one who told me that.’

Which was true, but only because that’s what I’d thought at the time. I didn’t think it any more, not after speaking with Theo Cavill. ‘What about that bit at the end,’ I said, ‘about being frightened? What does she mean there?’

‘That is a bit odd,’ Mum agreed. ‘I suppose she was remembering that conversation as an instance of our friendship. We spent so much time together, did so many things – I’m not sure why she’d mention that especially.’ She looked up at me and I could tell that her puzzlement was genuine. ‘Juniper was an intrepid sort of person; it didn’t occur to her to fear the things that other people do. The only thing that scared her was some notion she had that she’d turn out like her father.’