The Last Letter from Juliet
Page 30
It was a calm flight on a cloudless winter’s day. We headed out across the Normandy beaches and crossed a channel of water that had acted as the most precious and effective moat history had surely ever seen. As the Cornish coast edged closer, my heart sensed that he had gone. Part of me wanted to go with him – to the far side. All I had to do was to push down on the stick, never pull up and the whole world would slip away. And I was sure for a moment that I would. I saw the faces of all those I had lost – my parents, Anna, Lottie and now Edward and I wanted to join them. But then I felt the familiar shape of my father’s compass through my jacket pocket and I was transported to a field in Oxfordshire where a young girl was chatting happily to a journalist. ‘It’s instinct,’ she had said, ‘It’s just a case of knowing when to pull up.’ And although I could barely see to navigate through a cascade of tears, when I saw Lanyon appear through the haze in the distance, I thought of Marie and Wilkins, and more especially of Mabel who was playing in the garden with Amber, waiting for me. And that’s when I heard Anna’s voice, she was singing to me – Somewhere Over the Rainbow. And at that moment I vowed to remember all of it – every amazing, horrifying bit of it. I would live my life to its absolute limit – for Edward, for all of them – in the certain knowledge that one day we’d be together again, that he was waiting for me, on the far side, where the angels sing.
And that is where my story ends. As it began. In a bright yellow Tiger Moth, flying high above the angels, with Edward.
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks to the following: my wonderful editor, Charlotte Ledger, who guided me with tenderness and tact through the writing of this story. To Frankie, Becky and Caroline, who keep me going with endless encouragement and enthusiasm. And especially to dear departed Mary Ellis, whose wonderful autobiography, A Spitfire Girl, was the inspiration for Juliet’s story. I have so very many questions and I wish so much that I had met her.
About the Author
Melanie Hudson was born in Yorkshire in 1971, the youngest of six children. Her earliest memory is of standing with her brother on the street corner selling her dad’s surplus vegetables (imagine The Good Life in Barnsley and you’re more or less there).
After running away to join the British armed forces in 1994, Melanie experienced a career that took her around the world on some exciting adventures. In 2010, when she returned to civilian life to look after her young son, on a whim, she moved to Dubai where she found the time to write women’s fiction. She now lives in Cornwall with her family.
Her debut, The Wedding Cake Tree, won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Contemporary Romance Novel of the Year 2016.
@Melanie_Hudson_
www.facebook.com/melhudson7171
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