Dear Rosie Hughes

by Melanie Hudson

  Dear Rosie Hughes

  Melanie Hudson

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  HarperImpulse

  an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

  Copyright © Melanie Hudson 2019

  Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

  Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

  Melanie Hudson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008319625

  Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008319618

  Version: 2018-09-26

  To Andrew, Edward and Meg

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  About HarperImpulse

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  From: aggieb@yahoo.com

  To: rosie-of-arabia@yahoo.com

  Subject: My First Chapter!

  Date: 28 June 2003

  Hi, Rosie

  I know I’m going to see you next week, but I had to write straight away and tell you that I’ve completed the first few chapters of my new novel – and the words flew onto the page! It will probably be cut to pieces in the edit, but all I can say is, ‘Thank Christ for that!’

  And so, thank you, my wonderful friend, for allowing me to tell your story. I promise to take the very best of care of it. I’m wetting myself with excitement about writing the final chapter, which is going to be so blooming heart-warming, there will not be a dry eye in the house. Just imagine the scene: two old friends meet up for the first time on an achingly beautiful Scottish beach, one having just come back from a war zone in the desert, the other having finally found a purpose to her life, after years of being lost in a desert of her own. We lost many years of friendship (and all because of a man and a misunderstanding) but once you get home, we can crack on with a new bucket list and pledge (in blood, if necessary) to never lose touch again. Anyway, enough mush. Here’s the blurb for the book. Let me know what you think:

  Life in Rosie Hughes

  By

  Agatha Braithwaite

  Blurb

  It all began – as, perhaps, all such romantic stories should – with a miserable heroine, a crazy idea and an epic train journey. Such was the case for Stella Valentine, a beautiful but lonely romance writer who, on a dank December afternoon, decided on a whim to escape to the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, having lobbed her laptop and latest manuscript into the nearest river first. As anyone who has embarked on a ‘bugger-it’, life-changing journey will confess, at the outset it is impossible to know if the new path will lead to the much-longed-for ‘happy ever after’ or if it will simply prove to be yet another crappy, pot-holed road leading to even deeper depths of despair.

  But as Stella glanced whimsically out of the window of the old steam train as it powered its way down the glen, any lastminute reservations were forced to the back of her mind. She didn’t notice the driving wind and rain, but felt her heart lifted – yes, physically lifted - by the deep dark lochs, towering mountains and faded heather moorlands; a landscape surely designed for the swaddling of the lost and lonely. And as she stepped onto the platform at Mallaig station, she had the definite notion – or the ‘ken’ as her new Scottish friends would say – that the next six months would prove to be the most pivotal of her life.

  What Stella did not know, however, was that at the very same moment she stepped off the train and walked across the platform, dragging her case behind her and smiling into the rain, her childhood friend, Rosie Hughes, was not only thinking of her but had, quite coincidentally and on the very same day, embarked on an epic journey of her own, but to a significantly more dangerous corner of the globe.

  This is not just Stella’s story, then, but a story of rekindled friendship, and of two women who find that every single day matters, and that nothing in life is so bad or so utterly unfathomable, when shared between friends.

  With all the love in the world,

  Aggie (AKA Stella Valentine – I told you I’d find a use for the name)

  PART ONE

  Six Months Earlier

  Electronic Letter (‘E’ Bluey)

  From: Agatha Braithwaite, Midhope-on-the-Moor, West Yorkshire

  To: Lieutenant Rosanna Hughes RN, British Army Headquarters, Kuwait

  Date: 7 January 2003

  Oh, my Jesus Christ, Rosie. I’ve just found out you’ve gone to war!

  Before I go on, it’s me, Aggie Braithwaite. (I know it’s been an uncomfortably long time since we spoke.)

  I bumped into your dad in the village shop this morning and I knew something must be wrong because he was turning a squidgy mango over in his hand and staring glassy-eyed into the ‘past its best’ fridge. Bearing in mind your dad is from that generation of Yorkshiremen who would never dream of buying a mango (not even a squidgy one) I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘Oh, I’m bearing up, lass, considering.’. I thought, shit, someone must be dead. So, I followed on with, ‘Considering what, Mr Hughes?’. And then he told me how you’d flown to Kuwait yesterday – with the Army. What were you thinking, Rosie? No-one looks good in khaki. Not even you.

  The last time I bumped into your Dad was about eighteen months ago in Midhope. He was at the Chinese picking up a sweet and sour chicken. I broke open a fortune cracker and wrote my number and address on the back of the paper – did you get it? He told me you and Josh were living in a thatched cottage in Devon and you were working at the Met Office in Exeter. But now I hear you’re back in the Navy as a reservist and you’re getting divorced? Eh? I’d heard you left the Navy ages ago, so I’m utterly confused and believe that the world must finally have gone topsy-turvy bonkers bananas mad, because many things that I’m hearing do not make sense:

  1. What’s a sailor doing in the desert? Surely this is a misnomer?

  2. Unless you’ve taken up body-building, your physique and personality are not equipped for combat. If you were built like me (an Amazonian Warrior Goddess) it would be different.

  3. You don’t have the name of a war hero (and I’m an author, so I know these things). How can someone called Rosie go to war? It’s too soft. Surely you should be sitting in a cosy cottage toasting marshmallows, playing that violin of yours to twenty children?

  4. As founder member of the Charlie’s Angels (Huddersfield Division) I know for certain that you’re a bit of a scaredy-cat.

  In sum - Rosie Hughes at war? It doesn’t make sense
.

  Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get much information out of your Dad. He had to rush off because he had parked on double yellow lines and had lent his dashboard disability sticker to your Aunty Joan – she’s got fluid on her knee due to a nasty fall down the steps of the mobile library. But he told me about the forces electronic bluey letter system and pressed your BFPO address (and the mango, bizarrely) into my hands before he disappeared, which I saw as Kismet (the address, not the mango) because I’ve been desperate to get in touch for ages, but when you didn’t phone or write after I gave my number to your dad, I thought it was best to let it go. But now that you’ve gone to war, all that silliness seems irrelevant, and I just wanted to write and say, ‘hello’, ‘take care’ and ‘what the fuck, you idiot?!’

  But enough about you. My own life has been a series of bad decisions meshed together by good intentions, and you will not be surprised to learn that I still haven’t managed to nail it, and by ‘it’ I mean that thing called love. I’ve moved back to Midhope and I’m a writer, which despite being my lifelong dream, bores me to death. I joined the operatic society again with the hope of bagging myself a leading man (I never learn), but all of the men are either spoken for or just plain boring, and anyway that casting bitch at MAOS gave the part of Maria in The Sound of Music to Jessie Cartwright! So, I told them to fuck right off. I mean to say, Jessie Cartwright? As Maria? Please!

  It was exactly like that time in lower sixth when they gave the part of Juliet to Cheryl Brown just because she was light enough to stand on the balsa wood balcony. And to rub insult into injury, they’ve offered me a consolatory part playing a nun, and I don’t mean the pretty one. They offered me the part of Bitch Nun, the one with a face like crumpled steel. Honestly, Rosie, Jessie Cartwright has a weak, tinny voice and – mark my words – she will struggle to reach the back row. But I suppose she’s impish which fits the stereotypical image of Maria. When will people realise that the real Maria was a buxom, single-minded, man-eater who got chucked out of a nunnery for being a slapper? And I bet she was a total bitch with those kids once she’d got a ring on her finger. And answer me this: who else but me (in West Yorkshire) could play a buxom Austrian ex-nun who shags a sea captain? I nailed that audition. I did my usual Ella Fitzgerald impression and banged out, Puttin’ On The Ritz (great number for ‘filling the stage’ with song and dance), followed on nicely by With A Song In My Heart for the emotional pull. (Mrs Butterworth was actually crying when I closed the final line.) Basically, I nailed it, only to hear, ‘We’ll let you know.’

  We’ll let you know?!

  Apparently, I can’t just rock up in Yorkshire after ten years of absence and expect to be a leading lady.

  Why? Why can’t I?

  But they aren’t completely daft as they fully expect me to plonk my fat backside on the piano and accompany all the rehearsals – what a cheek! Anyway, I’ve told them to stick the part of ugly nun – and their piano – up their arses. I’m not remotely suitable for the role and I refuse to play her, it’s degrading. Shaun Jones asked me if I’d like to start doing my Ella tribute down the club again (I think he felt sorry for me) but I can’t face it. I’m done with singing. Anyway, it doesn’t matter as I’m fleeing to Scotland soon.

  More anon.

  Love, Aggie

  P.S. Any hunks over there? If there are, don’t forget, he has to be tall. Despite my best efforts soaking myself in the Dead Sea for ten hours on retreat last year, I have not shrunk.

  P.P.S. On a serious note, I know we haven’t been in touch for (what?) fifteen years, but I decided to go for a light (let’s pretend nothing ever happened and we were just gossiping over tea and cake) tone to this letter. Do you mind? I know things need to be said to clear the air properly, but can we be in touch while you’re away without raking up the past – at least, for now?

  Bluey

  From: Rosie

  To: Aggie

  Date: 3 January

  Oh, Aggie.

  It was just brilliant to get your letter, and it’s a crazy coincidence because only yesterday I was in the General’s evening briefing, drifting off, thinking of you, wishing we were in touch, and here you are – swear to God! I was thinking about the time we went to the Proms in Leeds on a Sixth Form night out. That woman in the balcony leant forward to wave to her friend and her false teeth fell out and landed in your pint! Hilarious. It could only have happened to you. Did you drink the pint after you fished the teeth out? Probably.

  Like you, I’ve also been wanting to get in touch, but when you didn’t reply to the invitation I sent for my wedding a few years ago, I thought, perhaps, you hadn’t forgotten (or forgiven) what happened that last summer before we went to university. I confess that Dad did give me your address last year. The fortune cookie made my throat catch. It said, ‘A friend asks only for your time, not money’ but at that moment, my marriage had just broken down – amongst other things of equal catastrophe – and I suppose I wanted to hide away. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I made up my mind to come and see you before I left for Kuwait, but I bottled it at the last minute and decided it would be best for us to catch up when I get home, when I’ve got more time.

  Like you said, though, let’s park all that for the moment. But I would just say this: if you kept away because of what happened with Simon, then I’m truly sorry. He can be a bit of an inconsiderate shit sometimes, but if it’s any consolation I honestly don’t think he means any harm.

  So, why am I in Kuwait with the Army? Temporary insanity is all I can put it down to.

  When Josh and I decided to separate, I couldn’t bear the thought of selling up my home on Dartmoor. Remember when I used to draw pictures of my dream home? Thatched roof, roses, duck pond, loads of kids? Well, I pretty much nailed it, except for the kids. Josh agreed he’d leave his money in the property for a couple of years and rent in town, he was away at sea most of the time anyway, but if I was staying at the cottage then I would have to pay all the bills. I agreed, but the reality was that I couldn’t afford it. To rewind further, I left the Navy in 1999 (after the shortest military career in history). I liked being a Navy Met Officer, but once I married Josh I wanted to settle down and start a family. So, I got a job at the Met Office in Exeter, but joining the reserves was a way of keeping my link to the Navy and it also meant I could afford to keep the house once we decided to split. Then, last November, I was asked if I’d consider deploying to Kuwait, to support the Army as a Met Forecaster. Call it impetuous irrationality, but I said yes (probably because I didn’t want to look like a coward). The Met Office released me for six months and before I knew it, I’d picked up my kit, done a bit of training, jumped onto an RAF transport jet and here I am.

  Shit look at the time! Must dash. I must prepare a forecast for the 1800 briefing, but I’ll write later with more info. Please write as often and as much as you can. I’m miserable and friendless out here. I want to know what you’re up to now! You said you’re an author? What are you writing? Did you ever finish that steamy novel?

  Love, Rosie

  P.S. Even though I’m in a target-rich environment, there are no hunks around here – sorry.

  P.P.S. Apparently the whole village is in bewilderment as to how you’ve managed to buy that flash barn conversion overlooking the river. Bloody hell, Aggie! Have your lottery numbers come up or something?

  ‘E’ Bluey

  From: Mr Hughes, Rosie’s Dad

  To: Rosie

  Date: 3 January

  Dear, Babe

  How are you settling in? How was the journey? Mammy wants to know where you are exactly and if you’ll be staying in Kuwait if it kicks off? Are you in a bunker? Also, she wants to know if you’re getting enough food, especially roughage (I know you’ve only been there a day or so, but you know how she worries about your bowels). Speaking of that kind of thing, we took Fluffy to the vet this morning because she kept wiping her backside on Mammy’s sheepskin rug. She’s had her anal glands squeezed (£45 qui
d!) and seems brighter so fingers crossed the rug will be spared future embarrassment when Aunty Joan comes over.

  I bumped into that big lass you used to knock about with at school the other day. She’s not fat now, but big enough to see that she still likes her food. She stole my mango (perfectly ripe and half price too!). I was going to cut a bit up for Mammy with some avocado, although why I persevere with avocado God only knows, the bloody things are either as hard as iron or on the turn and I never catch them right. Anyway, she’s going to write to you – Agatha, not Mammy. Mammy sends her love in my letters (you know she’s not one for writing).

  What else to tell you? Bill and Mary over the road are having their windows done. We don’t think they’ve thought it through. Faux wood effect. Nuff said. They’re having a big conservatory built, too. He calls it an ‘orangery’, the daft sod. How can a terrace house cope with an orangery? The new bloke next door to Bill (Tracy and Jack’s old place) put in a complaint to the council. He thinks it will block out all the light from his chicken hutch, but Bill is ploughing on with it. We don’t mind what he does because, like Mammy says, having a house in the street with an orangery will put the price of ours up and she’s fancying a bungalow. But I’ll only ever leave this place in a wooden box, so she can think again!

  The weather has been raw this week with a vicious wind but at least it’s too cold to snow so that’s something. Well, I’ve just heard the letterbox go and I’m waiting for my metal detecting magazine to come so I’ll sign off. Mammy is sitting in her chair looking through holiday brochures (she says she fancies a cruise, but I think we all know she could never cope with all the people and the chatter). Maybe we’ll treat ourselves to a new caravan at Whitby, although they are such a price these days I doubt we will.

  Well, that’s all for now. If you feel a bit low over the next few weeks, take out this letter and pretend I’m singing along with Nat King Cole in the car, just like we used to: