to look nonchalant. ‘I think I’ve got over the worst of it, but it came as a real shock at the time.’ He pulled himself together and pointed towards the food. ‘Hungry?’
Holly filed away the information that the separation had, by the sound of it, been caused by his wife, rather than by him. Somehow, she had rather assumed that a handsome man like him might have been the guilty party. And there was no doubt at all that he was a handsome man; handsome, sophisticated and urbane. She looked back across the table, liking what she saw, and that wasn’t just the food. At the same time she found herself wondering, not for the first time, just what this was. Was it a date? Was he trying to get over his wife’s departure and move on with another woman? Or was he simply taking her out for tea because she was the daughter of one of his father’s best friends? Or was it neither of those things? She decided the best thing to do was to concentrate on the feast laid out in front of her. She gave him a smile.
‘I don’t really know where to start. I’m afraid I’m a high tea virgin. Is there an etiquette to this sort of thing? You know, scones first, éclairs afterwards or something like that?’
He was smiling again. ‘Just dig in, I think. Of course, there is a bit of debate over whether you put the cream on your scone before the jam or vice versa, but I’m not a purist. Eat what you want, how you want, and in the order you want. Now, let’s have some champagne.’ As he reached for the bottle, the wine waiter materialised from behind a nearby Christmas decoration, filled both glasses and then disappeared as silently as he had come. Holly nodded appreciatively, reflecting to herself that rural Devon was surprisingly sophisticated, as was her companion.
Holly raised her glass towards Justin. ‘Thank you for a very special afternoon out, Justin. Cheers.’ She leant forward and clinked her glass against his over the top of the chocolate éclairs.
‘And thank you, Holly, for being such a charming guest.’ All terribly formal, but then so was he and here, in these surroundings, it seemed appropriate.
The meal, for that was what it was, rather than a mid-afternoon snack, lasted almost an hour. During that time they talked a lot and she learnt more about her father. She also heard Justin refer repeatedly to his wife and the fact that she had gone off. He also told Holly about his hobby of sailing and his love of the islands of the Aegean and, after her third glass of champagne, Holly found herself imagining him on the deck of a fine yacht, clad only in a pair of shorts, with her lying in the sun beside him in her skimpiest bikini. It was an alluring picture.
It was pitch dark by the time they left. As they got into the car, she reached across and touched his arm. ‘Thank you, Justin. That was amazing.’
‘Thank you, Holly. We always used to love coming here.’ She noted his use of the first person plural and knew he must still be thinking of his wife. And, from his tone, he clearly still had feelings for her, in spite of her deciding to leave him. The image of the yacht and the bikini dissolved as she realised she would do well to treat this afternoon as tea with a friend, rather than anything with any romantic involvement. Handsome and charming he most certainly was, but you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see that he was still missing his wife.
When they got back to her house, he jumped out of the car and came round to open the car door for her. She swung her legs out and slid down to the ground.
‘Thank you again, Justin. That was a real treat.’
‘You’re very welcome. Bye, Holly.’
She kissed him on both cheeks and waited as he turned the big vehicle and set off up the road again until the tail lights finally disappeared round the corner after the green. Her mind was working overtime. She had enjoyed being with him immensely. The plush surroundings of the Castle had reminded her of similar episodes she had enjoyed with previous boyfriends in wildly expensive London clubs and restaurants. She had always enjoyed dressing up in her smartest clothes – particularly, she admitted to herself, her best shoes – and she had loved the glitter and opulence of that sort of place. Now, standing outside a granite cottage in a little Devon village with a faint, but unmistakable smell of cow shit in the air, she started to question her previous life. Were places like the Castle or men like Justin what she really wanted? Was all that maybe a bit phoney? And anyway, she thought to herself, it was looking pretty clear that Justin still hadn’t got over his wife so, even if she had wanted to take things further with him, that wasn’t likely to happen.
A strangled half howl, half whine from the other side of the front door interrupted her train of thought. She found herself smiling as she reached for her keys.
‘Sorry, Stirling. I forgot you were there. I’m coming.’
That evening she didn’t have any dinner. She was so full from the high tea that, after a short walk with Stirling, who had behaved himself impeccably in her absence, she went upstairs and carried on with the task of clearing her father’s stuff. She started at the end of the corridor in the room he had been using as a study.
She began over to one side and gradually cleared the worst of the clutter. The floor was littered with boxes, books, piles of paper and files. There were even pieces of metal and models that she, as an engineer, recognised as pumps. It was when she had just about reached the far side of the room, her hands dusty and her fingernails black, that she made an amazing discovery.
It was an ordinary-looking cardboard box. She picked it up, wondering whether the contents should be binned or kept. Setting it on the desk, she sat down and started sifting through it. Within a very short space of time she realised she had stumbled across something incredible.
The box was full of letters, each meticulously folded and sealed into an individual envelope. There must have been hundreds of letters in there. And all of them had been written by her father to her.
It didn’t take long to work out that there was one letter every month, from the time he and her mother had separated, until just before his death. Most poignant of all was the fact that the first hundred or so were all in stamped envelopes that had been sent all the way from Australia to her mother’s home address; the same house where Holly had grown up. Each envelope was unopened and still sealed, and Holly recognised the firm handwriting of her mother across the front of each one: Return to Sender.
She counted them up. In all, there were a hundred and twenty-two sealed, stamped envelopes. He had written a letter to her every month from the day he left until her eighteenth birthday. From then on, the monthly letters continued all through her life, but in plain envelopes, unstamped and unsent, marked only with her name, Miss Holly Brice. There were tears in her eyes as she picked up the box and carried it down the stairs. She set it on the coffee table in the lounge and made herself a cup of tea. Then she sat down and started on the first one, dated 1st June 1989.
Every one began with the same words: My dearest Holly. As she read her way into the letters, she began to get a real insight into the true nature of her father. At first the letters were simplistic and entertaining. After all, she reminded herself, her father had been writing to a seven-year-old girl. But one phrase cropped up time and time again. After I had to leave you. It made it sound as if he had been forced to leave, rather than choosing to go off with another woman, as Holly had always been led to believe by her mother. There was no attempt at an explanation but, of course, how could he explain such things to a little girl? She read for several hours, but she was no nearer to discovering exactly what had transpired to cause the separation. But she now knew, if she hadn’t known it before, just how much her father had loved her.
By the time she was too drained to continue reading, his letters had almost reached her eighteenth birthday. He had left Britain almost immediately after leaving her mother and had been living in Australia all that time. She folded the last letter and slipped it back into its stamped envelope, as ever scrawled on by her mother. She glanced at the next ones in the box. There were a couple more with stamps, but from then on, the letters had not been posted. Presumably he had accepted the fact that a distance between them of ten thousand miles, and an implacable ex-wife, now meant he no longer stood any chance of ever contacting the girl he still addressed as his Dearest Holly.
Holly felt emotionally