Page 52 of A Letter to the Last House Before the Sea

Claude noticed Lettie shudder before she walked to the sofa and sat down. He passed her the cuttings and she began to leaf through them.

‘Have you found out any more about your relative?’

‘A little.’

Was now the right time? Before he could think too much about it, Claude moved to the dresser and picked up the photo. The colours had faded almost to sepia, but a middle-aged woman in a boat, with long dark hair, was smiling at the photographer. She was smiling at him.

‘I want to ask you something,’ he blurted out.

‘Of course.’ Lettie looked at him expectantly.

Silence stretched between them as a child outside ran by screaming at a seagull.

‘It’s to do with this photo. The woman in this photo.’ Claude closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and staring at Lettie. It had been so long since he’d even mentioned her name out loud. ‘I don’t like to ask for help. Never have.’ He paused, and swallowed. ‘But I wondered if you could help me find out what happened to her?’

She looked at him curiously. ‘Who is she?’

‘She’s a woman I used to know.’

‘How long ago?’

Claude hesitated, hardly able to believe the answer he was about to give. ‘It’s been almost forty years since I last saw her.’

‘That’s a very long time.’

‘It is. Yes.’

Claude’s mind reeled back over the last four decades. Even though much had happened since then, he felt as though he’d been in limbo all the while. As though real life had stopped the day she left and all that had remained was a façade of what life could be.

‘Why are you asking me about her?’ asked Lettie, with a gentle tone to her voice that he appreciated. ‘Can’t your friends in the village help with finding this lady?’

Claude shook his head. ‘Belinda has eyes and ears everywhere, and I don’t want to be the subject of village gossip. I’ve always kept myself to myself and that’s how I want it to remain.’

He almost said for as long as I have left. But that would give the game away, which wouldn’t do. If Lettie was sympathetic about his impending demise, as he felt sure she would be, he might break.

‘I’m not sure how I can help you, Claude.’

‘Can’t you try to find her on your computer? I thought you could find everybody on the internet these days, and you seem interested in chasing down people from long ago.’

‘I can look online, if you give me her details, but couldn’t you do that yourself?’

Claude huffed. ‘I’ve never had a computer and don’t know anything about all this new technology. It does nothing but cause problems from what I read about the social stuff.’

‘Social media can be challenging at times.’

‘All those people shouting into a void.’ Claude shuddered. ‘And the outsiders in Heaven’s Cove, most of them are too busy looking at their phones to truly notice the colour of the sea and the passing seasons making their mark on the countryside. I don’t want anything to do with that. But I would like to know what happened to Esther. If you don’t mind, that is.’ There, he’d said her name out loud.

He studied his hands in his lap. It had cost him a great deal to ask for help, and maybe an outsider wasn’t the best person to ask. She’d come to Heaven’s Cove to find out about her great-aunt, not to get embroiled in a pathetic old romance that had petered out because Esther hadn’t loved him enough.

Lettie stared at him for a moment before giving him a smile. ‘You’d better tell me about her and exactly what you’d like me to do.’

Claude’s shoulders relaxed and he felt a prickling in his eyes that he studiously ignored.

‘Will what I tell you stay between us?’

‘Of course. I can keep a secret.’

She was a stranger and Claude shouldn’t trust her. He didn’t trust many people these days, but there was something about her that reminded him of the woman he’d lost. And sometimes in life you had to take risks.