Letters to the Lost Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned the last page of the sheaf of papers in his hand, there was a relieved ripple of applause, then Miss Birch bustled forward clapping her hands and announcing that it was time for the bride and groom to cut the cake. Fred Collins was dragged back from the yard and ordered to put down his stout and pick up his camera. Stella found herself standing beneath the banner beside Charles, once more smiling into the lens. On the photographs it would look like they’d been at each other’s side all day, though the reality had been rather different. His hand covered hers on the cake knife and her chest clenched. He had such lovely hands – long fingered and elegant. She thought of later on, in the hotel in Brighton, and how those fingers would undo the buttons of her nightdress and move across her skin . . .
    ‘We’ll have to do that one again,’ Fred Collins guffawed. ‘You had your eyes closed, Mrs Thorne!’
    The Vicarage was a solid Victorian house with its own particular scent of boiled vegetables, damp tweed and masculinity that Stella hoped would somehow alter when she was properly in residence, as a wife rather than a housekeeper. Carrying her cardboard suitcase she led the way upstairs, with Nancy following behind, peering into rooms as they passed.
    ‘Big old place, isn’t it? Just fancy – all these rooms are yours now.’
    ‘Not really. The house belongs to the church, not Charles, but I know what you mean. I’m very lucky.’
    ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Nancy muttered as she followed her into the bedroom that from now on was to be Stella’s. The high wooden bed was covered by a mustard-coloured counterpane and there was a wooden cross bearing a carved figure of the tortured Christ hanging on the green-painted wall above it. Everything in the Vicarage seemed to be painted green; the same shade as the church hall, and the pavilion on the playing field, come to think of it. ‘Anyway, it’s not luck,’ Nancy went on. ‘You deserve all of this and more. He’s the lucky one, marrying a gorgeous girl like you.’
    ‘I don’t think his family see it that way. I’ll always be the girl from the Poor School to them.’
    ‘That shows what they know.’ Brusqueness, in Nancy’s case, was a sign of sincerity. The bed creaked as she collapsed back onto it, hitching up Betty Collins’s blue bridesmaid satin to reveal a packet of cigarettes tucked into her stocking top. ‘You’re a cut above the lot of ’em. Daughter of a Duke, that’s who you are.’
    Perching on the stool in front of the squat chest of drawers that did service as a dressing table, Stella smiled. All she knew about the mother who had given her up was that she’d been in service in a big house in Belgravia. Her father’s identity was a mystery, but Nancy’s theory was that he was from ‘upstairs’, which explained what she called Stella’s ‘ladylike ways’.
    ‘Well, it doesn’t matter whose daughter I am now, does it?’ she said softly, beginning to pull out the pins securing her veil. ‘I’m Charles’s wife. That’s all that matters to me.’
    ‘If you say so.’
    ‘I do. I know you think I’m mad, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted: a house to keep and a husband to love. A tea set with roses on it. You know that.’
    Looking out of the window, Nancy exhaled a sighful of smoke. There was a long pause, in which the only sound was the hiss of the brush through Stella’s hair and the distant sounds of children shouting in the street. ‘I’ll miss you,’ Nancy said, suddenly sombre.
    ‘Oh, Nance – I’m only going to Brighton for four days.’
    ‘I don’t mean that, and you know it. Things are bound to change. You can’t go out dancing and eat chips on the bus on the way home now you’re a vicar’s wife, can you? You’ll have to cook his tea and be there to hand round biscuits at all those evening prayer meetings he has.’
    ‘It won’t be so bad. We’ll still see each other.’ Stella supposed Nancy was