Letters to the Lost Read Online Free PDF

right about the dancing, but she wasn’t sure she’d miss it that much. It seemed a small thing to forgo in exchange for all that she would be gaining. ‘Here, help me out of this dress would you? We can meet up on Saturdays for the pictures or a look in the shops, and you can come round here whenever you like.’
    Heaving herself up off the bed, Nancy gave a humourless laugh. ‘I don’t think Charles would be too happy about that.’
    ‘Well, he’ll just have to get used to it. We’re as good as sisters, you and I; he knows that. You’re the closest I’ve got to family.’
    ‘Except Miss Birch. I reckon she thinks of herself as family now – can you believe what she was like today?’ Cigarette wedged into the corner of her mouth, Nancy smirked and said in her best Miss Birch voice, ‘ Stella is one of the great successes of Woodhill School . . .’
    A volley of Miss Birch impressions followed, accompanied by much giggling, as Stella dressed in the powder-blue suit Ada Broughton had snaffled from the donations for refugees and Nancy re-did her hair, pinning up her curls in one of the styles she had learned in the salon where she worked, and which she had assured Stella was the height of sophistication. When she’d finished she settled a little powder-blue hat on it, tilting at a daring angle.
    Stella looked at the finished result uneasily, turning her head this way and that. ‘I look very . . . grown up.’
    ‘You look gorgeous. You’ll knock his socks off. Talking of which . . .’ Nancy turned away and picked up her handbag from the bed. Out of it she produced a small, brown-paper-wrapped package. ‘Wedding present. Or, honeymoon present, more like.’
    She watched as Stella opened it and, laughing, held up the slippery sliver of pale pink satin.
    ‘Nance, it’s beautiful! What is it?’
    ‘It’s to wear in bed, silly. On your wedding night.’
    Stella’s cheeks glowed, and there was a peculiar tingling in the pit of her stomach. ‘I couldn’t! There’s nothing of it – I’ll freeze!’
    ‘Don’t be daft – you’ll be burning up with passion. Charles won’t know what to do with himself. He’ll have so much to praise the Almighty for he won’t know where to start.’
    Everyone came out of the hall to wave them off. Fred Collins made them stand beside the open door of the taxi for a final snapshot, Charles’s arm stiffly around her, his expression tense because he was aware of the meter ticking away. And then she was kissing Nancy again, and Ada and Ethel, and even, awkwardly, Roger and Lillian. She was about to get into the taxi, hurried up by Charles, when Nancy shouted, ‘Your bouquet!’
    ‘Oh!’
    She ascertained where Nancy was standing, then turned her back to the crush of well-wishers. But as she threw the bouquet upwards, the roses’ thorny stems snagged on her gloves and its trajectory was altered, so that it sailed over her head in a confetti of velvety petals, straight into the hands of Peter Underwood.
    Stella craned her head to look through the rear window of the taxi as they drove away. Everyone had crowded into the road and was waving frantically, except for Peter who was standing quite still holding the bouquet.
    ‘It was supposed to be Nancy who caught it,’ Stella muttered, anguished.
    ‘Peter always was rather a marvel in the slips,’ Charles said, admiringly.
    The taxi turned the corner at the bottom of Church Road and everyone was lost from view. Settling back on the seat, Stella felt sudden, inexplicable tears prickle her eyes. Looking down she saw that her glove was torn and the pristine whiteness stained with blood.

3
    2011
    The short days bled into each other, through endless stretches of night.
    The best way, the only way, to cope with the darkness and the cold and the hunger was to sleep. In the absence of electric light, television, regular mealtimes, her body clock reset itself to some more primitive rhythm and she did this with astonishing ease, like