Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey Read Free Book Online

circle of light cast by the streetlamp, he could see that her face was pale, her jaw set, her dark hair beaded with rain. She seemed to be heading towards the row of cottages – towards the house at which he’d just knocked, he guessed. Wearily he opened the door and braced himself against the wet.
    ‘Hi! Hello? Hi there—’
    She started visibly, her white face a mask of alarm. God, I’m such an oaf, Will thought as he broke into a sort of half-jog towards her. What woman wouldn’t be terrified at being approached by a bloke in a car down a dark backstreet? He tried to produce an encouraging, sensitive smile.
    ‘Sorry . . . Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .’ Seeing the stricken expression on her face he stopped a few feet away from her. ‘Sorry. I knocked on your door, but you weren’t in. Obviously.’ Oh God. ‘I’m from a firm called Ansell Blake—’
    She was shaking her head, shrinking away, as if she wanted to run. ‘I don’t know anything about it. You’ve got the wrong person.’
    And he’d actually thought the day couldn’t get much worse. ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you lived here. Do excuse me. I was looking for someone who might be able to help me find out about an elderly lady who used to live in the empty house there and I just assumed . . .’ He was babbling, and he stopped himself. ‘Sorry.’
    Just for a moment, no more than a split second, her pinched face showed a glimmer of interest. And then it was gone, extinguished by wariness.
    ‘Sorry, I don’t know.’
    Head down, she walked away, as fast as she could in the troublesome shoes, struggling with the cumbersome bag of shopping. And he was left, standing in the rain and feeling not only foolish, but oddly guilty too, as if he’d scared her away.
    He was watching her, she could feel it. She couldn’t turn round and go back to the house now. There was nothing for it but to keep walking.
    Reaching the garages she pushed through the undergrowth she’d come through the other night, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Oh God, he must think she was a complete weirdo – if he didn’t already know exactly who she was and what she was doing. She couldn’t remember the name of the company he’d said he worked for, but they sounded like lawyers or something. What if someone had seen her and tipped them off about squatters?
    Her mind raced. But he’d said he was trying to find out about an old lady, hadn’t he? The old lady who’d lived in the house. Stumbling out from the bushes behind the bins she stopped for a moment to relieve the pressure on the blister that had formed on her heel. She should have played along, pretended she lived in the area, asked him the old lady’s name. Maybe he was looking for Mrs Thorne too?
    The idea gave her a weird tight feeling in her chest, which might have been excitement or unease. She wanted to find her; she owed her that much as repayment for the fig rolls and the rice pudding and the loan of the coat and shoes. She’d squared it with her conscience by promising herself that she’d do her best to trace Mrs Thorne and hand over the letter from her lost love. If there was someone else looking for her, that would probably double her chances of success, which was a good thing.
    And yet, it felt strange. Like Mrs Thorne was hers, even though she knew nothing about her. Nothing ordinary, anyway, like her first name or what she looked like or even whether she was alive or dead; only that she had once been in love with an American airman called Dan, and that he had loved her too. And loved her still.
    She had been walking mindlessly, not paying any attention to where she was going, thinking only of filling in time until it was safe to go back to the house, but now she noticed a church on the opposite side of the street. It was an old-fashioned kind of church with a big square tower of dirty grey stone, and a sign outside which said, ‘ All Saints Church. All Welcome’ above a list of times for