SELENA SAW THE letter as soon as she opened the front door, the blue airmail envelope unmissable against the brown matting.
She halted abruptly, recognising the Greek stamp, her stomach lurching as a sudden image blazed into her mind of tall bleached columns rearing into an azure sky, with a pool of grass hidden among the fallen stones at their feet. And the soft murmur of a man’s voice in the sunlight, and the brush of hands, lips and warm, naked skin against her own.
She gasped, the plastic carrier bag she was holding slipping from her numb fingers, sending the lemons it contained bouncing and rolling down the narrow hall to the foot of the stairs.
Before she realised almost in the same instant that the untidy scrawl on the envelope could only be Millie’s. No one else’s. And alarm was replaced by growing anger.
Nearly a year of silence, she thought, her throat muscles tightening. And now—what? Another diatribe of recrimination and accusation with the pen scoring the paper just as her sister’s furious voice had scraped across her flinching senses in that last disastrous telephone conversation?
‘It’s all your fault,’ Millie had accused tearfully. ‘You were supposed to help—to put things right. Instead you’ve behaved like a brainless idiot and ruined everything for both of us. I’ll never forgive you, never, and I don’t want to see you or speak to you again.’
And the phone had gone down with a crash that sounded as if it was in the next room rather than hundreds of miles away in a taverna on a remote Greek island.
Leaving her with the knowledge that there was little she could have said in her own defence even if Millie had been prepared to listen. That she had indeed behaved like a fool and worse than a fool.
But she’d suffered for what she’d done in ways that Millie could not even imagine, or was determined to ignore.
Because since that phone call, there’d been nothing. Until now...
She was sorely tempted to leave the letter lying there. To step over it and walk into her living room and begin the new life that had filled her thoughts on the bus journey home.
Except it wouldn’t just go away. It wouldn’t disintegrate or vanish on a breeze. And, in spite of everything, curiosity would be bound to get the better of her in the end.
She bent stiffly and picked up the envelope, walking through the living room, and tossing it on to the worktop in her small galley kitchen, before filling the kettle and setting it to boil.
She’d originally planned to make a jug of fresh lemonade, clinking with ice, and enjoy it in the warmth of her tiny courtyard. A quiet celebration of this unexpected fresh start.
Now what she needed instead was a caffeine rush, she thought bleakly, taking the jar of coffee and a beaker from the cupboard.
While the kettle was coming to the boil, she went back to the hall, collected the lemons, and put them in the fruit basket.
Idiotic, she told herself, to panic like that. Needless, too. Had she really thought, even for a moment...?
No, she told herself harshly, her hands clenching into fists. You do not—not—go there. Not again. Not ever.
She made her coffee strong and carried it outside, settling herself on the elderly wooden bench in the shadiest corner, making herself recap the previous events of the morning and try to recapture something of its optimism.
She had been alone in the classroom, taking down the wall display for Mrs Forbes and putting it in a folder while she considered rather anxiously how she should occupy the unpaid six week summer break ahead of her, when her reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Smithson, the head teacher.
She said briskly, without preamble, ‘Lena, we heard last week that Megan Greig has decided not to return after her maternity leave. Her job as teaching assistant has therefore become a permanent instead of a temporary post, and the staff and governors agree with me that it should be offered to you.’ She gave Selena a brief, friendly smile. ‘You’ve worked very hard and become a real member of the team at Barstock Grange. We all want this to continue, especially Mrs Forbes, and hope you do, too.’
‘Well—yes.’ Selena was aware she must sound dazed, having expected to be once more jobless and probably homeless by Christmas. ‘That—that’s terrific.’
This time, Mrs Smithson’s smile was broader and tinged with relief. ‘Then we’re all pleased. You’ll be sent official confirmation in the next week or so. And—see you next term.’
Selena’s state of euphoria had lasted throughout her journey home and the short walk to her tiny terrace property. Until, that was, she’d opened the door...
She didn’t need to be subjected to another rant, she thought wearily, or, indeed, to the other possibility—a request to borrow money.
If so, she’s going to be disappointed, she told herself, because I’m skint.
Besides, I need to concentrate on my own priorities, like looking for somewhere else to live where children and animals are allowed.
She and Millie had always wanted a pet, she remembered, but Aunt Nora would never agree, clearly believing that two orphaned nieces were sufficient responsibility.
And, considering what had happened, perhaps she’d been right.
Over the years, it had become clear to Selena that Miss Conway had offered her late sister’s children a home more from a sense of duty than any warmer feeling, family visits having been few and far between. But, as she got older, she’d realised that her aunt’s decision owed an equal amount to self-interest.
Her valued role as a pillar of local society in Haylesford might have taken a serious knock if word had got out that she’d allowed her nieces to be put into care. A lot of people might have felt that charity should begin at home.
Having experienced it, Selena wasn’t so sure. Eleven years old, shocked and wretched with the loss of her parents, killed in a collision with a hit and run driver, it hadn’t seemed to matter where she and Millie went, or what happened to them, as long as they were together.
Although they were as different as chalk and cheese, physically as well as temperamentally.
Millie, two years her junior, was a golden girl, small, curvaceous and pretty, her hair a deep, rich blonde which curled slightly. Selena was tall and on the skinny side of slender. Her eyes were grey to Millie’s blue, and her skin much paler than her sister’s peaches and cream complexion.
But the big difference was her hair, almost at the silver end of the spectrum, and totally straight, spilling halfway down her back, even when confined to the thick braid insisted upon by Aunt Nora.
Hair like moonlight...
Oh, God, she thought, as memory stabbed at her suddenly, viciously. Not dead as she’d believed and hoped, but brutally alive.
She sat rigidly, her nails digging into the palms of her hands as she tried to force that particular memory back into the oblivion it deserved.
No one would ever say it to her again. She’d made sure of that long ago, leaving the long silky strands on the floor at the hairdressing salon in Haylesford in exchange for a gamine crop with