Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [87]
She wrote the first letter.
Dear Samuel,
You can have little idea how intensely I have enjoyed your company and the friendship you have offered me. You have brought into my life much that I had not even realized I was missing so deeply. Your stories of America are not only thrilling, but far more than that, you have the eyes to see beauty where other people might miss it, to see laughter and to feel compassion in a rare and wonderful way, which wakens in me an appreciation of life I hardly knew I possessed.
Was that too strong? Or not plain enough? Surely he would understand? She had seen Caroline’s handwriting often enough over the years on household accounts and invitations for the cook that it was easy to copy. They had never written letters to each other; there had been no occasion. The style she had to invent. But then Caroline had not written to Samuel Ellison either, so he would not know differently.
He must not mistake her meaning. She must leave no doubt or the whole plan would fail. There was only this one chance. It was win or lose everything.
She continued:
Before you leave London and go to see the rest of the country I should like to visit with you as often as you can spare the time. I shall miss you extraordinarily when you return to New York. Life will seem so pedestrian again.
Surely that was forward enough, even for an American?
Please call upon us this afternoon, at about five o’clock, if you are at all able. I realize I am behaving with unbecoming urgency, but I can talk with you as I can with no one else. You are family, a link with the past which for me is gone everywhere else I turn. We have so much in common which no one else shares. As you may have observed, and I am sure you have, I find my mother-in-law difficult to speak with, except about trivialities.
Should she add anything about loneliness? No. It was explicit. She must not sound hysterical, it might put him off, and that was the last thing she wished—unless it were completely. And she doubted she could do that. This was her only chance, like one throw of the dice. Win—or lose it all.
I hope to see you,
Yours most affectionately,
Caroline
Should she read it over? Or would she lose her nerve and fail at the last minute? No. Fold it up and post it. Now.
Or maybe she should read it?
She hesitated, sitting with it in her hands.
Once it was gone it was irretrievable.
But the situation was irretrievable anyway. It had been, even since Samuel Ellison had come through the door.
She folded it, put it in the envelope, addressed it, and attached the stamp.
She stood up and walked downstairs and out of the front door into the warm sun. The pillar box was at the end of the street. The post would be collected in half an hour. If Samuel returned to his hotel in time, he would have it long before five o’clock.
Again she hesitated, standing with it in her hand next to the red pillar box.
But if she did not post it he would come in an afternoon, perhaps with other people there, and the conversation would turn to Alys, as it had every other time. Caroline would ask about her, and it would all come spilling out, now or tomorrow, or the day after. Here on the hot pavement in the bright sunlight she was cold as remembered pain filled her, the struggle, the anger swelled back like a tide, the helplessness, the knowledge she could not fight, could not escape, could not refuse, could not even slip into the mercy of oblivion. She had tried that, tried to die, but one did not die of misery.
She let go of the letter and heard it thump on the others lying inside the box. It was done. Now to return home and carry out the rest of the plan. Alys would have done something like this—to protect herself.
Then there was