Page 9 of Last Letter Home
‘It all sounds a bit odd to me,’ Aruna said, arranging her towel on the sunbed. ‘So you’ve got some film of your grandfather and a few old letters and she’s got the stuff off her conscience.’ She reached for her Ray-Bans and lay down to cream her stomach.
Luke sat up, peering at Briony over his sunglasses. ‘Do we know anything about this woman who sent the letters? You said her name was Sarah.’
‘I’ve only read a couple, so no. She lived in Norfolk, I think, somewhere called Westbury.’
‘You know Norfolk, Luke,’ Aruna murmured sleepily.
‘I don’t. It’s my parents who have moved there, not me. We can certainly look Westbury up on the internet next time we get a signal. I’ll tell you what, though.’ Luke took off his glasses and fixed Briony with narrowed eyes. ‘The villa. How about a spot of trespassing when it’s cooler?’
‘That’s a great idea.’
‘Aruna?’
‘If it isn’t too much of a slog,’ Aruna groaned.
‘Try wearing some proper shoes for a change,’ Luke’s voice was gentle.
‘Oh shut up,’ she murmured.
‘Should we ask the others?’ Briony said tentatively.
‘They don’t like walking, haven’t you noticed?’ Aruna said with a laugh. She rolled over. ‘Here, will you put some cream on my back, Luke? Pretty please?’
Five
Mike and Zara didn’t want a walk, so towards evening it was only the three of them who set out. The light breeze in the lane brought the trees to life and in their shadow the air was deliciously cool. They were hot and tired, though, once they’d scaled the hillside and reached the rutted lane that led to the villa. Worse, despite her better shoes, Aruna was hobbling from her blister. She sank down on the grass verge to inspect it and Briony observed the tenderness with which Luke crouched to wipe the dust from her heel and stick on a plaster he took from his pocket.
‘You carry them around with you!’ Briony was impressed.
He held out his hands to show old scratches and scars. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, ‘even with gloves.’
Luke ran his own business in South London, designing and planting city gardens. Briony still teased Aruna about the way they’d first met. ‘Your knight in faded denim,’ she’d say with a chuckle. ‘Rescuing the beautiful maiden’s moggy.’
Purrkins, Aruna’s beloved blue Burmese, was supposed to be an indoor cat, but sometimes made a break for it. On this occasion he’d been missing for two days and Briony was helping search for him. Luke’s van was parked outside a house three doors down and Briony nipped along to ask if he’d seen a big, fluffy, blue-eyed cat. He hadn’t, but he’d heard mewing from the house next door where someone said the inhabitants were away. Purrkins, it turned out, had become stuck behind a one-way cat flap. Luke simply clambered over the garden fence and let him out. Aruna was so grateful that she immediately asked him to join them for supper. Briony, seeing which way things were going, murmured an excuse.
She liked Luke more than most of Aruna’s previous boyfriends, who had tended to be either stylish media types who ran a mile after meeting Aruna’s very traditional parents, or, during phases when Aruna was trying to please her mother and father, conventional professional men with whom she quickly grew bored.
At first Briony imagined that given her own world of books and ideas she and Luke would have little in common except Aruna, but not a bit of it. Luke was well read. He simply came at everything from a different angle, which was refreshing. And he was so easy to talk to that the three of them got on famously. Still, sometimes she felt a bit of a gooseberry.
Aruna slipped on her shoe again and stood up. ‘Come on, let’s go find this place,’ she snapped. It was clear she was still in discomfort. Luke put his arm round her slim waist to help her along.
When they reached the old gates, Luke was as charmed as a boy by the overgrown garden. ‘Did you find a way in?’ he asked Briony as he peered between the rusted palings.
‘No, I didn’t like to try,’ she said, but Luke was already off exploring. In one direction the wall skirted the edge of a deep drop, so she followed him to the left where it disappeared into a tangle of trees. These initially defeated their attempts to break through, then Briony found a place where she could duck inside and squeeze along a path winding between tree trunks until it reached a crumbling section of the wall. Propped up there she saw the remains of an old ladder.
‘Hey, over here!’ she called, and after some crashing around Luke emerged from the greenery.
‘Aruna’s sitting this one out,’ he said, brushing twigs from his hair. ‘Blimey, who’s been here then?’
‘No idea. Is she OK?’
‘Think so, just wants a rest. You’re lighter, do you want to go first? I’ll hold the ladder.’
Briony tested each rung before putting her weight on it, then scrambled onto the wall and looked down the other side.
‘More jungle,’ she called back. ‘Oh, and a ladder down.’ The top rung of this one was sound, but the next snapped and with a cry she half slipped, half tumbled the rest of the way, scraping her hands, before landing in a bush.
‘Briony?’ Luke’s voice was muffled.
