The Letter Reader by Jan Casey

Author:Jan Casey [Casey, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781803283821
Publisher: Head of Zeus

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Well before dawn she woke with a jolt. It took her a few seconds to get her bearings and recall why her head thumped and her stomach pitched. She was sweating, too, her nightie and the bedclothes sticking to her arms and legs.

She tiptoed to the facilities and refreshing summer air cooled the perspiration on her skin. Ken and Dora’s bedroom door was ajar and as she hurried past she caught sight of Dora’s arm flung over her husband’s shoulders as they rose and fell with his rhythmic snores. They seemed to be cosy and comfortable and in tune with each other. Nothing like her and Arthur who slept back-to-back with a wide berth between them except on the specific nights when they were intimate in the customary manner.

Tucked up again, the alcohol guaranteed that sleep evaded Connie and she knew she’d be lucky to get another hour before it was time to get up. She’d have to give her teeth a good scrub in the morning on the off chance that Arthur got passionate at the station again and detected the presence of drink on her breath.

‘Wah-Watusi’, ‘Twist and Shout’ and ‘Mashed Potato Time’ played over and over in her mind and she smiled when she thought about how silly they must have looked last night. She thought, too, about the lovely scarf tucked away in her suitcase and the television set, the unusual combination of pork and orange, Peter Robinson’s restaurant, the boys tackling the washing up. The idea of going home later that day, back to her old routine, filled her with an empty, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Lulu’s face on a poster advertising To Sir, With Love stared down at her as one searing tear slipped across her face and landed on the pillow. She brushed at it roughly with the back of her hand. Then she remembered she had August – and three whole days here on her own – to look forward to. That felt like a huge victory.

She fell in and out of a fitful sleep, dreaming in fragments about Jim Stanton, Millicent, Shirley, Ken, Maude Grimshaw and Mum. Despite her semi-conscious state, she realised that Arthur was nowhere to be seen in her visions and that didn’t worry her in the slightest. Snippets of conversations she’d had with Dora floated in and out of her awareness and that word – endure – continued to nag at her. Then there was ‘stylish’ and ‘let Connie organise things’ and ‘can you remember the names and circumstances of others that passed through your hands’.

Rubbing her eyes, Connie saw the first signs of dawn creeping under Victor’s blind; the birds, too, told her it was almost morning. She yawned extravagantly, stretching her arms and legs to get some energy into them. There had been others – thousands of them. She’d dwelt on them and fretted about them endlessly during the war years and now they were back to bite her on the bum, as Ken would say.

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