"You'll find someone again, Ed. You won't even have to try. You're not only handsome, but you work in one of those professions that make people swoon, like fire fighters and brain surgeons."
Ed raises one corner of his mouth. "Do you know that every single female who I told I was training to become a librarian, said 'Really?', like I'd just announced Henry Cavill was going to give them a personal strip tease?"
"They did not," I say through a laugh.
"Every single one."
As much as I feel obliged to scoff, I can well believe it. Many women would be happy to entertain an ideal with a man who looks like Ed. Except for me. Obviously. “You must have the ladies lining up.”
"In a town the size of Port Derrum?"
"All those yummy mummies coming in for Story Time. Their eyelids probably go into spasms from all the eyelash batting."
Ed laughs and the movement causes a lock of thick, ebony hair to fall over one eye. The remaining one is half closed so that his iris looks almost black through the curtain of dense lashes.
Other women, no doubt, would find the combination of wayward hair and thick lashes irresistible. One of them comes immediately to mind. "I saw the way that member of the House of Lords, Pauline Westerton-Whatsherface, smiled at you in the library last Tuesday. She looked positively hungry."
Ed grimaces. "God, it was intense, wasn't it? All those bleached teeth. She was beaming like a glow worm's doop valve."
"Doop valve?" I say through a laugh. "Where did you get that from?The Handbook of Glow Worm Anatomy for Six-Year-Olds?"
"'Arse' sounded too aggressive."
Ed never goes for aggressive. Cutting and funny, yes, but anything tending towards mean, no.
Next to my caustic thundercloud, he is sunshine and the sparkling angel dust that falls from butterfly wings. Or something equally worthy. What I bring to the friendship is anyone's guess. Perhaps we balance each other out, like yin and yang, or The Dark Side of the Force and whatever they call the light side. The Light Side presumably.
"Arse is too aggressive," I agree. "Especially as an endearment for your future wife."
Ed raises his eyebrows. "Oh I'm not going to marry her. I'm just going to use her for her body."
I stifle a laugh and poke my lip out in consideration. "She is kind of hot for someone who's old enough to be your dad's eccentric aunt."
"Never underestimate the sexual experience of your father's eccentric aunt. When I lose my virginity, I want it to be really memorable."
I do laugh at that. "Wait. You are kidding, right?"
"About which bit?"
"About your virginity. Not about lettingPauline Westerton-Whatsherface ride you like an angry cowgirl."
Ed holds his hands up in a 'who knows?' gesture. After a pause, he says, "Angry? Why angry?"
"She just looks like someone who'd get turned on over hostile negotiations."
He nods and says with solemnity, "Just my kind of lady."
We drink in silence for a minute.
Eventually Ed says, "So, what are you going to do with the letter?"
I have absolutely no idea. I want to keep it, but it's not mine to keep. "Hold onto it until we can find out who it belongs to? The person who threw it away can't be the owner. You'd treasure something like that. It would be an heirloom. Something precious that belonged to your parents or grandparents."
"Or great-grandparents. The war ended eighty years ago."
"True."
“What’s your plan to find out who they are?”
