Itellmyselfit'stosatisfy my creative curiosity, to see if I have the skill to craft something that is entirely outside of my writing experience. That it has nothing to do with me being given permission to create an expression of how I feel about Bess.
Nor that it might bring the romantic catharsis Mistral spoke of.
It doesn't anyway, regardless of the lie.
All it does is reflect the feelings I have for Bess back at me, so that I experience them two-fold, like the sun reflected in a mirror. And just like being placed under the scrutiny of the sun, it is intense and wholly uncomfortable.
When it's done, I feel exhausted, like I've poured all my emotional and intellectual energy into it.
Then I tell myself another thing.
That it doesn't expose my vulnerabilities, because I've hidden them inside the persona of a World War Two soldier. It's like that layer of protection a costume gives you at a themed party to be bold and uninhibited, instead of the miserable dude in the corner wishing he weren't among a whole lot of people he barely knows.
It's the soldier's words. Not Ed Chakrabarti's.
But I know this to be another lie.
I keep it close – in my bedside drawer at home, in my pocket at work – so I can pull it out and read it when I need to be reminded of any number of things I'm capable of but that I doubt about myself, or that the world is capable of doing to me and I've made it through.
That I am a good writer.
That life carries on after heartbreak.
That I can hold Bess close, even when she's so far out of reach.
It's just for me and feels like a little piece of magic. A distillation of what I've been harbouring for the last year into five hundred, charged words. It's heavy with the energy of them and feels dangerous, like it will explode on impact.
One thing's for sure. I will never allow it to get into Bess' hands.
Chapter sixteen
Bess
WhenthePortDerrumGallery's phone rings, it's no longer so unusual that I only expect it to be Mistral calling me over to deal with wayward library customers. In the last few days I've had to field actual queries about actually purchasing art.
So, I am taken by surprise when it does turn out to be Mistral.
"Okay, so," she says. "We've got another one."
"Another what? Unreasonably loud patron? Heavy petting teenagers?"
"No." She drops her voice to a whisper. "We've got another letter."
Chapter seventeen
Bess
“Iliterallyfounditinthis book in the return bins.” Mistral hands me a book on bird watching. “It wasn’t checked out to anyone, which is very strange.”
The book is a library book. It has the barcode on the front and the label on the spine.
“The person would have had to have got the book out of the library without setting off the security gates to post it back through the returns slot.” Mistral’s eyes sparkle with the excitement of it. “It’s a real mystery.”
"Huh," I say, because it is, indeed a real mystery. Someone wanted this letter discovered.
"And," continues Mistral in a hushed tone, "this time the letter's in an envelope addressed to you."
To me? A thrill courses through me and I open the book to the page where the tip of the letter is visible.
