August 2, 1958
My dear Emmy,
I am not sure how to put into words what I am feeling. I am still a bit dazed. Numb, really. I don’t feel at all like I thought I would.
I found Aunt Charlotte’s house today.
But not the brides box.
I was inside the bedroom you and I shared. I found the crawl space. I opened the door that had been painted shut.
It wasn’t there.
I am back home now, sitting in my flat and watching the telly with Simon. He’s afraid to leave, thinking it will dawn on me after he goes that the brides box is lost to me forever and the last little bit of you with it.
But I am strangely numb.
I found the village to which Charlotte first took us to get library books. It’s Stow-on-the-Wold, and it’s four miles from Moreton-in-Marsh. I didn’t remember the name of this little town, but when I saw the church and the library and even the post office, I knew this was the village Charlotte had called her own, and you and I had been to it—many times.
I started out by going into the library, mainly because I remembered it. I asked the more mature of the two librarians if there was an older woman in the village named Charlotte. In her eighties perhaps?
You mean Charlotte Havelock? the librarian replied.
I felt silly not knowing her last name, so I just asked if this Charlotte Havelock had a sister named Rose.
The librarian said yes, she did.
Oh, Emmy, how my heart thumped in my chest as I asked where I could find them.
She said she was sorry to tell me they were both deceased. She had attended Charlotte’s funeral just three months ago. Rose died several years before that.
Three months, Emmy. Charlotte was alive three months ago.
I had to sit down for a moment to let that sink in. I knew no good would come from pondering why I hadn’t begun the search sooner. But how could I not lament having just missed her?
The librarian felt bad for me and wanted to know if she could get me anything.
I told her I just needed to know if Charlotte’s house was still standing.
She answered with a nod and told me she’d heard an American woman and her daughter were living there—at least for the summer. The woman was distantly related to Charlotte. Or something like that.
She asked if I wanted directions to Thistle House.
Charlotte’s house has a name, Thistle House. You probably remember that. You probably remember everything.
It didn’t take long to drive the half mile to the house. The moment I was standing outside it, it was as if the years had rolled back like a curtain and you and I were arriving on that first day.
I knocked and the door was opened by a teenage girl. She asked if she could help me. Her American accent was strange to hear coming from that threshold.
I told her that I had lived in this house during the war when it belonged to Charlotte Havelock. And then I asked if her parents were home. She said her father was still in the States and her mother wasn’t due back until evening. I was so deeply disappointed. To have come that far—to have actually found the house—only to have to leave and come back another time was crushing.
I pulled a grocery receipt out of my handbag and scribbled my name and phone number on it. I asked the girl if she wouldn’t mind giving my name and number to her mother when she got home and asking her to give me a ring.
Does my mother know you? she asked.
I told her she didn’t. And then who knows why I did what I did next. I just blurted it all out, Emmy. I told the girl about you and your bride sketches and what I had done with them on the night we ran away from Thistle House. I told her how you and I were separated on the first night of the Blitz and that I was whisked away to America by a grandmother I didn’t even know I had and that I never saw or heard from you again.
The girl’s eyes were rimmed with tears when I was done and I realized with a shock that so were mine.
I began to apologize profusely when she opened the door wide and told me to come and see if the brides box was still there.
I didn’t think I should with her mum not at home. But the girl said I looked harmless enough.