Always in My Heart by Ellie Dean Page B

increased. ‘Let’s not think about that now,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re alive, that’s all that matters.’
    Cordelia had listened while Ron regaled everyone over supper with how Harvey had sniffed out Jim cowering naked behind the wall, but, unlike the others, she really didn’t think it was at all funny. Poor Jim was lucky to be alive, and she could only imagine the awful humiliation he must have suffered to be found like that – and to have his father actually joke about it. She was just thankful that only his pridehad been hurt and that his injuries hadn’t been more serious.
    Jim had done his best to make light of it all during supper, but Cordelia could tell that he was worried about his future – as was Peggy. The last thing dear Peggy needed was for him to be called up, what with the baby, the air raids, and this big house to run.
    Feeling tired and a little out of sorts, Cordelia had left the kitchen shortly after the nine o’clock news, and made her way up to her bedroom. It had been a long, rather fraught day, and although it had been heartening to hear the news that the Russians actually had the Germans in retreat from Moscow, the situation in the Far East was very worrying.
    Once she’d prepared for bed, Cordelia rummaged in the bottom of her wardrobe and drew out the cardboard box she’d placed there the day she’d arrived at Beach View. Snug in her dressing gown and slippers, she sat in the chair by the gas fire in her room and, after a momentary hesitation, lifted the lid.
    Her gaze fell on the bundle of letters tied together with a blue ribbon. The ink was faded, and the paper had become brittle as she’d read and re-read them during the years when her darling husband had been fighting in the trenches. She set them aside, not needing to read them again, for she knew them almost by heart, and his return home had wiped away the fear and made it all seem rather unreal.
    The second bundle of letters was much thinner, and she’d tied a narrow black ribbon around them. Thesefew letters had been sent by her brother, Clive – again from the trenches. She had no wish to go through them, for they invoked such sad memories of a brother she’d adored and lost.
    Cordelia set them to one side and sifted through the sepia photographs, pausing now and again to study the faces, and the fleeting moments in their lives that had been captured in perpetuity. Most of them were stiffly formal studio shots, and she gave a wry smile as she regarded the one of her parents.
    Her mother was seated in an ornate chair, her long skirts carefully draped at her feet, her wide-brimmed hat tilted fetchingly as Cordelia’s father stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other grasping his jacket lapel. They looked terribly grand and prosperous, and her father’s moustache fairly bristled with pride as he stared almost defiantly at the camera.
    She set the photograph aside and continued to delve through the mementos. There were little hand-made birthday cards and crayon drawings given to her by her sons when they were still small, and a few short letters and hastily scrawled postcards that had been sent from Canada which hardly gave her any flavour of what their lives were like now. With a deep sigh, she continued to sort through the rest, and finally found what she was looking for.
    Her oldest brother had been a good letter-writer, and she’d found these few amongst her parents’ things after they’d died. The sequence wasn’t complete, formany of them had been lost or destroyed over the years, but they still told an interesting story, and she could remember, as a child, asking her father for the stamps to add to her collection.
    Charles Fuller had married seventeen-year-old Morag Campbell after meeting her in her parents’ hotel whilst on a walking tour in Scotland. At twenty-five he’d decided he no longer wanted to be a small-town solicitor like his father and, as Morag was quite an adventurous sort of